We've Already Cut and Run
The US Army is still nominally in Iraq, but it appears increasingly to have retreated to its bases while the Iraqis step up their sectarian civil war, week by murderous week. From today's NYT, "Civilians in Iraq Flee Mixed Areas as Killings Rise":
Dozens of bodies, garroted or executed with gunshots to the head, are turning up almost daily in Baghdad alone. The gruesome work is usually attributed to death squads or Shiite militias, some in Iraqi police or army uniforms. Meanwhile, powerful bombings, a favorite tactic of the Sunni Arab-led insurgency, continue to devastate civilian areas and Iraqi bases or recruitment centers....The number of kidnappings of Iraqis is surging because of an explosion of criminal gangs working for their own gain or with armed political groups....At the same time, American commanders have decreased the number of their patrols and have tried to push the Iraqi security forces into a more visible role.
What is the point of having US troops in Iraq if they aren't actually preventing the civil war that would supposedly ensue only if we retreated? Obviously, the troops' number one concern is saving their own hides - and one can hardly blame them. One can, however, wonder why we continue to spend over a hundred billion dollars a year to keep them there when they are neither bringing democracy to Iraq nor even preventing the country from falling apart. The argument for immediate withdrawal keeps getting stronger.
Until fairly recently, there was a military adage that it took ten thousand lives to train a general. A few militaries have built sufficiently realistic training environments that they have reasonable confidence that officers will perform well in combat.
Pushing the Iraqi security forces into action is the only way to tell if they are ready, and to push marginal units to readiness. Compare this with any other country with newly organized security forces, and you will see similar characteristics.
Qualifying the Iraqi security forces is the #1 priority of the US military there. They still get technical support from US forces, but are, appropriately, being pushed into an increasingly lead role. Some of the technical support is in the form of new techniques against IEDs, being worked out by US specialists with more background.
"Dozens of bodies" daily is characteristic of insurgencies, and rather mild compared to major wars and genocides. Some insurgencies have been conquered, such as in the Phillipines and Malaya. Others have not. Viet Nam is not a good example, as the corrupt government of SVN fell to a conventional military invasion, not an insurgency.
April 1, 2006 9:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Pushing the Iraqi security forces into action is the only way to tell if they are ready, and to push marginal units to readiness.
Ready for what? What action can the Iraqi security forces be pushed into that is likely to be effective in moving the country towards peace? What can they do? Even if they become as strong and efficient as our own military, what can they accomplish that our military cannot? What exactly does being in the lead role mean? What strategies and tactics can we or they use to defeat the insurgency? How do you effectively fight an enemy which you cannot identify until he shoots at you from an ambush position and then disappears into the local population? Do you [not necessarily you personally] justify killing everyone in the area so as to get the one who is guilty? Does this accomplish anything positive?
Did not the defeat of the insurgencies in Malaya and the Phillipines required the massacre of many thousands of civilians.
Will the eventuall victors in Iraq be forced to use that tactic? Should we use that tactic?
I pose these as real questions, not to be snarky, because I have not seen them answered anywhere.
April 1, 2006 11:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
If there is to be any Iraqi government after the US leaves, there has to be Iraqi military and police forces. They won't do a perfect job, not can the US do a perfect job. US troops have more skills and equipment, while Iraqi troops have language and local skills, and, with very careful monitoring, may be able to stay neutral in the political wars. Various countries with ethnic rivalries have made a point of never stationing anyone in their home area; this often seems a good idea until a national spirit develops.
In the lead role means several things. It means being able to respond, increasingly without US support, to sudden outbreaks of violence, and to bring them under control without excessive casualties on either side. No, that does not mean no casualties on either side, and, no matter who started it, it doesn't mean, whether the US pulls out or not, there will not be innocent casualties. There is no way to avoid that; there are some ways to reduce it.
What strategies and tactics can we use? Seriously, how do you expect me to answer that--not a reference to anything being classified, but the range of tactics can be used? Without any question, I've read thousands of military-related books, articles, and reports, and I'm not a full-time soldier.
