Last throes? Doesn't even look like throes.

"I think we may well have some kind of presence there over a period of time," Cheney said. "The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."

-Dick Cheney, speaking with Larry King, on May 31, 2005.

Yesterday, in Iraq.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 2 - Six Marine snipers moving on foot near a western Iraqi city were killed in an afternoon ambush, American commanders said Tuesday, in one of the single deadliest incidents for American troops in the last several months here.

[...]

In its Web posting, Ansar al Sunna said it had killed the marines in a "compact ambush," as they walked in the Jazeera neighborhood north of the city. The unit involved in the attack, the group said, went by the Arabic word Tawid, meaning allegiance to one god, commonly used by Sallafis and other ultraconservative Islamist sects.

The Associated Press reported that several masked men, claiming to be members of Ansar al Sunna, had appeared in the city's central market, carrying helmets, flak jackets and rifles they said had belonged to American troops. They passed out fliers.

"They were on a mountain near the town so we went up, surrounded them and asked them to surrender," one of the fliers said, according to The A. P. "They did not surrender, so we killed them."

The killing of six American marines on foot is unusual. Most American casualties result from "indirect" fire like mortar explosions and bomb blasts. Ordinarily, in a street fight, the guerrillas are no match for the marines.

The insurgency may be taking a new, more sophisticated, and much more dangerous turn. There seems to be new evidence of tactical maneuvers of modern warfare. There is no way the new Iraqi forces can take on a Revolutionary Guard-trained opponent without American help.