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"Why am I always outside when those things come in close? ;-)"
Because the good Lord is showing you, HE has your six dear. You hang in there. (easy for me to say).
It is almost sureal to think these major operations may continue for many months without a stop. Actually as you three would most probably agree, we cannot afford to stop. Continuing HUMIT and other Intel sources hopefully will fuel the effeciency of this surge to the point, literally thousands of goons will be laying in the ground, or what is left of them.
I for one am convinced, only recently has this type surge had the chance of success. Once the major Sunni tribes in al Anbar switched sides on an official bases, leading to further considerations of other groups such as we are now seeing in some of the provinces, we can now carry out large sustained operations that can eradicate insurgents that used to hide in safety.
People used to scream about why our troops where not killing off tens of thousands of insurgents. One has to know where to find them in order to kill them off. Now the time has arisen where this is possible. Al Qaeda and many of their support groups are now doomed.
But I still worry about those large numbers of Saddam Fedayeen and others close to the Saddam military that will still be left to contend with.
Many of them did not fit into the de-Baatification process, simply because they still are sworn to Saddam to make war with any government other then Saddams, as well as the occupiers.
So let us be carefull not to assume that once AQIR's back is literally broken and non-effective that things will just quiet down. The insurgency is made up of to many different elements. And lest we forget the large Sadr and Badr militias and the many smaller ones still are 100% active.
If Maliki does not come through on his promise to disband all of them, then things still could get very sticky.
I can see for the time being to lay off them over all other then go after elements of them that INTEL shows must be dealt with. Some of them obviously will end up tangling with the Multinational Forces when found to be directly opposing the new government/military and our military. That is a given. But tens of thousand of them will still be intact in the future, not directly proving to be a direct threat but always being close to the line.
Anyway. May the real true God watch over our troops as they take the fight to the enemy, and spare as many of them as it would please HIM to do so.