Report from Iraq

It's been nearly a year since a gang has been able to attack and capture a police station. The cops know how to call in reinforcements, including American ground troops and air support. In response, the gangs increasingly turn to murdering and kidnapping individual police. But this sometimes backfires when the cops go after relatives of the criminals. This is an old Middle Eastern practice. Kill a cop, and the police will lock up your mother until you turn yourself in. The outlaws are at a big disadvantage once the police come to town, build police stations that cannot be captured, and establish the capability to arrest people. Law and order changes the way the war is being fought. The gangsters are increasingly making desperate and spectacular attacks with bombs and ambushes, failing to shake the cops, and then fleeing to the shrinking number of towns without police stations. The Iraqi police are taking more casualties than the Americans, but the cops are winning the war, one neighborhood at a time.
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