silverbear
08-26-2007, 01:37 AM
Here's an opposing viewpoint to that Pollyanna outlook, one chock full of good ol' common sense... I'll be excerpting the most salient points, since it's quite a long article:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070826/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_counting_the_dead
BAGHDAD - This year's U.S. troop buildup has succeeded in bringing violence in Baghdad down from peak levels, but the death toll from sectarian attacks around the country is running nearly double the pace from a year ago.
Some of the recent bloodshed appears the result of militant fighters drifting into parts of northern Iraq, where they have fled after U.S.-led offensives.
Well, DUH... that's one of the basic principles of guerilla warfare, you try at all costs to avoid direct confrontation of massed forces... you only engage in guerilla warfare in the first place because the other side has a decided advantage in manpower and firepower... so when the other side masses troops in one place, you pull your troops out of there, and send them where the other side doesn't have so many forces, often the areas they pulled their troops out of to concentrate on their newer targets...
Guerilla warfare is all about strike and move on, strike and move on... frustrate your enemy by NOT confronting him... this is a lesson we were taught in Vietnam, but apparently we never learned it...
What's frustrating is that *I* know this, but our military leaders apparently don't... I knew what would happen when they first announced this "surge", and said as much at the time...
The findings include:
• Iraq is suffering about double the number of war-related deaths throughout the country compared with last year — an average daily toll of 33 in 2006, and 62 so far this year.
• Nearly 1,000 more people have been killed in violence across Iraq in the first eight months of this year than in all of 2006. So far this year, about 14,800 people have died in war-related attacks and sectarian murders. AP reporting accounted for 13,811 deaths in 2006. The United Nations and other sources placed the 2006 toll far higher.
_According to the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization, the number of displaced Iraqis has more than doubled since the start of the year, from 447,337 on Jan. 1 to 1.14 million on July 31.
However, Brig. Gen. Richard Sherlock, deputy director for operational planning for the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff, said violence in Iraq "has continued to decline and is at the lowest level since June 2006."
Don't you just hate it when our military spokesmen treat us like we're idiots?? There has already been 1000 more Iraqis killed thus far this year than there was in all of 2006, and this liar is telling us that violence is at the lowest level since June 2006...
But initial calculations validate fears that the Baghdad crackdown would push militants into districts north of the capital, including Diyala province where U.S. force and Iraqi soldiers have conducted major operation to clear its main city, Baqouba, of al-Qaida in Iraq fighters.
Crack down on Baghdad, watch the insurgents focus their attention in other regions... then, when we send troops to deal with them there, they'll sneak back into Baghdad... and round and round and round we go...
"Will it lead to more bloody attacks as they try to exploit the American political debate? Yes."
Of course they're gonna try to exploit the American political debate... does this mean we should stick with a strategy that has no chance of long-term success, just to deny them the opportunity to exploit our debate??
I say HELL no...
Nora Bensahel, a military analyst at the Rand Corp., said that northern Iraq had become increasingly destabilized over the past few months.
The insurgents have made a "concerted effort to concentrate attacks in other parts of the country," Bensahel said, in part to escape the increased U.S. troop presence in Baghdad and in part to give the impression that no place in Iraq is safe.
That's Guerilla Warfare 101... one wonders why it's not taught at West Point, but it doesn't seem to be...
they are particularly keen to undermine the notion that northern Iraq is a "success story" for Washington and its key Iraqi partners — including the Kurds who have maintained a near-autonomous state in the north since the early 1990s.
Staging attacks in the north "has a symbolic effect," she said.
And beyond that, Bensahel said the tactic puts the United States in a difficult situation.
"There isn't an ability to move north in any significant numbers without abandoning Baghdad" — a change in strategy that Washington is not prepared to make, she said.
Hit 'em where they ain't-- that's page one of the Guerilla Warfare handbook...
"Due to the constant pressure and depletion of their leadership, extremists have been pushed out of many population centers and are on the move, seeking other places to operate within the country," Odierno said last week.
He makes that sound like some kind of victory, when in fact it's merely a standard response by a guerilla force to the enemy concentrating troops in one area...
What's funny about this is that George Washington might have been the father of guerilla warfare, we ought to know how it's done, and how to respond to it...
And how, you ask, do we respond to it??
Well, either we commit significantly more troops to the effort, five to six hundred thousand troops instead of a hundred sixty thousand troops (that may not even be enough), and we give them carte blanche to REALLY fight a war, or we recognize that there's no winning the way we're trying to go about it now, and get out of there...
This really is Vietnam all over again, our leaders are hamstringing the troops in the field, by forcing them to fight shorthanded... 160,000 troops, to pacify a country that size?? That's madness, pure madness... but worse, they won't let them really fight... we have to have surge-level troops in Baghdad, and just about everywhere else around the country, and we have to be willing to bomb the bejesus out of sites where the insurgents might be found, to drive them out of their holes... of course, if we do that, we're gonna be responsible for massive civilian casualties as well, so there ain't no way we're goin' down that road...
