I feel Dawn's pain, as expressed passionately here. It also feel the deaths of our young military men and women in Iraq piling up in my soul, crushing my optimism.

The key to this enterprise is to remain on the offense, as is supposedly our entire modus operandi for the greater War on Terror. We seem to have been in maintenance mode since our forces' stunning victory in the war proper - obviously, this is not working. We need more personnel not less, we need to be much more aggressive in hunting down and eliminating the foreign and domestic scum that are killing Iraqis, Americans and international aid workers using time-honored Islamofascist techniques of terror. We must take the fight to them instead of allowing ourselves to be caught back on our heels.

That is why I am greatly heartened by this report:

Insurgents killed two U.S. paratroopers and wounded another west of Baghdad on Saturday as the U.S. military unleashed a show of force in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, rocketing buildings to rubble and dropping 500-pound bombs near the site where a Black Hawk helicopter crashed.

....The pre-dawn barrage in Tikrit came hours after the Black Hawk - apparently shot down by insurgents - exploded in flames in a grassy field just outside the city, a hotbed of anti-American sentiment. Six Americans in the copter died, capping the bloodiest week in Iraq for U.S. forces since the fall of Baghdad.

In retaliation, U.S. rocket and heavy machine gun fire destroyed a warehouse and two houses believed to have been used by militants. Air Force fighters screeching overhead dropped bombs, which rattled houses. Mortar rounds howled, and tracer bullets lit up the sky.

"We want to remind this town that we have teeth and claws and we will use them," said Lt. Col. Steven Russell of the 4th Infantry Division, who led raid in Tikrit, a city of 120,000 people about 120 miles north of Baghdad.

Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told reporters in Baghdad that the Bush administration was "sobered by the problem" of increased violence.

Still, he said his talks in the Iraqi capital convinced him that "we have a very solid plan to go out and get these people who are killing us and killing Iraqis."

"I'm pretty convinced after this short visit that we're going to take the fight to the enemy," Armitage said Saturday.

....The U.S. Army quickly took action, reimposing a 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. curfew that had been lifted so people could celebrate Ramadan, which lasts for another two weeks.

After midnight, Russell's convoy of Humvees and Bradley fighting vehicles, their headlights turned off, set out across Tikrit toward the three buildings insurgents were suspected of using.

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