Michael Yon's dispatch yesterday was quite descriptive of this fact. He wrote about how the cascading effect where you capture a guy, he rats out 3 or 4 other guys, who do the same and you've captured anywhere from a dozen to many dozen guys in a row.

Also, media reports of "a top lieutenant" to Zarqawi are more frequent than reported, as they either kill or capture the replacement before they've had the chance to officially gain the title "top lieutenant."

Quite honestly, my jaw hits the floor when I think about how successfully we've turned things around over there. Absolutely astounding on the part of our armed forces. The Left was able to do their quagmire dance for a while, but are really going to be eating a giant shit-burger when this is over.

Faster,faster.

It's the great counter-insurgency advantage. Too much cellular structure and you lose the ability to act cohesively. Too little and you've built a house of cards.

If you visit three or four sites on the net, you can find out all you really need to know about the war in Iraq:

The Fourth Rail by Bill Roggio
The Belmont Club by Wretchard.
Winds of Change with Dan Darling among others.
Austin Bay's Weblog
..and of course...
Michael Yon

I have yet to see anything in traditional media that gives me what these sites offer.

The looney "Left" (as opposed to the rapidly vanishing rational Left that I count myself in) will continue to believe and state that Iraq is a 'quagmire' no matter what is being reported or said in either the MSM or the NM.

I have tried to point out today to my lefty friends (I am but a fellow traveler with the Right on the War on terror with my social views being quite left of center) about the Yon report, the letter, and the sucess both Iraqi and US troops are having in Western Iraq. I got various 'moonbat' responses.

Here are a few from today's lunch. I edited out some of the foul stuff..

"Who is that 'Yon' guy? (after explaination) "Oh he is just a Bush Apologist.”

"Liars." (not me, my sources such as Yon, Belmont, etc.)

“How can you believe such lies when today 6 more of our babies (yes she said babies) died today?”

"When did you go over to the dark side?"

"The media is just lying to make Bush look good."

"That NY thing is Bush faking it so he looks like a leader after letting all those people die in N.O."

"Only one, ONE, Iraqi battalion is able to fight the insurgents and that is less than before!" (after attempting to explain what I learned via Belmont report) "Oh, BS; how can you buy into such ?"

"The terror letter release is a fake timed to release with last "

"How can you support the killing of innocent Iraqis? Are you some kind of ?"

"We are just making it worse in Iraq. We need to stop killing people and leave."

"Violence never solved anything."

I gave up and changed the subject to how we are going to get killed by Texas (OU tex game this weekend) this time around. That gave them something less painful to whine about.

Someday the Left will come back to it senses. Perhaps when the Terror war is over.

God save us if the Right continues to self-distruct politically and the Left manages to win control of some part of the Federal gov't.

This&That

Anyone laying odds on how long it will take some lefty genius to "question the timing," especially since the Plame thing is back in the news again?

I screwed up some how on at least two quotes

"The terror letter release is a fake timed to release with last TERROR ALERT "

"How can you support the killing of innocent Iraqis? Are you some kind of FASCIST?"

Anyway, one should get my point.

This&That

Even with 80% of them gone, that still leaves a lot more organized psychotic killers out there than you want. But at least psychotic killers aren't runner the freaking Iraqi government any more. You'd think people would be glad about that. Well, not if Bush did it.

Yon's latest is great, a beginning-to-(near-)end look at victory in one particular city. Our apparent success in inculcating an American-style military ethos is remarkable.

The most positive thing is the change in the populace attitude. They're dropping a dime now, where before they were casual observers.

AQ (and whoever else) really screwed the pooch when they had the bright idea to start explicitly targeting the civies. Bad move - real bad move - an AmateurGrade™ move in a place where you want to maintain an insurgency.

Moonbat_One:

When you kill off the organized psychos, you're left with the disorganized ones, and those guys are a helluva lot easier to catch (much like serial killers). They work off of emotion instead of intellect, and make many, many more mistakes.

An aside: I note he enthusiastically prefers, at least for current ops, the Stryker to the 113 tracked vehicle.

A few days ago, someone linked to a (long) post by soldiers who felt differently. Maybe. I say maybe, because while I thought about the first tenth [perhaps four scrolled pages] made sense (well, not all, one claim was that full-sized tracked vehicles [Main Battle Tanks] cannot do 60mph on metalled [concrete or tarmac] roads - and even though I've never served with them, I know better) it then degenerated into standard far-left ranting (all about oil, where are the WMDs, we were lied to, we're occupying and should leave immediately, etc.). After about five pages of that, I stopped reading.

