OK---I am an alarmist in military operations because in WWII I was
extremely sensitive to the
effects of bad military planning, and in postwar civilian lifE as a
turnaround management
consultant and startup entrepreneur, maintained the same mindset.
We see two faces of the war in Iraq, both seemingly entirely
inconsistent with one another---one
exhibiting inordinately bad planning plus failure to quickly reappraise
and adjust to defeats---
the other (General Petraeus) who reminds me of Abraham Lincoln shifting
generals until he found
General Grant, whose clear vision of what must be done to defeat General
Lee, gradually, and
inexorably ground the Confederacy to dust.---not without great cost to
Union Forces, of course.
At this stage, Iraq is not a set-front war, it is a guerrilla war with
which we have had little
experience, but a guerrilla war with or without a set-front war is
learnable---I went into Burma
as a Captain in the WWII Air Commandos, which was essentially a
guerrilla warfare group. We
completely destroyed all Japanese forces in Burma---took about a year of
combined tactics.
Now we are in a similar position in Iraq---belatedly enlisting, training
and equipping Iraqi Army
and police forces to maintain their own order and security---there are
and will be defections, but
as in the American Civil War under a better general, the sheer weight of
domestic forces should
prevail over the influx of fewer numbers of Iranian and Al
Qaeda-sponsored guerrillas now pouring
into Iraq.
Here is the con-position:
washingtonpost.com
Violence in Iraq Belies Claims of Calm, Data Show
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, September 26, 2004; Page A01
BAGHDAD, Sept. 25 -- Less than four months before planned national
elections in Iraq, attacks
against U.S. troops, Iraqi security forces and private contractors
number in the dozens each day
and have spread to parts of the country that had been relatively
peaceful, according to statistics
compiled by a private security firm working for the U.S. government.
Attacks over the past two weeks have killed more than 250 Iraqis and 29
U.S. military personnel,
according to figures released by Iraq's Health Ministry and the
Pentagon. A sampling of daily
reports produced during that period by Kroll Security International for
the U.S. Agency for
International Development shows that such attacks typically number about
70 each day. In contrast,
40 to 50 hostile incidents occurred daily during the weeks preceding the
handover of political
authority to an interim Iraqi government on June 28, according to
military officials.
Reports covering seven days in a recent 10-day period depict a nation
racked by all manner of
insurgent violence, from complex ambushes involving 30 guerrillas north
of Baghdad on Monday to
children tossing molotov cocktails at a U.S. Army patrol in the
capital's Sadr City slum on
Wednesday. On maps included in the reports, red circles denoting attacks
surround nearly every
major city in central, western and northern Iraq, except for
Kurdish-controlled areas in the far
north. Cities in the Shiite Muslim-dominated south, including several
that had undergone a period
of relative calm in recent months, also have been hit with near-daily
attacks.
In number and scope, the attacks compiled in the Kroll reports suggest a
broad and intensifying
campaign of insurgent violence that contrasts sharply with assessments
by Bush administration
officials and Iraq's interim prime minister that the instability is
contained to small pockets of
the country.
Speaking with President Bush at the White House on Thursday, Prime
Minister Ayad Allawi said the
security situation in Iraq was "good for elections to be held tomorrow"
in 15 of the country's 18
provinces. Elections for a national assembly are scheduled for January.
Allawi told Washington Post reporters and editors on Friday that "for
now the only place which is
not really that safe is Fallujah, downtown Fallujah. The rest, there are
varying degrees. Some --
most -- of the provinces are really quite safe."
The Kroll reports are based on nonclassified data provided by U.S.-led
military forces, the U.S.
Embassy in Baghdad, private security companies working in Iraq and
nongovernmental organizations.
The reports, which Kroll has refused to distribute to journalists, were
provided to The Post by a
person on the list to receive them. They cover the period of Sept. 13
through Sept. 22 -- but do
not include Sept. 15, 18 or 19, for which reports were not available.
