Nov 20 2006
Are We Keeping Up With The Terrorists?
Possibly yes. As we know the Syrian border has been a source of concern regarding the influx of fresh martyrs. Now we have some numbers to compare in terms of whether we are keeping up with any rise in terrorist recruits. Today we learned at most 100 new jihadists cross the Syrian border every month, which equates to 1200 new recruits a month over that border alone. This year we have seen around 1100 terrorists killed or captured – which is good news:
“We don’t know how much they (Syria) are assisting this effort, but we don’t know how much they are trying to preclude it either,” U.S. military spokesman Major General William Caldwell told reporters in Baghdad.
“We still see foreign fighters coming, between 70 and 100 a month coming across the Syrian border into Iraq,” he said, figures in line with those of the past year.
He said U.S. and Iraqi soldiers had killed 425 foreign fighters so far this year and captured 670. Twenty percent of them were Syrian, a similar percentage Egyptian, and most of the rest from Sudan and Saudi Arabia.
By comparison, the training numbers for Iraqi police and army forces run around 2400-2900 per month. So the results are pretty clear. We are training Iraqi forces at ten times the rate the insurgency is flowing replacements across the Syrian border (albeit, this is only one border), and we are nuetralizing nearly 90% of what the Syrian border can replenish in a given year. So I would say the insurgency is falling well behind the power curve with nearly 300,000 Iraqi forces in training or deployed along with our 130,000 coalition members in place. So to answer Don Rumsfeld’s question on whether more terrorists are being created than we can deal with the answer is clearly no. We are ramping up forces much faster and they are barely retaining their already low numbers.
More disinfo from Strata. We are “training” members of private
militias more loyal to Iran and/or to ethnic group than to the
concept of “Iraq” and more importantly…they don’t like us!
And one more thing.Strata seems more concerned about Syria’s
border control than America’s.
Ken, where are you getting your information? You state that AJ is “wrong” yet you offer no sources for your information. I think you are simply making it up out of thin air.
Do you have any hard evidence that any of the numbers AJ mentioned were incorrect or do you simply wish they weren’t true?
The “private militias” are not a significant portion of the population. Don’t confuse number of dead with amount of support. Last numbers I saw were that 70% of Iraqis supported the government and want these militias disarmed. An increasing number of killings does not translate into either an increase in popular support or an increase in size of the groups, only an increase in the violence level of the groups. They could just as well be shrinking in numbers yet killing more as they get more desparate.
If you have 10 killings in one month and 100 killings the next, it doesn’t mean the number of people doing the killing is growing or that they are having any greater support among the population. It just means they are killing more.
For example: There are about 1300 murders a month in the US. Does that mean that murderers and gangs in the US have any significant degree of support among the population? Does that mean the US police is “training” murderers? If not, then why are police “training” murderers in Iraq but not in the US? Because it is in your interest for some reason to portray it that way.
Most of the killing in Iraq has nothing to do with US forces. Most US forces are not killed in direct combat, they are killed by roadside bombs …. boobytraps. Nearly all of the killing is Iraqis killing Iraqis. Why do you think removing US forces from their role of training Iraqi Army and Police will somehow make things better?
I honestly want to know how you reach those conclusions because they make absolutely no sense to me. The case you state is something along the lines of “If the Cripps and the Bloods are in a gang war and killing each other, then we should dissolve the National Guard for that state and stop training the police”.
You guys really are political Moonies…Strata and the Bushmoonies repeating this mantra for years saying “more killing means things are getting better…” utter robotic rationalizing only 30% of the population down from 60% believe anymore. “Evidence,”…we
have the evidence of three years of this crap as Iraq crumbles…
and the blood-laden crumbling unnoted by the amoral imperialists of Strata’s ilk…but just let him get your ear on his love for the unattached fetus!
The miltias were supposed to have been immediately disbanded
on Bush’s orders in 2003. And your amoral “see no evil, hear no evil”
about the violence having nothing to do with US troops? Rubbish!
Geneva Convention war rules related to occupation say it has everything to do with the troops’ failure to keep the peace.
As for the “training” the US doesn’t even trust many of the “trainees”
with minimal firepower required to fight, lest the guns be turned on
the troops themselves. Training “murderers?” Well,that depends on how you define it. They are training pre-dominantly milita members the government parties (ethnic groups, both Shia and Sunni,)cannot disband because they came to power using their loyalty and protection.
Ken:
moron.
Imperialists? Saddam killed more Mulsim than the Crusaders Ken and if you had your way he could wipe out half his population and control the world’s oil while he funded terrorism and it would be just fine and dandy with you.
“utter robotic rationalizing only 30% of the population down from 60% believe anymore.”
Oh, so it isn’t what is shown to be real that is important, it is what people “believe” to be real. So back when people believed the earth was flat, then that made if flat and when the majority believed it was round then it suddenly became round. I get it, getting more than 50% to believe something is true makes it true. Uhm, 50% of the population are below the median intelligence level too.
