The Opinionated Bastard

Talking with a frequent commenter over email about President Bush, I ended up writing this long piece I've decided to share.

It's long, so I moved it to its own page.

First off, we will win because there is nothing the insurgents can do to the Iraqi people that is worse then what Saddam has done.

Second, we will win because the insurgents are a small fraction of the Iraqis and in order to win, they must defeat the other 90% of Iraqis. That isn't going to happen. The insurgents gets smaller and weaker every day.

Third, we will win because every day, our American Soldiers prove to the Iraqis that Americans aren't the boogeyman they've been led to believe. Our young men and women in Iraq are the most convincing ambassadors we have.

Fourth, every cell phone, ever satellite dish is an agent in the war. The more access Iraqis have to information, the more they begin to think for themselves, to questions their leaders, to say been there, did that, got the t-shirt at my cousin's execution. We will win, because in order for us to win, the Iraqis don't have to like us, they just have to be a democracy. In the game of nations, always bet on democracy. Through the long path of history, the human race has been marching steadily towards more freedom for all.

Fifth, every day our soldiers get smarter.

Sixth, we've made a lot of progress.

Seventh, we've already won!

Qando has some excerpts from the downing street memos, as well as links to the complete memos.

It's very interesting reading the larger excerpts, much more interesting then reading the word “fixed”.

I've got some of the excerpt after the link if you're interested, with my own commentary.

Only 16 days and 14 hours until the release of the next Harry Potter book as I write this.

Lately, I've been way too serious about the Iraq war. I've talked about how we basically needed to invade Iraq because its the bullseye of the Middle East. I've debunked some myths about the war. I've talked about the Euro. I've looked at the numbers to try to see if Iraq is getting worse or better. I've looked at the Downing Street memos.

Enough! It's time to take a break, and be a little silly.

I'm going to talk about the last Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix while I wait for the next one, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

The plot of the book is that despite a child getting killed in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by Voldemort, the Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge refuses to believe that Voldemort has come back. So he sets out to discredit Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter with the help of the Daily Prophet. The Daily Prophet begins printing stories about how Dumbledore has gone senile, and how Harry Potter has been driven mad.

Meanwhile, Voldemort is up to no good. Without the support of the Ministry of Magic, the fight against Voldemort is driven into the shadows; the Order of the Phoenix is the organization Dumbledore creates to fight Voldemort and his followers.

With Dumbledore basically in hiding, the Ministry of Magic appoints a new headmaster, Dolores Umbridge, to oversee Hogwarts. She proceeds to undermine the entire Defense against the Dark Arts curriculum, as well as harass Harry for his claim that Voldemort is back. This forces the students to turn to Harry for instruction, which ends up working quite well given Harry's extensive experience.

The wizarding world goes along with this, because really, Voldemort is so scary a topic that no one really wants to believe he has really come back.

The book ends when Voldemort attacks the Ministry of Magic, forcing even the Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge to recognize that he's baaack.

That's the plot. But what is really going on? Glad you asked...

This book series is an allegory of the War on Terror.

Voldemort represents both Saddam Hussien and Osama Bin Laden, that is, the threat of terrorism against the West. Dumbledore represents Uncle Sam as personified by George Bush, and Harry Potter represents Britian, specifically Tony Blair. The first 4 books are sort of a history of terrorism in that Voldemort makes a few attacks here and there, but only Harry and Dumbledore really realize the danger. So the various attacks against the US and UK by Al Queda are will represented. The 4th book ends with Voldemort killing a child this represents 9/11; it should be the wake up call for the entire wizarding world that Voldemort/Terrorism is a problem they need immediately gear up to fight, they have killed the innocent.

Wizards, like all humans, don't want to believe that. Enter Cornelius Fudge and the press, which would rather believe that Dumbledore (George Bush) is crazy/senile. This of course closely parallels world opinion of US and UK actions in the War on Terror. The Ministry of Magic is a bureaucracy, and so represents the interests in London, Washington, and the UN who would prefer to just refer terrorism to a committee.

Enter Dolores Humbridge (Hans Blix) the classic bureaucrat. She not only denies all possibility that Voldemort could be back, she actively seeks to undermine Harry, Dumbledore, and any ability of the students to defends themselves.

Dumbledore and Harry are forced to go it alone, and so Dumbledore (Bush) creates the coalition Order of the Phoenix. Rowling's choice is interesting here, because Dumbledore is the most powerful wizard (as Bush is the most powerful man), but Harry (again, Britain) has the most experience in fighting Voldemort/Terrorism. Even though Dumbledore is the most powerful wizard, the only wizard Voldemort truly fears, we all know that it will be Harry (Britain) that saves the day. In fact, there are rumors the Dumbledore dies in the 6th book; perhaps Rowling expected Bush to lose the election?

At any rate, despite the obstacles put up by Dumbledore's secrecy, the bureaucracy's maneuverings, and the tide of public opinion the evil of Voldemort leads him to another attack directly on the Ministry of Magic, much like Al Queda has begun attacking other Arab nations. So finally, world opinion public opinion swings the other direction, and Europe the wizarding world signs up for the War on Terror War against Voldemort.

I wonder what will happen in Iraq the next book.

Having Islamic law as the basis for Iraqi law doesn't necessarily bother me. Its one of those things where the devil is in the details.

Islam talks a lot about justice. It specifically says its the duty of Muslims to obey just governments, and resist unjust ones.

One of the big problems we have in communicating with Muslims is that we keep talking about freedom. There is no word in Arabic for freedom, so it gets translated as non-enslaved.

Its not freedom we want to bring to the Middle East. When American's talk about freedom, we really mean justice. We're sloppy with our speech, and it costs us lives.

If we started talking about justice, the Quran would be on our side...

I would argue that the most Islamic government possible is a democracy, because it is the most just.

Sewer, Water, Electricity and Trash is the key to winning in Iraq, as I've said before.

Here's an article (PDF) on the 8th Engineer Battalion Baghdad working on SWET.

Here's another.

Technorati Tags: Iraq

Pretty much, this picture shows why its been so hard to get the electricity back on in Iraq. From this report. The report goes on to give a broad overview of all the work they're doing on the electricity, but it's in slideshow form so you have to read between the lines. Basically, we're 2 years into a 4 year project...

So after this post I learned that most of the deaths in Iraq are from IEDs. So I'm trying to dig in to find out more about them. Why? Well the mainstream media is so bad that basically the only way for me to really get a sense of what is going on Iraq is to find numbers for me to track, then dig in from there.

Anyways, here's a cool background article on them.

Hat tip: Winds of Change who has a few more links too.

Enron was a player in the Oil For Food scandal

But only obliquely:

Not that Enron did business directly with Saddam's regime in violation of U.N. sanctions, or even did anything clearly illegal. Rather, the tale of its guest appearance in Oil for Food illustrates why in some ways the U.N. scandal dwarfs even Enron. Under cover of Oil for Food, Saddam's system of bribes, payoffs and kickbacks, ultimately totaling billions, ran through chains of often obscure middlemen in places such as Cyprus and Switzerland. Enron shows up on one of the outer spokes of Oil for Food's global web, dealing with a trans-Atlantic crew of companies and characters engaged not only in fraud, but allegedly linked to arms traffic, payoffs to the Kremlin and kickbacks to Saddam's regime. Along the way, this gang did its bit to comply via Oil for Food shipments with Saddam's policy of enforcing the Arab League boycott against Israel.