To many natives and foreigners living in Iraq, the portrait of progress
that Allawi painted during
his trip to Washington does not depict reality.
After his speech to a joint meeting of Congress on Thursday, Allawi
described Baghdad as "very
good and safe." In fact, during the period for which security reports
were available, the number
of attacks in the capital averaged 22 a day.
On Wednesday, there were 28 separate hostile incidents in Baghdad,
including five rocket-propelled
grenade attacks, six roadside bombings and a suicide bombing in which a
car exploded at a National
Guard recruiting station, killing at least 11 people and wounding more
than 50.
"People are very naive if they think Baghdad is safe," said Falah Ahmed,
26, a cigarette vendor in
center city. A nearby tailor, Hisham Nuaimi, 52, said Allawi "is either
deceiving himself or the
Americans."
"What do you call a city with a car bomb every day?" he said. "Is this
the security they are
achieving?"
At the same time, however, the city retains an air of normalcy.
Motorists clog the roads during
rush hour. Markets bustle with shoppers. Restaurants fill up with
lunchtime customers.
In his remarks Thursday, Allawi did not specify the three provinces he
deemed insecure, nor did he
specify what he meant when he contended that violence in those provinces
had been limited to "
certain pockets." But since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003,
Baghdad and three of the
country's largest and most populous provinces -- Anbar in the west,
Salahuddin to the north and
Babil to the south -- have been the principal hotbeds of insurgent
violence. And according to the
Kroll reports, recent violence appears to have been widespread rather
than limited. On Wednesday,
for instance, attacks in Salahuddin province occurred in Taji, Balad,
Tikrit, Samarra, Baiji,
Thuliyah and Dujayl -- the seven largest population centers in the area.
Moreover, the security reports indicate that a majority of the hostile
acts committed against U.S.
and Iraqi security forces over the past two weeks have occurred outside
those three provinces. For
example, the cities of Amarah in the southern province of Maysan and
Samawah in Muthanna province,
also in the south, had long been relatively free of violence but are now
experiencing frequent
attacks, the reports indicate.
There also has been an unusual spike in the number of attacks to the
north of the capital. More
attacks have been reported in the northern cities of Mosul, Samarra and
Tikrit over the past two
weeks than in Fallujah and Ramadi, two areas of frequent fighting in Anbar.
Military officials contend, however, that does not mean the restive
areas west of Baghdad -- the
area known as the Sunni Triangle -- are no longer insurgent strongholds.
The likely explanation,
the officials said, is that U.S. Marines stationed in Anbar have sharply
reduced their patrolling,
making them less vulnerable to roadside attacks. But that strategy,
officials say, has allowed
insurgent cells to expand in the province.
"There are fewer attacks here because we're out on the road less," an
officer at the Marine
headquarters near Fallujah said on condition of anonymity. "But you
shouldn't conclude from that
that things are any safer."
As news reports have detailed over the past several months, the
insurgents' campaign of violence
is not limited to U.S. and Iraqi security forces. Iraqi civilians
working for the interim
government have been killed and kidnapped. So, too, have Iraqis who work
as interpreters and truck
drivers for the U.S. military. Foreign civilians, even aid workers and
fellow Arabs, are regarded
as fair game by the insurgents.
The security situation has grown so dire that many of the few remaining
nongovernmental aid
organizations left in Iraq are making plans to withdraw. The United
Nations, which was supposed to
help organize the national elections, has just 30 employees in the
country, all of whom are
quartered in the U.S.-controlled, fortified Green Zone. Foreign
journalists, who used to roam the
country, are now largely restricted by safety concerns to Baghdad hotels
surrounded with concrete
walls and barbed wire.
With insurgents targeting not just U.S. troops but seemingly everyone in
the country -- Iraqi
security forces, Iraqis working for the interim government, foreign
contractors, journalists, aid
workers and others -- it is difficult for even ordinary Iraqis to ignore
the threat.
"When we leave home, we never know if we're going to return home alive
or not," said Mohammed