Well stand down when they stand up...and don't shoot us.Follow

http://apnews1.iwon.com//article/20070713/D8QBOLG00.html

Oh those crazy Iraqi polices.


U.S. forces battled Iraqi police and gunmen Friday, killing six policemen, after an American raid captured a police lieutenant accused of leading an Iranian-backed militia cell, the military said.

Seven gunmen also died in the fight, a rare open street battle between American troops and policemen. Washington has demanded the government purge its police force of militants, and U.S. and Iraqi authorities have arrested officers in the past for militia links. But the Bush administration said in an assessment Thursday that progress on that front was "unsatisfactory."

On the plus side, though, training apparently fairly effective:


The lieutenant was captured before dawn in eastern Baghdad, but the soldiers came under "heavy and accurate fire" from a nearby Iraqi police checkpoint

Heavy and accurate, good job boys! Silver lining, baby.

What Iraqi militia members have infiltrated their way into the military and police organizations? You don't say? Did we time warp back to 2005?

Was this anything new? You'd think the "story" would be that they tracked one of these cells and removed them, not that they exist in the first place. Talk about finding a way to spin this...

Given that this isn't exactly new information and that the problems with Iraqi police and military "taking sides" in faction fighting in Iraq has been one of the key obstacles to us "standing down" for a couple years now (at least), one would wonder at someone presenting this as though it was "news".


The "news" is that as part of the surge we're finally starting to weed those people out instead of sitting back and saying "yeah, it's a problem but we don't have the manpower to deal with it", like we have for the last couple years.

But hey. It's not like Smash is approaching this from any particular partisan angle, now is he?

Umm... Joph? It's called "the surge". That's because *we* (as in the US military) increase our numbers to give us additional manpower to take care of specific obstacles in the process of handing over power to the Iraqi forces. That's what it's purpose is. You're somehow confusing the end goal with the methods used to get there. Not that this is surprising though given the number of people with a "are we there yet?" attitude to the whole thing.

I'd also point out that the surge wasn't even approved until march? The troops didn't start arriving until late may, and it's only been in the last few weeks that the full increased force numbers have been present in Iraq. Arguing that we should be "done" or showing signs of success at this point is, well... missing the point. What we should be looking for are actions by US forces to weed out those "problems" that are in our way. Like faction militias imbedded in police and military units. Areas being used as support structures for the above.

You should expect to see *more* actions like these in the comming weeks and months, not less. You seem to assume that upon stating a goal it has to magically appear before us completely finished or the whole thing isn't working. Um... you have to actually do the things you need to do to achieve those goals. What on earth did you think "additional troops" are needed to do? Stand down immediately?



Seriously. Did you really think the whole point of the surge was to send a bunch of extra forces so they could all stand aside and watch the Iraqis do everything? Did that make sense in your head cause it doesn't make any sense to me...?




Um... There's a time component between those Joph. Don't be dense. Part of the purpose of the surge is to help the Iraqi's deal with exactly the kind of embedded insurgents and faction militias that they've been having problems with over the last couple years and we simply haven't had the manpower to deal with.

What exactly did you think was involved in the "standing up" part of that? You can't immediatly move to hands off mode. If that were the case, we wouldn't have needed to send 40k more soldiers into the country. I thought that was obvious. What part of "surge" and "more soldiers" made you somehow think that an increased number of engagements like this would mean that it was failing?





Yup. And this is part of what raids like this are designed to fix. How did you think that was going to happen? You are aware that in terms of actual deployed troops in the country, the surge has essentially only just started, right? Therre's more time between now and september (the first milestone check period) then we've had that full increased number in country. I'd say it's a bit pre-mature to assume failure because we haven't fixed all the problems yet and doubly so when you label the actions designed to fix those problems as "failures"...



Yup. Again. This is what we're there to help them do, and this is what this operation is part of doing. How do you label a report of a successful operation of this nature that is in exact accordance with the stated objectives of the surge and in exact accordance with what you'd need to do to deal with the problem you just listed as a "failure"?

