NEWS: "After temporary gains, Marines leave Iraqi cities"

[Bluebear]

Apparently all talk of smoking them out of their holes and having the insurgents on the run was only useful in *November*. Gee, why would November be so important in painting an optimistic picture?

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By Dan Murphy, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

......As the Marines involved in "River Blitz" pull out Anbar Province, a smaller US force is replacing them. One senior marine said he feels "guilty about leaving" Hit because he worries that insurgents will seek reprisals on residents in the absence of local police.

These sentiments echo the scaled-back expectations among troops on the ground. Gone is the talk about breaking the back of the insurgency that was floated before the November battle for Fallujah, where hundreds of militants were dug in and ready to fight.

Instead, the troops speak about a long, painstaking process of intelligence gathering, slowly constricting the corridor along the Euphrates river that has helped foreign militants move into Iraq from Syria and helped domestic militants move men and money.

And they speak about slowly finding a way to train and motivate Iraqi troops to replace the largely failed experiment with the Iraqi National Guard, which has been plagued by desertions, insurgent infiltration, and a refusal to fight because of fears of reprisals against their family members.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2326&e=9&u=/csm/20050303/ts_csm/ohitplan_1

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

1. Somebody should inform Hillary about the "failed insurgency".

And, see if her foot can be removed from her mouth.

[KansDem]

2. Haven't we learned anything?!

I remember attending a public forum sometime around 1970 where a Marine vet spoke about his experiences in Vietnam. I remember him saying that too often we (the Marines) would take a hill only to pull back afterwards. The VC, who was pushed off the hill would merely move back onto it after the Marines left, resulting in a kind of stalemate I remember sensing an air of frustration in his voice as he describe this tactic and his explanation that once we take a hill we should hold on to it so we could advance to the next hill, and so on. It seemed at the time his way of doing things would have ended the war sooner. Who knows?

Now, however, some 35 years later, I read that US troops in Iraq are repeating what appears to be the same mistake, contributing to the festering quagmire.

[Bluebear]

3. Not a thing, Kansas. nt