Changing Roles

There's been a recent noticable change in Iraq- that the American forces are now fighting border battles with insurgents, while Iraqi forces are maintaining security in the heartland of Iraq. Here's a list of the most recent operations in Iraq, and who's doing what, and where:

Operation Matador: Iraqi/Syrian border, American forces
Operation New Market: central Iraq, Iraqi forces with American support
Operation Thunder/Lightning: central Iraq, combined Iraqi and American forces
Operation Dagger: Iraqi/Syrian border, combined American and Iraqi forces
Operation Spear: Iraqi/Syrian border, combined American and Iraqi forces

That's the major offensive operations that have been undertaken the past few months in Iraq, and they all show a new dynamic for the war in Iraq. More and more often, the Iraqi forces are taking a major role in major offensives, which tells that they have troops that are capable of conducting themselves in independent action in large scale operations (ie; not police or SPECOPS ops) and are aquitting themselves well on the battlefield. This frees up the American and coalition forces to do more offensive operations along the Iraqi border regions (primarily the borders of the Anbar province), which have had the effect of disrupting the terrorists' communication and transportation lines throughout Iraq. It's no small suprise that alot of the terrorists leaders have been captured in this time span; we're catching them on the run.

I'd probably give a good estimiate for the amount of terrorists who've been captured to be around 3-5,000 in the past few months, and probably another 1,000-1,500 killed in combat. And all the terrorists have to show for it is hitting soft targets which create more blowback for them than anything else. And with Sunni Iraqis joining the gov't in larger and larger numbers, expect the Iraqi police and military forces to just grow, exponentially within the next year. With the growth and combat training of the Iraqi military, they'll take over more and more of the military situation in Iraq, allowing the coalition forces to act as a support role. It won't suprise me if the coalition forces end up being used to normalize the situations on the Iraqi borders- even if it means hitting the supply lines of the terrorists in Syria or Saudi Arabia.

The bottom line is that it's a race of time for the terrorists- they need to flood Iraq with fighters or else they'll eventually reach a choke-off point when the borders are effectively sealed, and the Iraqi gov't to build more and more military units. The problem for the terrorists is that they can only send in a limited amount of fighters, while the Iraqi gov't could concievably (and are) getting alot more soldiers than the terrorists can handle.

And the talk about America's will to win is not realistic. Even among the Americans who supported Kerry, there was a significant number of them who wanted him to stay in Iraq for the time being. And the polls that are out- saying that America is "increasingly against the war" are essentially left-wing polls [i]designed[/i] to tell you what the left wing newspapers or newsshows want you to think (ie; they're weighted, and have poor question choices). In the end, the Democratic party is also not giving any real discussions as to any alternatives to fighting the terrorists in Iraq- they're too busy calling Gitmo a Gulag and Auschwitz. They don't have the public backing them- and they really know it. I'd estimate about 65-75% of the country would like to see the US win and stabilize Iraq, within the next 2-5 years. Americans, ultimately, want to win.