[neocone]

Just watching 60 minutes about the glorious saving of american wounded.... what a bunch of propaganda of how great everything is... BUT just like the barbarians invented the concept of "living off the land" and did away with with expensive and logistically nightmarish army resupply issues (i.e just kill/loot/rape for whatever you need on whoever you invade) vs. the romans, it seems to me the insurgents in Iraq do pretty well:

- Not kill but massively maim americans... for the costs of each american wounded amount to $ millions and once back home, the survivor is unable to fight again and is anihilated as a combattant because of loss of limbs and massive wounds, and exposes hundreds of people to a horrible sight.

- Use to their advantage the obsession of marines etc... to save their own and shoot at medical personel as much as soldiers.

- Create massive amounts of wounded Irakis for the americans to take care of.

- Prolong the war and wear and tear on expensive technological gadgetery so as to make the cost on medical and maintenance costs enormous.

Ultimately the best strategy is represented by the IEDs... they are meant to maim as much as possible the soldiers within a humvee, so at the maximize the economical damage to the US economy more than the "token" value of killing actual american troops.

Meanwhile the massive equipment is breaking down tremedously. Sands and desert storms are a nightmare for tanks, helicopters, guns, and morale.

It is by very virtue death by a thousand cuts on US forces. Textbook urban and insurgent warfare. Those guys do know their stuff!!!

[AgentR]

I have to disagree. Most of our economic injury is self inflicted in a sense.

IED's are not designed to wound, they are designed to kill; however, as a result of military adaptations on our side, kills are much more rare than severe injuries. This is the prefered American way to fight. And even in previous wars, if you look at dollars and pounds invested per soldier, since WWII at least, we send everything but the kitchen sink, and we'd send that if we could figure a way to put it in a backpack. Other armies spend much less and send much less; but their ratio of kills vs survivable severe injuries is very different.

Anyway, I digress; I'm not suggesting IED's are ineffective, but simply noting that the insurgents want to kill as many as possible, in any way that they can.

[neocone]

Indeed two things have happened:

- The insurgent have gotten better because the idiots among them have been weaned out by the US forces. Darwinian adaptation rules... as much as germs will learn how to fight umproperly (not enough) administered antibiotic and create a resistance to it.

- The insurgents in a very subconscious way have adapted their strategy to inflict as much chaos and ECONOMIC mayhem as possible i.e sabotage of oil pipelines and impossible daily life. For the US the perverse obsession to save soldier's lives becomes a shot in the foot.

America now kind of reminds me of that one Prussian king that loved his army so much he wouldn't consider sacrificing his men in battle... and hence was quickly toppled and eliminated.

Being a soldier means accepting Death and also be sacrificed... sometimes for the most menial of means (i.e be told to walk on a mine to clear it up for a tank). A nation that forgets the disposable nature of its army is bound to loose to a foe that uses its manpower as a real fighting force.

Arab nations have 300 millions young men unemployed and potentially brainwashed for the ultimate sacrifice for their cause.

Do the math...

[Dreamtwister]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AgentR', 'I') have to disagree.

[The_Toecutter]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')ll I can say is, for the soldiers' sakes, I hope the Iraqis don't figure this out.

[gg3]

Neocone, good point about darwinian adaptation of the insurgents. But you blow it by suggesting that the way to win wars is by throwing soldiers into the meat-grinder, and your attitude toward soldiers' lives comes off as frankly cavalier. Would you like to be the last person to die for a mistake?

I worked on the IED issue before it was a popular news item, and I can tell you there is no way to beat these things. To trigger an IED requires sending one data bit, via any means from mechanical (a pull-string) to acoustical (a dog whistle) to optical (a laser pointer) to electromagnetic (radio frequency signals). To detect that one data bit requires covering all of those simultaneously and in real-time from a mobile platform. We can't even cover the entire RF spectrum simultaneously from a mobile platform.

The bottom line is, we lost the war when Rumsfeld fired General Shinseki for having the ballz to suggest we needed twice as many boots on the ground as Rumsfeld wanted to hear about. And we lost the war when Rumsfeld said he'd fire anyone on his staff who wanted to discuss post-maneuver planning.

We could have recovered earlier in the game. By this point it is too late. We have replaced a brutal secular tyrant with an even more brutal anarchy leading to a brutal Shiite theocracy. And along the way, we have created a darwinian selection mechanism for insurgents and a live-fire training zone for terrorists and a breeding ground for both.

According to General Odom, Director of NSA under President Reagan, this is the worst strategic failure in US history.

[neocone]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gg3', 'A')ccording to General Odom, Director of NSA under President Reagan, this is the worst strategic failure in US history.

[shakespear1]

Talk about psychological horror. On BBC there was a report of how in Iraq the insurgents are using snippers to attack troop. Not a happy situation as this is all going on in an urban setting so one can not talk about war as per WWII. This is warfare of the worst kind as it is very much in the MIND. The snippers make films that are then made available to attack the minds.

It all sounds like hell.

[gg3]

Yo guys, spelling corrections: "iraki" -> Iraqi. "snippers" -> snipers. I assume y'all are using English as your second languages; pretty good for the most part, I probably couldn't do your languages as well, even with automatic translators.

---

It occurs to me that if we did pull out of Iraq and let the place collapse, it wouldn't matter.

