originally posted here
The New York Times got hold of a scathing memo written by Senior Marine intelligence officers which contain two very troubling bits of info:
- The plan calls for U.S. troop levels in the Falluja area to be significantly reduced allowing insurgents to come right back in.
- The insurgents are dedicated propagandists who will turn Falluja into a symbolic victory and an excellent recruiting tool. They will likely recruit more as a result of this battle than we killed or captured.
Now, I am neither a military strategist nor an intelligence expert, and chances are most reading this aren't either. Yet some basic common sense applies. Falluja is a no win. We never had enough troops in Iraq to begin with, so keeping enough soldiers in and around Falluja to keep it secure will drain our already thin resources further and make make them targets for daily attacks. But pulling them out means the insurgents will just march right back in, and all this will have been for naught. I don't consider this any sort of deep analysis. It's just common sense.
Yet here we are, according to these senior intelligence officers, on the verge of giving Falluja right back and possibly losing a lot more.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 - Senior Marine intelligence officers in Iraq are warning that
if American troop levels in the Falluja area are significantly reduced during reconstruction there, as has been planned, insurgents in the region will rebound from their defeat. The rebels could thwart the retraining of Iraqi security forces, intimidate the local population and derail elections set for January, the officers say.
They have further advised that despite taking heavy casualties in the weeklong battle, the insurgents will continue to grow in number, wage guerrilla attacks and try to foment unrest among Falluja's returning residents, emphasizing that expectations for improved conditions have not been met. [...]
Marine commanders marshaled about 12,000 marines and soldiers, and roughly 2,500 Iraqi forces for the Falluja campaign, but they always expected to send thousands of American troops back to other locations in Iraq eventually, after the major fighting in Falluja. This intelligence assessment suggests that such a move would be risky. [...]
The report offers a stark counterpoint to more upbeat assessments voiced by military commanders in the wake of the Falluja operation, which they say completed its goals well ahead of schedule and with fewer American and Iraqi civilian casualties than expected.
Although the resistance crumbled in the face of the offensive, the report warns that if American forces do not remain in sufficient numbers for some time, "The enemy will be able to effectively defeat I MEF's ability to accomplish its primary objectives of developing an effective Iraqi security force and setting the conditions for successful Iraqi elections."
In response, some senior officers said they will keep a sizeable force in the area, but keep in mind the intelligence officers who compiled this report based their predictions on the planned "sizeable force."
What's just as chilling is the group's view of where Falluja fits in the larger picture:
The insurgency has shown "outstanding resilience" and the militants' willingness to fight is bolstered by four main factors, the report says. One, the tribal and insurgent leaders understand the limitations of the United Nations, American elections and internal Iraqi government politics, and try to exploit them. Two, they are skilled at turning battlefield defeats into symbolic victories, just as Saddam Hussein did after the 1991 Persian Gulf war. Insurgents will make the battle of Falluja into an excellent recruiting tool, the report says.
Three, the insurgents are dedicated propagandists who use the Internet and other means to feed exaggerated and contrived reporting from the battlefield to jihadists in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Middle East. Al Jazeera and Arab media then pick it up, the report says.
Finally, the report says, the insurgents believe they are more willing to suffer casualties than the American military and public, and "will continue to find refuge among sympathetic tribes and former regime members."
Do you get the feeling Bush and co never look at the big picture? Even so, it was already too late by this point. Bush clumsily followed a script which led us to a place where every decision has a bad outcome.