“The miltias were supposed to have been immediately disbanded
on Bush’s orders in 2003.”
Uhm, no, the old Iraqi Army was disbanded in 2003 under Bush’s order … or to be more exact, under the order of the administration’s man on the ground in Iraq.
“As for the “training†the US doesn’t even trust many of the “traineesâ€
with minimal firepower required to fight, lest the guns be turned on
the troops themselves.”
I see less evidence of that today than I saw say 2 years ago. Read Michael Fumento’s recent article. US units are now turning over all their gear to the Iraqis when they rotate out. As these units gain experiance, they are getting better. Also, the Sunnis are finally starting to join the police and army in numbers that were unseen before this summer. That will also have a stabilizing impact on those forces as they become more diverse in ethnicity.
But just because someone decides to crank up the violence doesn’t mean there are more of them or that they have any more resorces than they had before. In fact, it is often an indication of the opposite.
In 2001, 20 “foreign jihadis” killed 3000 people in New York and Arlington VA. Does that mean because we saw 3000 dead that somehow these jihadis were A: significantly larger in number in the US than they had been the year before and B: had any great amount of public support from the US population?
Another point, what Iraq is experiancing mostly is factional violence. The violence isn’t aimed at government troops, it is aimed from one faction to another. Every month that passes, these factions become weaker as their numbers are killed off. Every month that passes, the Iraqi army grows stronger in number, better experianced, better equipped and better trained. Each day you hear of 20 Sunnis found dead or 40 Shiites found dead … the Army is not experiancing casualty numbers of that magnitude. The factions are doing a good job of killing themselves off and in the long run are actually diminishing their influence as they will be increasingly unable to stand up against the central government forces due to casualties caused by fighting each other.
The real problem is that the existing Iraqi political leadership was intentionally chosen by the Iraqis to be weak so as not to pose a threat to any of the factions. THAT has to change. My gut instinct tells me that if someone strong doesn’t emerge soon, we are going to see a coup by the Iraqi Army.
Oh,my thigns are going so well, Crosspatch climaxes his comment with reference to an impending strong man coup!
Actually, Crossie, don’t take glory in the internecine “good job of killing themselves off” because the remaining Iraqis blame the US for
the killing ,justly, and will not be on our side ,whatever their numbers.
And the “factions” numbered in the hundreds of thousands in 2005,so don’t take much heart in those figures.
And the Sunnis joining the police are largely members of private militias too, so not much there-but even if they weren’t they
still would be anti-American.
And Crossie re your flat earth false analogy, you see when
scientific evidence increased to show otherwise the stats declined in its favor…just as the steadily increasing evidence of Iraq degradation
since 2003 has led to the steadily decreasing support for the war.
And of course throughout this whole period, the Stratas of Bushbizzaro world gave us phony proof the opposite was happening,
with many “turning points” thrown in for bad measure…
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HK21Ak03.html
Seems like the site needs a “realworld Iraq report for the day”
and this should provide a little balance.
Oh, and Strata, Rumsfeld’s query applied to terrorists worldwide,
not solely in Iraq. And of course leaked CIA reports and many others
have come to the opposite conclusion as you.
I ask for facts and you link to an opinion piece by someone whose claim to fame is being an investor?
Kenney claims “the site needs a “real world Iraq report for the day†and then links to an investor who writes a syndicated opinion piece as a real world report.
So heres a real world report for Kenney; My son Just returned from Iraq where he spent a year training the Iraq military, and he reports that they are doing just fine, he also reports that the news does not tell the truth to the American public about the success of the war!
Is that real world enough for you? It is for me, any questions?
Here’s the stuff you don’t hear reported in the MSM:
With corresponding drop in Coalition casualities.
Witch
Dissenting troops have been silenced, their anti-war blogs shut down.
Dissent also carries with it the possibility of being sent on dangerous missions.
Then we have the reality that many if not most US troops do not wander from their bases and have little congnizance of the horror
that is Iraq as a whole.
Still.the Feb. Zogby Poll of US troops showed most do not agree with your son. 73% gave December 2006 as the end date for success,
failing which they believed the mission should end.
Ken
Dissenting troops have been silenced? How did the top brass accomplish that, do you suppose? The last I heard the troops have lap tops and report to their families all the time. And since Witch’s son is back in the US, I seriously doubt he could be silenced.
And there you go again quoting Zogsby.
Do you spend all your time looking up irrelevant polls? Or do you draw them out of thin air?
Anti-war soldier bloggers were shut down in 2004. Soldiers at home can be returned to dangerous missions if deemed malcontents.
Crosspatch
Yesterday the single worst insurgent attack of the war. al Sadr
threatens to leave government if Maliki meets Bush.
Every point you attempted to make,unsucessfully at the time, has now been completely negated-and US troops are responsible for failing to keep basic order.