What's the point of this new offensive,if you can't control the territory

[Swede]

you've taken? Get a bunch of boys killed,then retreat back to Bagdad. Shades of Viet Nam.

http://news.google.ca/nwshp?hl=en&tab=wn&q=new%20offensive

[flamin lib]

1. Better quesiton, if they are hunting down the insurgents and

having some success, why not last week or the week before?

[Swede]

3. They admit foreign terrorists are pouring in.

They can't control the borders either. There are one billion Muslims and the tiny per centage that are willing to go to Iraq is still in the tens if not hundreds of thousands. Killing a few accomplishes nothing but recruit their relatives.

[emulatorloo]

5. deep down I believe they dont want to control anything

if they controlled the borders, then reconstruction could be completed and there would be no need to hang around there. and we could get the hell out.

as it is, things just keep getting blown up. Uh oh halliburton needs more money.

[kentuck]

2. Very good analogy...

We take a mountain today and give it back to the VC tomorrow. We wipe out a village of insurgents today, and give it back to them tomorrow. I've heard that they have come back into Fallujah? After we flattened almost the entire town...

[flamin lib]

4. The lesson of Vietnam is that you cannot defeat an insurgency

with it's base in the general population. Can't happen. If you attack the combatants you inflict so many collateral injuries that it ups the recruiting of more combatants.

In 'Nam we killed 3,000,000 locals and still couldn't gain control. It can't be done militarily.

You think we'd learn . . .

[teknomanzer]

6. Yeah Fallujah...

They had to burn the village in order to save it...