[GSlob]

Well, how many of these 400+ excremists have been scooped up? At least some of those on the inside who were involved have been removed from circulation. Enemy personnel loss on the scale of few hundred at one sweep would be a major success by any account.

[Smokin' Joe]

NO surprise. Much of the opposition has been running out of the vietnam playbook, especially here at home. I would hope that the American people have learned something of the truth about Tet, that afterwards the VC were effectively done, and that it was a significant military victory for our forces.

Of course, with the dinomedia trying to make the President look like Nixon (right up to and including their unabashed hate of him), and pulling everything from the protest circuit onward even to rumbles about impeachment, they would probably jump on the opportunity to give a war away again.

It is up to us to not let them. We are the new variable in the equation.

[jmc1969]

Zarqawi has been incredibly good at playing our media, but you can only get played if you want to.

[William Tell]

From the article: They were “one bureaucrat’s signature away” from implementing the plan when it was uncovered.

This assessment is exactly what we would want the enemy to believe, especially if it was not true. One key to US successes in Iraq is an intelligence operation that can infiltrate our enemies. If this has happened, I don't expect to hear about it. But I would expect to see the enemy's plans disrupted apparently by chance.

Let's wait and see if there are future indications that we are "just getting lucky".

[OPS4]

The problem is that the borders of syria and Iran are full of these radicals ready to die for the cause.

Intel is tough in this situation, knowing the good guys from the bad.

My hats off to this exercise in rounding up this group, but vigilance is 24/7, in that country, as well as right here at home.

We cannot let our guard down for a second.

Ops4 God Bless America!

[Brad from Tennessee]

Tet is the Chinese Lunar New Year. It is not widely celebrated in Iraq.

[Wombat101]

The author, while making some very good points, ignores the ultimate results of Tet;

1. The US Military won. Tet brought the Viet Cong into the open where they were annihilated, the very situation Westmoreland had sought for years,
2. The US Press spun the Tet offensive as a defeat because they know nothing of war and are even less inclined to find out,
3. The Johnson administration viewed a military victory in terms of public relations, not as it was: we may have won, but there were pictures of the US Embassy being fought over, in the heart of Saigon, and there were street executions being carried out by our allies. This LOOKS bad.

Add to this the simple inertia and incompetence at the highest levels of th US military and government, and the possibility of using the Tet victory to begin the process of attaining total victory, died at birth.

Four hundred "insurgents" within the Iraqi security apparatus sounds bad (heck it is bad), but it is NOT necessarily fatal. A government which abandons it's policy in the face of unfair, politically-motivated criticism and which is more interested in appearances, rather than results, is.

I'm not going to sit here and follow the line that Iraq is a text-book example of good policy, because it's obvious it isn't. However, some of these problems can be corrected and the mission, at least, partially rescued.

However we have to stop viewing Iraq through the lens of Vietnam, which is the lens of defeat.

[Lejes Rimul]

I still don't unconditionally trust what Jabr says. The man is former Badr Brigade. It's in his and Iran's interests to jail Defense Ministry Sunnis, it makes the Shia more powerful.