80% certanly seems like a good number, but how long do you think it will take for Al Qaeda to fill up its ranks? If you look at a graph detailing the frequency of attacks vs. time passed, you will see that it won't be long. Do you think that the money flowing from Saudi Arabia and the weapons crossing from Iran and Syria will ever just magically stop?

Killing individual insurgents, and insurgent "leaders", will never in and of itself end the war in Iraq. Cirby mentioned that killing "organized" insurgents will only leave "disorganized" ones, but you know peple can indeed organize - the al Qaeda network has been constantly re-organized and its nature makes it fairly easy to do so quickly. In the short term that will certainly help but it won't take long before the network is rebuilt.

We are already seeing a limited civil war raging between Shiites and Sunnis waged with bombings, death squads and assasinations. Unless the parties involved can come up with a political solution, rather than a military one, then the war will never end. The chances of that happening of course are close to zero - Iraq simply cannot be a country without one group oppressing all others - it never has been and it never will. I know this may sound pessimistic, but the leaders in that part of the world know nothing other then power through military means, and to believe that we can "teach" them democracy in a few short years is simply naive.

Does anyone here honestly think that our long term solution for Iraq will work as planned? The constitution does not mean a damn and even though it will likely be accepted (simply because many Sunnis won't take part of the vote at all because of fear of insurgent reprisals) it will not end the attacks and limited scale civil war. If we pull out, that civil war is likely to escalate into full scale ethnic clensing, large migrations of people, etc, so that's not an option. If we stay the attacks on our troops and on the Shiite government will continue no matter how many individual terrorists we capture or kill. If that's not a quagmire, what is?

J,

You said:

The chances of that happening of course are close to zero - Iraq simply cannot be a country without one group oppressing all others - it never has been and it never will. I know this may sound pessimistic, but the leaders in that part of the world know nothing other then power through military means, and to believe that we can "teach" them democracy in a few short years is simply naive.

You're creating a strawman when you say that we will "teach" them democracy in a few short years. No one has set a time table, but we are first putting out fires by training an Iraqi security force that can engage, arrest and defeat terrorists. Al-Qaeda has demonstrated to the Iraqis what radical Islam can do for them, and if you reach Michael Yon's take, they have overwhelmingly rejected them. The cold shoulder that the Coalition felt from Iraqis prior to this year had mostly to do with self-preservation. There was no need to stick your neck out against al-Qaeda if you thought the Americans were going to pull out.

Sorry, but we didn't pull out, and have demonstrated to the Iraqi population that we are staying put. The response has been support for our efforts and an overwhelming number of people signing up for the police or security forces. Right now, Iraqi behavior belies your boarderline racist claims that they are incapable of functioning as a democracy (For a frame of reference, it took 10 years for the U.S. to fight for independence and then ratify our Constitution).

Indeed, the next steps are political, but they have been in the works behind the scenes for a while (unlike the false, sole military solution you claim exists today). You see inevitable civil war, where I don't. Sure it is possible, but even during the height of the insurgency, Iraq held together. At present, I'm reserving judgement as we see Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds all engaging imperfectly, but together to try and make this work. Things can still happen, but I am definitely not as sure as you are.

When you and your fellow pessimists aren't creating the quagmire strawman, you'll see a much more complicated picture where there is a lot to be hopeful for. This is FAR from being over, however even the Saudis are fighting al-Qaeda now (47 of the top 50 most wanted are dead or captured).

Can you really claim the al-Qaeda, especially al-Qaeda in Iraq, has not been severely damaged in our campaign against them? Are they really gaining in popularity? These claims of quagmire are so far off base on any objective level it's astounding.

Quality is way down. If you read all of the Brown interview he says they haven't seen any quality talent since Feb.

Now its just a bunch of untrained foreign teenagers. Looks like they're willing to roll over on each other without much prompting either when they get caught.

Q: What other events in the region were happening back around Feb?

A: Rafik Harrari gets himself dead and a shit storm decends on the Syrians to get the hell out of Lebanon.

Iraq insurgent quality plunges in Feb. Syrians start getting a Lebanese rectal exam in Feb.

Coincidence? Or connect the dots?

J-- About stuff flowing in from Iran and Syria:

That part of your post is true, but I noted that both Bush and Blair made some pretty explicit statements regarding reigning in Syria and Iran in speeches on the same day yesterday. I know tough words have been said before with no action afterwards, but it could be a sign that the Coalition is about to really get tough on Syria and Iran this time. It may well be just more talk, though.

Regarding the rest of your post, I'm hoping that you are wrong or at least overly pessimistic about the situation there. I think the thing to do would be to wait and see a little. If we leave abruptly right now it will be thousands of times worse there. Wait and see how the upcoming Constitutional referendums do in Iraq. Rumor has it that the Constitution there will pass even among a majority of Sunnis.

