# Iraq Government Misses All Targets **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 10, 2007, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-government-misses-all-targets/411165 "2007-07-10T05:23:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2007, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-government-misses-all-targets/411165/41 "2007-07-12T17:14:24Z")
[QUOTE=Kimstu] Now we’re being told by some that the original goals were impossible, unrealistic, over-sold, over-hasty, etc., and the **really** important goals in this situation are the things that our forces **have** managed to do, and if we keep “harping” on the failure to meet the originally-specified goals then we’re defeatists and pessimists and biased and what have you. This, to me, has rather a whiff of moving goalposts. [/QUOTE] The goals seem to mostly be political/economic. The surge is a military endeavor. Militarily the only purpose the surge is supposed to serve is to make Baghdad more secure. And as I’ve already said, it is too early to assess whether or not it is going to be successful at that. Long term security can’t be judged based on short term information. The thought process of the Bush Administration appears to be, “if we make Baghdad secure, it will let political leaders come together and forge compromises and work together in rebuilding Iraq.” Whether or not that will happen is probably independent of whether or not the surge succeeds in making Baghdad more secure. As the old saying goes, you can take a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. Even if we succeed in making Baghdad secure that does not, in fact, mean that the Bush Administration’s plan will work, maybe the political leaders don’t have any interest in compromise or working together. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2007, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-government-misses-all-targets/411165/42 "2007-07-12T17:16:52Z")
[QUOTE=John Mace] I just want to emphasize that when speaking about “the benchmarks” it’s important to identify specifically which benchmarks you’re talking about. Often it seems to be used a shorthand for “the political benchmarks” and even though the linked article uses the word “all” in its title, the text of the article seems to imply that it’s only talking about a subset. And clearly Petraeus was not talking about all of the benchmarks in his Congressional hearings. I suspect you may have been using too broad a brush in your original post about the benchmarks being unrealistic. Many of the political goals (benchmarks) were, I think, ridiculously optimistic. But some of the concrete military ones were not. [/QUOTE] That is certainly possible. As I said, I did not have a totally concrete idea as to what the entire list of goals was. I have read several articles by _conservative_ commentators in recent months who identified certain goals as being unrealistic, and I agreed with them. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2007, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-government-misses-all-targets/411165/43 "2007-07-12T19:20:15Z")
Here’s the pdf: [Initial Benchmark Assessment Report](http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/white_house_iraq_assessment_report_071107.pdf?topnews) ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2007, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-government-misses-all-targets/411165/44 "2007-07-12T23:57:16Z")
Does anyone think Paraeus is going to say things are not going well. ? ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2007, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-government-misses-all-targets/411165/45 "2007-07-13T07:52:51Z")
[QUOTE=xtisme] If you feel up to it I’d be VERY interesting if you could expand your point a bit and give your take. [/QUOTE] To a certain extent I feel they are repeating the same mistake the British made in the 1920’s. It’s hardly an exact parallel, but it does make me shake my head a bit. The British deliberately elevated tribal leaders, making them into political figures that they hadn’t been under the Ottomans, while undermining the Ottoman-educated administrative classes. To the British, the tribal sheikhs were exemplars of the ‘Noble Savage’, corrupted by the venal influence of oriental despotism, which could only ape western ways in the most counterproductive manner possible. The elevation of pensioned chieftaincies at the expense of any centralizing, modernizing tendency, helped set the stage for the failure of Iraq as a state. Toby Dodge goes into this in some detail in Inventing Iraq. The American impulse is different from the quaint chauvinism of the early 20th century - more a matter of expediency or perhaps desperation - but I worry the results will be similar. First the disastrously overbroad “de-Baathification” drastically weakens Iraq’s administrative machinery and the disbanding of the army shatters any possibility of quickly reasserting central authority. Now the encouraging and enabling of tribal elements to organize into discrete armed bodies. The tribes are realities in Iraq, that’s true. It’s definitely necessary to deal with chieftains as societal intermediaries and intercessors. And it’s not like they were unarmed to start with, really. But validating their standing as independent, armed, political entities outside/parallel to the state? Bad news. Iraq has enough tendency towards balkanization from competeing sectarian communities and rival parties. Now you’re adding yet another armed layer capable of striking out on their own and carving out turf. I have a