posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jason Abbadon:
Ride untill we find them: Kill them all.
shiney penny for whoever gets that ,movie quote)

---

posted                      

quote:

---

Situation Called Dire in West Iraq
Anbar Is Lost Politically, Marine Analyst Says

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 11, 2006; Page A01

The chief of intelligence for the Marine Corps in Iraq recently filed an unusual secret report concluding that the prospects for securing that country's western Anbar province are dim and that there is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there, said several military officers and intelligence officials familiar with its contents.

The officials described Col. Pete Devlin's classified assessment of the dire state of Anbar as the first time that a senior U.S. military officer has filed so negative a report from Iraq.

One Army officer summarized it as arguing that in Anbar province, "We haven't been defeated militarily but we have been defeated politically -- and that's where wars are won and lost."

The "very pessimistic" statement, as one Marine officer called it, was dated Aug. 16 and sent to Washington shortly after that, and has been discussed across the Pentagon and elsewhere in national security circles. "I don't know if it is a shock wave, but it's made people uncomfortable," said a Defense Department official who has read the report. Like others interviewed about the report, he spoke on the condition that he not be identified by name because of the document's sensitivity.

Devlin reports that there are no functioning Iraqi government institutions in Anbar, leaving a vacuum that has been filled by the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has become the province's most significant political force, said the Army officer, who has read the report. Another person familiar with the report said it describes Anbar as beyond repair; a third said it concludes that the United States has lost in Anbar.

Devlin offers a series of reasons for the situation, including a lack of U.S. and Iraqi troops, a problem that has dogged commanders since the fall of Baghdad more than three years ago, said people who have read it. These people said he reported that not only are military operations facing a stalemate, unable to extend and sustain security beyond the perimeters of their bases, but also local governments in the province have collapsed and the weak central government has almost no presence.

Those conclusions are striking because, even after four years of fighting an unexpectedly difficult war in Iraq, the U.S. military has tended to maintain an optimistic view: that its mission is difficult, but that progress is being made. Although CIA station chiefs in Baghdad have filed negative classified reports over the past several years, military intelligence officials have consistently been more positive, both in public statements and in internal reports.

----

---

Just so you can see the size of Anbar Province, here is the graphic the Post included with the story.



You might be asking yourself how, the American military with all the might it possess is not doing so well in the post-initial conflict stage of the invasion of Iraq. We might find the answer in this story I found posted a Crooks and Liars:

quote:

---

Rumsfeld Forbade Planning For Postwar Iraq, General Says

Long before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld forbade military strategists to develop plans for securing a postwar Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said.

Brig. Gen. Mark E. Scheid told the Newport News Daily Press in an interview published yesterday that Rumsfeld had said "he would fire the next person" who talked about the need for a postwar plan.

Scheid was a colonel with the U.S. Central Command, the unit that oversees military operations in the Middle East, in late 2001 when Rumsfeld "told us to get ready for Iraq."

"The secretary of defense continued to push on us . . . that everything we write in our plan has to be the idea that we are going to go in, we're going to take out the regime, and then we're going to leave," Scheid said. "We won't stay."

Planners continued to try "to write what was called Phase 4" -- plans that covered post-invasion operations such as security, stability and reconstruction, said Scheid, who is retiring in about three weeks, but "I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next person that said that."

---

posted                      

quote:

---

War price on U.S. lives equal to 9/11
By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer

Now the death toll is 9/11 times two. U.S. military deaths from Iraq and Afghanistan now match those of the most devastating terrorist attack in America's history, the trigger for what came next. Add casualties from chasing terrorists elsewhere in the world, and the total has passed the Sept. 11 figure.

The latest milestone for a country at war comes without commemoration. It also may well come without the precision of knowing who is the 2,973rd man or woman of arms to die in conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, or just when it happens. The terrorist attacks killed 2,973 victims in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

Not for the first time, war that was started to answer death has resulted in at least as much death for the country that was first attacked, quite apart from the higher numbers of enemy and civilians killed.

Historians note that this grim accounting is not how the success or failure of warfare is measured, and that the reasons for conflict are broader than what served as the spark.

The body count from World War II was far higher for Allied troops than for the crushed Axis. Americans lost more men in each of a succession of Pacific battles than the 2,390 people who died at Pearl Harbor in the attack that made the U.S. declare war on Japan. The U.S. lost 405,399 in the theaters of World War II.

Despite a death toll that pales next to that of the great wars, one casualty milestone after another has been observed and reflected upon this time, especially in Iraq.

There was the benchmark of seeing more U.S. troops die in the occupation than in the swift and successful invasion. And the benchmarks of 1,000 dead, 2,000, 2,500.

Now this.

----

As of Friday, the U.S. death toll stood at 2,693 in the Iraq war and 278 in and around Afghanistan, for a total of 2,971, two short of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Pentagon reports 56 military deaths and one civilian Defense Department death in other parts of the world from Operation Enduring Freedom, the anti-terrorism war distinct from Iraq.

Altogether, 3,028 have died abroad since Sept. 11, 2001.

The civilian toll in Iraq hit record highs in the summer, with 6,599 violent deaths reported in July and August alone, the United Nations said this week.

---

quote:

---

U.S. says 3,000 more Iraqi troops needed in Baghdad

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S.-trained Iraqi soldiers do not want to leave other parts of their country to serve in Baghdad, leaving security efforts in the violent capital short by 3,000 Iraqi troops, a senior U.S. commander said on Friday.

"I would tell you I need more Iraqi security forces," U.S. Army Maj. Gen. James Thurman, the U.S. military commander for Baghdad, told reporters at the Pentagon from Camp Liberty in the Iraqi capital.

Thurman said that six Iraqi army battalions -- roughly 500 soldiers each -- that he has requested to reinforce Baghdad have not been provided by the Iraqi government. U.S. commanders have said sectarian violence in Baghdad between Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims could lead to civil war if left unchecked.

"Some of these battalions, when they were formed, were formed regionally. And some of the soldiers due to the distance did not want to travel into Baghdad," Thurman said. "And the minister of defense (Abdel Qader Jassim) is working with that."

U.S. commanders have stated that curbing sectarian violence in Baghdad has become the main effort of the 3-1/2-year-old war, more important than the long-running fight against Sunni Arab insurgents in vast Anbar province west of Baghdad.

But only a relatively small portion of the 145,000-strong U.S. force and the 302,000-strong Iraqi government security forces are being devoted to the effort. Thurman said 15,000 U.S. troops, 9,000 Iraqi army soldiers, 12,000 Iraqi national police and 22,000 local police are operating in Baghdad.

Thurman said he was not disappointed by the failure of the Iraqi government to get the requested soldiers to Baghdad, but added the U.S. military was working to make Iraq's army "more mobile."

----

---