Ken,Originally Posted by Ken White
I guess I will let you off the hook with your previous answer, but I would argue that having a strategy and focus tends to allow the commanders (PLT and above) in theater the ability to better focus their resources with some sort of endstate in mind. I think if you looked at some open source information you would see that our senior leadership (President on down to MNF-I/MNC-I Commanders) have failed to provide a clear strategy for our forces operating in Iraq. I am not so convinced that our strategy has a "bigger Middle East" theme and more of a "making it up as we go along" theme. I would be more convinced if the State Department could get its own foreign service corps to serve in Iraq and help implement this yet revealed Middle East strategy you refer to because I have scoured the internet looking for the POTUS and SECSTATE strategic vision for the Middle East, and how the forces currently in harms way are contributing to it.
The current calm in Iraq (if you listen to the pundits) is all due to the successful surge of U.S. forces, but I would argue (from my sources) that it is more to do with the MAS initiated cease-fire from late August then U.S. forces taking it to the enemy across Baghdad. My sources tell me the Shia's are buying time and waiting for the U.S. forces to finally withdrawal so they can finish standing up the latest Shia Islamic Republic in the Middle East. They also tell me that MAS could turn the violence back on with the snap of his finger, which is why we're doing the slow dance with Maliki and the other Shia sympathizers within the "sovereign" government. Now I am not trying to be a smart ass but was this part of the greater Middle East plan our administration had envisioned when invading Iraq? I find it peculiar that our senior leaders had a plan to overthrow Saddam but after that they didn't have a clue and when their assessments (Pearle, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and crew claimed the Iraqi's would welcome as liberators and quickly assume their own security and governing) failed to materialize they fell back and called it an insurgency. I would argue what we see in Iraq is less of an insurgency and more of a failed invasion with no real vision on how to correct it. We will see an invetiable civil war fought inside Iraq within the next 36-48 months with the victors most likely being the Shia's, and how this will play out in the greater Middle East has yet to be seen. Anyway, I am not buying the overall greater Middle East plan that is supposedly the answer for this protracted war...
In regards to IED's there is something like four major task forces within theater, and according to my sources neither of them is synched or coordinated but yet their overall annual budgets run into the billions!!
PT
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