How do you fight an enemy who shoots at you from ambush and then disappears into the local population? Several ways, none of which are perfect. The most important comes from Mao: "the guerilla swims in the people as the fish swim in the sea." Little area by little area, you have the people believe that the local security forces are there to help. Exactly how that is done depends on the local conditions. When dealing with villages surrounded by farmland, the US Marine CAP program was successful in Viet Nam until the forces were withdrawn. Part of the Phillipine response to the Huks was to train locals and return them to their own villages. Commanders must maintain rigid discipline about abuse and disrespect of locals. In urban situations, there must be raids or other actions that show the insurgents are not able to act with impunity.
There are technological methods, and I won't argue that some are still being developed. You may be aware that on a modern battlefield between major combatants, artillery cannot survive unless the cannons fire one round or a burst, then immediately drive to a new spot, quickly. The artillery round will be spotted on radar (US Q-36 and Q-37 primarily) as it still is incoming, coordinates of its firing point sent electronically to another artillery battery, and counterfire often in the air before the shells hit. Similar technology is being developed for rifle fire (e.g., sound location) and direct-fire weapons such as RPGs; it already exists for mortars and is used now in base defense against mortars and indirect fire rockets.
"Killing everyone in the area" needs more precision. I was offered a guest position in a country with an insurgency, teaching engineering and telemedicine. Security was discussed. I made it clear that if I were taken hostage, the deaths or capture of those holding me, in my mind, took precedence over my continued life. That is an individual decision, faced by ordinary police forces all over the world in hostage situations with "Ordinary Decent Criminals", not insurgents. Mass fire against urban areas is rarely if ever needed or appropriate, the rare case being where the general population has left, insurgents are in control and using weapons that are not line-of-sight, and there are some hostages.
Let's not deal with Iraq, but Darfur. The janjaweed militia are small groups on horses or camels; there is nothing high tech and nothing against which precision weapons can be used. Their tactics are often to hit isolated farms or villages, kill or enslave everyone, take food and anything else there, stay for a few days, and move on. They are literal nomads, living off the land and off civilians.
In the average farm or village, there are no telephones, there is no Internet, and the only chance of giving an alarm is for a lucky rider to get away. If a patrol finds a captured civilian area, patrols of plausible size don't have the ability to surround the site and eventually move in and clear it, freeing hostages and capturing or killing raiders.
While no one really has hard estimates, there are probably around 10,000 janjaweed, rarely operating in groups as large as a couple of hundred. They are primarily Baggara, not native to the area as are the Fur and other ethnic groups.
You are a squad commander. You do not have the manpower or weapons to take the site building by building, with troops highly skilled in relatively safe hostage rescue. While it's not available now, what if you could observe from a distance, have reasonable confidence there are no civilian survivors, and then call in a small number of armed helicopters or low-maintenance aircraft to destroy the site? If you don't do that, the janjaweed will almost certainly get away.
There are no good options in this situation. It is a reality that the janjaweed force is not native to the area and will have difficulty in replacing losses. Economic sanctions on Khartoum don't have much effect on light cavalry. What do you do? You can only take the least bad choice.
As far as your historical examples, Magsaysay's campaign in the Phillipines was, more than anything else, an example to the locals of bringing in incorruptible and helpful troops and civilian aid, and actually assisting locals. It was coupled with a real amnesty program and yes, hard attacks against resisters. Once Magsaysay got into power, there were few major battles and nothing I would regard as thousands of casualties.
When I speak of thousands of casualties in an insurgency, I expect to see the sort of evidence present in Rwanda or Cambodia, or of the masses of displaced people in Darfur.
Malaysia was both more complex and yet militarily simpler than the Phillipines. As in Darfur, the insurgents were from a different ethnic group, but not as mobile as Darfur. They were Chinese, not Malay. The British, under Thompson, gradually expanded control, and detained suspected Chinese. The detention camps were on a level comparable with Western POW camps for WWII prisoners, with strict but not deadly conditions.
Does killing innocents accomplish anything positive? There's no simple, general answer. Sometimes it is less negative than the alternative. Sometimes, it's like the tough decisions that get made in epidemics where there are limited resources: you quarantine the worst outbreak areas, accepting deaths there, to keep the infection from spreading.
These are intended to be real answers, as much as there can be real answers to complex situations. On the foreign affairs table, I have a discussion of the realities of supporting counterinsurgency in Darfur. The logistical realities are massive and I see nothing that can do much more than slowly increase stability over seveal years -- in an area without cities.