hard time imagining these sheikhs meekly surrending authority to the central government once ( if ) those annoying foreign elements are ejected. Sunni chieftains submitting to a government they perceive as Shi’a dominated? No - you’re replacing one immediate threat to central authority with another, far more rooted and popular one. That they could even become a source of armed resistance to the U.S. down the road is hardly inconceivable. I suppose you could argue that it’s just the cherry atop the sundae when you already have such pervasive militia influence in Iraq. But why add to a bad situation, unless you really are conceding it’s hopeless? Sad is it is too say, better the wholely unreliable, factionated Iraqi _army_ take control in these areas if only for appearances sake. Tribal control means tribal autonomy and that has hardly worked out well in Afghanistan or ( these days ) Pakistan. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2007, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-government-misses-all-targets/411165/46 "2007-07-13T12:51:57Z")
[QUOTE=gonzomax] Does anyone think Paraeus is going to say things are not going well. ? [/QUOTE] The report already says that (about certain things related to security), so that would be a “yes”. The question you probably meant to ask is, does anyone think he will say we’ve lost. The answer to that is “no”. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2007, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-government-misses-all-targets/411165/47 "2007-07-13T15:57:03Z")
The surge,adding 20 ,000 troops, is not a complex idea requiring large amounts of analysis. We have had more troops before. It is simply an attempt to buy more time. If Petraeus said it was a mistake he would be gone. If he came out in Sept and said it was showing no progress ,he would be gone. If you add the so called Iraqi trained troops 100,000 plus. Add in the mercenaries 100,000 plus with our 140,000 troops ,the surge is minuscule. It is just trying to buy time. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2007, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-government-misses-all-targets/411165/48 "2007-07-13T16:19:44Z")
[QUOTE=gonzomax] It is just trying to buy time. [/QUOTE] I loved AP’s headline this morning: [Iraq report may mean longer U.S. surge](http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070713/ap_on_go_pr_wh/iraq_what_next_9) Who could have imagined _that_? ---
**Author:** ![Spavined\_Gelding](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/958977/32.png) [@Spavined\_Gelding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spavined_Gelding)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2007, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-government-misses-all-targets/411165/49 "2007-07-13T16:54:39Z")
[QUOTE=Squink] I loved AP’s headline this morning: [Iraq report may mean longer U.S. surge](http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070713/ap_on_go_pr_wh/iraq_what_next_9) Who could have imagined _that_? [/QUOTE] For what it is worth, some talking head from the American Enterprise Institute was on the NPR news this morning talking about this. As I understood it he said that we must expect the Iraqi politicians to make slow or negligible progress in getting their act together because they can’t be sure of US support for more than six more months. If on the other hand they could count on a US military presence for 20 years they’d be meeting political objectives like a house on fire. This seems to echo the statement for last week or the week before that post-1953 Korea ought to be the model for Iraq. Of course the rational question is just how long the US is willing to spend three billion dollars a week and one hundred soldier’s lives a month and tie up the active Army and Marine Corps and a fair hunk of the reserve force in order to give Iraqi politicians the sense of security necessary to encourage them to put their house in order, or to make the Middle east safe for Exxon, if you would. Are we well and truly ensnared by the tar baby? Sixty-two years after the end of WWII, fifty-three years after the end of the Korean War, fifteen years after the implosion of the Soviet Union we still have a significant military establishment in Germany and Korea. Are we prepared to do the same thing in Iraq? Is that what the President and his handlers really want? ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2007, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-government-misses-all-targets/411165/50 "2007-07-13T17:19:51Z")
Conservative think tanks have rceived great TV time since this war started. They dominate Fox and get play at all other stations. No matter how many time Kristol and his people are wrong ,they get breated with respect every time they get on. Who would have backed the war if they would have told us it would last 6 years or more and cost a Trillion dollars. ? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2007, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-government-misses-all-targets/411165/51 "2007-07-13T17:20:13Z")