Al-Qaida's Network in Iraq Goes (Temporarily) Silent

Be really cool if it was good news...

While there is lots of brouhaha over the mention of Islam in the constitution, and whether it uses Islam as “the” source, or “a” source, dare I say it may not matter?

Empty platitudes probably won't have much influence on laws, I'd expect...

Think I'll go ask Volokh what he thinks.

[The constitution empowers legislators, not clerics}(http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110007157)

This post from over at Captain's Quarters is actually about Howard Dean, but the title caught my eye as being ultimately true about Iraq:

Extremism will Not Win Elections

Yep. That's why we'll win. Let people vote, and they'll vote for people who are going to create a better Iraq, not people who just scream, hate, behead, etc.

Brookings is behind in updating their Iraq Index so I can't easily run the numbers yet but I just thought I'd do a quick post to counter the “2,000 Doom and Gloom” you'll see in the media today.

The insurgents are going to lose. They were always going to lose because what they want is insane.

Don't believe the nonsense you read in the media. If you read the things Al Queda writes about themselves, they want to bring back the caliphate. Guess who gets to be Caliph?

America on the other hand, wants every man to the be the Caliph of his own home. Not one Caliphate, millions of Caliphates.

Which would you choose? Being told what to do by someone else or setting your own destiny? Why do you think the Iraqis are any different?

Sure, they don't like being occupied. Sure they expect their own government to accomplish more then they expect the US Military to accomplish.

This is not news. It shouldn't even be surprising; the destiny of Iraq has always needed to be in the hands of the people of Iraq, not the hands of the US. We've never had a magic wand. Saying that you can't get democracy from the barrel of a gun is like saying democracies don't need policemen. It's never been our job to “fix” Iraq. We only need get them on their feet. And we've been doing that.

To my mind, the insurgents lost the moment Al-Jazeera and the other Arab nations started taking polls in Iraq to determine what the Iraqis wanted, that was the moment we won the war on terror.

Because that means that the Arabs have accepted (whether they realize it or not) that governments rule with the consent of the governed.

And that's the whole ball of wax.

More then anything, if there's one thing the White House has woefully mismanaged in this war, its been the propaganda campaign.

Instead of cursing the darkness, here's my attempt to light a candle.

The first thing we need to do is clarify the victory conditions in Iraq. If we don't set the expectations of the press, the press will make unreasonable assumptions. The media at this point don't have any reporters who have every been soldiers (or had any sort of real job for that matter). So its up to us, the bloggers to set reasonable expectations, since the Administration doesn't seem to be able to. So here goes:

Peace is Relative

Iraq is never going to be as peaceful as say, Flagstaff Arizona. Yet as Americans, we're going to think somehow in the back of our mind that for us to “win”, Iraq will be at peace.

That is unreasonable. For us to win, Iraq need only be as peaceful as say, Compton (famous for its drive-by shootings). That would make it one of the most peaceful of the nations in the Middle East. This is especially true if you consider, as I do, violence done against peaceful citizens to actually count. By that standard, Israel, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia are not at “peace”, and repressive regimes like China and North Korea to not be at “peace”. (See Dhimmi Watch if you'd like to see what the status quo in Arab nations is like towards their own citizens. ) So if we want to consider peace, we should consider true peace. If the US topples a regime that is killing 20,000 of its citizens a month; but incites an insurgency that kills 20,000 civilians a year, that's actually progress.

So victory occurs not when Iraq meets the “Flagstaff, Arizona” definition of peacefulness, but when the violence has dropped to the nuisance level. We will never get to zero violence, there is no place in the world with zero violence. Perhaps that seems obvious to you, but the media will and has amplified every single event in Iraq without any perspective.

Recently, some Al Queda types tried to attack the Palestine Hotel. They were thwarted by the Iraqi Police, without any US aid. This was a huge milestone for the Iraqi Police. To the media of course, this was played as a bad thing. The media no longer has any perspective on what war is like.

The world is, and always has been, a dangerous place. We Americans, we happy few in the world have it pretty good. We can't apply American standards to another country, especially a fledgling democracy.

Agreement is Relative

The Iraqis will never be in complete agreement with each other any more then Americans are in complete agreement with each other. If Iraqis are in the Parliament screaming at each other at the top of their lungs, we have won. At that point we will have turned a violent process into a political process. If Al Sadr runs for Parliament, even if he wins, this means victory for the US.

The media will of course play up every minor squabble like its the end of the world. But I'll point out: ; Democrats and Republicans scream at each other all the time. They're not even very nice about it, nor especially peaceful.

Not all of Iraq's problems or issues will be resolved; 30 years later Americans are still arguing about Roe v. Wade. It is not our job to solve or mediate every dispute in Iraq, even fundamental disputes like Shia v. Shite or Kurd vs. Arab. All we merely need do is get the Iraqis to work together on their problems politically.

Eventually, we will leave

No doubt we left Vietnam prematurely. But at some point we are going to leave Iraq. That does not mean the insurgents have won. Already, there are more Iraqi police then US soldiers in Iraq. In approximately 8 months, we will have met our original goals for Iraqi security forces. At that point, we may very well transition to almost no military role in Iraq.

We cannot let the media paint the withdrawal of troops as another 'Fall of Saigon' moment. For that matter, if Iraq grants us military bases, that doesn't mean we're still occupying Iraq. Are we still occupying Germany?

Not Every Iraqi Will Like Us

It's unrealistic to expect the Iraqis to overwhelmingly like us. We invaded their country. In fact, the amazing thing about the Iraq War is that the Iraqis don't universally hate us. US Presidents never get 100% approval ratings and often have lower numbers then the US does in Iraq. When the US has higher approval ratings then the President, we're winning in Iraq.

Democratic revolutions are slow, painfully incremental miracles

Stolen from an article title by Austin Bay, I think the title says it all. In this 24/7 news cycle world (which frankly, seems to have the same 15 minutes repeated 96 times) it seems like the press expects everything to happen instantly. Some things just take time. Anything that involves people, and especially the perceptions of people can only change so fast. Iraq's progress will be measured in years, not months. The fall of Baghdad was the fastest military campaign in history, yet the press called it a quagmire. Actual accomplishments are the true measure of progress, not speed.

Case in point: Electricity in Iraq. Lead time for ordering giant power plants is measured in years. While I would like to have seen more progress on this front in Iraq, the reality is that we've probably been going as fast as we can: when we ordered new plants, the companies that made them had to start buliding them. Megawatt power plants aren't off the shelf items. Similarly, laying sewer or water pipe means digging trenches, and you can only do that so fast.

Anyways, that's it for the moment. Anyone else have any examples where they think the media is unreasonable?

A reader took issue with my estimate of the Saddam regime causing 20,000 deaths/month in Iraq, so I thought I'd explain my thinking.

Counting the Butcher's Bill can be complicated.

There's the issue of neglect as well when it comes to totalitarian states. During the Oil-For-Palaces program and prior to that, Saddam made choices that lead to the deaths of many Iraqis, so I count those as well. The way I see it, if 1,000 Iraqis starved that year because Uday bought a Ferrari, then Saddam killed 1,000 people plus the 5 or so that Uday ran over directly with his new toy.

That is, I'm counting the indirect deaths as well. Estimates of total direct and indirect deaths for the Saddam regime were 2.5 million people over the last decade, which is 250K/year, or 20K/month.