Is the proposed Iraqi government structure viable? I don't know. I am less familiar with the detailed factions there than I am in Darfur, although I have a greater familiarity than a simplification to three groups alone. There is no plausible international peace enforcement organization for Iraq, for any of an assortment of reasons. Recent proposals to split into a two-part federation of Shiites and Kurds/Sunni are worth exploring. Is the one-time Saudi proposal of bringing in non-neighboring Muslim peace enforcers -- not peacekeepers -- totally dead? I don't know.
I am far more willing to accept the serious intent of the US military training organizations than I am the rationalizations and manipulations of the current Administration.
April 2, 2006 4:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Is there an answer in there somewhere? If so, I'm afraid I couldn't find it.
April 2, 2006 6:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
You asked for answers to several questions, and I responded in good faith. For example, you asked about the reasons for shifts between US and Iraqi forces, and about the tactics that would be considered reasonable practice against urban fighters. You asked specific questions about Malaysia and the Phillipines.
I don't know what you are implying by suggesting there is no answer. Certainly, there is no single answer, because you asked no single question.
Let's begin with what should be the least controversial, the historical references to the operations of Thompson and Magsaysay. What did you want answered that was not? Did you expect a certain answer that I did not give?
For the record, I opposed the Administration policy of invasion well before it was done, but I also do not support what I understand to be Murtha's description of immediate withdrawal. I believe in prompt but not precipitous withdrawal. I see relatively little military use for long-term bases in Iraq, and I am aware of a number of bases being turned over to Iraqis.
I would thoroughly oppose a long-term set of operational, as opposed to training and support, US bases in Iraq. There's no anti-terrorist reason I can see for them, given the existing and welcome bases in Kuwait and Qatar, the really bad geography of Iraq for operations elsewhere, and the US seaborne and long-range air capability. Keeping a strong ground force presence would, indeed, suggest the Administration intends to make a puppet government.
April 2, 2006 7:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was asking for specifics about day to day tactics to be employed by the operational forces in Iraq and I put it in several questions. The overriding reason for my questions about effective tactics, that is, tactics that will help Iraq become a reasonably safe, secure, functioning country by stopping the insurgency, was not that I expected you to know some, but to demmonstrate that there are none. Most of your reply was completely off point but maybe that is because of the way I framed my questions. Let’s try it this way.
A Company Commander sends a platoon on a city patrol in Bahgdad. The actions that that patrol takes that day can be either proactive or reactive. If their intenton is to be proactive what can they do. Do they gather up local citizens and search them? Do they do neighborhood sweeps and search all the houses? If so, do they knock politely and explain what they want or do they kick in the door and trash the place in a quick and dirty search? Do they pay informers to point out locals who might have valuable information? Do they arrest that person or members of their family and interrogate them to gain tactical information? These tactics and others are being employed and are not working. Therefore the question remains. What tactics will work. The other possibility for the platoon for that day is to be reactive. They may simply be a presence in the city intending to make it too risky for insurgents to act. No doubt that works sometimes but they never know when their presence prevented an attack, but only know when the insurgents decide that the situation suits them and do attack. The attack is nearly always in the form of ambush and then the American forces react by tacking a defensive position so as to treat and evacuate the wounded. They can also try to counter attack a target which has almost surely melted away. After all, it only takes one person to activate a command detonated roadside bomb and he can be any place that has a view of the road. Maybe in a second story window a block away. What is an effective reaction that the U.S. forces can take or can train the Iraqi forces to take in that situation. Suppose the attack was by sniper fire and a soldier thinks he saw muzzle blast from a window a block away. Do they make a coordinated advance on the building to attempt to capture or kill the gunman, possibly through booby trapped access or do they call in artillery on the building which might have the insurgent inside but very likely has other people too. In any instance I describe or you can imagine, do the U.S. force react with rage and fire back at anything which might be a legitimate target but might also not be. Remember, all the Iraqis look the same to a scared, adrenalin pumped, angry soldier. Do they often direct their fire correctly and in the process destroy someones home or business and kill innocents. At the end of that day are more or less Iraqis glad we occupy their country? Are there more or less people ready to resist our presence?
The above scenario only talks about soldiers in operational units. All the support troops and infrastructure are targets of the insurgency too, but troops in support role are not as well equipped, trained, or organized, to carry the fight to thr enemy.