[QUOTE=Spavined Gelding] For what it is worth, some talking head from the American Enterprise Institute was on the NPR news this morning talking about this. As I understood it he said that we must expect the Iraqi politicians to make slow or negligible progress in getting their act together because they can’t be sure of US support for more than six more months. If on the other hand they could count on a US military presence for 20 years they’d be meeting political objectives like a house on fire. [/QUOTE] :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: Right. Every manager knows that the way to accelerate progress on a project is to put the deadline off by six months. What planet is the AEI on, anyway? The purpose of the surge, I thought, was to improve the situation enough to give the politicians time to work out a political solution which is the only way of preventing a bigger bloodbath. As it turns out, 100 lives a month (so long as they aren’t their lives) seem to be no reason for them to get their act together. It seems only announcing a withdrawal date will get these guys moving. Then three things can happen. 1. One side is correctly so sure that they will win that negotiations will fail. This assumes that the other parties don’t unite against them. The surge will not change this situation, so delaying withdrawal postpones the inevitable. 2. All sides are sure they can win. No one negotiates. We’re not going to help with this either. Only a real war is going to wise these guys up. 3. They’ll actually negotiate. This is the best outcome. Remember the Star Trek where two planets were fighting a centuries old “clean” war, which Kirk stopped by forcing a situation where the societies would get ruined unless they negotiated a peace? That’s what’s happening here, since the leaders appear to consider the current situation acceptable. Time to give them a vision of an imminent disaster to focus their minds. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2007, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-government-misses-all-targets/411165/52 "2007-07-13T17:30:09Z")
[QUOTE=gonzomax] The surge,adding 20 ,000 troops, is not a complex idea requiring large amounts of analysis. We have had more troops before. It is simply an attempt to buy more time. If Petraeus said it was a mistake he would be gone. If he came out in Sept and said it was showing no progress ,he would be gone. If you add the so called Iraqi trained troops 100,000 plus. Add in the mercenaries 100,000 plus with our 140,000 troops ,the surge is minuscule. It is just trying to buy time. [/QUOTE] The surge is not about more troops. The surge is about a change in strategy, which happens to require more troops. A very significant change in strategy. One that should have happened years ago, but Rumsfeld and Petraeus didn’t agree with each other, and Rumsfeld won. It was the removal of Rumsfeld that opened the door to a new strategy that has already had significant success - not just now, but back when Petraeus was implementing it in his areas of Iraq a few years ago. Let me explain the difference: The strategy under Rumsfeld was a search-and-destroy operation plan, in which soldiers would enter an area known to be full of insurgents, attack them, clear them out, and then leave. This was part of Rumsfeld’s ‘faster, agile’ strategy, but it was wholly inappropriate to fighting an insurgency. Here’s what would happen: The U.S. would come in with limited local knowledge, and often get ‘played’ by various factions who would accuse each other of being insurgents. People would be killed, and there would be significant collateral damage. Then the U.S. soldiers would pack up and leave, and the terrorists would come back, and exact vengeance on anyone who helped the coalition. Once the population learned that the U.S. presence would be temporary, they stopped cooperating. Any temporary gains in security would be lost as soon as the Americans withdrew. This strategy had one advantage - it was easier on the military. You needed fewer soldiers, and they came into areas in force and well protected. It had numerous disadvantages - it made enemies, for one thing. The collateral damage would be left behind without compensation - something that Iraqi culture despises. It did nothing about the underlying causes of the insurgency, and it made the population cynical. Petraeus’ strategy is completely different. Now, the U.S. moves into an area, and sets up a permanent presence. The soldiers get out of the APCs and live among the population. They attend town meetings. They work with the locals. They eat with their families. Once the terrorists are cleared out, they’re kept out. Once the population realizes that the protection is permanent, they start cooperating. And areas stay peaceful and secure longer, which allows infrastructure projects to be driven to completion and the local economy to come back. Also, with the soldiers living right in with the local population, they get a much better idea of the security scene. Collateral damage goes down. There was recently a major operation in Diyala involving extensive fighting, and only 11 civilians were killed (a tragic number, but a far cry from the hundreds that might have been killed by Rumsfeld’s tactics). In addition, under Petraeus the Americans are developing a reputation for fairness - whenever there is collateral damage, Petraeus or his commanders call in the local tribal leaders, go over the damage, and arrange compensation on the spot. The old strategy alienated the population, and made the insurgency worse. The new strategy is all about winning hearts and minds. So far, it is showing reasonable success. The downside is that it requires more soldiers (soldiers have to stay in one area and can’t be reused to fight battles elsewhere). Hence, the surge requirement. It also has the disadvantage of putting the soldiers more at risk - they work within the population, far more exposed. It’s more dangerous to do foot patrols than to blast through an area in a Stryker and head back to base. So casualties are higher. But it’s also the only way there’s even a chance to win. The surge as a military strategy is paying dividends. Tips from the population are up dramatically. Areas cleared of terrorists are staying cleared. After years of stagnation and reversals, there’s once again progress on the ground. