One thing that has been absolutely vital and has just happened is for predominantly Shia-manned national security forces (mostly Army) take down Shia militia leaders. This is vital to show the Sunni minority that they will be made safe and that the scales of justice weigh all equally. Having a couple of his hatchet men bagged has made Muqtada al-Sadr (whom, frankly, we should have killed when we had the chance in 04, but hindsight's always laser-clear) go all statesmanlike. Why? He's scared. We'll back down from whacking him, but Sistani, who is keenly aware that Muqty is a mere talib who's gotten too big for his britches (he's an ayatollah-school dropout), has no such compunctions. He's bright enough to realise he needs some friends among the less-radical Shia as he hasn't any among the Sunnis and we're not going to be around to play mommy forever.
Watch the Sunni parties in the Iraqi legislature versus the Sunni attacks. Interesting, eh? When the lawyers are holding their breaths and turning blue, the death squads run rampant. When the lawyers come back in from the cold, the death squad activity reduces but does not drop. The element that keeps in nonzero is the Sunni hardcore element that is unresponsive to their own politicians. The "Michael Collins" faction, or the "Real IRA" to update the insurgency. Basically, that group must die and in the end it will be the Sunni politicians who want a monopoly of power for the legitimate government who will kill them.
There are many ways to define the pipeline (and powerline) fight. A draw? Well, it's all in what you measure, exactly. But this is a very, very vulnerable linear target that can be disrupted by a point attack. You can't guard it all, hundreds and thousands of miles of nothing in the desert... if you put a fort within viewing distance of the next fort (think Kitchener in the Boer War) the hostiles could simply mass and take out one fort, make their line cut, and skedaddle.
One tactic we saw as far back as 2002 in Afghanistan was a probing attack to determine how long it takes the cavalry to come. Then when they mount the big attack later, some guy is running a timer and calls withdrawal on T minus fifteen minutes or so (this is a tactic that can be beaten).
An important thing about the Iraq insurgency is that many of the insurgents have had professional training, unlike elsewhere in the world, like Afghanistan or Chachnya where the training is more ad hoc. Saddam trained his Fedayeen Saddam in the tactics they'd need for stay-behind operations... for instance, target analysis. In Afghanistan they'll often attack the "wrong" part of a target complex, the Sunni insurgents seldom do this. (At least, the component that are former regime types, which is most of them. The suicide Saudis are a different thing).
Anyway, the answer to the insurgent's ability to cut the power- and pipelines is to target him where he's vulnerable: whack the cells, especially the leaders with that training. When that starts happening and an insurgency has to fall back on more and more OJT'd leaders, its striking power declines and it ultimately lapses into survival mode. The techniques used to do this are less those of warfare per se (although a cell caught on the pipeline is usually a pin taken off the enemy's situation map for good, the leader may not be present), but more those of counterintelligence and/or police work.
Some of the most effective people at this kind of insurgency have been our reserve and Guard forces. In one outstation we had a Guard SF guy who was a drug cop at home and he was just a natural.
We do need to do more killing and less capturing of insurgents. Given the national insecurity over this, expect a lot of that to be done by the locals, who do it without compunction, as we did once (remember the fate of John Wilkes Booth? Today he'd be lawyered up and made a hero by the press.. in 1865 we just killed him. John Dillinger, too, same kind of deal. The Iraqis still have that national will we don't any more; their Booths and Dillingers are at risk of their lives).
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Of course, everybody will be able to read between the lines!
Sorry, rambling on here.
McVey