Dean,

My take on it, fully explained over at Blogs for Bush, is that this not just a skirmish - its the real thing; a decisive battle. Don't be tricked by the size of the forces engaged...after all, Marengo was decided when a few hundred fresh troops were scraped up by Napoleon who then won the battle decisively.

My view is that we noted the growing strength and radicalism of Sadr, took note of the Shiite distaste for him, and decided to push him into pre-mature action. You're correct that we'll win this fight (after all, does anyone really think the US Marines will lose this fight?), but I think that decisive results will flow from this fight - we'll have, after the smoke clears, wiped out the last of the Baathists and at the same time taken down the genuinely Islamo-fascists forces which have been growing like a cancer since we liberated Baghdad.

All in all, excellent war-making; the more I look at it, the more carefully planned it all looks.

Yeah, well, there'll still be fighting a year from now, no doubt. But you're probably right about this being a decisive moment in many ways. Yet still, a small one on the vast scheme of things. Just as the casualties will be small compared to what's normal in a war of this scale.

Most people understand that I think.

Dean,

Small casualties, in historical terms - but still rather tough to bear; an American soldier is intrinsically much more valuable than his enemy; whomever that turns out to be - and not just in an existential, "I'm and American and thus I care" sense; a US soldier is the moral acme of the United States - in microcosm, each one of them is the United States personified. An enemy soldier is just a bit of foolish cannon-fodder launched against his betters by very unthinking and cruel men. One of ours lost is like 1,000 of theirs lost.

I'm noting that we're not being too gentle in this fight - the iron fist seems pretty much ungloved in this fight. We're bringing to bear the full weight of an American military organization against this current crop of enemies in order to instruct the survivors so that when its over, they'll know they were beaten thoroughly and thus wont want to try it again.

Given this, I doubt much there will be much fighting a year from now - in Iraq, that is; the US military might be doing a great deal of fighting in the Spring of '05, but not in Iraq. We keep up what we've been doing this past few days, I think we'll have taken all the fight out of those enemies who manage to survive.

No, Dean, we must have immediate perfection or it proves it was a mistake.

I briefly saw Lou Dobbs over at CNN ask his reporter on the scene, "Why can't the United States keep the peace over there?"

"Cuz it's a f*&%#$I^ war, asshole!" I said. Unfortunately, reporter didn't say that, instead answering the question as if it were a good faith question. I walked away from the TV after that.

Obviously I was sarcastic with the first line in the previous post. Just pissed me off. People are in harm's way, trying to something incredibly difficult, and folks are acting surprised. This is a war. It's not going to be easy.

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, then there should be a sleeveless jacket somewhere with his name on it. The post-war planning has been mediocre from the beginning, paralysed by intenecine warfare between the State Department and the Pentagon, political gamesmanship and a leadership with a god-complex, and a president who can delegate but can't mangage when his top men screw up.

Definition of insanity referring to troop levels of course. Before anybody starts eulagising Rumsfelds new vision, how many contracters are we paying 5-10 times the going military rate to do the same job?

Max M,

if you're so concerned about troop levels, why aren't you kicking in the door at your local recruiter so you can sign up?

And yes, I already served, and was honorably discharged.

IB Bill, in case you hadn't seen the latest studies, it's been proven that CNN is bad for your heart. Clogs your arteries or something. You should switch to Fox.

Then you can see Geraldo act like he's an old-time military man, very very macho. Hmmm. I'd say try MSNBC, but there's a good reason why their ratings are in the dumps.

On third thought, just check the blogs. They're just as accurate and less annoying.

ahh, the chickenhawk gambit. Classy.

What, Samuel, you think you're morally superior to me because you signed up or something? What a pathetic ad hom.

Max M,

for a coward who refuses to reveal even his real e-mail, you sure talk big.

Again I reiterate, if you're so concerned about how things are going in Iraq, why don't you sign up and go over there and fix things personally?

