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Iraq
Iraqi Carpool Gets JDAM Ticket On Way To Job Site
2006-10-26
BAGHDAD - U.S. forces killed 12 people they said were insurgents preparing to plant a roadside bomb in the western city of Ramadi, the U.S. military said on Wednesday. It said the suspected insurgents were traveling in a car that was destroyed on Tuesday with "precision munitions".

Every once in a while we hear that we are getting the bad guys. Unfortunately every day we hear more about our loses than the terrorist. I guess we are still suffering from the Vietnam "Body Count" aversion. It's like hearing the sports score of only one team, the opposition.
Posted by:GolfBravoUSMC

#17  NS: Zhang Fei's comment is a perfect example of why releasing enemy KIAs is a mistake. It focuses attention on killing the enemy and that is not what is important. Achieving our political objectives is. We killed lots of NVA and VC and it didn't help achieve any of our political objectives so we ended up winning all the military battles but losing the war.

Actually, Vietnam was lost because the Democrats cut off military supplies and air support to South Vietnam at a time when the Soviets were sending billions of dollars in equipment* to North Vietnam. During the 1975 combined arms invasion of South Vietnam, the South Vietnamese were literally running out of gas and ammunition. Thanks to the Democratic Party.

As to the numbers themselves, Westmoreland did destroy the Vietcong, despite all the obstacles that Lyndon Johnson placed before him - micromanaging airstrikes and rules of engagement. It was the politicians who failed to lead and back him up. After Westmoreland, GI's fought mainly NVA regulars. Besides, Vietnam was way tougher because North Vietnam had the manpower of an entire nation to draw upon, and the combined armories of the Soviet Union and China to borrow from. And yet we achieved 20 to 1 kill ratios.

I think the transformation people have misinterpreted the essential nature of war. Nations aren't people - you can't bend a nation to your will. All you can do is kill most everyone who wants to fight and is prepared to actually step up to the plate. We did that in WWII. We almost did it in Korea. We almost did it in Vietnam. We are nowhere close to doing it in Iraq. At the rate Verlaine says we're killing them in Iraq, we could fight for the next hundred years and not exhaust the terrorists' pool of available manpower.

* The Vietnamese Communists spent over a decade after their victory paying these loans back. The Democratic Congress could have similarly lent the South Vietnam money to fight North Vietnam. But the Dems wanted to gift-wrap the destruction of South Vietnam.
Posted by: Zhang Fei   2006-10-26 23:14  

#16  Glad you're home, Verlaine.
Posted by: tu3031   2006-10-26 21:51  

#15  WB Verlaine!
Posted by: Frank G   2006-10-26 21:01  

#14  Thanks to all for the kind words.

Still jet-lagged and distracted, but I saw somewhere that the lack of info on enemy KIA had come up in some public forum with the president - I think there's no doubt the unnatural silence on the issue is a problem for many Americans trying to make sense of Iraq.

As to exchange ratio, it was way above 5 to 1 on a monthly basis, I believe, and much much higher for set-piece ops such as al-Fajr (Fallujah) and the various Euphrates mini-campaigns.

Don't agree that the options are (1) awkwardly and oddly refuse to mention one key bit of information or (2) make that info the focus of public debate.

Agreed that enemy KIA are a means not an end, but in a struggle that will be protracted, in a democratic society with an extremely high and rising aversion to casualties or costs of any sort, there are probably many who might have a different sense of the situation if they heard that we're actually engaged in a war where we're killing the bad guys and not just taking losses for no apparent reason other than periodic Iraqi elections.
Posted by: Verlaine   2006-10-26 20:51  

#13  Welcome back Verlaine. Look forward to lot's of debriefs.

Zhang Fei's comment is a perfect example of why releasing enemy KIAs is a mistake. It focuses attention on killing the enemy and that is not what is important. Achieving our political objectives is. We killed lots of NVA and VC and it didn't help achieve any of our political objectives so we ended up winning all the military battles but losing the war.

