NYT: Battle for Baghdad Boils Down to Grabbing a Slice at a Time

I bet you're all wondering... what is this new security plan for Baghdad, and how are they going to eff it up?

Well, the Times has the answers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/26/world/middleeast/26military.html?hp&ex=1153886400&en=863c358a806390da&ei=5094&partner=homepage

July 26, 2006
Military Analysis
Battle for Baghdad Boils Down to Grabbing a Slice at a Time
By MICHAEL R. GORDON

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 25 — The Bush administration’s announcement on Tuesday that it will shift more forces to Baghdad is much more than a numbers game. It reflects a new strategy to reclaim control of the Iraqi capital and a new approach for deploying the troops.

The plan is to concentrate on specific neighborhoods rather than distribute the forces throughout the city, control movement in and out of sectors of the capital and try to sweep them of insurgents and violent militias.

In effect, the scheme is a version of the “ink blot” counterinsurgency strategy of grabbing a piece of terrain, stabilizing it and gradually expanding it. Only this time the objective is not a far-flung Iraqi city or town, but the capital, the seat of the fledgling government and home to some seven million Iraqis.

The plan has risks. It will divert American military police from deploying to Anbar Province, where the insurgency continues to rage. And an increased presence of American troops on the ground in Baghdad, where insurgent attacks have soared, carries the potential of more American casualties.

Yeah, that'll work, since it worked so well in the countryside. More at link.

Ya this will work---NOT

When 90% of the people want the Crusaders out of there look for more low tech killing

is an effort to make 1/64th of Iraq safe. good plan. get ready for tourists!


:sarcasm:

for next year. And what leaped out at me was the Green Zone.

I mean where else can you get that kind of action and adventure?

I can just imagine that travel brochure...

Come to the Green Zone!

Relax at our many fenced in pools!

Sweat off those extra pounds at one of the barbed wire enclosed tennis courts.

Stay and play at our 24 hour concrete bunkered recreation facility!

While away those balmy nights while you sip your faux-gin and tonic to the rhythm of automatic gun fire!

Spend your evenings "getting down" at the many heavily fortified bomb proofed discos!

And if you act now on your secret green zone getaway, you can qualify for your own flack/chem/bio suit!!

the fun never stops at Club Green! Unless of course you get hit by a mortar round...

Remember, anonymous Iraqi insiders were saying that is what is happening next.

I think the US and "Iraqi" forces will move in to the Shiite neighborhoods they can control, and turn the rest over to the insurgents. Because they can't control the whole city, it's impossible now.

With the armored and infantry divisions fast approaching Baghdad, there was fear of street fighting, house to house, nasty firefights in alleyways. It never really materialized. Then when the Shiite rebellion began after the boneheaded attempt by the forever-to-be notorious Coalition Provisional Authority to criminalize the militia of Moqtada al-Sadr, there was street fighting, primarily in Sadr City (and later in the Shia south, and of course the Battle of Najaf) and while American troops held their own, they did not break the militias, did not disarm them, and most certainly did not "secure" the sectors. But this plan looks like they're going for it: real house to house fighting in "slices" of Baghdad. It will be a costly draw at best, and more likely an ineffective and bloody disaster. In other words, par for the course.

And it will end up pretty much Vietnam.