So that's where I get my 20,000/month.

I could probably argue it even higher:

There are the deaths from the Iran/Iraq war as well. Note that I said citizens, which is actually more inclusive then the numbers reported by IBC which only reports civilians. I would say that Iraqi soldiers killed during the invasion would go to to the US Butcher's bill, but deaths in the Iran/Iraq war go to Saddam, as would deaths to throw him out of Kuwait.

Of course, you can and should count those indirect deaths caused by the coalition actions (i.e. if damage to a hospital causes someone to die), but then you would have to count actions taken by Iraq in Kuwait (the dead Kuwaitis), not to mention people killed by Saddam's funding of terrorism, the Iranian side of the Iran/Iraq war and so on. And of course where do sanctions fit into all that? Or the US aiding both Iran AND Iraq during the war?

The original sanctions caused the Iraqis hardship, leading to the Oil-For-Food program, which Saddam willfully used to subjugate the populace even more. If the UN imposes sanctions, but Saddam keeps building palaces, who pays the butcher's bill?

Here's an article from the NYT saying 1,000,000 at least

Using only direct costs though:

Going over to Iraq body count, they have 30K on the high end for direct deaths. So out of the last 32 months (since March 2003), that's 937.5 deaths/month, or 11,250/year.

But do insurgent caused deaths count towards the Coalition butcher's bill? I don't think you can make that argument, because then it NEVER makes sense to intervene in a civil war or genocide. That is, if the Sudanese genocide is 5,000 deaths/month, and the UN intervened and cut that down to 1,000 deaths/month, it seems to me like the UN should get credit for a 4,000 death decrease. So counting insurgents kills towards the coalition total doesn't make sense either. According to IBC, only 37% of the first 25K were from US-led forces, 36% were from “post-invasion” criminal violence.

Even so, by all accounts Saddam killed more Iraqis towards the end of his regime then the beginning. If I remember correctly it was like 2-1. So if you take the estimates that Saddam killed only 300,000 Iraqis during his Presidency, that's 12,000 year, but probably more like 24,000 towards the end of his reign.

So the 11,250 doesn't seem so bad now.

So there's this press release from DOD announcing Iraq troop rotations: here. Only 92,000 though, and scheduled to begin mid 2006. Does that mean we're drawing down the troops? Any military types know the answer?

Remember my theory on when we start pulling out of Iraq is here.

The UN approved our stay in Iraq through 2006, with a review after 8 months. Read here.

Like I said, we start pulling out in Aug 2006.

In the end, the story of the run-up to the Iraq war is about intelligence, but not in the way most people think. Intelligence is always flawed and imprecise, even more so when you're dealing with a closed, paranoid and authoritarian regime like Hussein's. It's foolish to suggest Bush should have bucked consensus estimates on Iraq WMD built from more than a decade of intel, and it's even worse to suggest he lied for not doing so.

What President Bush did instead was put an end to the decade-long guessing game and place the burden squarely on Saddam Hussein by saying in front of the world: “This is what we think you have. It's now your responsibility to prove us wrong.” In the aftermath of the worst terrorist attack in the history of America, it was absolutely the right thing to do.

From Real Clear Politics, via Blogs for Bush

Mass Graves

Hat Tip: My Co-Worker Matt who really gives it to the Democrats in the piece I just linked to.

So the entire blogosphere missed the biggest story of the week, as did all of the newspapers, and both Senators Kerry and McCain: The Pentagon announced on November 8th that they would be reducing the number of American troops in 2006 down to about 92,000.

I more or less expected the papers to miss this. They've never quite gotten the war on terror, or understood exactly how the “rotation plan” works; the Pentagon was able to slip a troop increase of about 30,000 troops past them this quarter. But two of the most famous Senators spent the week arguing back and forth about what troop levels should be. Much ado about nothing? No, much ado about ignorance! I've always assumed that Senators had access to better (classified) information then me. I guess I was wrong...

Kerry said we should cut troop levels by 30,000 troops in Iraq by the end of the year. Um, Senator, there are currently 170,000 troops in Iraq, up from 140,000 prior to September. The Pentagon quietly raised the number of troops in Iraq for the October and December elections by overlapping the OIF-4 rotations against the OIF-3 rotations. That overlap ends in the first quarter of 2006, so the US was already going to reduce forces by 30,000 troops. This is so typical of Kerry. I think he has CEO disease; he gets a briefing and thinks it is his idea. “Bush should be doing exactly what he..er..is doing”, he'll thunder.

Meanwhile, McCain gave a speech to counter Kerry, saying we needed more troops in Iraq. Well, I agree with that, I just don't think they should be US troops, they should be Iraqi troops. We're training 7-10,000 new troops a month in Iraqi. Those troops are about 3-4 times more effective then our own troops; after all, its their country. So by the end of the year, when we rotate those 30,000 troops home, there will be more then enough Iraqi troops to replace them. By August, we'll have 270,000 Iraqi troops in Iraq, which compares well to the previous regime which had more troops, but they were inadequately trained. Saddam didn't even provide food or uniforms for half of them.

As for how I caught this when the press missed it, remember how I suspected that we were planning on reducing forces in Iraq in 2006? Then there was this announcement by the DOD of the new troop rotations? And then I noticed that the UN mandate has been extended through 2006, but that the Iraqis have the ability to cut it short if they want?

At first, I thought maybe I was getting it wrong, so I talked to a couple of people and they just sort of shrugged. Then I watched a newsreport by the internal DOD news channel saying it and I thought “aha!”. Finally, I asked the DOD directly and they confirmed it:

The story about the 92,000 troop rotation for 2006 seems to be implying that we'll be drawing down our troops in 2006.

This briefing makes it more explicit.

Can I have confirmation that this is true? This seems like pretty big news.

We can confirm that the plan is, in fact, to reduce the size of Coalition Forces in country in 2006. It's big news inasmuch as the Iraqis are increasing the size and strength of their footprint and, by the same token, we're reducing ours.

As we've stated in the past, rotation planning is flexible, conditions-based and operationally focused; it is not based on timetables or political pressures. The coalition is committed to assisting Iraq while Iraq works to achieve political stability and the maintenance of a secure environment.

How was I able to read the tea leaves that the New York Times and the Washington Post missed? Simple. I've always understood the war plan.

The war plan, for good or ill has never been to occupy the country. It's always been the plan for the Iraqis to provide security in their own country. In other words, do the exact opposite of what we did in Vietnam:

• Instead of installing a puppet government, we've spent 2.5 years building up an Iraqi one.
• Instead of having 500,000 troops and 60,000 casualties from trying to take over Vietnam, we've 170,000 troops but only 2,000 casualties because we weren't trying to take over.

In other words, instead of going into Iraq and trying to run the country like we did in Vietnam (Step 1 install a Christian leader in a Buddhist country? What idiot thought up that one?), we've done the minimal amount of work to keep Iraq in a holding pattern until the Iraqis could run it.

It's pretty simple really, and it's actually not a bad plan. I think the US has learned the lessons of Vietnam and Somalia; let people run their own countries. The main mistake we made in this whole war was thinking that it wouldn't take most of 2004 to train the Iraqi Police and Army. It just takes time to do that kind of thing.