The surge isn't working, it never had a chance to work, really... if Dubya doesnt realize that, he's an idiot, and if he does realize it, he's playing all of us for idiots too, as he pleads for our support for this moronic ploy...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070826/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_counting_the_dead
BAGHDAD - This year's U.S. troop buildup has succeeded in bringing violence in Baghdad down from peak levels, but the death toll from sectarian attacks around the country is running nearly double the pace from a year ago.
Some of the recent bloodshed appears the result of militant fighters drifting into parts of northern Iraq, where they have fled after U.S.-led offensives.
Well, DUH... that's one of the basic principles of guerilla warfare, you try at all costs to avoid direct confrontation of massed forces... you only engage in guerilla warfare in the first place because the other side has a decided advantage in manpower and firepower... so when the other side masses troops in one place, you pull your troops out of there, and send them where the other side doesn't have so many forces, often the areas they pulled their troops out of to concentrate on their newer targets...
Guerilla warfare is all about strike and move on, strike and move on... frustrate your enemy by NOT confronting him... this is a lesson we were taught in Vietnam, but apparently we never learned it...
What's frustrating is that *I* know this, but our military leaders apparently don't... I knew what would happen when they first announced this "surge", and said as much at the time...
The findings include:
• Iraq is suffering about double the number of war-related deaths throughout the country compared with last year — an average daily toll of 33 in 2006, and 62 so far this year.
• Nearly 1,000 more people have been killed in violence across Iraq in the first eight months of this year than in all of 2006. So far this year, about 14,800 people have died in war-related attacks and sectarian murders. AP reporting accounted for 13,811 deaths in 2006. The United Nations and other sources placed the 2006 toll far higher.
_According to the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization, the number of displaced Iraqis has more than doubled since the start of the year, from 447,337 on Jan. 1 to 1.14 million on July 31.
However, Brig. Gen. Richard Sherlock, deputy director for operational planning for the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff, said violence in Iraq "has continued to decline and is at the lowest level since June 2006."
Don't you just hate it when our military spokesmen treat us like we're idiots?? There has already been 1000 more Iraqis killed thus far this year than there was in all of 2006, and this liar is telling us that violence is at the lowest level since June 2006...
But initial calculations validate fears that the Baghdad crackdown would push militants into districts north of the capital, including Diyala province where U.S. force and Iraqi soldiers have conducted major operation to clear its main city, Baqouba, of al-Qaida in Iraq fighters.
Crack down on Baghdad, watch the insurgents focus their attention in other regions... then, when we send troops to deal with them there, they'll sneak back into Baghdad... and round and round and round we go...
"Will it lead to more bloody attacks as they try to exploit the American political debate? Yes."
Of course they're gonna try to exploit the American political debate... does this mean we should stick with a strategy that has no chance of long-term success, just to deny them the opportunity to exploit our debate??
I say HELL no...
Nora Bensahel, a military analyst at the Rand Corp., said that northern Iraq had become increasingly destabilized over the past few months.
The insurgents have made a "concerted effort to concentrate attacks in other parts of the country," Bensahel said, in part to escape the increased U.S. troop presence in Baghdad and in part to give the impression that no place in Iraq is safe.
That's Guerilla Warfare 101... one wonders why it's not taught at West Point, but it doesn't seem to be...
they are particularly keen to undermine the notion that northern Iraq is a "success story" for Washington and its key Iraqi partners — including the Kurds who have maintained a near-autonomous state in the north since the early 1990s.
Staging attacks in the north "has a symbolic effect," she said.
And beyond that, Bensahel said the tactic puts the United States in a difficult situation.
"There isn't an ability to move north in any significant numbers without abandoning Baghdad" — a change in strategy that Washington is not prepared to make, she said.
Hit 'em where they ain't-- that's page one of the Guerilla Warfare handbook...
"Due to the constant pressure and depletion of their leadership, extremists have been pushed out of many population centers and are on the move, seeking other places to operate within the country," Odierno said last week.
He makes that sound like some kind of victory, when in fact it's merely a standard response by a guerilla force to the enemy concentrating troops in one area...
What's funny about this is that George Washington might have been the father of guerilla warfare, we ought to know how it's done, and how to respond to it...
And how, you ask, do we respond to it??
Well, either we commit significantly more troops to the effort, five to six hundred thousand troops instead of a hundred sixty thousand troops (that may not even be enough), and we give them carte blanche to REALLY fight a war, or we recognize that there's no winning the way we're trying to go about it now, and get out of there...
This really is Vietnam all over again, our leaders are hamstringing the troops in the field, by forcing them to fight shorthanded... 160,000 troops, to pacify a country that size?? That's madness, pure madness... but worse, they won't let them really fight... we have to have surge-level troops in Baghdad, and just about everywhere else around the country, and we have to be willing to bomb the bejesus out of sites where the insurgents might be found, to drive them out of their holes... of course, if we do that, we're gonna be responsible for massive civilian casualties as well, so there ain't no way we're goin' down that road...
The surge isn't working, it never had a chance to work, really... if Dubya doesnt realize that, he's an idiot, and if he does realize it, he's playing all of us for idiots too, as he pleads for our support for this moronic ploy...