There is enough popular support to maintain the insurgency. That’s all an insurgency needs. They have a lot of support in key cities and neighborhoods in Baghdad. Undermining and coopting this support is the key to defeating the insurgency.

The support for foreign fighters and terrorists has dropped considerably and will likely drop further. Only the most radical Sunni factions seem to support them now, which will limit their operations considerably.

It is not the function of SF to operate as a general occupation force. Yes, they are trainers but really designed to train insurgents or counter-insurgents in areas where we don’t have an “official” presence. If we are going to do this kind of thing again, we need a special kind of unit. It would be a special MP unit in my imagination. It is difficult to describe this kind of unit as there is nothing in existance to compare it to but if we are going to go on a “nationbuilding” spree, we had better have them. They would have quite a bit of police training and infantry and some special ops skills. Think of MP crosstrained as infantry with Ranger school and you are getting close.

Combat forces would initially clear out combatant formations and these guys would come in behind them as a policing function to maintain order. The combat troops could be based nearby out of sight and used for quick reaction should someone get their ass in a sling. We are currently attempting to do this function with our regular combat forces and I just don’t believe they are the best tool for the job. In fact, I don’t believe we have the tool in our box that we need in order to do this job. It might not be cost effective to build one either because we haven’t faced this kind of task since WWII. In post-WWII Europe, we had a much more developed Civil Affairs branch operating in occupied areas. Even so it took over 5 years to quell violence across Germany. Political assasinations were common in places like Berlin long after the war was over.

The main point is that we are not seeing any popular support of these “insurgents”. They are simply being disruptive and that is very easy to do and doesn’t take a lot of support or infrastructure. A dozen people can raise holy hell and be very difficult to find.

The Iraqis have had about two weeks to start to get a grip on the situation. I am prepared to give them some time.

Whoever is posting these messages is providing a link to a blog that I maintain. However, BMOC is not me. I have never been to this site before noticing the amount of traffic coming to my blog from this site.

“BMOC” is almost certainly an individual who lurks on my site from time to time who wants to embarrass me by posting idiotic messages linking to my site on conservative-themed websites. The sad thing is that he’s been a victim of this himself (liberal posters putting up asinine posts linking to *his* website), and I stood up for him and did what I could to help track down the folks responsible for the faux postings.

Apparently he’s embraced the very tactic he was victimized by.

At any rate, I just wanted to let you all know that “BMOC” is not me, and while I’d be more than happy to have you stop by my blog, I’d never say something as dopey what BMOC is attributing to me.

Thanks, and sorry again for the silly posts put up in my name.

Cheers,

Ted

The stated goals at the bottom of the chart speak for themselves. The electricity situation is, like I said earlier, stagnant at best.

That’s not exactly true. Army SF specializes is doing just what you described. The military, as a team, can do much of the task. We have civil affairs, CE, engineers, the whole bit. The military’s capabilities are only designed to get things going in the short-medium term however. Civilian specialists are needed to built a permanent infrastructure.

As far as power and oil go, it’s true that levels occasionally go above pre-war levels, but most months they do not. I don’t see how anyone can call the electricity and oil situation a success. At best we have been maintaining a status quo for the past three years. Things won’t improve as long as the insurgents are able to interdict the power and pipelines and prevent new infrastructure from being built.

Yes, the north and south are doing pretty well, especially the north. The North and south are also the safest areas of the country with the least violence. The Kurds have been autonomous up there for a decade and their infrastructure has remained relatively intact. The south is in a similar situation. Even in the relatively safe north and south, few areas have reliable power 24X7 from the grid. In the areas with the most violence, Baghdad and the surrounding cities, the situation is the worst. The areas around Baghdad that have the most violence account for about 60% of the country’s population, so I’d say that is significant. It’s not just the capital, but it’s also all of the surrounding provinces.

Even with generators there isn’t 24X7 power in most of the country, especially when there are fuel problems, which there often are.

So, overall, the power and oil situation does not look good. I stand by my earlier statement that much of this is due to interdiction by insurgents, which isn’t widely reported outside of Iraq. Until the security situation is improved to the point where the the infrastructure can be rebuilt, the best we can hope to do is what we’re doing now - simply hold the line against collapse.

Right, and I say that is not the task of a combat force. The purpose of a combat force is combat. If you want to have a nationbuilding force, then we need a separate branch of the military to do it. People don’t have a switch you can flip like some kind of robot. You can’t send them into battle to destroy an enemy and then flip a switch and turn them into a humanitarian police force.

Electricity and oil production in Iraq remain below pre-war levels.

Untrue. It varies. Oil production is back to about the same with the re-opening of the northern pipeline.

Electricity production has been higher than pre-war levels and is current about at pre-war levels. The problem is that consumption is has grown more than production. People that never had air conditioners, TVs, and refrigerators have them now. Electricity demand has gone through the roof.

What you are now finding is that private entrepreneurs are buying large generators and selling electricity to the neighborhood when the official grid is off.

Just before the war, official production was at 4400 MW (down from a maximum of around 9000 MW in 1991 … in other words, production had already been steadily dropping sice 1991 to 2003) August 2004’s peak production was 4707 MW in August, about 300 MW more than at the start of the war.

People often look at Baghdad and extrapolate from that for the entire country. Not a good thing to do. Many towns that never had electricity under Saddam now have it 24×7. Electricity supplies are stable in the Northern sections of Iraq. Supply is much more available in the Southern parts too. Baghdad’s demand for electricity has skyrocketed. It is estimated that Baghdad will need three times the pre-war level of electricity simply to service current demand 24×7. Doing that with oil for fuel is probably not the best approach. Oil is too valuable for other products to be burned in bulk as power plant fuel.

One thing that is being done is to attempt to capture and use the natural gas that Iraq has traditionally flared off as a waste product. They have little infrastructure for handling gas and it is slowly being built.

The truth is that the Dems political future does depend upon our failure. This may bug many Republicans, but when W ran for president the first time around he made the statement that as a nation the US will not try to be nation builders. It was because of the failure in the Balkans and Somalia that prompted that position and also won the support of millions of Americans in 2000.