New reports from Iraq report that 12 marines have died in the fighting in Ar Ramadi, a city about 40 km west of Al Fallujah, which is about 50 km west of Baghdad. This is in addition to the deaths in Fallujah, after U.S. forces closed in on the city (previously left alone to fester as an anti-coalition stronghold) in response to the killing of Marines and civilian contractors (mercenaries) in the area. Fighting is also going on in the Sadr City slums, sparked by the arrest of the deputy of the Shiite cleric al-Sadr.

The thing is, this fighting is not a winding down of anything, nor is it a climax–it is just the beginning of a new round of unrest and rebellion, and it is just going to get worse. It will get worse when troop rotation brings in a majority of reservists (as opposed to active-duty troops), it will get worse in the heat of the oncoming summer, and it will get worse as the people of Iraq become more and more unwilling to live under U.S. command.

As noted a few posts ago, Bush’s flacks have been spinning most of the news coming out of Iraq, trying to establish the talking points of (a) we’re greeted as liberators, not occupiers; (b) we’re improving things and the infrastructure is better now than it was under Saddam; and (c) things are getting better, they’re under control, we’re winning the peace, and we’re ready to hand the whole thing over to the Iraqis well in time for the election. However, the truth of the matter is that most Iraqis, even those ecstatic over the ouster of Hussein, want us gone, completely, not with 14 permanent military bases, not with a pronounced 10-year military presence, and not even with any control over the new government–they just want us gone, and now radical groups are taking up arms and shooting at our soldiers.

With the recent fighting in Baghdad, Fallujah, Ramadi, and Najaf, the death toll for the month of April is up to 37 just for the first six days of the month, making April so far the bloodiest month for U.S. and coalition forces since the invasion began last March, with an average 6 or so deaths per day. And this is just the beginning of a bloody new uprising. This is decidedly not going our way.

Administration officials try to play this down, of course, and have been for some time. This little snippet is from Fox News’ Brit Hume last August:

California Roughly Same Size As Iraq

Two hundred and seventy seven U.S. soldiers have now died in Iraq, which means that, statistically speaking, U.S. soldiers have less of a chance of dying from all causes in Iraq than citizens have of being murdered in California…which is roughly the same geographical size. The most recent statistics indicate California has more than 2,300 homicides each year, which means about 6.6 murders each day. Meanwhile, U.S. troops have been in Iraq for 160 days, which means they are incurring about 1.7, including illness and accidents, each day.

What Hume failed to mention is that California has a population of 34 million people, as opposed to 145,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq. That means that one out of every 14,783 people in California is murdered each year, as opposed to one out of every 206 now in Iraq–a 72-to-1 disparity. When told of this, Hume blithely replied, “Admittedly it was a crude comparison, but it was illustrative of something.” Yes indeed. It was illustrative of the fact that Hume is an idiot.

Iraq may very well be a far bigger issue this November than we thought.