Once you understand the war plan, the minute the number of Iraqi Police started to pass the number of US troops, it was obvious we were going to be able to draw our own troops down. With the 210,000 Iraqis, plus the 170,000 US troops, there are 380,000 troops working towards security in Iraq, the most we've ever had. So I was looking for troop reductions, and I found it. By August, with 270,000 Iraqi troops and 92,000 US troops, 3/4 of the troops in Iraq will be Iraqis, and the US may not be needed at all. Hence the provision in the 2006 mandate to end the presence of coalition forces early if need be.

So there you go, spread the word. Be sure to read Defining the Victory Conditions so you can realize that our pulling out troops is a sure sign of success in Iraq, and you can read: Route Irish has Improved if you want to see how much more effective the Iraqis are then our own troops. For one thing, not only do all Iraqis speak the language, but they can recognize someone who doesn't belong the same way a Flagstaff resident can see a Phoenician a mile away. (Phoenician being a tourist from Phoenix.)

Update:

Welcome Instapundit readers. As you can see, I originally noticed this on the 12th of November, so its been a weird week for me listening to the debates about all this. Looks like the media has caught up though. Here's an interesting interview with the Marine commander in Fallujah, he says the Iraqis could take over there in 6 months.

Update #2: Wow, Glenn linked me twice. Mudville Gazette has looked at the same stuff here. Like me, he concludes that troop reductions may be coming but they may not be down to 92,000.

For new readers to my blog if you like what you see, you may be interested in:

Brookings which is all my coverage of the Brookings Institution's Iraq Index reports.

Debunking Iraq Myths where I lay out a moderate position on Iraq.

Friction where I discuss “Why Iraq?”

Bush Lied, People Died, Er, Kinda where I talk about that meme.

Ground Truth are pieces that provide information on how the war in Iraq is going from either soldiers or Iraqis.

Warning, I do consider myself a moderate on the war. I don't think Bush was totally straightforward, I don't think he could be. I do think Iraq was necessary. All my foreign policy pieces are here.

Technorati Tags: Iraq, puppy

Here's chart of the number of troops we'll have in Iraq over the next few months:

Here it is in “Mainstream Media Fashion”, where I omit the first bar, so it looks like we're going to be dramatically pulling down the number of troops in Iraq:

So my readers all know that the DOD announced plans to reduce troops in Iraq in 2006. But nobody else does, which means I keep seeing pieces like this is the news. (Hat Tip to Jon).

It's not like I didn't try to get the word out, I sent several emails to some of the A-list bloggers to point this out. Like the mainstream media and our political leaders, it seems the blogosphere is more interested in screaming at each other then in knowing the truth.

Perhaps its not just the mainstream media that is aspiring to be professional wrestling, the blogs seem to be following the same path.

So now both the media and the blogosphere are surreal for me.

sigh

MSNBC on withdrawing troops from Iraq. Note the 60,000 number? Guess what 170,000-92,000 is?

Hat Tip: Defense Tech which has some other interesting links.

Remember, you heard it here first

Update: Here's another one from CNN, Hat Tip: Jihad Watch

Over at Black Iris a Jordanian website.

Murdoc also read the tea leaves, and he made a good point on the 92,000 number.

No Marines.

However, I think he's missing that some of the Marines currently in Iraq were already part of OIF-4, so they'll be staying. But he's right it that we shouldn't take that number too seriously folks. Without the complete rotation plan, we won't really know. Besides no plan survives...

I still think:

• Drawdown in January after the elections as a side effect of the existing rotation plan.
• Drawdown somewhere between August and November. Murtha may be right, because I know for a fact that we've planned the war to coincide with US Political Timetables. In fact, I said so on November 3rd, long before the Pentagon announcement.

Hat Tip: Defense Tech who was one of the first people to link to my original piece about troop reductions.

The White House has published its Strategy in Iraq. This is the plan they've been working off of since 2003.

If you're a long time reader though, nothing in this document will be news.

Nice to be vindicated though. :-)

The document leaves out Why Iraq? though, which I've covered here.

Here are some interesting tidbits about the Administration's viewpoint. They see 3 sorts of enemies in Iraq:

• Rejectionists are the largest group. They are largely Sunni Arabs who have not embraced the shift from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to a democratically governed state. Not all Sunni Arabs fall into this category. But those that do are against a new Iraq in which they are no longer the privileged elite. Most of these rejectionists opposed the new constitution, but many in their ranks are recognizing that opting out of the democratic process has hurt their interests.

• Saddamists and former regime loyalists harbor dreams of reestablishing a Ba’athist dictatorship and have played a lead role in fomenting wider sentiment against the Iraqi government and the Coalition.

• Terrorists affiliated with or inspired by Al Qaida make up the smallest enemy group but are the most lethal and pose the most immediate threat because (1) they are responsible for the most dramatic atrocities, which kill the most people and function as a recruiting tool for further terrorism and (2) they espouse the extreme goals of Osama Bin Laden – chaos in Iraq which will allow them to establish a base for toppling Iraq’s neighbors and launching attacks outside the region and against the U.S. homeland.

The administration sees the war in Iraq to function along three tracks:

Political: Isolate, Engage, Build Security: Clear, Hold, Build Economic: Restore, Reform, Build

What I notice is that all 3 tracks have “Build” as a major element. The mistake the White House made in the Iraq war was overestimating how functional Iraq was as a state.

Also, as I predicted but haven't written about much yet:

As security conditions improve and as Iraqi Security Forces become increasingly capable of securing their own country, our forces will increasingly move out of the cities, reduce the number of bases from which we operate, and conduct fewer patrols and convoy missions.

Basically that means less Marines, and more airplanes. That is, we'll have an Air Force base or something somewhere in Iraq, the Iraqis will go into a town, we'll bomb the terrorists. That kind of thing. That means less deaths from IEDs. As I've pointed out for a long time, the insurgents switch to IEDs is a losing strategy. In fact, I think its worth another blog post.

Note that despite the long description of card game rules, this post is really about Iraq.

During the holidays, my family likes to play this card game called Canasta. If you've ever played Canasta though, this game bears little resemblance to the real game. Supposedly, the variation we play is called Mexican Canasta except the rules have no resemblance to what everyone else calls Mexican Canasta.

So I just call it Wetter Family Canasta, especially since my wife claims that the rules change every time (they don't we just remember a few during play, honest).

Full rules are in the extended entry, but there's a few points you need to know:

• Canasta is one of those games where you can pick up the previous player's discard. The catch in Canasta is that you pick up the entire discard pile if you can use the top card. Since its a “collection” game, picking up the pile is a good thing.
• Red 3's are basically free points, while black 3's are considered the “perfect discard” because they aren't worth anything. So not only can't you use a black 3, but whoever is after you can't pickup the pile if you discard a black 3.

The nice thing about playing Canasta over the holidays is that basically its something to do while you all sit around and visit while having coffee and pie. It gives you something to do then between the first feast (the turkey) and the second feast (the desserts).

After playing this game for a couple of years, my wife, who is quite competitive, asked me “How come I keep losing at Canasta?”. I asked her: “Where are you sitting?”

See, long ago I figured out that where you sit at the table determines how well you do. Sitting right after my mom or dad means you'll lose. The worst is right after my Mom, because she loves to pick up the pile, which means you'll be staring at black 3's all night. My dad is the same, but even when he doesn't pick up the pile, he'll sacrifice his own collections in order to discard stuff you won't be able to use.

