Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[seabass]

>>>You can't answer that question I have asked you several times.<<<


What question is that now? Probably one I've answered repeatedly but you just don't like the answer.



>>>The increased number of troops, the changed dynamic politically and the different tactics all show how the surge is different.<<<


Some military voices. You know something they don't?

"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 in Diyala province, said wearily, "We just do not have the forces in country right now to have the appropriate level of presence across the country."

Many counterinsurgency experts agree. Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., the director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a national security think tank, said flatly that Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, does not have enough troops. "I suspect General Petraeus is taking a risk here, but that's what commanders do," he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/22/AR2007062202013.html