Quote Originally Posted by Tom Odom View Post
At the risk of over simplifiying (admiitedly this hypocritical of me to do this as I often point out simplistic analysis is a lodestone around our collective necks), this sentence to me goes back to the roots of our problems, troop numbers and the long term effects we have seen.

Best
Tom
It seems pretty clear that the troop numbers issue is not going to be fixed - we've just got to do better with what we have.

As regards Baghdad, I'd like to refer to the my previous post on displacement. Virtually all of those elements are present in the reaction of the bad guys to our efforts in Baghdad. I may be beating a dead horse, but we need better intelligence and better integration of intelligence with operations. Of course, to be truly effective, all of that needs to be tied in tight with close cooperation with Iraqi security elements - which is tough, because many of them are tied in with (or are part and parcel of) the elements we're attempting to disrupt and destroy.

With intel in the context of "displacement", I'm talking about true predictive intelligence, based upon in-depth knowledge of the city, its population, and the multitude of factions and their shifting alliances along with deep analysis of historical operational trends projected in sync with current and planned ops. We need analysts with significant experience not just in Iraq, but working the Baghdad AO to be tied in with trusted counterparts from among the indig. As long as this ain't happening we're not succeeding.