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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hoa Hao who wrote (202047)	4/11/2007 1:05:54 PM
From: unclewest	Respond to of 793719

The campaign of "gated communities" - whose genesis was in the Vietnam War - will involve up to 30 of the city's 89 official districts and will be the most ambitious counter-insurgency programme yet mounted by the US in Iraq. This plan is neither counter-insurgency, uw nor irregular warfare. These are conventional military techniques of population control. I now believe the real problem is Petreaus is 100% focused on and is following the wrong Special Forces manual. He is married to FM 3-24. The manual he needs today is FM 31-20-3, Foreign Internal Defense Tactics, Techniques and Procedures for Special Forces. The latter is restricted and I'd bet Petreaus and his conventional staff do not even know it exists. Petreaus has selected yet another technique with a record and history of failing. Winning techniques are readily available but he doesn't seem to know that. This is rapidly becoming a classic case of getting killed by what you don't know. If you want to know how stupid this is...ask yourself....OK we have Baghdad locked down, and we are still losing men to insurgents now what do we do? The article suggests we are going to wipe out entire segments of the city including the citizens. Yup! That will sure win them over. We attacked Iraq to free the population from oppression. Petreaus now wants the oppression reinstated under his rules and by American soldiers. Petreaus is going to make Saddam look good to an Iraqi. Expecting civilians living under the harshest of martial law conditions to cooperate with us is profoundly ridiculous. Petreaus wrote a letter that talked about his sacrifice. The real sacrifice is being paid by every GI who dies or is seriously wounded pursuing Petreaus' dreamed up visions of UW. Petreaus is hell bent on proving his prior statements that any American military unit can do UW. So far he has failed and this technique will fail too. Oh he might gain control of some neighborhoods. But the troop concentration needed for this tactic will leave many many other areas open and vulnerable. I took a wag recently and guessed once Baghdad was said to be secure we would leave. I suppose if we put everyone in jail, Baghdad might be secure long enough for us to withdraw. Best thing Petreaus could do is stop the war for one year while he attends the Special Forces Q Course. Second best thing he could do is get some SF Officers on his staff. Third best is give it up.