Certainly counting estimated enemy KIA is a useful intelligence exercise and should persist. But making it a focus of public discussion is an error.
Posted by: Nimble Spemble   2006-10-26 17:26  

#12  Welcome home, Verlaine! May your transition go more easily and quickly than expected.
Posted by: trailing wife   2006-10-26 16:56  

#11  V: Last year, at least, the average monthly enemy KIA figure was usually in the 210 - 240 range, if I recall correctly, spiking considerably higher during our all-too-rare offensives.

If this is the number, we're in deep trouble. I can understand why they're concealing the body counts - an exchange ratio of 5 to 1 is an unmitigated disaster. In Vietnam, we managed 20 to 1 despite not having smart bombs and having to attack the NVA through dense foliage.
Posted by: Zhang Fei   2006-10-26 15:38  

#10  Glad you're home safe and sound, Verlaine, and thank you for the first-hand observations.
Posted by: Zenster   2006-10-26 15:14  

#9  Welcome back, Verlaine. Drop me a line if you're ever in/near DC...
Posted by: Seafarious   2006-10-26 13:32  

#8  No longer Verlaine "in Iraq". Left a few weeks back.

I had multiple discussions with military, both public affairs and otherwise, at the Palace on this very topic. And, Golfbravo, I used exactly the same analogy: like hearing one side of a sports score.

Of course this is far more serious, and I've always wondered if this were one more small element that helps give most people such a dark view of Iraq.

The phenomenon is particularly bad in Anbar, where for going on two years the Marines have (with the infrequent exceptions of large ops like Fallujah and the pre-referendum ERV campaign) fairly rigorously excluded any mention of enemy KIA. This produces a drumbeat of odd and potentially troubling reports - "3 Marines killed in Anbar by enemy action." Hmmm. Since our enemies these days typically are obliterated if there is any sort of actual engagement, the reader is left to wonder if we killed 78 bad guys, or zero, and that the tragic Marine losses were a cost of achieving an objective. Or something else.

In order to stimulate debate, and when feeling particularly spirited, I would tell some military folks that our near-systematic concealment of enemy KIA was in fact a form of lying to the public. That got their attention, and reactions varied. Many of them would adopt a semi-weaselly approach, saying that there were often uncertainties about who was who. But that doesn't wash in a situation where we control the battlefield post-engagement 99.9% of the time.

In any case, as with much else over there, there is no uniform system. You'll often see MNF-I releases with detailed body counts - and others with nothing.

Last year, at least, the average monthly enemy KIA figure was usually in the 210 - 240 range, if I recall correctly, spiking considerably higher during our all-too-rare offensives.

In at least some cases, there clearly is an irrational and indefensible phobia of "body counts" among military officers.
Posted by: Verlaine   2006-10-26 13:25  

#7  "I'm going to have to ask you to please fly out of the car in tiny bits."
Posted by: Zenster   2006-10-26 12:53  

#6  12 people in a car? Must have been one of those clown cars heading for the circus. Yeah, that's it - we blew up a car full of peaceful clowns on their way to entertain the kiddies at the circus.
Posted by: Glenmore   2006-10-26 12:50  

#5  Camping out in Virginville, nothing better.
Posted by: wxjames   2006-10-26 12:17  

#4  First time you see it I think, as fit for a virgin-related graphic.
Posted by: anonymous5089   2006-10-26 11:31  

#3  Love the headline and the graphic cracked me up. New? Or just the first time I've seen it?
Posted by: JDB   2006-10-26 11:27  

#2  GolfBravoUSMC, your point is well taken wrt the vast majority of American citizens who get there news from the old MSM.

Same cannot be said of those who frequent places such as RB and select milblogs. He can correct me if I'm wrong, but I suspect Mr. Fred's purpose in building RB was to give the American public a more complete view of the war on jihad. That's my take.

BTW, excellent title for the underlying story. LOL.
Posted by: Mark Z   2006-10-26 11:10  

#1  I hear you golfbravo. But the body counts are not lost on the islamo-cockroaches. More importantly it signals there are OPSEC holes everywhere that would allow us to JDAM a carload of the subhumans.
Posted by: anymouse   2006-10-26 11:04  

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