This could turn a lot of things around because of the powerful statement it would send. Plus, our troops and the Iraqi troops are legitimately kicking terrorist ass there. All we hear every day is our own and the Iraqi casualty figures though, because the news works that way. Don't let the relentless drumbeat of defeatism get you down. Either way, whether you are right or wrong, only time will tell. We should know a lot more in the next 3 months or so. Let's hope our guys all come back OK, in the meantime.

Wow, if this keeps up, the presence of Al-Q will be as low as before the invasion.

And then it will just be Sunni, Shiites, Kurds fighting each other.

With the US in the middle.

Which is more than it took to create the quagmire that was Vietnam.

Al Qaeda is just there because there's an opportunity brought about by chaos, violence, desperation, and anarchy, and discontent with an occupation. Kill them all and there's still chaos, violence, ... discontent with an occupation.

Further developments of interest. Put this in the context of the kidnapping of 3 Hamas honchos.

Lebanese Army on full alert outside Palestinian camps

Premier Fouad Siniora, who earlier in the week criticized a Palestinian armed presence outside the camps, will be meeting with Palestinian factions today to discuss the issue.

In an interview with LBCI, Siniora said: "We are absolutely not on the road to confrontation with the Palestinians and we have no intention or desire to do so. Our Palestinian brothers are visitors and guests and we have to have dialogue with them.

"It is very important to specify things; there is no need or interest in having Palestinian arms outside the camps."

Over the past week the Lebanese Army has surrounded border posts of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC), sparking the group's anger and criticism from some Lebanese groups.

The main point of contention revolves around the movement of Palestinian fighters across and around the Syrian border in the Eastern Bekaa Valley.

In the LBCI interview, Siniora called on the Syrian regime to reign in the Palestinian groups over which it has sway.

Wow, if this keeps up, the presence of Al-Q will be as low as before the invasion.

So you now admit there were in fact terrorists in Iraq prior to the invasion? Excellent, your deprogramming is making fine progress.

Oops for forgot the link to the Hamas honcho kidnappings. Loose shit...

HAMAS HONCHOS KIDNAPPED

..."It's our first retort to Hamas' dealings and its disregard for Palestinian law," said the group, named after one of the first Muslim caliphs and a companion of the Prophet Mohammad.

Mushir al-Masri, a Hamas spokesman, accused "certain circles in the Palestinian Authority" of having a hand in the kidnappings and talked about a "component extolling the eradication" of the radical group.....

Thanks for the responses TF6S and MARK_D, glad you didn't scream looney leftie or something like that. Anyway, I realize it is a little to strong to say that Iraqis are "incapable" of democratic government respecting human rights. They are - however, there are many among them who do not wish for that to happen. We obviously have the militant Sunnis and the Iran-style Shiites who would do anything to put themselves into power and control. It really is our job to make sure we don't let Iraq turn into another Iran because then we would have done all this to replace one terrorist state with another.

I think you're overly optimistic about their armed forces - I am sure you've heard about the 1 ready batallion they have and while that might be an exageration, quality still has a way to go. But my biggest concern isn't with the quality or amount of their own defenses - it is the notion that much of their police and military has been infiltrated with Shiite militants holding dubious loyalties. I am sure you read about what the British are dealing with in Southern Iraq. The AP ran a story today on death squads dressed as policemen abducting and killing Sunnis in many areas. This not to say that SOME Sunnis, those who bomb shiite markets and msoques don't desrve it. Unfortunately, such reprisal killings are usually non-discriminant, only provoking further violence - certainly a trend that we don't want Iraq to go.

In any case I certainly hope that the mission succeeds and I certainly don't think we should pull out of a sudden - that would be disastrous. At the same time our views probably differ as far as why we went to war and the competence of those waging it - I still think that we were not prepared for what was comming and we missed a few golden chances early on.

The reason why I am skeptical about the possibility of success is because Iraq is frankly an aritifical country - the people in that country - Shiite, Sunni, Kurds and Turkomen did not all of a sudden gather together and decide "Hey, lets form a common government...". They were simply grouped together because one group conquered them all and the British ruled them as a province together. Gurdges in those parts of the world last generations and it's simply difficult for me to see how all of a sudden everone there will forgive their neighbour and start anew - that would certainly be freakin awesome, but it's very unlikely to happen.

I'm sitting by the TV waiting for CBS to report this. I may need more pretzels.

Violence never solved anything.

LOL. Yeah, that's a personal favorite.

In reality, violence solves EVERYTHING provided you do it right.

