bush's New Way Forward is "Too Little Too Late"

[leftchick]

and everyone with a functioning brain, not blinded by oil profits knw it....

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2132575.ece

"This is too little, too late," said Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert at Queen Mary, University London, and the International Institute of Strategic Studies. "Studies have estimated that it would take a force of up to half a million to control Iraq, and adding 20,000 troops to the 132,000 already there is nowhere near enough."

A leaked memo from Stephen Hadley, Mr Bush's National Security Adviser, recently admitted that "we could not clear and hold" in previous counter-insurgency operations. In these, US-led forces would swoop on Baghdad neighbourhoods in succession, with the aim of expelling the militias and allowing the Iraqi authorities to gain control. But with much of the Iraqi security forces, particularly the police, in league with the militias, these areas reverted to militia control as soon as US troops left.

"General Casey was replaced in part because he wanted to concentrate on the training of Iraqi security forces," said Dr Dodge. "The White House wants to focus on gaining control over sectarian violence... But it is a false choice: if you don't have enough Iraqis you can trust to take over, the strategy collapses."

<snip>

Baghdad already knows what an all-out battle with the militia would be like: the Mahdi army has twice launched armed uprisings against coalition forces. During the last clashes, in which US helicopter gunships were used over Sadr City, the teeming Shia slum that is the militia's stronghold, the cost both to US troops and to Iraqi civilians was heavy. "I don't think they can dig the Mahdi army out of Sadr City, not without levelling it, like Fallujah," Dr Dodge said.

[Tom Joad]

1. Time to admit the US has lost, it is a good thing, and get the troops out.