So don't sit after my mom or my dad. If at all possible in fact, arrange it so my dad sits after my mom. Then my dad will be looking at black 3's all night. In fact, the perfect spot is just before my mom. Then whenever she run's out of black 3's and there's not much in the discard pile, you can feed her a convenient discard.

Also, never let my dad sit across from my mom if there are a lot of people either in case you end up having teams.

So in other words, long before you make the small tactical decisions about which card to discard and which to play, you've already determined how well you can do by the strategic decision about who you've sat next to.

Which brings us to Iraq. I've been saying for awhile now that the decision by the insurgents to use car bombs, IEDs and suicide bombings was a war-losing move. While tactically it seems to be good (most of the troops killed in Iraq are from IEDs), strategically its a disaster. Actions in war need to accomplish something. Ultimately, that's the difference between a terrorist and a soldier. Both may kill civilians, but soldiers do so accidentally in pursuit of a goal.

Terror is not a goal. That's the strategic mistake the insurgents and terrorists ultimately make. Sure, it gets your cause noticed on the news, but only for one day. To get anywhere in war, life or politics, you need to hold territory. A mine field or IED merely denies territory, and generally from both sides. There's a fundamental flaw in their strategy in that they're assuming that our side _needs that territory.

The thing is though, long term, we don't. From the White House document released this morning:

As security conditions improve and as Iraqi Security Forces become increasingly capable of securing their own country, our forces will increasingly move out of the cities, reduce the number of bases from which we operate, and conduct fewer patrols and convoy missions.

To some extent, in order for an IED to be effective, we have to cooperate. If we don't drive down the street where the IED is implanted, it can't be effective. Long term, we're going to be spending more and more time isolated on our bases in Iraq, leaving patrols and such to the Iraqi Police. As that happens, it's just like going “around” a mine field. If we fly “over” the places we're driving through now with a helicopter, no IED attack.

So the insurgents are basically sitting right after my mom at the Canasta table. They can play their hearts out, but ultimately, they're going to be looking at black 3's all night.

Come to think of it, fighting the US in Iraq has been a “sit after my mom” strategy for Al Quida in general...

(Wetter Family Canasta rules follow)

Technorati Tags: Iraq, Canasta

Over at American Future someone has gone through all the New York Times editorials to see what their pre-Bush Iraq policy looked like.

So its not that the NYT didn't want us to invade Iraq, its that they didn't want Bush2 to invade Iraq...

Technorati Tags: Iraq

We're 12.5% done in Iraq. Though we need to pick up the pace a bit. At one province every 4 months, it would take us 4 years to leave.

Hat Tip: Murdoc Online which is also where I got the picture.

Technorati Tags: Iraq

Rich Bloggy Goodness Right Here

Excerpt:

Now, see, Allah is definitively not down with gayness, but when you're chillin' in the garage with your fellow Jihadis, sometimes you get a little frisky. This is normal. The good news is, Mohammed never said anything specific about not jabbing each others' poo, if you know what I mean. Just remember, though; don't go falling in love with another man, because, well, that's totally gay.

Over at Radio Free Europe

Hat Tip: Terrorism Unveiled which had an interesting article pointing out that only 69 people voted for George Washington, etc.

My wife asked me this morning, here was my answer:

• It's the exact center of the Middle East, it borders 6 other countries in the Middle East, and ALL of the problem countries.
• For every problem in the Middle East, it was on our flank.
• It wasn't a home run on any problem, but it was a double for about 7 different ways. 7 doubles will win a game more than one home run.

Of course, I've said that before, in a more long-winded version here.

Or in my case Kurdish

Take the test at the link above and see which parties you like in the Iraqi election!

There was a free and democratic election in the Middle East!

A historic moment.

But the news yawns.

Because it's not news, its merely important.

I'm telling ya, Nightly News and Professional Wrestling? Same thing.

Since you won't be able to get decent reporting from our media, here's some stuff worth reading from others:

Hammorabi who's never been much of coalition fan makes too comments:

1. However the main players which make the elections to succeed are the Iraqis who voted by no for terrorism.

2. One of the most noticeable things is that some of the Sunni leaders like Mithal Al-Alowsi party (the Party of Iraqi Nation) achieved quite considerable amount of voices in the Shiite regions. It was reported that it achieved the third place in Karbala where there are 100% Shiite population and many Shiite parties. This is a good indication that many Iraqis are not looking for the faith of the person but for his program. This is the issue for many like Al-Alowsi, Sadoon Al-Doliami, Sheikh Mahmood Al-Eisawi and many other Sunni Iraqis who are against terrorism.

Austin Bay has some good links.

So does Pajamas Media who paid 8 Iraqis to report on the elections (imagine that! Asking the people who live there what they think? Weird!)

Juan Cole says:

There has been no improvement since Saddam fell or things are worse: 60%

Uh, that's not what I got, even if you lump the “same” category with the “worse” category because you're a half-empty kind of person:

I didn't do a pie chart for this one, but Juan says:

Things are going badly in Iraq today: 52% (30% say “very badly”).

Actually Juan, you should round up to 53%, then it's: 44% Good, 53% Bad, 3.2% “hard to say”. But you're definitely a half-empty sort of person...I'm not sure Americans would poll this well, most Americans tend to be kind of pessimistic...

Juan says:

It was wrong for the US to invade Iraq: 50%

Poll says: It was right for the US to invade Iraq, 46%. It's pretty amazing that 46% of the people polled thought some other country was “right” to invade their country, don't you think?

Juan goes on to say:

(Only 19% say it was “absolutely right” for the US to invade)

Yeah, and 28% felt the US was “somewhat right”. You want certainty? About someone invading your country and occupying you?

Juan points out:

Oppose presence of Coalition troops in Iraq: 65%

But conveniently fails to mention that only 26% think they should leave now. In fact, 98.7% of the Iraqis think the Coalition should leave eventually. Duh! Even Bush thinks that.

Juan says:

Iraq needs a government made up mainly of religious leaders: 48%

Except that table isn't that clear. Does that mean a leader who is a priest, or a leader who goes to church? I think something like 75% of Americans polled think a politician should believe in God. That's why there's always photo-ops of Kerry going to Mass. For that matter, 49% think that a government made up mainly of military leaders would be good, but 90% agree with a democracy. That question was actually agree/disagree on a lot of government topics, so Juan's drawing conclusions I don't think are supported here.

When I first posted these pie charts for the poll, I left off some of the negative stuff because I figured the media would spin it on their own. That's what Juan's doing here, but frankly, there was plenty more negative stuff in the poll that didn't require half-full/half-empty spin. He should have dug a little deeper.

Oh well, I never expect much from lefty professors anyways.

No doubt, somehow, despite the fact that an Arab nation had a real election somehow the results (when they come out sometime between now an January) will be spun by the glass-half-empty-crowd to be somehow bad for the US.

Here's my answer:

• A higher percentage of people voted in Iraq than in the US.
• It doesn't matter who they voted for, they voted. I might vote for a Democrat for Governor. I might not. Unless you know the details about each candidate, you have no idea what it means.
• Iraq is a religious nation. Expecting them to vote like say, Californians is just dumb. Expect them to vote like someone in the Bible Belt.