See how this is spin? We succeed at an operation to fix these problems, but it's reported as though the very fact that there was a fight is somehow a failure of the surge (cause we're not done yet). Um... They're just getting started. This is one in what will likely be a number of operations like this. All specifically designed to deal with the whole "eliminating militia control of local securith" bit.




Yup. Same deal. This is a bit more political in nature, but it helps terrifically to apply a bit of a "stick" to the process. I've been explaining this dynamic for months now. That these militias are mostly extensions of existing political factions inside the Iraq government itself. The goal here is to get them to stop using the militias to fight their battles but to use the process of law and parlament to do so.

Of course, as I commented the last time this subject came up, it would have helped tremendously if folks like Murtha hadn't started calling for withdrawal of US forces back in late 2005. We might not have had to do what we're doing now if he hadn't done that. Most of those militias were non-existent back then and those few remaining were being negotiated out of existance. But when Murtha called for troop withdrawals, ever political leader that didn't have a militia realized that if we did leave, they'd be wiped out by the handul that did. Thus, they all started arming their supporters and we're now in the mess we're in.

Thanks Murtha. Good freaking job!

Well it probably wasn't any of these guys.

Given that this isn't exactly new information and that the problems with Iraqi police and military "taking sides" in faction fighting in Iraq has been one of the key obstacles to us "standing down" for a couple years now (at least), one would wonder at someone presenting this as though it was "news".


The "news" is that as part of the surge we're finally starting to weed those people out instead of sitting back and saying "yeah, it's a problem but we don't have the manpower to deal with it", like we have for the last couple years.
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it is news. it is news because the whitehouse wont deliver what is STILL happening on a dailey basis in the mess THEY CREATED. if someone doesnt remind the ignorant masses on a regular basis, it will be forgotton that americans are being butchered for helping a country that doesnt want our help.....EVERY DAY. 24/7.

weeding out "those people"?

hahahahaha, thats what we have been doing since day one. the RESULT is what is NEWS. we have more to WEED OUT now than we did when we STARTED. thats the news everyone should be reading into this. thats the news the new assement report is telling everyone.

we are loosing. we will continue to loose.

all that is left to decide is how much we are WILLING to loose before we leave. that is the only political or military decision left to make..short of ramping it up to a REAL WAR.

either we roll in with 400 to 500,000 soldiers, and level every building and infrastructure, take no prisoners, and kill everything within a 100 yard radius of whereever any shot if fired at us, a REAL WAR, or we pull out of our second....vietnam with our collective tails between our legs.

war or leave. no inbetween for a reagon who has millions of people who are willing to die to kill us. either this addministraition grows some balls and does what needs to be done, or they pull out and stop the needless, pointless slaughter of americas best.

they should be impeached and tried for treason.

Umm... Joph? It's called "the surge". That's because *we* (as in the US military) increase our numbers to give us additional manpower to take care of specific obstacles in the process of handing over power to the Iraqi forces. That's what it's purpose is.

No, it's purpose was as a purely political delaying tactic to slow down anti-war debate in Congress. No one with any inkling of knowledge in military tactics has any illusions about this. For it to fulfill your states purpose it would have required about 100,000 more troops by the most optimistic estimates. Had that action been taken, I'd have posted that someone in this administration had finally listened to the people who know anything at all about warfare.

War isn't a linear equation. Adding 30,000 troops in this situation isn't 1/5th as good as adding 150,000, it is about 1/500000000000000th as good. DoD must do one of two things to prevent this war from being a disastrous failure, both of which may be impossible now because of they way they've bungled things thusfar.

They either need to develop a staged withdrawal exit strategy and declare victory, which won't happen for political reasons, or they need to stop trying to fight this war asymmetrically and adjust troop strength numbers up to where they should be to fight an insurgency. The inflection point for a useful troop increase in Iraq may be lower than 70's standard of bringing ground forces to a 10/1 ratio to fight entrenched guriella war due to advances in technology, but is sure as hell isn't anywhere near 30,000. This "surge" is a completely pointless gesture unless it's somehow a brilliant strategy to leverage four or five equally large surges through some kind of miraculous propaganda campaign.

If that turns out to be the case, I'll retract my criticism of this administrations war planning.