Later,
bbeck

J:

Don't worry about the "1 ready battalion" stuff. The reason behind that report was that the Army decided to elevate the standards that their trainers were using to evaluate the readiness of the Iraqi battalions. There are many Iraqi battalions that they judge to be reasonably competent, but what they are shooting for is a level of readiness similar to our own units'. This change in standards made it so that many more units than before were downgraded to lower levels of readiness.

So, it is really an encouraging thing-- what they are doing is trying to make sure that the Iraqi army is ready for some really heavy shit, before we leave them on their own. We could just train them to average third world nation standards, but someone in the food chain recognizes that this will not do, and is willing to spend more loot and time in order to make sure that they will have a good army that can really step up and protect their people when we leave. Just one example of how an average press report can be a little misleading because sometimes information is presented out of context.

I am optimistic because I know that people everywhere want to live, and they don't want to live under a tyranny any more than we would. They need a little help for now to be able to fight on their own some day, just like the French [of all people!] and Lafayette did for us long ago.

If I'm overly optimistic and it turns out to be a huge bloated clusterfuck, well, only time will tell. My experience tells me to take into account human nature. Humans prefer to live without being constantly told by some violent jerk what they have to do. If humans think they have a real shot at it, they are willing to take a risk to be able to live on their own and do what they want. I bet the Iraqis will take the chance that we are giving them and run with it.

And, don't forget the point of view of the Colonel being interviewed. Remember the things he was saying about the bombers they are capturing, and how these guys are being lied to and tricked into carrying out attacks? You can't hide stuff like that from everyone forever, especially in this age of the Internet. Even among the poor people in opressed cultures where they can't access the Internet, word will still get around by mouth. Like lightning. And, the more it does, the less people will decide to throw their lives away. We've seen it over and over again, from reports about how the Isrealis captured a retarded kid who was tricked into carrying a bomb through a checkpoint, to fathers in Iraq handcuffed into car bombs by AQ and told to drive it somewhere or their family would be killed. Word of that stuff gets around, and the casualty numbers among the innocents do, too. And it pisses regular people off.

Human nature is that the average Joe in Iraq may want us out of there, but they are starting to recognize that the terrorists are a greater problem than us, and the sooner they are defeated, the sooner we'll be gone and they can have their own country. With them in charge, not us, and not the terrorists.

So have hope! All might go better then you think, and that means our guys might get to come home soon.

There is only one thing that I AM pessimistic about-- my thought is that even if everything goes as well as it can, there will be other places that the GIs will have to go soon, instead of coming home. The world is full of these sewers and more of them are going to have to be drained.

In reality, violence solves EVERYTHING provided you do it right.

Going all the way back to when the first cave man short order cook bashed another's skull in with a rock for complaining about the too rare wildebeast -- problem "solved", no complaints from other customers after that.

J:

Your point about the factions potentially not getting along well enough to survive without a Yugoslavia type situation is valid. We shouldn't count these people out though, until they've had their chance. They may very well be able to pull it off, and a representative democracy with the Constitution they have drafted might work.

J

Even though I disagree with your conclusions, you have taken the time to honestly articulate your thoughts and see things a different way. If your thoughts weren't attempts at making an argument, I would just have ignored them. I think you are trying to figure your way through this, just like the rest of us are, but see things a little negatively.

Anway, I think that there are many problems that need to be overcome in order for us to succeed. Many times, those in the pro-war camp can be overly optimistic and ignore glaring problems. The problems your describe in Southern Iraq are certainly troublesome.

I don't agree, though, that they are unsolvable problems. With the Shiites, the British, by ruling their area of operations with a "tread lightly" approach, have paid the price. However, although the developments are troublesome, let's not assume that all Shiites are Iran supporting theocrats. Al-Sistani has been a mysterious figure that is difficult to pin down, but he has hardly been a mouthpiece for the Iranian government. As a matter of fact, Sistani has signed on to the democratic government and been decisive at points where the "experiment" could have been severly hampered if he endorsed its dissolution. I think the militias are a problem, but not nearly to the extent that al-Qaeda and the ex-Baathists have been...yet. I don't have enough information to make a truly informed decision on that one until I can get some better reporting out of the South.

The signing and ratification of the Constitution should be a positive step. I predict that the Sunnis are going to participate and will suprisingly vote YES in bigger numbers than orginally thought. Polling prior to our operations these last few months is understandably going to be negative with the insurgents guns to their heads. Reading Michael Yon, I get the impression that even some of the Sunnis are tired of the fight and see some hope in the political process.

So, we'll see, right? If the Sunnis join, regardless of whether they are ready to outright hug their Shiite & Kurd rivals, isn't that a good start?