My refeence to thousands of citizens slaughterd in Malaya and the Phillipines was because you said they were examples of successful counterinsygency operations. I don’t know that history well enough to try to apply it to the question at hand but I believe it involved a very high level of vicious suppression. Carried out in Iraq, that tactic might work, but I hope we don’t go that far.
About the system of radar guided counterfire which you say works against mortars. About five years after it was introduced as an operatioal system I watched it fail over oand over again. Maybe it works now, I don’t know, but when the insurgents can fire from a pickup in someones back yard located in a dense residential area and then race away through the city, returning artillery fire to that back yard from several miles away is not a way to win the hearts and minds of the local people
April 3, 2006 3:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Your first example is the way some patrols are carried out now, but there is a conscious attempt to get away from certain aspects -- and that is only possible when there can be a local Iraqi police presence rather than trying to do peace enforcement with combat arms forces not designed for peace enforcement.
The most important proactive action, which has happened in a few but not enough towns, is to have the populace inform the police of the presence of outsiders, or of possible bomb locations. I have one friend in a US Engineer unit whose role is to respond to possible bombs and use their more sophisticated equipment to analyze the threat and either disarm the bomb or detonate it in a controlled way. In that sence, they should be, and are, reactive.
Your tactical example has too many branches to have one answer. You ask if getting local information will work, but immediately state it isn't working. That doesn't sound as if you are really looking for answers. As I mentioned, I have personal contacts that are, in fact, operating largely on information given to the Iraqi Police, second to the Iraqi Army, and third directly to US forces. I'm not foolish enough to say this works in every case, but it's futile to try to answer you if you state the answer immediately after asking the quetion.
In like manner, you are making assumptions about artillery being used against snipers, when artillery is generally not even available for true sniper situations. It is available and used against mortar and rocket fire against bases.
Your sniper assumption is full of assumptions, and indeed emotional language, to an extent that I cannot answer it in a meaningful way. US counter-sniper and counter-ambush standard procedures, since the sixties, do not quite work the way you suggest, and counter-sniper and counter-ambush are quite different situations.
You asked about Malaya and the Phillipines, and now say "I don’t know that history well enough to try to apply it to the question at hand but I believe it involved a very high level of vicious suppression. Well, it might help if you did know the history well before generalizing about it. I had answered with specific names and programs, and you are generalizing. To be more specific, the US campaign against Aguinaldo in the Phillipines, around the turn of the 20th century, was full of atrocities
on both sides. The post-WWII operations against the Hukbalahap, under President Magsaysay with Edwin Lansdale as his main US advisor, had a major focus of cleaning up government corruption and showing villagers that the goverment actually could help them. This was coupled with an active and effective amnesty program, and, indeed, with direct military action where appropriate.
You say radar guided counterfire against mortars doesn't work. Please be specific about what system to which you refer, both in the detection and the countermortar fire components. I can't answer generalities followed by your answering your own questions.
I am not saying anything is perfect and I believe that the US should get out in a prudent manner. Nevertheless, I need to believe you are interested in serious dialogue, as opposed to answering your own questions and dismissing specific answers with your general recollections, before I'll continue to spend more effort with this. It's impossible to give specific answers to tactics when you make a long series of assumptions, the very first of which does not match current practice.
Forget Iraq, and look at the Kerner Commission reports of state vs. National Guard response to the 1967 Detroit riots, one of the very few times that regular military forces were brought into a modern civil disturbance. There was excessive use of firepower by the police and National Guard, where the 82nd Airborne brigade made more captures and stopped more snipers with a far lesser expenditure of ammunition.
April 3, 2006 5:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry, but I couldn't enter an edit to the above post. It should begin
By your own admission, you don't want answers to what you pose as questions: "The overriding reason for my questions about effective tactics, that is, tactics that will help Iraq become a reasonably safe, secure, functioning country by stopping the insurgency, was not that I expected you to know some, but to demonstrate that there are none." You dismiss specifics responses, even when those responses recognize there are no perfect answers. Apparently, your mind is made up and any answer that challenges your assumptions is defined to be wrong.
I'm packing for a cross-country move and don't want to spend time in a meaningless discussion. If you want to give a policy-level opinion that nothing is working, I can respect it at that level. If you want to discuss tactics, then do so, without either announcing the answer as you pose the question, or state you have no specific knowledge but go on to disagree with a specific answer. For example, your comments about the Phillipines suggest that you may not understand that there were at least two, quite different, counterinsurgency wars over approximately sixty years.
