According to Major General John D. Johnson, one of the top US commanders in Iraq, the US military expects an increase in the number of massive terrorist attacks like the one seen earlier this week in Baghdad, which killed at least 160 and wounded around 700 others.

According to Maj. Gen. Johnson, insurgents “desire to conduct a large attack because they’re able to garner a lot of media attention and it’s an attempt on their part to be relevant.” He says these will likely increase “in the run-up to the election, and after the election.”

Though the general maintains that the US won’t be caught by surprise by such attacks this week’s attack and a virtually identical one in August invovled insurgents managing to infiltrate ostensibly top security areas with truckloads of explosives and detonate them without any official scrutiny, certainly raising doubts about the reliability of the procedures in place to deal with them.

Iraq’s election is scheduled for January 16, but the nation’s parliament still hasn’t been able to settle on laws governing it, raising the prospect that the election could be delayed.

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