" symptomatic of the last gasp of the Islamo-fascists in Iraq, "

Absolutely consistent with Rush Limbaugh's phraseology. Just yesterday he was talking about Kennedy's outrage as indicitive of the "last gasp" of the liberal democrats.

Is this Iraqi's way of taking control in Iraq, the nacent democracy taking hold, or are those resistent to freedom dying out in a last futile attempt at rebellion? Don't over simplify this situation. What you see as a last gasp could very well be the begining of a movement. One that seems to be growing as unrest outbreaks in more cities today.

God help us, this might be spreading. Thugs certainly starteded it, but it's getting poppular.

Max: you talk a good game, now how about backing it up? It's easy to spout a lot of vague rhetoric with cute "definitions" (oh, look, I can quote someone else being clever), but you mention nothing specific.

Just what, specifically, is wrong? Don't reiterate the last sentance from your post; it's all hot air. You need to substantiate your claims.

And before you go any farther with that horseshit about insufficient troop levels, note that every time the DoD asks the generals in-country if they need more troops, the answer is "no." What they need are very specific classes, such as civil affairs. There are more than enough soldiers to go along with.

As for the contractors, grow a fucking clue. (I'm sorry, everyone, but I am sick and tired of people who clearly do not have the slightest grasp of the dynamics here, but grab every opportunity to take cheap, monday-morning quarterback shots at the men and women who do have to make hard choices.)

Max, go back to Dean's "Mercenaries?" and Rose's "What is a Mercenary?" Follow the links to my blog. Follow other links to places like StrategyPage.com. Read up on why, and how, we can only find a very few SOCOM-qualified men each year, and why we lose some each year. Ask some real soldiers about all this.

THEN, you might actually have an opinion that doesn't sound completely clueless.

I'm sorry (but not very) if this sounds ad hominem, but -trust me- you really, obviously don't understand how this stuff works. I'm just really, really, REALLY frustrated by people who don't understand much about the military, but express ignorant opinions anyway.

What are you expert in? (no, really) I'll give you an example from that how dumb someone can sound that way.

Here's a good example: commentor Mark Adams is a lawyer. I would look really stupid if I tried to lecture him about the law if everything I learned came from movies and/or television, wouldn't I?

Mark Adams:
"Absolutely consistent with Rush Limbaugh's phraseology. Just yesterday he was talking about Kennedy's outrage as indicitive of the "last gasp" of the liberal democrats."

Just pissed cus you didn't get the talking points memo, Mark? You're in the right place. Going by Bob Novak's picking up on Dean's "Bush's flip-flops are actually clever traps for the Democrats" meme, I think Dean actually writes some of them.

Casey, don't be disingenuous. You know that there was and is disagreement about the size of troop deployment to take and pacify Iraq.

“… To simplify the whole thing, the military commanders tended to want larger forces. The civilian side of it tended to think we could get away with a much smaller force. The argument produced something roughly in the middle.”
- Former Army Sec. Thomas White, Jan 31, 2004

Your argument about specialization is irrelevant. We needed more troops, especially military police to establish order immediately after the collapse of the Baathist Regime. I’m not saying that was obvious from the outset, that we could have anticipated how quickly we would need them in forward deployment, or that it would have been easy to do. Nevertheless, that failure along with not having greater international support and being slow rebuilding infrastructure is why we’re where we are today.

I hope that somehow you guys are right about the duration of the resistance. But “guerilla insurgencies” aren’t the risk we’re facing even though Bush apologists would like to see it that way. The danger is mass rebellion by Shiite and/or Sunni Muslims. The other is all-out civil war between some combinations of Shiite, Sunni, Kurd populations with us in-between. If you’re not really thinking about those serious possibilities, you’re just jerking off.

Samuel, blog warrior supreme, I salute you. You seem to think that I need to enlist to prove my sincere concern for our troops. God bless your service, but your ideas are reprhensible.

hah, Casey, you can blame it on youthful ignorance, no specialisation yet - working on a physics degree though. I don't hold much truck with the old argument from authority though. Strategypages is in my favourites list. I'm not clueless :-)

If you think there hasn't been serious debate by the top professionals in the milatary over troop levels, you're the one who needs to broaden their horizons mate. The point about the 'mercs' was probably overreach on my part - but there a intelligent, serious, ex-army folk who see the very fact that there are so many of them needed as a failure, harder to pin on Rummy admittedly [tacitus is my go-to guy].

