1: we are not allowed to fly along them because the danger is too great
2: with the roads being under patrol it’s safer for the insurgent to used the river
3: it makes more sense from a leadership point of view to assume they are. If you’re wrong, you wasted money. If you’re right, you stopped arms from traveling as freely across the country.
But if you begin deploying swiftboats specifically to combat a threat that may or may not be present, it is not just wasted money, but military resources & personnel that may be better spent against known threats.
Can you say for certain that there is no problem along the rivers? If not, then it would be wiser, especially on these small military matters, on the professionals, who have much more information than we armchair generals on the SDMB. (Answer the question before resorting to rhetorical cheap shots about how these soldiers got us involved in an “illegal” “losing war” - it was not they who dictated policy.) You may as well call into question every minute policy, using your own lack of information as an argument.
This doesn’t strike me as particularly newsworthy, considering the British army has been using boats on the Shatt al-Arab and surrounding waterways since pretty much the beginning of this damn fool war.