April 3, 2006 5:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
You seem to be saying that if I could just ask my questions right that you would be willing and able to answer them. Thank you. I will try.
My questions are based on a premise. I believe that The U.S. military is failing to carry out it’s mission successfully in Iraq. Further, I believe that it is not possible for them to succeed in their mission, in Iraq. If I am correct, then even though the U.S. forces cannot be defeated by any force the Iraqis can field, they can be said to be losing the war. If it can be concluded that they are losing and cannot win, it will inform our decision as to whether to lose for a short time more or to lose for a long time more.
Whether I am right or wrong , I believe the outcome, good or bad, it will depend on how those forces act and react in all the interactions that do in fact take place between those forces and Iraqis.
Do you believe we, The U.S., are now winning? Or do you believe we can win if we do it right. That is, is the mission on a successful coarse? Could it be put on the right course? You can assume we agree on the mission or define it yourself. Do you believe we are using effective tactics.? Do you know of other better tactics that could be used? That is, tactics that could lead to the success of the mission. If so, can you describe them for me? Can you demonstrate for me how you see them playing out in a real life encounter? In Iraq. Today.
Do you believe that our tactics and application of force in Iraq is sometimes, or often, counter productive, and not only increases the size of the current insurgent force, but creates generational enemies not only in Iraq but in countries and populations sympathetic to the Iraqis?
Do you believe that a soldier in the heat of battle can be expected to stay as cool as a surgeon in an operating room or would you expect that emotions have a strong affect on them and they can be expected to sometimes deviate from standard operating procedures and act inappropriately? That is, for example, sometimes panic, or go in to a rage, and shoot at anything that moves. In a city. In Iraq.
You said…..
You say radar guided counter fire against mortars doesn't work. Please be specific about what system to which you refer, both in the detection and the counter mortar fire components. I can't answer generalities followed by your answering your own questions.
In fact, I didn’t say it didn’t work now. I said…
About the system of radar guided counter fire which you say works against mortars. About five years after it was introduced as an operational system I watched it fail over and over again. Maybe it works now, I don’t know, but when the insurgents can fire from a pickup in someone’s back yard located in a dense residential area and then race away through the city, returning artillery fire to that back yard from several miles away is not a way to win the hearts and minds of the local people
I think your statement commits a logical fallacy. I bet you could tell me which one. I’m thinking straw man since my obvious point was not whether or not the system works, but, that even if it works as designed, it is a very inappropriate weapon to use, in most cases, in Iraq.
Thanks for your time, if you choose to respond.
April 3, 2006 4:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
You appear to be asking questions to which a book-length answer would be required. I shall attempt to address some overall premises, and perhaps reduce some of the conflict before addressing tactical techniques. There is no way I could answer the long sequence of chained assertions you make about tactics. There are answers that could be made one at a time, but not to line after line of questions with implicit assumptions.
I do not believe the Bush 43 administration'sassumptions to invade were justified. I do not believe the Bush 43 administration had a clear-cut definition of either conditions of victory or defeat. In this context, I highly recommend the thoughts of Fred Ikle, a respected academic who has held policy posts in several Republican administration, in his book, Every War Must End (revised edition).
I do not believe the Bush 43 administration had a realistic concept of post-high-intensity stability operations, in contrast with the OPERATION RANKIN contingency plans for the occupation of Germany. I do not believe that the Bush 43 administration had reasonable alternatives about potential Iraqi governmental structure, of which there is an interesting analysis from the Strategic Studies Institute of the Army War College (pdf) Precedents, Variables, and Options in Planning a U.S. Military Disengagement Strategy from Iraq
Given the Bush administration got into this mess, there are Geneva Convention requirements for an Occupying Power to attempt to restore some form of order before leaving, unless militarily defeated. The best continuing analyses of the details of strengthening Iraqi security forces is being done by Anthony Cordesman and associates at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.[Unfortunately, the CSIS website doesn't allow direct links to documents; you have to use the search engine for Cordesman or Iraq+Security],
This is the context I consider least bad: the #1 priority being readying Iraqi security forces to protect a government yet to be defined. I am not convinced the nation of Iraq can exist in its present boundaries. There have been some interesting ideas, such as a Shi'ite part and a Sunni-Kurdish part, either federated or independent. I reserve judgment.
