Iraq Push Revives Criticism of Force Size - Baghdad Offensive May Shift Violence Elsewhere

Source: Washington Post

Iraq Push Revives Criticism of Force Size
Baghdad Offensive May Shift Violence Elsewhere

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 23, 2007; A01



The major U.S. offensive launched last weekend against insurgents in and around Baghdad has significantly expanded the military's battleground in Iraq -- "a surge of operations," and no longer just of troops, as the second-ranking U.S. commander there said yesterday -- but it has renewed concerns about whether even the bigger U.S. troop presence there is large enough.

As the U.S. offensive, code-named Phantom Thunder, has been greeted with a week of intensified fighting in areas outside the capital -- areas that the U.S. military has largely left untouched for as long as three years -- the push raised fears from security experts and officers in the field that the new attacks might simply propel the enemy from one area to another where there are not as many U.S. troops.

Since President Bush ordered the troop increase in January, the military had focused on creating a more secure environment in Baghdad. "We are beyond a surge of forces," Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno said yesterday in a briefing from his headquarters in the Iraqi capital. He did not directly address the size of the force, saying only that the addition of 30,000 U.S. troops over five months "allows us to operate in areas where we have not been for a long time."

Retired Army Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, who in 2003 was among the first to call public attention to the relatively small size of the U.S. invasion force, said that the new operation shows how outnumbered U.S. troops remain. "Why would we think that a temporary presence of 30,000 additional combat troops in a giant city would change the dynamics of a bitter civil war?" he said in an interview yesterday. "It's a fool's errand."

An officer working in Arrowhead Ripper, the subsidiary offensive


Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/22/AR2007062202013_pf.html

Even 500,000 or more wouldn't do it either.

"Baghdad Offensive May Shift Violence Elsewhere"

WE ALL knew to expect this fall-out ... but these arrogant Rumsfeld-Select Generals think all those "little brown people" will, instead, be in awe of our mighty empire and thoughtfully lay down their arms. :eyes: