Remember Iraq?

Why is nobody talking about this? Last week’s Abu Ghraib prison escape took a major chunk out of the successful parts of the tentatively over U.S. War in Iraq.

I just thought I’d let you know, in case you missed the half hour window during which the story was being reported, after speculation about the gender of the “royal baby” but before getting distracted by yet another glimpse at Anthony’s wiener

Upwards of 500 high level prisoners, including high-ranking Al Qaida members, were broken out of the infamous prison, in an apparently pre-planned and well organized attack involving mortars and vehicles.

Since the U.S. intervention there ended up responding to the asymmetrical warfare model by being mostly about disassembling Al Qaeda by capturing its command, or otherwise weakening their strategic capabilities by removing senior officials, this is a step back for the entire war effort.

Depending on the rate at which 500 important combatants were able to be captured during the whole Iraq campaign, this escape might represent the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars and scores of lives and months of war.

It’s probably worth mentioning.

You can read some of the paltry selection of articles about it here, here, here, and here.