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

To: redfish who wrote (128190)	4/2/2004 6:16:30 PM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi redfish; Re: "Having the Falluja police do it makes us look weak." Well, we are weak. But if you were the commander of the Marines over there, and you knew what he knows, I doubt that you'd be doing things much differently. Here's my guess for the facts on the ground and how they got there (short version): (a) The US quit patrolling Fallujah (and other recalcitrant areas) back in early February, and let the Iraqi police patrol instead. This resulted in a sharp decrease in US casualties. (b) The Iraqi police took over, but they didn't actually do much patrolling. Instead, since they are ridden with resistance sympathizers, the resistance arranged to use Iraqi patrols as cover for their installing really big "IEDs" in roadways that the US was no longer patrolling. (c) In mid March, it became obvious that the Iraqi police weren't doing us much favors. For example, Iraqi policemen executed four American contractors. So the US began going back into a few selected areas. This was associated with an increase in US casualties back to the January level. These casualties caused the US to be more careful about where they were patrolling. (d) A US APC got taken out by a bomb that left a 15 foot crater west of Baghdad and killed 5 of our soldiers. On the same day, those 4 contractors got ambushed. The big bomb indicates that the resistance planted a bigger bomb (duh), and that they therefore had more time available to do it. This suggests that the regions where the US wasn't regularly patrolling may have some heavy ordnance dug in. That 15 foot crater was deep enough that there aren't any US vehicles that can survive that sort of damage. And since the US hasn't been in Fallujah for a while, the commanders are postponing going in until they can figure out how to send in some sort of mine sweepers. The bad guys have already demonstrated an ability to shoot down helicopters, so that's not an option, but I would guess that if they had a discernable target, they'd risk it anyway. My guess is that the military is looking at doing some sort of operations (1) at night, and (2) staying off the roads. If they knew where they were going, they'd start the operation now, but the facts are that they still have lousy intelligence about the resistance in Fallujah. For example, when those contractors were ambushed, the resistance was so well organized that they got Iraqi civilian vehicles off the road first. All the Iraqis around there knew it was going to happen, but no one said a word to the Coalition. -- Carl