Here are my predictions:

• Some Religious candidates will do well. Iraq will end up being more conservative then California or New York, but not as conservative as 1876 Boston (used to be illegal in Massachusetts to have your business open on Sunday), perhaps slightly more conservative then Alabama, but not much.
• Some Secularists will do well. Not as many as we'd like, but enough to ensure that Iraq will be mostly secular.
• The Kurds will do well in the north.
• Some Shia will have voted for Sunni and vice versa. News Flash: Sometimes Blacks vote for Whites and vice versa. Voters are always smarter then the politicians think. Competence trumps incompetence every time in a secret ballot.

Here's my long term prediction for Iraq:

• Iraq will neither agree with the US 100% of the time, nor make us happy 100% of the time. That is, they'll be just like every other ally or enemy we've ever had.
• All in all, a free Iraq will be better for the world then a Saddam Iraq.
• Iraq will prove that people in a democratic society are always smarter more reasonable then their leaders.

From over at the Brookings Institute:

The jury remains out over whether democracy in the Arab world would yield governments more supportive of U.S. interests, produce populaces less sympathetic to jihadists or prevent al Qaeda from pursuing its goals through terrorism. At stake is more than presidential rhetoric. Democracy promotion has become the sole and defining element of President Bush's long-term counterterrorism approach. That is why the administration has an obligation to go beyond assertion and demonstrate convincingly that its one-dimensional strategy will yield the desired result. If it cannot, the administration risks putting all of our security eggs in the wrong basket.

Yeah, those light-brown people might not always agree with us, so we should go back to the good old days of dictatorships.

We know how well that worked after all:

Don't bother reading the editorial, its long on criticism but doesn't present any alternatives. I only linked to it to be polite.

From over at the Brookings Institute:

The jury remains out over whether democracy in the Arab world would yield governments more supportive of U.S. interests, produce populaces less sympathetic to jihadists or prevent al Qaeda from pursuing its goals through terrorism. At stake is more than presidential rhetoric. Democracy promotion has become the sole and defining element of President Bush's long-term counterterrorism approach. That is why the administration has an obligation to go beyond assertion and demonstrate convincingly that its one-dimensional strategy will yield the desired result. If it cannot, the administration risks putting all of our security eggs in the wrong basket.

Yeah, those light-brown people might not always agree with us, so we should go back to the good old days of dictatorships.

We know how well that worked after all:

Don't bother reading the editorial, its long on criticism but doesn't present any alternatives. I only linked to it to be polite.

Go Read This

Normally, I'd blow this off. But reading:

The Americans, responding to concerns that Iran's meddling might have gone too far reportedly arrested Bayan Jabr, Iraq's minister of Interior.

Maybe we'll only have to redo the Baghdad elections?

Gee, if only I'd finished that “cheat-proof elections” thing I was working on...

Jan in the comments on this piece asks:

Will Sunnis and Shiites go to war? from an Arabic newspaper.

None of that breathless anticipation “Let's have a war!” that you see in the Western media.

A Citizen of Mosul is a teenage Iraqi girl who writes today and yesterday about her uncle getting shot by US troops.

I've been reading her blog for awhile. She was a sunny, optimistic girl, and she was generally willing to give the US troops the benefit of the doubt.

Today she writes:

Or just because a scared boy holding a gun hiding behind his Stryker and protected from the law, this what changed him from a human to a monster.

GO HOME AMERICANS, WE DON'T WANT YOU HERE

It's very discouraging to read this today, because for a long time now I've been following her blog. Even though she lived in one of the most dangerous places in Iraq, even though her house got searched (and she wrote about how humiliating it was), she was willing to see our point of view.

Shooting her uncle was obviously a mistake. It's turned a potential ally into an enemy. Why it happened, we'll probably never know.

Of course, things like this are inevitable in war. In fact, if the MSM didn't have their head up their butt, they'd actually be covering more of this stuff. (They're actually incompetent in both directions.) If they were fair, they'd also cover not only when US troops shot the wrong guys, but when the insurgents deliberately killed people. In fact, I'd love to see a score card:

Iraqis accidentally killed by US Troops: 500 Iraqis deliberately killed by insurgents: 10,000

I think the media bias is bad because the way I see it, if the media is always going to portray the soldiers in the worst possible light, there is no reason for them to try harder to act well.

Similarly, if they always portray the insurgents in the best possible light, there is no reason for them to act well either.

According to Osama Bin Laden, he considered America a paper tiger because we're unwilling to accept both our own casualties nor that of our enemies. There's some truth to that. Osama doesn't care how many Iraqis he kills, even if we do.

The ideal for me would be for both sides to have every action scrutinized in immense detail, to see something like the scorecard above. What we're trying to do in Iraq is hard, and we have to do it with imperfect people. The reality of an occupation is that an accidental shooting by an Iraqi policeman is a tragedy; an accidental shooting by a US soldier is a call to jihad.

But the media aren't making it any easier. The media could very easily break the cycle of violence in Iraq where: insurgents attack soldiers; soldiers fight back; innocents get killed; insurgents recruit from the families. If they just portrayed the true viciousness of the insurgents, if they reported the ideals that led us into Iraq as well as the baser motivations, I wouldn't have to worry about a civil war in Iraq this morning.

Nor would I have to worry about our soldiers degenerating into barbarians themselves. They say you always turn into your enemy...

sigh Time to send another care package to Iraq I think...

Jon may not agree, but I think good actions have ripples. I think bad actions have ripples to. I've seen that happen in my own life, and the life of others.

Sometimes its obvious how bad actions cause other bad actions, sometimes its not.

I really haven’t been motivated to blog lately.

Part of it is because I’m two months into a 3 month extended business trip. So I’m not at home, blogging isn’t comfortable, I have a new job with lots to do, my last job screwed me on vacation pay, yadda, yadda, yadda.

But mostly, its because its just a waste. I’ve reviewed the numbers.

Is Iraq better or worse then it was the last time I blogged?

Worse.

Is it as terrible as the media portrays?

No.

Have we “lost the war”?

No.

So what’s bugging me is that no doubt many of the people who keep stupidly hoping that we’ll lose the war to “teach Bush a lesson” will take my posting this as a rallying cry. See! We told you!

Yeah, well fuck you. You’re a moron if you think that “Bush should be taught a lesson” at America’s expense.

Oh well, on to the analysis.

Here’s my famous chart (click to popup):

So what is this telling me?

IED deaths are pretty much steady state.

What’s more disturbing is the trend in deaths from hostile fire (bullets in the chart).

Our soldiers are mixing it up more directly with the Iraqis these days. Now I last posted about the war in April (about March, because you can’t post about a month until its over, duh). That seemed to be a low point in casualties and perhaps a high point in our conduct of the war. Kind of interesting really, because it was a low point for casualties in 2005 as well. Could the weather have more of an effect on the war then our desires and wishes in Iraq? One wonders.

Showing the total killed each month shows that while the war is worse then March it’s not really any worse then its been in the past:

September was 8th out of 21 months.

The number of wounded sort of bears out my theory that the soldiers doing more fighting (based on the assumption that IEDs tend to kill or miss entirely so woundings rise when our troops are doing more direct fighting) :

So September has the highest number of wounded in Jan 2005, but only 8th for soldiers killed.

The real sign that things have turned for the worse though is that the Pentagon started increasing the number of troops in Iraq starting in July after they’d been slowly drawing them down:

Meanwhile, the number of Iraqi troops has been steadily increasing as well:

At this point, Iraqi troops outnumber US troops by over 2 to 1:

Meanwhile, one bright point, September had the 3rd fewest number of Iraqi policemen killed.

So what does it all mean?

