Posted on 11/21/2004 6:38:21 PM PST by crushelits
Convinced the recent battle for Fallujah has significantly weakened insurgent ranks, commanders here have devised plans to press the offensive into neighborhoods where enemy fighters have taken refuge after fleeing Fallujah or were already deeply entrenched.
But the forces available for these intensified operations have become limited by the demands of securing Fallujah and of overseeing the massive reconstruction effort there -- demands which, senior U.S. military officers say, are likely to tie up a substantial number of Marines and Army troops for weeks.
"What's important is to keep the pressure on these guys now that we've taken Fallujah from them," a high-ranking U.S. military commander said, speaking on condition he not be named because of the sensitivity of the deliberations on whether to arrange for more troops. "We're in the pursuit phase. We have to stay after these guys so they don't get their feet set."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
a clear sign that the iraqi forces are not living up to expectations.
I've heard one report where up to 50 percent of Iraqi troops are unreliable or worse.
I kind of expected this, what with them really wanting to hold the elections at the end of January. I think it is a good idea. I hate for it to happen at Christmas, but the sooner we get the place exterminated of all of the roaches and their pest holes, the sooner the Iraqi people can start taking care of their own.
I wish they would also hold a hugh employment week and hire as many Iraqis as possible to start the rebuilding of Fallujah and other places. Give them good pay for jobs, and free up some of the troops.
I don't think we should expect much in they way of help fighting the main fights. But we need them to go into the mosques and put an Iraqi face in the towns that still have pockets of insurgents.
I think we will be doing good, if the US troops do the "heavy lifting" and we can get it to where the Iraqi police and army can STAY ALIVE and not get executed.
Plus, like I said above, free up some funds and get the other Iraqis working for money and putting their own homes and towns back together. They need community pride to take over so they won't tolerate the insurgents coming and tearing it down again.
The Iraqi forces are not what we envisioned a year ago. But what’s going on now is a readdress of what we failed to do a year and a half ago. Iraqi forces are playing a significant supporting role, but the story is that we’re back on the right track, defeating the components of the insurgency. Increased demands on US troops are a sign the we’re correcting an earlier mistake, not that we’re failing.
Sort of--although I believe the real problem is there are not enough of them. We are both training new forces plus taking other Iraqi units that went through the truncated version "off the line" in order to get them up to standard. The raids on the mosques in Baghdad were primarily done by the Iraqi Army and the brigade + they had in Fallujah fought alongside our gus and gained some valuable combat experience.
50%? Really? Where did you hear that?
Welcome to Free Republic.
I think that figure applies to the iraqi police, not the army and guard units. the police are damn near useless.
with the Shia, we did an excellent job of cornering Sadr as a radical, and taking out his limited number of followers, while the "mainstream" Shia backed us. We are not and will not be able to do the same with the Sunnis, they are off the reservation - I guess what I am saying is, I'm starting to worry about the containment aspect of this.
>>I've heard one report where up to 50 percent of Iraqi troops are unreliable or worse.
Not to mention the deserters and the ones killed by iraqi insurgents.
Technically incorrect. The phase following a successful attack is exploitation--that is where you "stay after those guys so they don't get their feet set"; i.e. prevent them from reconstituting & reorganizing their forces and establishing new postions or bases. The exploitation phase is often "terrain" oriented; i.e. establish control over places the enemy is likely to want to use to "set his feet". The pursuit phase normally follows the exploitation and is for when the enemy is no longer able to effectively defend himself. It is a force-oriented phase with the purpose of completing the destruction of the enemy as a viable fighting organization.
After viewing "Hating America" tonight on Fox, we need to pull all are troops out of Europe and use them to rotate fresh troops into Iraq and give our guys and gals and their families shorter tours of duty.
The issue for reconstruction and Iraqi security forces is fear of assassination for cooperating with us. The way to handle that fear is to put the sunni population supporting the insurgency behind barbed wire. If they are there for months, and some normalcy returns as a result, the Iraqi security forces will be far more effective, dealing with a trickle of those starting up again.
We also need to do a better job of stopping infiltration from Syria, and financing operations for the resistence. Through Jordan, in the west, and inside the country. Some things can change that easily, like currency controls (making foreign exchange less liquid, effectively) and occasional forces exchanges of script (to wipe out unauthorized stashes of Iraqi money).
I think you are exactly right. The ING seems to generally be holding up well, while the police forces are just not cutting it.
most of these "police" were just men without work looking to pick up a government check for directing traffic or loading relief supplies.
I second your question.
This may be a controversial viewpoint, but I just don't know if the Iraqis really want democracy.
Would our nation tolerate a dictator like Saddam for 20 years? I very much doubt it. We wouldn't need anyone to come liberate us. (Well, maybe we patriots would need to liberate New York City, the District of Columbia, and other localities that don't respect 2nd Amendment rights.) But, no foreigner is going to be needed to liberate the patriots in most parts of America.
So, while our troops are doing a wonderful job, I think we need to be thinking about what the goal is over there. If the Iraqis are unwilling to stand up and fight for their democracy, then we can't sustain it for them forever, and maybe we should be working to identify a Putin-type leader, who can restore order (if not democracy) over there.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.