WP: In the Battle for Baghdad, U.S. Turns War on Insurgents

[brooklynite]

PATROL BASE SWAMP, Iraq -- Here, in a half-ruined house bristling with dull black machine guns and surrounded by green sandbags, shin-deep mudholes, and shadowy palm groves, lies the leading edge of the U.S. war in Iraq.

This remote outpost, manned by Bravo Company of a unit in the 101st Airborne Division, is the forwardmost American position in the so-called Triangle of Death southwest of Baghdad. Some U.S. commanders say the region is now the focal point in their campaign against Iraq's stubborn insurgency. It's a tough fight: Just getting U.S. troops established here in the canal-laced fields of the Euphrates River Valley meant running a gantlet of roadside bombs, with one platoon encountering 14 in a three-hour stretch.

Interviews with U.S. soldiers -- from top generals to front-line grunts in Tall Afar, Mosul, Ramadi, Balad and throughout Baghdad -- as well as briefings at the U.S. military headquarters for the Middle East in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar, reveal a markedly different war from that seen in 2003 and 2004, or even last year.

Current U.S. military commanders say they have come to understand that they are fighting within a political context, which means the results must first be judged politically. The pace and shape of the war also have changed, with U.S. forces trying to exercise tactical patience and shift responsibilities to Iraqi forces, even as they worry that the American public's patience may be dwindling.

The war also has changed geographically. Over the last three years, it has developed a pattern of moving around the country, from Fallujah to Najaf to Mosul and Samarra and back to Fallujah. Last summer and fall it was focused in Tall Afar, in the northwest, and in the upper Euphrates, in the remote western part of Anbar province near Syria.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/25/AR2006022501738.html

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Good thing we have intelligence agencies so advice our military leaders so they know what to expect...

[Warren Stupidity]

1. "shift responsibilities to Iraqi forces"

And just today we learned that there is not even ONE combat ready Iraqi batallion. Not one. So this report is a bunch of pr bs.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=2132968&mesg_id=2132968

"Real progress is being made in training Iraqi forces, especially its army, according to every U.S. officer asked about the issue." Or not. I guess it depends on which story we are telling at any given moment.

"with U.S. forces trying to exercise tactical patience" right. What the heck does that mean? Two theories: 1) they try to stay in their base as much as possible, or 2) they call in airstrikes instead of directly engaging anything resembling a hostile.

"For years, "the standard was to haul ass," noted Lt. Col. Gian P. Gentile, commander of the 8th Squadron of the 10th Cavalry Regiment, which is based near a bomb-infested highway south of Baghdad. Now his convoy drivers are ordered to move at 15 mph."

Ah - its plan B. Slowly inch forward to avoid IEDs, hoping somebody will shoot, and then call in the big guns.

And the biggest insight:

"But the dominant view, especially among senior officers, is that the insurgency committed a key misstep by allowing a foreign terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, to become its face in Iraq. "They could have done much better," said one Army officer who works on Sunni political issues. "If I was in charge of part of them, I think I could have done better.""

I guess the insurgents ought to have asked our propaganda units to stop headlining Zarqawi. What a freaking joke. If that Army officer was in charge of an insurgent cell with hardly any equipment except the shit they could steal, no money, no R&R, no safe havens to wind down in, facing the planet's mightiest army, that officer would be out of there within 24 hours.