Military Analysis-Intensified Combat on Streets Likely

[rodeodance]

Military Analysis
Intensified Combat on Streets Likely

By Thomas E. Ricks and Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, January 11, 2007; Page A01

President Bush's plan to send tens of thousands of U.S. and Iraqi reinforcements to Baghdad to jointly confront Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias is likely to touch off a more dangerous phase of the war, featuring months of fighting in the streets of the Iraqi capital, current and former military officials warned.

"The terrorists and insurgents in Iraq are without conscience, and they will make the year ahead bloody and violent," the president said last night in explaining his revised approach. "Even if our new strategy works exactly as planned, deadly acts of violence will continue -- and we must expect more Iraqi and American casualties."


VIDEO | Full Speech: President Bush appeals directly to the American people to support a renewed campaign to pacify Iraq.

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The prospect of a more intense battle in the Iraqi capital could put U.S. military commanders in exactly the sort of tough urban fight that war planners strove to avoid during the spring 2003 invasion of the country. The plan to partner U.S. and Iraqi units may compel American soldiers to rely on questionable Iraqi army and police forces as never before. And while the president insisted there is no timetable associated with the troop increase, military officials said sustaining it for more than a few months would place a major new strain on U.S. forces that already are feeling burdened by an unexpectedly long and difficult war.

Most of all, the White House's insistence on confronting all insurgents and militias, both Sunni and Shiite, may mean that the U.S. military will wind up fighting the Mahdi Army of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. That militia is estimated by some U.S. intelligence officials to have grown over the past year to about 60,000 fighters, and some in the Pentagon consider it more militarily effective than the Iraqi army. Fighting it could resemble on a citywide scale the sharp combat that took place this week along central Baghdad's Haifa Street, in which U.S. jets and attack helicopters conducted airstrikes just north of the U.S. Embassy in the protected Green Zone..........

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/10/AR2007011002581.html

[cornermouse]

1. Translation.

We're going to help one set of bad guys destroy the other set of bad guys (historical reference-see Taliban) and then we're going to declare them free and democratic. Neither of which will be factual in basis but since he only lives in la-la land, he won't care.