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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (115816)	9/27/2003 10:42:19 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I am probably displaying my ignorance of the military, but, with 2.6 million soldiers (1.4 million on active duty and 1.2 million in the reserves), why aren't there any more available for Iraq? Why are we "tapped out"? Even including support forces in the area, we've got substantially less than 10% of our total forces in Iraq today. Well, I hope this will enlighten you as to current force structure: armedservices.house.gov Note that the Army has a total of 480,000 men, down from the 751,000 servicemen it possessed in 1990 (Desert Storm). Yet its number of missions has increased, as well as the intensity of those missions.. Of those forces, the overwhelming majority are support and service personnel in non-combat related MOSs (cooks, clerical, supply, mechanics.. etc). The actual number of combat MOSs is probably somewhere around 25-30% of total manpower (if that).. I tried to find some actual MOS breakdowns but didn't have any luck finding that info. The Marines are the only force that has properly trained all of its personnel to be "infantry first", technician second.. Hawk

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (115816)	9/27/2003 10:48:29 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

US kills three more in Sunni triangle Patrick Graham in Falujah Sunday September 28, 2003 The Observer Standing by the grave of his dead brother, Sheikh Abed Asalam Jamil says he is happy and calls for a jihad against the US Army. 'Everyone in Iraq is a mujahid,' says the imam, whose brother, Zamal Jamil al-Juleimi, was killed on Friday night as he returned from a doctor's appointment with his family. 'The people of this country will raise the flag of jihad.' Zamal was shot dead, along with his wife and her mother, Beijah. Their son, Haider, who was sitting in the back of the pick-up, lies wounded in the hospital in Falujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, in the heart of the Sunni triangle. Falujah is not the kind of place where they understand the concept of friendly fire. The conservative, tribal society views outsiders with suspicion even when they come unarmed. Here, police openly sympathise with the resistance to the US occupation. According to members of the resistance, the city spawned the first armed groups last April that now organise almost daily attacks on the convoys of foreign troops. The nervous troops, in return, respond with overwhelming firepower. The cycle appears to be growing worse. The US military does not release, or perhaps does not even keep, the statistics of civilian casualties. But over the past few weeks Falujah's hospital has received a steady stream of victims, including a dead two-year-old girl and her three wounded sisters. The girls were shot after US soldiers fired following the detonation of a roadside bomb. In another incident, a 14-year-old boy was killed at a wedding when celebratory rifle shots were mistaken for hostile fire. Last week soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division called in an airstrike on a farm outside Falujah. Three men were killed. The army claimed it was chasing members of the resistance who fired on a patrol. At the funeral, the family said they had fired a few shots at a suspected thief in the bushes. The 82nd has a bloody history in Falujah. In April the division killed 18 protesters and wounded 78. Two weeks ago they killed eight policemen chasing bandits. 'We're taught to shoot back with everything we've got,' said a former member of the 82nd, now working for a private security firm in Baghdad. The Sunni triangle is now overwhelmingly hostile to the Americans. Last week a sign appeared on a former Saddam monument telling drivers to stay well back from US convoys which 'could be attacked at any time - this is your last warning'. Friday night's shooting is further proof for those who argue that the Americans are here as occupiers, not as liberators. Ironically, Zamal was exactly the kind of Iraqi the Americans hoped to win over. As manager of the local grain silo, his salary had increased under the new regime. Colleagues explained that Zamal and other educated men and women supported US efforts. This makes his death all the more bitter and, for his family, incomprehensible. observer.guardian.co.uk