[A-List] No fat lady in sight

[Bob Enoch <bobenoch@xxxxxxx>]

It seems that one of the achievements of this campaign has been to add a new
category to military statistics.
To killed, wounded, and captured, we must now add "melted away".
To equipment destroyed, or captured we must add "evaporated."

"Where is everybody?" is not the usual question asked in the aftermath of
"regime collapse".
Not a single member of the "regime" has been captured, or shopped by the
population of "jubilant" Baghdad.

If your strategy is to fight an urban war, you must first permit the enemy
to get stuck in to the urban terrain.
It seems to me that this is more consistent with what we have seen thus far
than the CNN-Faux News
scenario.
This is why they are shooting non-embedded journalists, and producing
Psy-ops with statues, endlessly showing a thirty second loop of "Shi'a
supporters", and splicing them with pictures of Kurdish villages
"celebrating", which should surprise no one.

Who are the B52s bombing on the banks of the Tigris? Looters?

In Kirkuk, more "melting away" they say. But the result is to test the
Turks,
and place the small US forces there on the horns of a dilemma, military, and
especially, political.

Withdrawal from large districts of Baghdad not only brings the 3rd ID and
Marines into an urban fighting environment; it also instantly places them in
the practical position of taking up the role of occupiers; tanks at
intersections, checkpoints, policing, making arrests, and looking and acting
like the IDF on the streets of
the first city of the Arab world.

Call me a diehard optimist, but the US-UK spin doesn't add up.I don't envy
the soldiers and marines in Baghdad today.

Bob