The Middle East is an overpopulation time-bomb waiting to implode, with the highest birth rates aside from some of the most-failed states in Africa.

Bottom line is, if a place is already a Malthusian nightmare, we should just let go of it and let nature run its course.

As for Middle Eastern oil, replace it with nuclear, wind, and solar.

As for the risk of atomic bombs being used locally in the Middle East: wash our hands of the place, nothing we can do about it.

As for the risk of terrorists getting into the Western world: ban all travel in & out of the Middle East to the rest of the world. We did it to Cuba, which is at worst an authoritarian regime whose leadership at least believes in science.

So sorry we f---ed up Iraq, but the forces we are up against are ultimately the population/resource equation, and in the end, Ma Nature cleans house with relentless efficiency.

[Cloud9]

America has a tendency to be behind the learning curve in most wars. WWI and WWII come to mind. We first went into Iraq with an army specifically designed to defeat the Russians. The Iraqis were armed and trained by the Russians. The forty years of acquisitions and training paid off handsomely. A war on insurgents is not what we built up for or planned for.

Rumsfelt is responsible for that failure. Much of his unpopularity with the military lies in his desire to trim commands by replacing large weapons platforms with precision systems. Generally speaking his theories of smaller precision forces are the wave of the future. The problem lies in technology.

Our technology is not up to identifying the insurgents before they attack. I am sure that weakness is being addressed as we speak. I give it a couple of years before every man, woman and child in Iraq is tagged. We will know the location of every person in the country at any given time and who he associates with. When that technology evolves, we will be able to identify and kill not only the insurgent, but everyone he associates with.

Once that technology has been developed, it will be adapted to the United States and our assumption of personal privacy will have ended. When Google Earth becomes real time and recorded, your friendly street corner thug will have lost his anonymity and your friendly politician will find himself staring in his own Sherman show. Welcome to the Brave New World.

[shakespear1]

Cloud9 I think you are projecting into the future with clear logic. What you suppose make sense in terms of the current trends in airport, equipment orgin, passport, ID's etc controls in place. Good Job

[Dreamtwister]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cloud9', 'R')umsfelt is responsible for that failure. Much of his unpopularity with the military lies in his desire to trim commands by replacing large weapons platforms with precision systems. Generally speaking his theories of smaller precision forces are the wave of the future. The problem lies in technology.

[TommyJefferson]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gg3', 'B')ottom line is, if a place is already a Malthusian nightmare, we should just let go of it and let nature run its course.

As for Middle Eastern oil, replace it with nuclear, wind, and solar.

As for the risk of atomic bombs being used locally in the Middle East: wash our hands of the place, nothing we can do about it.

As for the risk of terrorists getting into the Western world: ban all travel in & out of the Middle East to the rest of the world. We did it to Cuba, which is at worst an authoritarian regime whose leadership at least believes in science.

[Bytesmiths]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dreamtwister', 'T')he disorganized nature of the insurgency itself prevents the type of complex planning you seek to attribute to it.

[Dreamtwister]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Bytesmiths', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dreamtwister', 'T')he disorganized nature of the insurgency itself prevents the type of complex planning you seek to attribute to it.

[neocone]

First off no amount of technology can solve the permeating rot unleashed on US soil by the war

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15477453/

For every US dead there are dozens of wounded physically and psychologically.

Also technology requires maintenance and a logistic system that the insurgents do away with.

And America is on the brink of economic collapse... the housing bubble is bursting and with it the employment and economic activity picture isn't going to get rosy anytime soon THIS DECADE.

The enemy was underestimated, and now US forces are trying to catch up an efficient and ruthless opponent which is getting better day by day.

Maybe "technology" will evolve to catch IEDs more effectively, but given it takes years and years to develop *anything* (i.e new troop transport vehicle or radar or jet fighter or helicopter or machine gun or...) what you have NOW is pretty much what you can do with, and your only hope is in adapting the TACTICAL use of that equipment.

The middle east is not a malthusian hell... people there live decently in 99% of it (From Morocco to Pakistan). Sure poverty reigns but the people are also rich in values and traditions. Their concept of "wealth" is different from our cracker box housing and big box retail chain linked together by the unsustainable transport by metallic cage paradigm.

Wake up and smell the coffee... the muslims are counting on their thriving demographics to CONQUER THE PLANET. Meet the new barbarians, same as the old barbarians.

Btw during Roman times the barbarians were actually quite civilized, and mostly strove to get the hell out of the cold north to the sunshine of the spanish southern coast. Kind of like the California of those days...

[zoidberg]

What you guys are describing is 4th Generation warfare.

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/

This guy does a good job of describing it. In esence I would venture that there is a definite striving to simply create as much chaos and strain on American forces as possible. The fact that good American armor changes killing blows into maiming blows is no doubt considered a happy side effect, and a clever way to transform a strength into a weakness.

In short its not planned, but it is no doubt noticed.

[neocone]

No doubt about it... the insurgents also read "The Art of War".

Ghengis Khan could defeat the Califat... as for America I am not so sure.

[manu]

I agree with neocone, the wounded are a problem. Even on a battlefield it will take at least three people to take care of one wounded soldier. It seems to me no one remembers before the war that Saddam said we will disappear into the night and fight you house to house. What he said has been happening now for four years. So much for "shock and awe".