Dean - Again, I am in agreement with you. But if you think we've seen fallout thus far, Wait until the news about the US firing on a mosque full of worshippers gets around. Ain't seen nothin' yet.

Update - It seems that the mosque was being used as a firing position by insurgents a la Palestinian terrorists, and the mosque itself was not damaged. But I still say that some will make this mol;ehill into a mountain.

Mark Adams,

What is your evidence that the resistence to the US/Iraqi forces of freedom are becoming popular? Have you taken a poll? Conducted a vote? Interviewed 500,000 Iraqi's in the past 24 hours?

You have absolutely no way of ascertaining a growing support for the people who are resisting our efforts other than the fact that some people are resisting and we haven't killed them all yet.

Also, what spread of the resistence? Where is there fighting today where there wasn't fighting yesterday?

Shep,

The same sort of questions apply to you - what evidence do you have that a massive rebellion is prospective among the Iraqi people? What evidence do you have of a will to civil war among the varied Iraqi groupings?

You have none - other than a likely predisposition to assume that if they're not American, they must want to fight us and if they're not like each other, then they'll fight each other.

Max: so you follow StrategyPage? Good on ya.

I wasn't trying to argue from authority, but that one post sounded really dumb; i.e. as if the poster really didn't have a clue.

Ok. I'll admit you have a clue. You won't even have to show me the receipt. :)

This reminds me: I've been pretty short with a couple folks here the past several nights. If I came across rude (hell, an asshole), sorry. Been very frustrated over here over non-blog stuff and it boiled over into here.

So I decide to chill a while; have a beer, watch a comedy, lighten up.

Play with my new toy: Heath/Zenith Z-200 antique. It's a 286 with 287 mathco, two HDs (21mb & 42mb), Logitech Mouse, EGA monitor, and all the original software/paperwork. SW includes MS-DOS 3.2, GWBASIC, Pascal Compiler, Lotus Manuscript, and Windows! Dunno if the Windows is 1.x or 2.x; it isn't installed. Only missing the keyboard.

Not bad for $5, eh?

Be back later, after chill-pill.

You guys wanted evidence, god help me, I really didn't want this thing to spread, but of course it would. And I also fear that the more heavy handed we are, the more it will blow up in our faces.

Karbala, Kufa, Najaf, Kut, and Hawijah, near Kirkuk in the North, and don't forget Baghdad's Sadr City slum and Baghdad's Shiite enclave of Kadhimiya and on another in the Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiya.
Look at TheWashington Post Or the much maligned NYTimes

Mark Noonan:
"The same sort of questions apply to you - what evidence do you have that a massive rebellion is prospective among the Iraqi people? What evidence do you have of a will to civil war among the varied Iraqi groupings?"

I made no such claim, Mark, although there's certainly evidence of the possibility - even movement in that direction. My point was, for war promoters to prognosticate about future difficulties while avoiding the real risks is merely an exercise in mental masturbation.

"mental masturbation," my second favorite kind.

If watching the 6 o'clock news makes you nervous then turn it off. Those of us who went there/are there/are going there will see this dumb thing through and come home to resume our normal American lives. If you haven't travelled to the middle east/SW Asia, trust me, that's a real incentive.
I didn't join the Army to fight. Sounds odd, but it's true. I hated being in Iraq. Couldn't wait to get home. But as God is my witness I'll go back tomorrow if it means taking the fight to "them". Be aggressive, B-E aggressive. You can't reason with a radical, particularly one with a loaded gun (that's a non-religeon based fact).

Just switch the news to American Idol and sleep in tomorrow, don't worry... there are more of us looking to perserve our way of life then there are of you, looking to reap it's rewards without lifting a finger.