A video was released today depicting the cold blooded murder of a Turkish truck driver in Iraq. The same group (al-Zarqawi's?) claims to be holding two other Turkish truck drivers. Their demand? Stop delivering goods to the Americans.
The leader of the Turkish truck driver's union said that union drivers would stop deliveries, which affects 200 to 300 out of a total of 1800 from Turkey each and every day. So it's safe to assume that the driver's union action only covers 20% of the Turkish truck drivers. That still leaves roughly 1500 trucks coming in from Turkey, if other trucking companies don't stop deliveries.
Maybe someone can look this up. In addition to those 300 trucks, other companies from Kuwait and Jordan have already committed to ceasing operations in Iraq. Even the supply routes that are being actively traveled by mercenary drivers willing to run the gauntlet for a living are dangerous at best, deadly at worst. Hundreds of drivers have been hijacked / killed / robbed running the routes into Baghdad.
As far back as April of this year, there were reports of food being rationed in the "Green Zone". Two meals and one MRE per day per person inside the Green Zone. Now, with trucking becoming an increasingly risky part of the picture, how long before it goes down to one and two? If an army travels on its belly (as the old saying goes), what do those who are less used to hardship (embassay staff, reporters, other apparatchiks inside the Green Zone) travel on? What happens when the supply of Jack Daniels dries up?
It's pretty obvious that the Bush administration is trying to soft peddle Iraq right now -- hey, the country's at the intersection of Anarchy and Failed State right now -- it's not exactly an accomplishment that TeamBush wants out front-and-center right at the moment.
Here's some mile markers on the way to "failed state":
- when the logistics pipelines are failing
- when the focus of disruption shifts from beheading American hostages (ineffective) to blowing the brains out of truck drivers to disrupt supply lines
- when suicide bombers start targeting CHRISTIANS rather than islamists
...the situation quickly deteriorates from untenable to lost cause.
We're ---> <--- this close.