Basically, I’m not seeing a huge amount of progress in Iraq. Whatever progress we’re making in Iraq is glacial. We seemed to be making steady progress until about July, but as the Iraqis squabbled in the legislature instead of knuckling down and working out their problems, things began to deteriorate.

The Pentagon’s answer to this implies that basically, its not our job to fix Iraq, its the Iraqis:

The Iraqi’s agree:

They also think Al Qaeda/Bin Laden is a putz:

So what I’m thinking at this point is the following:

Iraq is never going to be as peaceful as the white bread suburban neighborhoods most of you live in. If its as peaceful as say, Compton, Iraq will have been a success. That would be 1563 deaths a month in Iraq given the relative sizes of Compton and Iraq. (Yes, I’m making the analogy between urban gang related violence in Los Angeles, and well, urban “militia related” violence in Baghdad. Deal with it.) So if you’re expecting Iraq to ever be bunny rabbits and flowers, its not going to happen. This past year, Iraq has gone from 1.07 Comptons to a high of 2.18 Comptons in July, dropping to 1.86 Comptons in August. That sucks. It sucks for the Iraqis most of all.

But the media can’t have it both ways. Either Compton and Iraq are both in a state of civil war, or neither are. So all the yelling and screaming about Iraq being in a civil war in the media is well, election crap. They’re in something, “civil insurrection” or just “chaos”, or “random violence” perhaps, but not “civil war”.

Meanwhile, I’m disappointed with the lack of progress in Iraq. While I’m somewhat disappointed in our government, I’m mostly disappointed in the Iraqis.

Yet its not entirely their fault. If Bush has made any mistake in Iraq, I think it was how they conducted the elections in the first place. As someone put it, they didn’t have an election, they had a poll.

The proverb goes “all politics is local”. When it comes down to it, people vote and care about the things that most directly affect them. I’m guessing here, but I think that we structured the elections the way we did because we were worried about corruption. I have to wonder if we wouldn’t have done better with an Iraqi legislature full of Chicago Aldermen willing to deal in order to get the trash picked up on their street instead of the collection of party hacks we have now. That is, we have party stalwarts when we need people who are willing to deal with each other.

As for whether we should have gone into Iraq in the first place, its still too soon to tell. Saddam may not have gotten along with Al Queda, but he got along quite well with a number of terrorist organizations (he issued press releases!). He may not have had an “arsenal of WMD”, but he was definitely playing around with the idea. If we pull it off, it was a great decision. If we don’t, well then, I ask the critics what should we have done instead? If the Democrats want to criticize, then they need the alternative to “we should have sat on our thumbs”.

Meanwhile here’s some perspective:

Animated History of the Middle East

Iraq meets Steve Jobs

That's pretty much my entire blog.

Friggin' Hilarious

is a completely different country it seems.

Great Article by Micheal Totten

Troops before the surge: 140,000

Troops in Iraq right now: 140,000

We didn’t send more troops to Iraq, we sent more troops to Baghdad.

What’s really going on: Rumsfeld is out, Gates is in, old General is out, Petreaus is in.

That is, we really just changed how we were fighting the war.

Short and sweet version of my opinion so far.

War is about the unexpected. You can beat Petraeus about not meeting all of the “benchmarks”, but what really happened is that a lot of positive things happened in Iraq that no one expected, and that no one has any way to measure.

That's a good thing. Petraeus is 'da man, he's done a tremendous job in Iraq.

Don't take my word for it, go read some of the articles over at the Brookings institute, publisher of the Iraq Index I used to read religiously. According to him:

...most categories of killings are down 20 to 50-percent since the surge began. This is true for overall civilian fatalities from all causes, including victims of extrajudicial killings (basically reprisal assassinations), murders, and for the most part, car- and truck-bombing victims.

Trip Report-PDF

Table showing the dramatic improvement in military momentum

Petraeus Doesn't Cook the Books

However it is true what the Democrats say; that the Iraqi legislature sucks. They're almost as incompetent as...drumroll...Congress.

Which isn't surprising. Our fatal flaw in Iraq was conducting a census instead of an election. What we really need to do is fire the existing crop of guys, and hold a whole bunch of elections focused not on what race/party you are (Sunni/Kurd/Shia) but whether you can get shit done.

Now if only we could do that in this country...

Of course, that's just a fantasy on my part. I think the senators are right though that we need a “diplomatic surge” to go along with the troop surge.

As always, a magazine-article length essay, but well worth it about the real reason the surge is working.

40 Second Boyd and the Big Picture

Video about them here

Here's a cool picture

Here's McCain on ForeignPolicy "An Enduring Peace Built on Freedeom":

So it should make anyone nervous that Petreus is leaving Iraq, even if its to accept more responsibility for the Mideast as a whole.

Here's his Wikipedia Bio.

Which gives him mixed reviews based on my reading:

Odierno's tenure as 4th ID commander in Iraq and his unit's actions there have subsequently come under criticism from several sources. Many officers from the 1st Marine Division were critical of 4th ID's belligerent stance during their initial entry into Iraq after the ground war had ceased and the unit's lack of a 'hearts and minds' approach to counter-insurgency. Several authors have echoed similar criticisms shared with them by other military personnel in the theater. In his unit's defense Odierno strenuously argued that the situation was that such an approach was required and subsequent insurgent activity justified the actions of 4th ID as former insurgents began to join the fight against Islamic extremist groups, such as al-Qaeda, in 2007.[4][5] As a general also stated in Rick's "Fiasco: the american military adventure in Iraq": "What the 4th ID did was criminal."

In his second Iraq deployment, Odierno served as the commander of Multi-National Corps-Iraq. During Operation Iraqi Freedom 06-08, he and General David Petraeus were the primary architects of the troop “surge” into Baghdad. Running counter to previous strategies that sought to draw down the American presence in Iraq, Petraeus and Odierno increased the U.S. presence in Iraq to 20 Brigade Combat Teams from the previous level of 15.[6] The “surge” deployed troops to many parts across Iraq, concentrating in and around Baghdad and culminating in the Iraqi led Operation Fardh al-Qanoon that began in March of 2007. In conjunction with his counterpart in the Iraqi Army, Lieutenant General Abud Qanbar, the push into Baghdad included the establishment of dozens of Combat Outposts and Joint Security Stations throughout the city. Capitalizing on the initial success of Fardh al-Qanoon,[7]Odierno then launched Operation Phantom Thunder just north of Baghdad in the Diyala, Babil, and Salah-ah-Din provinces as well as just to the west in the Al-Anbar province. Forcing many of Baghdad’s extremists from the capital, Odierno sought to root out extremist influences around the city and initiated Operation Phantom Thunder in June of 2007.

So bad thing is that his first tour he was too heavy handed. Second tour, he was partners with Petreus. Hmm...

The Weekly Standard says that Odierno is Patton to Petreus' Eisenhower:

As is well known, General Petraeus oversaw the writing of a new counterinsurgency doctrine before being sent to Iraq. But the doctrine did not provide a great deal of detail about how to plan and conduct such operations across a theater as large as Iraq. It was Odierno who creatively adapted sophisticated concepts from conventional fighting to the problems in Iraq, filling gaps in the counterinsurgency doctrine and making the overall effort successful.

