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Wretchard said... after reading Yon and Roggio
There are two ways to think about the operation as a whole. The standard framework, one echoed by the New York Times and other outlets, is that past offensives have failed because the enemy was always left with some place to regroup. This time, the NYT suggests, the US military is spread out so much that the enemy will have no place to regroup.Bill Roggio's post has an interesting characterization which suggests that one objective is to get the enemy to transition and hit him while he is transitioning. Bill's framework is subtly richer than the standard "give them nowhere to run" line. Because obviously Iraq is so big that the US cannot literally be everywhere and give them "nowhere to run". The more apt description, probably, is that the US won't let the enemy run anywhere for long. That is to say, you can conceive of the campaign as a series of evictions with the AQI leaking a little more each time. If you can increase the tempo of the evictions quickly enough, then what happens is that the AQI gets pursued to pieces. Most of the pieces of information the public needs to understand what the military intends is probably already known to the public, but it has explained in ways to camouflage the true purpose. We know that the forces have been deployed closer to the ground; that they are operating in coordination with the Iraqi Forces; that new command groups have been set up; and -- if you have been following the deployments a little closely -- a certain amount of unspecified logistical and hardware capability has been added. One item which should be mentioned separately is the existence and battlefield use of biometric database systems, something which was also explained away in connection with a largely defensive Surge. My own guess -- and it is entirely speculation -- is that Petraeus has attempted to shape his battlefield for the offense while masking it as defensive preparation. I remember distinctly hearing at a round table or someplace where his first item of business in the morning was what was captured in the previous day's raids. Iraq is unique in that it is the first war in history where prisoners vastly outnumber the enemy KIA. I think the number is 10 EPWs to every 1 enemy KIA. Hence, it is above all a war of intelligence prosecution. And many of the pieces needed to accomplish that task are precisely the pieces Petraeus has put in place, except they advertised as being something else. Beyond that, we should wait and see what happens. One of his commenters adds (I love this part) Now what happens if any of these guys try to flee across the border into Iran with us in hot pursuit? Michael Yon's latest piece was from the Brits patrolling along the Iranian border. He describes them as being energetic and capable ... just the sort of folks you might want to have waiting if you were chasing a bunch of bad guys in their direction in hot pursuit. Wonder why the Beeb is so interested in wanting to know where the British forces in Iraq are right now, too. Posted by: Sherry 2007-06-22 |
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