Indeed on the IO campaign. This is exceedingly difficult though. Informing the population while still maintaining enough surprise to successfully operate on the tactical level will be quite difficult. (I'm not even talking about killing insurgents. I'm talking about not getting ambushed by exceedingly large Mahdi Army or [insert militia/terrorist group here].) The only way to ameloriate this is probably more mass in our formations, which is something we don't necessarely have, or something we don't have the political will to muster without a sufficient IO campaign on the home front.
On a related note, Wretchard analyzes Keegan on a 50,000-troop surge, and the lack of a corresponding IO campaign. Here.
At any rate, it was a pleasure to read, jc. Kudos.
Bookmarks