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it will be all for naught if the political process doesn’t come through with some serious accomodations between factions, and the Iraqi politicians are dragging their feet. The hope is that if the population can be better protected and the economy starts to move forward, there will be more political pressure on the various factions to make a deal and cement the gains. At a time when there were constant retributional attacks between factions, accomodation was impossible. It’s a long, hard road. It could all fail. In fact, the odds today have to favor a failure. But then, the same could be said for the allies in WWII in 1940. Long odds do not equal failure. The war is not lost. Yet. Given the extreme consequences of failure (anything up to and including genocide and an entire middle east in flames with millions of casualties), it is pusillanimous to advocate giving up and conceding victory when there is any chance of turning it around. ---
**Author:** ![BJMoose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/5fc32e/32.png) [@BJMoose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BJMoose)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2007, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-government-misses-all-targets/411165/53 "2007-07-13T17:33:10Z")
Guess y’all have missed the official spin on this. Saith Earless Leader: “They have made _some_ progress on _about half_ of the benchmarks; airgo, everything ist sehr Gut in dem Vaterland.” Mein Fuhrer! I can walk! ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2007, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-government-misses-all-targets/411165/54 "2007-07-13T17:36:31Z")
I’m sure the War Czar that Bush appointed a few months ago (remember him?) will shortly have everything under control. ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2007, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-government-misses-all-targets/411165/55 "2007-07-13T17:41:38Z")
The Nation has a spine-chilling article of what is really happening on the ground in Iraq – they interviewed fifty combat veterans and here’s some of what they had to say: [**The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness**](http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070730/hedges) > [@](#): > > Over the past several months The Nation has interviewed fifty combat veterans of the Iraq War from around the United States in an effort to investigate the effects of the four-year-old occupation on average Iraqi civilians. These combat veterans, some of whom bear deep emotional and physical scars, and many of whom have come to oppose the occupation, gave vivid, on-the-record accounts. They described a brutal side of the war rarely seen on television screens or chronicled in newspaper accounts. > > **Their stories, recorded and typed into thousands of pages of transcripts, reveal disturbing patterns of behavior by American troops in Iraq. Dozens of those interviewed witnessed Iraqi civilians, including children, dying from American firepower.** Some participated in such killings; others treated or investigated civilian casualties after the fact. Many also heard such stories, in detail, from members of their unit. **The soldiers, sailors and marines emphasized that not all troops took part in indiscriminate killings. Many said that these acts were perpetrated by a minority. But they nevertheless described such acts as common and said they often go unreported–and almost always go unpunished.** > > \ > > “ **I guess while I was there, the general attitude was, A dead Iraqi is just another dead Iraqi** ,” said Spc. Jeff Englehart, 26, of Grand Junction, Colorado. Specialist Englehart served with the Third Brigade, First Infantry Division, in Baquba, about thirty-five miles northeast of Baghdad, for a year beginning in February 2004. “You know, so what?.. The soldiers honestly thought we were trying to help the people and they were mad because it was almost like a betrayal. Like here we are trying to help you, here I am, you know, thousands of miles away from home and my family, and I have to be here for a year and work every day on these missions. Well, we’re trying to help you and you just turn around and try to kill us.” > > He said it was only “ **when they get home, in dealing with veteran issues and meeting other veterans, it seems like the guilt really takes place, takes root, then.** ” > > \ > > **Many of these veterans returned home deeply disturbed by the disparity between the reality of the war and the way it is portrayed by the US government and American media.** The war the vets described is a dark and even depraved enterprise, one that bears a powerful resemblance to other misguided and brutal colonial wars and occupations, from the French occupation of Algeria to the American war in Vietnam and the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. > > “I’ll tell you the point where I really turned,” said Spc. Michael Harmon, 24, a medic from Brooklyn. He served a thirteen-month tour beginning in April 2003 with the 167th Armor Regiment, Fourth Infantry Division, in Al-Rashidiya, a small town near Baghdad. “**I go out to the scene and [there was] this little, you know, pudgy little 2-year-old child with the cute little pudgy legs, and I look and she has a bullet through her leg… An IED [improvised explosive device] went off, the gun-happy soldiers just started shooting anywhere and the baby got hit. And this baby looked at me, wasn’t crying, wasn’t anything, it just looked at me like–I know she couldn’t speak. It might sound crazy, but she was like asking me why. You know, Why do I have a bullet in my leg?.. I was just like, This is–this is it. This is ridiculous.**” – my highlights. Much more at source. Maybe some of the posters here would be better off reading this article than the propaganda they keep parroting. Just a thought. ---
