I'm asking for the number in the campaign to pacify Iraq. And the generals of WWI and WWII most certainly DID put limits on the number of casualties that were acceptable in the individual campaigns. There's only so much manpower available. They ran games to get estimates of what the totals would be and then modified their plans accordingly.
...It always comes down to numbers eh CB?
Well my butcher's bill to eliminate the urban shooting match is around 3,725. 625 for Fallujah, and 3100 for the rest of the cities. Make it 4,000 worse case, assuming the Iraqi's fight and we stop playing politics.
...It could be much smaller of course, but you know how picky the lawyers get about these things. What's your calculator say?
But the real problem isn't our casualties or the 10,000, soon to be 80,000(?), urban militias. The problem as you know, is killing enough Iraqi's to be assured that the current militias aren't replaced by a new crop. That's not going to happen unless GB is willing to be put on trial, and I don't mean in the Senate.
So once the 10-80,000 militants are reduced and disarmed (I figure it should take no more than 6 months with 300,000 troops) you'll need at least a 500,000 man/woman force to sit on top of the cities until you can get your elections held.
Then... once they've got their dictator officially elected... you declare victory and get the heck out of the cities entirely so that they can wear themselves out killing each other without your having to go on trial.
When they finish and have a passable military capable of defending their borders and attacking their neighbors you bring all the troops home and wait for Israel to nuke the place. ...Then you go back and trade them iodine pills for oil.
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