http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20050808-124515-9860rBy Martin Sieff
UPI Senior News Analyst
Published August 8, 2005
WASHINGTON -- If the U.S. Army and its Iraqi allies are killing as many insurgents as reports indicate they are per month, why is the insurgency intensifying instead of collapsing?
The Bush administration has been extremely reluctant to comply with the requests of a Congress controlled by its own party and issue detailed figures, or "benchmarks" on progress in combating the insurgency. But a study of the best figures and estimates available publicly suggests that the level of attrition reported and widely believed to be inflicted on the insurgents is in reality a lot less than the figures indicate.
For if the figures widely quoted are accurate, then the insurgency should be either collapsing already or, at the very least, shrinking dramatically in its resources and capabilities as its combat units and intelligence networks should have been suffering unsustainable attrition.
Retired Gen. Jack Keane, the former Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, attracted widespread publicity on July 25 when he told a meeting at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, as reported in The Washington Times, that more than 50,000 insurgents had been killed since the start of the insurgency. Afterwards, official administration spokesmen refused to confirm that figure.
...
Therefore, either the U.S. estimates of casualties inflicted on the insurgents are vastly inflated, or the insurgents are able to recruit within Iraq at a level that at the very least keeps track with their losses, and even if they are losing large numbers of experienced, highly trained cadres, they are able to replace them almost immediately with no discernible strain on their ability to sustain their current level of operations.
...
Most alarmingly of all, the figures suggest that the insurgency is able to operate and organize among a far wider cross section of the Sunni Muslim minority in Iraq than the widely quoted estimates have suggested, and that it enjoys a far broader popular support base in the Sunni community This, in fact, is the conclusion reached by several U.S. military analysts, speaking on condition of anonymity to UPI.
It appears, therefore, that the figures quoted are as accurate and reliable as it is possible for them to be in such a situation. But it is the conclusions to be drawn from them that make the grimmest reading.
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