So that goes along with the "learned better" theory. Here's a briefing he did back in January, though you'll want to download the slides first. For a real treat, alternate between slide 2 and slide 4. He says some things that indicate he "gets it":

By reversing and reducing the cycle of terror through tough fighting and immeasurable sacrifice, coalition and Iraqi security force were able to earn the trust and cooperation of Baghdad citizens. While acknowledging the risks, coalition force in Anbar seized upon Iraqi discontent with al Qaeda's brutality, and planted the seeds for what is now a burgeoning bottom-up reconciliation effort that is rejecting extremism. In June, with the full surge in place, we initiated Operation Phantom Thunder, a corps-level offensive operation focused on the Baghdad Belts to defeat al Qaeda and extremists, deny enemy sanctuary, and interdict their command and control and logistics capabilities. With Phantom Thunder's success at disrupting the enemy, we launched Operation Phantom Strike in August to intensify pursuit of al Qaeda and extremists.

Q Some of the proposals by some of the candidates for president have talked about removing all of combat brigades from Iraq by the end of next year. Would you say that, given the strategy of the need to reinforce Iraqi units in the future, that you would be opposed to removing all combat forces in two years time?

GEN. ODIERNO: Well again, it depends first on what the environment is like, and so it's hard to make a prediction of what the environment is like. And so what I would say is for us to continue to make progress and for the Iraqis to make sure that they -- the government is successful, that they become regional partners, that they become partners in transnational terrorism, we want to make sure they're successful. And so as the environment goes forward and we believe the conditions are set, then we can reduce our forces.

The timeline of that depends on many factors. The timeline depends on the threat, the capacity of the Iraqi security forces, the capacity -- the governance capacity that's established. And based on that, we'll make recommendations.

Obviously, it's a policy decision about how long we stay here. What I would do is make my best military recommendation.

It's hard for me, again, to look two years from now. I see us making progress. I see us being able to get down to 15 brigades by the summer. I'm very confident of that. If conditions continue along the way they are and the same they are, then I think we'll set the conditions for further reductions, but that will be based on all the factors I just laid out for you.

Q As General Austin comes in, could you just reflect a little bit about what you would tell him about the biggest challenges that you see ahead and any advice you'd give him on lessons that you've learned from your time here in Iraq?

GEN. ODIERNO: Well, I mean, I would just say -- is that the bottom line is that the number-one piece of advice that I've given him and he understands very fully -- he's a great officer who has great understanding of Iraq -- is -- it's about really protecting -- you know, the lesson we learned is, it's really about providing security for the people of Iraq, protecting the population. And what we have to do -- and the Iraqis understand that. And so his mission is to continue to do that as he turns more responsibility over to the Iraqis. And my advice to him would be to do that in a slow, deliberate manner, making sure that we don't make some of the mistakes we've made in the past -- turning it over too quickly, where we lose ground and give some of these extremist elements a chance. We don't want to give them another chance. We don't want to give them anything back. So I would say that's probably the biggest challenge.

It also is about developing jobs. We've got to help, work with the -- it's the government of Iraq's responsibility, ultimately, but here, in the next six to eight months, job development is going to become more critical, because security now is at a level where jobs become more important, economic development become(s) more important. So it's time for us to really focus on those areas, working with the government of Iraq to try to create as many -- and not -- I'm not talking about just jobs for jobs; I'm talking about sustainable jobs.

And we've been able to do that through micro grant programs, through establishing some vocational technical institutions. We are just beginning a program called the civil service corps. We've kind of modeled after the 1930s, when we were trying to put people to work in the United States after the Depression. And so we're trying to put some of those programs -- and we're working those with the government of Iraq, with their reconciliation cell.

So I would say those are the areas that are going to be hard to get started, and those will be -- those are the things that will be the most difficult for them to move forward with. But I believe they understand that, and they are ready to do that.

Here's a more recent briefing, where he answers my question directly, did you learn better? (March 3rd):

Q Sir, you were given credit for kind of changing your thinking about how to fight a counterinsurgency. And in effect, some people would say you got the memo when it comes to fighting a counterinsurgency. Could you talk a little bit about how your thinking changed and adapted through the past year? And also, as you kind of go into this next job, do you see the Army as well prepared to do what it needs to do in these kinds of fights?

GEN. ODIERNO: Yeah, well, I would just say, first, there's nothing like experience, being on the ground, getting to see it every day. The most important thing, though, is to try to take that and learn from it.

And who I learned from is a lot of my subordinate commanders, frankly, these great brigade commanders, battalion commanders, division commanders. We had a collaborative process and really had a chance to really talk about this very complex problem and try to come up with the best solutions to fix these problems. And that's what enabled us to really -- and in fact, that environment was what I credit with the change, the fact that we had an environment that we were able to have these discussions. No single person does any of this; it is a team effort, you know.

And so us working together as a group, us trying to come up with these right solutions, but it's also the -- you know, what I was most impressed about with our leaders is the time -- you know, everyone had been over there before. The time they spent back here, they used that to really do some introspective looks, as well as -- I did as well, continued to study the problem and what is the best solution as we move forward. And I think that helped us as we started to implement this counterinsurgency strategy. So I was very happy about that.

And you asked a second part.

Q What about the rest of the Army, as you kind of --

GEN. ODIERNO: Yeah. I would just say, first off, it's very important, as we move forward, we are full -- what I call full- spectrum. That requires us to operate across many different levels. We can't forget the lessons we've learned -- what I call irregular warfare. And we have to continue to make sure we emphasize that. And it's about adaptability in our thinking. It's about decentralizing, giving right and left limits, providing intent, decentralizing responsibility, and then allowing them to adapt to the problems and give them the resources to do that, whether it's a division, a brigade or battalion. We have to continue that thought -- it's about decentralized thinking, decentralized execution.

It's -- you know, our conventional forces are doing operations that our Special Operations Forces did in 2003. Our Special Operations Forces are moved higher up on their capacity to conduct their operations. And that's how -- we want to keep that, but still going back and being able to do some higher-intensity conventional operations if we can. I feel very comfortable that we can do that. But we can't ever completely go back to conventional. We've got to maintain this irregular warfare capacity that we have built into our Army.

Q Real quick, though. As you come back, do you see that there's a lot of pressure to kind of forget those lessons learned?

GEN. ODIERNO: No. No. In fact, I see us incorporating it every day. I mean, I see it incorporating in our schools -- both our officer, noncommissioned officer schools, in the academies I see it being incorporated. But there's still work -- more work in our training centers, national training centers, all being incorporated, Joint Readiness Training Center. We just have to make sure we don't stop, we continue moving forward, we continue thinking about it, we continue improving ourselves. That's the challenge I think we have.

Q How much does the retraining in counterinsurgency play into the increased dwell time? Because I know that the families are a big focus, but you have to retrain for these full spectrums. How large of a piece is that?

GEN. ODIERNO: Well, you know, it's one of the things we talk about all the time. You know – we’re deployed for a year, home for a year -- during that year you're not just sitting home every night. You're out training and doing a lot of other things and still spend some time away from home. That's why we want to extend that time. And also, you know, and we'd like to have a bit more time to reintegrate units, to spend more time on our equipment, to spend more time doing those kind of things.

So time does play a role in it. But we have been able to do it very well. Our equipment is continuing to perform very well under really tough conditions that we have to inside of Iraq. So I'm comfortable with what we're doing. More time would just give us a bit more -- reduce the risk, mitigate the risk a little bit more.

Bottom line, giving a specific number (like say, 16) in a war is just foolish.