In some of the specific efforts to prepare Iraqi police and military for self-sufficiency, I see some appropriate activities, and continuing learning and adaptation. As I believe I have indicated with a reasonable number of strategic and operational references, the situation is not simple.
Describe "tactics" for you? Do you have any idea of the size of an operations order for maintaining security in a given area, or the size of the bookshelf that holds even the unclassified doctrinal manuals? Do you seriously expect me -- anyone -- to give as wide ranging an answer, in a blog format, as you seem to want? Oh -- and let's first get through defining the tactics themselves, and then get into the effects they have on the population. You are mixing too many things to get a coherent explanation.
I am willing to try to deal with some of your questions one or two at a time, but I don't know how to approach as massive a block of questions as in the post to which I am replying.
April 3, 2006 6:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
I counted 14 question marks but not that many questions. The first twelve were actually only three stated in different ways in an apparent failed attempt to be clear and precise. Those three were so closely related that they could be answered concurrently if they could be answered at all. The answers of the last two seem completely obvious so let’s forget them. Maybe I can get the three questions down to two.
Using your own interpretation of our militaries current mission in Iraq as defined by G.W. Bush et al, please answer two questions. 1. Is our military in Iraq accomplishing it’s mission? 2. If not, can “the army we have” be used in a different way so that it can accomplish it’s mission?
April 3, 2006 10:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
I shall try to answer these two, which, in my understanding of strategy, operational art, and tactical levels, are no longer tactical.
Addressing your first question, there are multiple missions. Some yes, some know. I believe they are making decent progress, at an increasing rate, to train Iraqi security forces. This is a strategic decision with implications for the operational-level deployment of resources. It is a prerequisite to withdrawal of major forces in a reasonable but not precipitous time.
Other than self-protection (including bases, the embassy, etc.), security force enhancement is the #1 priority. There may be patrolling, but that should almost always be joint. If it's a question of not covering an area at all, there may be tactical use of reaction forces. If an Iraqi or mixed unit is being overwhelmed, which isn't all that likely, there may be a tactical reaction.
For your second question, assuming the continuing tuning of the security force development effort, the delivery of equipment for security forces, etc., no, I would not see major alternatives.
I still have a sense that you want me to make a statement of flat failure, which I'm more than happy to make at the grand strategic level. At the tactical level, your questions seem to presuppose what I'd regard as uncontrolled tactics for US forces in urban areas. It is possible that more unwise tactics are used by Iraqi forces still being trained.
Let me offer two articles about countermortar/counterrocket tactics. At major bases such as LSA ANACONDA, there is, indeed, automated linkage between Q36 and Q37 detection radar and 155mm gun batteries assigned to counterbattery missions. ANACONDA itself is 15 miles in diameter, with a security zone around it. Given the distances involved, someone firing rockets or mortars is in the security zone, not in the city of Bagram.
See for tactics used in the city of Mosul by 3/2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team (SBCT). You will notice that a significant part of the response is not by counterbattery fire, but by ground movement of prepositioned reaction forces. Those tactics will not always stop three people firing a couple of 60mm mortar rounds from the back seat of a car. They are, however, an example of trying to draw a balance between getting the enemy and jeopardizing civilians.
April 4, 2006 8:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
What we're doing in Iraq to stall for time is the same thing we did in Vietnam. Basically, we will play defense, launch massive air attacks, and push Iraqification. This will lower the number of American corpses and increase the number of Iraqi corpses. That's all it will accomplish. There is no military solution and we need to implement Rep. Murtha's exit plan now.
Tom
April 1, 2006 9:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Precisely what targets are there for "massive air attacks", at least for any generally accepted definitions of "massive"?
April 1, 2006 9:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Exactly - a lot of civians are going to die. Seymour Hersh had a piece about this a while back.
Tom
April 1, 2006 9:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't understand your reference to "exactly". Were anything I would recognize as a massive air attack were directed at civilian areas, for some unfathomable reason, thousands, not dozens would die. I'm asking for what you see, in specific military terms, as the characteristics of short-term American military examples.
I communicate often daily with American personnel in combat, combat support, and direct Iraqi training roles. Some types of activities have increased, others have decreased, and the IA and IP is being integrated better, with different results in different localities.
April 1, 2006 9:42 PM | Reply | Permalink