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So, if it's AlQueda and the Taliban holdovers, are they using the same techniques they did to fight the Russians in Afghanistan now in Iraq?

If we know that they are fighting in the same way, how do you counter that?

So many issues here...

1) The Afghan resistance predates the Taliban and AQ. While there are some who were part of the mujahadeen - the mujahadeen wasn't a direct predecessor of either organization

2) They can't use the same tactics, because unlike Afghanistan, Iraq, in the sunny triangle region at least, is flat and open - unlike the broken terrian of Afghanistan.

3) The Mujahadeen were on their last legs when we started supplying them with anti-air missiles. Soviet helicopter attacks were punishing the poorly equipped resistance. The Baathist reminants do have access to stockpiles of Hussein's weapons - but how much they have we do not know. More importantly, no major arms producer is supplying them.

4) The Soviets engaged in brutual, murderous warfare on behalf of a puppet communist government that was about to be overthrown. Their extreme brutality turned the whole country against them in spite of the many differences between various tribes in Afghanistan.

In Iraq we've already won the hearts and minds of most of the populace - namely the Kurds and Shiites. Many Sunni Baathists believe we will cut and run if they kill enough Americans thanks to the seditious press. When Bush wins in 2004 and/or Hussein is proven to be dead, that hope will go leaving them no room for victory.

As for the AQ/Pallies in Iraq, they are hated with a passion by the locals. When Sunni resistance ends, expect them to not last very long - and we can always get serious with the pressure on Arafat to make them stop comming if we have to.

The Iraqi insurgents feel they don't need to do anything militarily significant to see the backs of our troops, and unfortunately they may be right. Their goal is to inflict political defeats, taking advantage of the leftist media and our general addiction to short-term results, as well as our aversion to long-term commitments of blood and treasure. Therefore, by no means do they have to mount a truly effective resistance like the Afghan mujahedin. If their goal is to increase the American body count in Iraq and hunker down amidst the general population, they can probably keep it up for quite a while. And so long as Saddam remains at large, the violence reminds ordinary Iraqis that the past refuses to be completely extinguished, leading some of the more anti-American, nationalistic elements to consider assisting the rebels, and more ordinary Iraqis to refrain from providing vital intelligence to US forces.

The situation in Iraq is indeed more urgent than many of us would like to admit. When Baghdad fell in April, the US public wasn't prepared for the possibility of a long, hard slog. Expectations ran too high among the people who supported the invasion only because they thought it'd be an easy matter - and that's a lot of Americans we're talking about.