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Post by deovindice on Apr 1, 2007 7:13:57 GMT -5
The U.S. military death toll in March 2007, the first full month of the security crackdown, was nearly twice that of the Iraqi army, which American and Iraqi officials say is taking the leading role in the latest attempt to curb violence. American losses were 81, as compared to the Iraqi losses of 44.
The Iraqis are taking the leading role in the fighting that has consumed their own "country"?
This is bass-ackwards, folks.
This shows who is actually doing the fighting, and who is cutting and running, or not even bothering to show up.
U.S. Army Major General James Thurman requested figures from the Iraqi government that showed how many Iraqi soldiers were missing from the Baghdad area campaign. The tally? Six Iraqi battalions or 3,000 troops. These turn out to be Shi'ite troops from other provinces who have refused orders to be transferred from their home areas to Baghdad.
Time to go.
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Post by W.O.M.I on Apr 1, 2007 15:12:20 GMT -5
The numbers do make a bit of sense because:
1) More American troops are deployed in Baghdad now
2) Iraqi and American troops are entering places like Sadr City where they did not go before the surge
3) The focus of the effort is now to clear out and hold/pacify areas of Baghdad rather than merely patrol them. Clearing-and-holding yeilds the potential for more casualties than does either one alone.
As for the Sunnis in the Iraqi army not being all that willing to turn their guns on their own people, well I can't say that I blame them all that much. If we had a situation here in the US where people from Alabama were on opposite sides of the conflict and facing each other, how many epople would be eager to pull the trigger on their brothers? We saw the reticence to do so in our own 'Civil War'.
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Post by Twista on Apr 2, 2007 1:27:51 GMT -5
Uhh... Womi, I don't see how your comments addressed any of the points that Deo put forth... It seems that our army is doing most of the fighting, instead of the Iraqis who are "taking the lead"... It also shows that the Iraqi government doesn't even control it's own army...
And if the casulties are proportional to the number of soldiers in each army, then that would lead one to think that there aren't enough Iraqi troops to clear the city, which would seem to be the absolute top priority of their government. That seems to bode VERY badly for the future of the government...
So the conclusion that I would come to is that clearing and holding an area "permanently" would seem to require that the troops be Iraqi, unless our government is planning on staying a whole lot longer than they are leading us to think...
Or they will eventually give up the lost cause...
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Post by W.O.M.I on Apr 2, 2007 15:15:16 GMT -5
The so-called "surge" qualifies as a very drastic change of tactics because, prior to now, the strategery was to clear an area of bad guys and move on. We did that in Falluja a couple of eyars ago.
However, once the US military completed its mission successfully- and by all accounts it did so- the ball was dropped when responsibility for control was passed to the Iraqis who were, at least then, not ready to accept that responsibility and so they failed.
We tried taking the lead and letting the Iraqis take over once we moved on. That failed.
We tried letting the Iraqis take the lead, supported by our troops. Once the Iraqis cleared the area, we moved our troops on. That failed as well.
Now the idea is for the US military to clear the area and hold it with the support of the Iraqis and we won't leave the areas until the Iraqis demonstrably have control. It >seems< to be working, at least to this point.
I don't say that the casualties are proportionate to BOTH armies; I say that the US troop casualties probably will increase because more US troops are there and are venturing into areas where, for various reasons, they weren't allowed to before. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say that the overall casualy rate as a percentage of our deployed troops will increase until the surge is fully in place and then decline, probably rather precipituosly because the areas 'occupied' will be well and truly pacified.
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