Pentagon Sets Steps to Pacify Iraq Rebel Sites

[Rose Siding]

WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 - Pentagon planners and military commanders have identified 20 to 30 towns and cities in Iraq that must be brought under control before nationwide elections can be held in January, and have devised detailed ways of deciding which ones should be early priorities, according to senior administration and military officials.

Recent military operations to quell the Iraqi insurgency in Tal Afar, Samarra and south of Baghdad are the first and most visible signs of the new, six-pronged strategy for Iraq, approved at the highest levels of the Bush administration, the officials said. While elements of the plan have been discussed in generalities recently, the officials described it in much more detail, calling it a comprehensive guideline to their actions in the next few months.

As American military deaths have increased in Iraq and commanders struggle to combat a tenacious insurgency and a deadly spate of bombings, even administration officials involved in creating the plan acknowledge that American forces face an extraordinary difficult task and that success is far from guaranteed.

From the standpoint of the White House, the disclosure of the new plan addresses one of the criticisms lodged by the presidential campaign of Senator John Kerry - that the administration has no plan for Iraq.

http://nytimes.com/2004/10/08/politics/08strategy.html?hp&ex=1097208000&en=cd69f4f82066978b&ei=5094&partner=homepage

*edit- "Pacify". It's the reporters word but it brought back memories. Pacification....

snip>
"Pacification is the military, political, economic, and social process of establishing or reestablishing local government responsive to and involving the participation of the people. It includes the provision of sustained, credible territorial security, the destruction of the enemy's underground government, the assertion or re-assertion of political control and involvement of the people in government, and the initiation of economic and social activity capable of self-sustenance and expansion. the economic element of pacification includes the opening of roads and waterways, and the maintenance of lines of communication important to economic and military activity."

http://www.lexisnexis.com/academic/guides/military_history/vietnam/vietnam_pacification.asp

[FlemingsGhost]

1. They will fail.

The only thing that will change is the body count.

[necso]

2. "Pentagon planners"...

"The three military officers who discussed the plan have seen the briefing charts for the new strategy, and the three civilian officials who discussed it were involved in deliberations that resulted in the strategy. The civilians, in particular, agreed to discuss the newest thinking in part to rebut the Kerry campaign's criticism."

"have seen" -- har de har..

"deliberations" -- another classic. Like the (real) military had squat to do with this plan -- except to try to keep it from becoming a total disaster.

Oh, and they slime the military again on Najaf. But that whole paragraph sums up the spin.

"What you have here is a new approach," one senior administration official said. "Najaf was not planned. We didn't plan to go in and have to do that. But we know, once we got that behind us, where do we have to work? We have to work Samarra. We have to work Ramadi. We've done our bit in Samarra. Now we're consolidating and cleaning up. We're doing kinetic strikes in Falluja."

"Kinetic" -- what's next -- Voodoo?

It would probably work better.

[necso]

8. Perhaps I should have used

"have seen the briefing charts".

That is, the military guys' involvement was that they "saw the charts" (as in: after the charts were completed). It doesn't get much more outrageous -- or outrageously funny -- than this.

[TrogL]

3. If they did what they did previous times - carpet bombing and nukes

Remember Dresden
Remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki

[Demeter]

4. What Nonsense

If you pacify Iraq there won't be any Iraqis left to vote, fake election or not.

[pfitz59]

5. 20 million "insurgents"......

Yep, we're gonna control them ALL! US are invaders and occupiers. This war is illegitmate. The entire bUsh* should be tried for war crimes!

[Rose Siding]

6. "Reduction in troops"

This is pretty much just what Bush has criticized Kerry for saying:

snip>
The military plan also contains options to reduce the approximately 138,000 American forces in Iraq by brigade-size increments of roughly 5,000 troops beginning some time next year, if the security situation improves and Iraqi forces show they can maintain order. "Depending how the security looks, the force levels could be reduced," one Pentagon official said.

[bemildred]

7. Oh goody, they have "measurements" and "timelines".

I wonder if they used MacProject or MSProject? I'm sure that
another dose of MBA-think is just what is needed. Maybe we can
put a "tiger-team" of mercenaries on the problem, and they can
run around and meddle with the field officers and troops.
:puke:

[necso]

9. I imagine

that we are talking mostly PowerPoint -- or possibly crayon.

[Rose Siding]

10. kick

This is The Plan- produced on the weight of Kerry's criticism.