Lets use Rumsfelds yardstick to tell if we are winning or losing in Iraq

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.bangkokpost.com/News/05Sep2006_news25.php


<snip>US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld once said that the measure of success in this war is whether the number of terrorists we are killing and deterring is larger than the number that the terrorists are recruiting. By this standard, we are doing badly.

In November 2003, the official number of terrorist insurgents in Iraq was given as 5,000. This year, it was reported to be 20,000. As Brig-General Robert Caslen, the Pentagon's deputy director for the war on terrorism, put it, ''We are not killing them faster than they are being created.''

We are also failing in the application of soft power. According to Brig-Gen Caslen, ''We in the Pentagon are behind our adversaries in the use of communication either to recruit or train.''

The manner in which we use military power also affects Mr Rumsfeld's ratio.

In the aftermath of 9/11, there was a good deal of sympathy and understanding around the world for America's military response against the Taliban.

The US invasion of Iraq, a country that was not connected to the 9/11 attacks, squandered that goodwill, and the attractiveness of the United States in Muslim countries like Indonesia plummeted from 75% approval in 2000 to half that level today. Indeed, occupying a divided nation is messy, and it is bound to produce episodes like Abu Ghraib and Haditha, which undercut America's attractiveness not just in Iraq, but around the world.

[savemefromdumbya]

1. Chickenhawks at work

if the current administration had served on the front line in the past and had experience of wargames (not from the couch with a beer and a pretzel) then they would not have done what they have done.