**Author:** ![Contrapuntal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2007, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-government-misses-all-targets/411165/56 "2007-07-13T17:42:50Z")
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde] Huh? No, it doesn’t. It’s like people are being willfully ignorant here. Maybe the surge is a guaranteed failure, maybe it isn’t. It’s still _too early to see_, have you guys not heard anything Odierno and Petraeus have been saying? They’ve both been very candid that the full effects of the surge just simply can’t be analyzed yet, and can’t be analyzed properly until September. [/QUOTE] Is it still too early to analyze whether we will be met by throngs of flower-wielding Iraqis, loudly proclaiming their gratitude for every ear to hear? When \*\*can \*\*we determine how well the war is going, exactly? ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2007, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-government-misses-all-targets/411165/57 "2007-07-13T18:21:00Z")
[QUOTE=RedFury] Maybe some of the posters here would be better off reading this article than the propaganda they keep parroting. Just a thought. [/QUOTE] Who here is saying that civilians aren’t getting hurt? Who is parroting that some of these deaths aren’t due to American firepower? Who here is saying War is a Grand Endeavor (a.k.a. Havin’ a Good Time)? The OP asked whether the failure of the Iraqi Government will cause a dramatic shift in US policy in Iraq. Not whether the US soldier’s there are reincarnations of the Mongol Hordes. ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2007, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-government-misses-all-targets/411165/58 "2007-07-13T18:34:16Z")
[QUOTE=mlees] Who here is saying that civilians aren’t getting hurt? Who is parroting that some of these deaths aren’t due to American firepower? Who here is saying War is a Grand Endeavor (a.k.a. Havin’ a Good Time)? The OP asked whether the failure of the Iraqi Government will cause a dramatic shift in US policy in Iraq. Not whether the US soldier’s there are reincarnations of the Mongol Hordes. [/QUOTE] Thew following extract of _one_ post should answer all your queries: > [@Martin Hyde](#): > > …However, if you guys have actually paid attention to any of the highly informative reports that Odierno has made thus far you’d see his assessment is that the current combat operations in Baghdad and the surrounding areas are going very well. They’re hitting insurgent groups in ways they’ve never hit them before, and they’re learning from past failures. In the past anytime we’ve successfully cleared insurgents out of an area, we’ve withdrawn combat forces or switched security responsibility over to the Iraqi Security Forces. What happens? The insurgents hide for a few months then come back. This time the military is making commitments to keep soldiers in an area for much longer periods of time. They’ve also had successes in destroying IED factories and disrupting supply lines all the way to other cities, where some insurgent groups operating in Baghdad have been getting supplies. The current approach has been the most successful operations in Baghdad since we drove Saddam Hussein’s forces out of the city in 2003, it’s been a holistic approach that has involved forward deployments throughout the city, and most importantly surrounding areas where large weapons caches used by insurgents had until now been left unmolested… You kill an Iraqi and by Og…it’s an insurgent or an AO affiliate! Dead-eye killers. Read the article. ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2007, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-government-misses-all-targets/411165/59 "2007-07-13T18:41:01Z")
Oh, and thanks for reposting the OP for moi. However, to your everlasting amazement, I’ll have you know that my comprehensive reading skills are rather advanced as many a test has proven. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2007, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-government-misses-all-targets/411165/60 "2007-07-13T19:27:16Z")
> [@Redfury](#): > > Thew following extract of _one_ post should answer all your queries. **Martin Hyde** ’s post you quoted does NOT make the claim that civilians are not getting hurt, that they are no longer getting hurt by American weapons, or that “War is Fun!™”. [QUOTE=RedFury] Oh, and thanks for reposting the OP for moi. However, to your everlasting amazement, I’ll have you know that my comprehensive reading skills are rather advanced as many a test has proven. [/QUOTE] Not a prob, but I’ll have to take that on faith, because you seem to be stating something that’s not answering the OP’s question, or in **Martin** post you just quoted. You just seem to be taking the opportunity to stop by and bash the war. _shrug_ [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-government-misses-all-targets/411165.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iraq-government-misses-all-targets/411165.md?page=4)