BF2S Forums Juba, Iraqi insurgent sniper.

Nehil wrote:

airborne916 wrote:

it bad anough just shooting a man

Thats why im join the army in 2 years.

You realize what your saying and doing right?

u cant join the army for only 2 years... its 4 years now

Greenie_Beazinie wrote:

Esker wrote:

They wouldn't shoot him if they found him. He's only got to drop his rifle on the floor and he instantly becomes a civilian again. You watch the news and it's always mentioning some soldier is on trial for murder...
.

Aint that classified as surrending? I'd be a crime anyway then...

It all comes down to what kind of ROE the mission country has, but a none combatant is allways a none combatant. For intel it is allways best to try to capture them alive. If a soldier is on trial for murder clearly he/she must have done something above what is SOP. Example if you enter a building where you know a sniper has fired from and find him standing with a rifle in his hand, who can say that you did'nt see him as a treath and there for killed him?

Its silly to assume that the insurgents don't have thier asses.  This is war fellas.  Each side has its heros.  You have to respect your enemy..you don't have to like them.  The Mo of this Jube is consistent with the insurgents.  Spread fear, doubt, and second guessing.  I would assume he takes the shots he can when he can because the military would find him too quickly otherwise.  He hits when he has an excape route open.  If that means he can only wound a target the mission is still a success.   
As far as this being fake...it could be and it might not.  Depends.

ok whigg, let me get this right...your saying that the entire insurgent army is full of incompentent people?

What was your assignment in Iraq?

Where were you posted?

(lol i had a 4 paragraph responce to this but I hit the backpage button and lost it...not goin to write it again)

sfg-Ice__ wrote:

ok whigg, let me get this right...your saying that the entire insurgent army is full of incompentent people?

What was your assignment in Iraq?

Where were you posted?

(lol i had a 4 paragraph responce to this but I hit the backpage button and lost it...not goin to write it again)

Pretty much that is what I'm saying, and I bet all the other vets will agree.  They may be reasonably adept at sneaking around and planting bombs, but they are ABSOLUTELY USELESS in any kind of a stand up fight.  I have talked to quite a few troops who have been there, and haven't run into one yet who said, "Damn those guys gave us a hard time in a firefight once!"

I was an MP, and spent 18 months in Iraq doing just about any job you could conceive of for a Combat Support MP company.  For the first 6 months of the war we were attached to 3rd ACR and were the ONLY MP company in Al Anbar (which includes Ramadi and Fallujah, and is generally conceded to be the hottest province in Iraq).

I did road and city patrols in Fallujah, Ramadi, Northern, Southern and Western Al Anbar Province.  Did lots of Convoy escorts from our AO to Baghdad (including prisoner loads to Abu Ghraib), Tikrit, Anaconda, and Kuwait.  I have pretty much been everywhere in Iraq except North of Tikrit and East of Baghdad.

And since you may not be familiar with some of my earlier postings, I'll give you an idea as to who you are talking to:  While on Active Duty, I was an 11B with 2-14 IN, 10th Mtn, and have previous combat experience in Somalia, to include 3 Oct 1993, and a little light duty in Haiti in 1994.  After active duty I went into the MPs (because there isn't any infantry in the Army Reserves).  Since that time, I have spent more time on active duty in the Reserves than I did when I was supposed to be on active duty.  Overall, I have 12 years of service, not including a break between active and reserves.  My point, of course, is that I don't run into too many folks outside of special ops who have seen more shit than I have, so when someone who hasn't got a clue tries to tell me the score, you will excuse me if I don't accept what they say at face value.

oberst_enzian wrote:

i think you mean "everyone that's been there and made it back says more or less the same thing", don't you? go and say this to one of the many families who've lost someone over there, they miht have a story or two for you.

First of all, asshole, I know a few families, and most of them are proud of their troops and what they did.  As for the troops themselves, I'm pretty sure that after hearing the kind of sad sack bullshit you are trying to spread here, they wouldn't have pissed on you if you were on fire.  You  can try to come back with some kind of idiotic pacifist statement if you want, but at the end of the day, I actually knew some of the dead, and you didn't - So please don't try to tell me what they were thinking.

Second the vast majority of troops who die over there are dying from IEDs and suicide bombers - why?  Because the enemy has no balls for a stand up fight.  They suck in a fight, and they damn well know it.

Now take your political muck-raking bullshit and waste it on someone who doesn't know any better.  Prick.

oberst_enzian wrote:

What I suggested was that people who have had loved ones die in Iraq would disagree that insurgents can't fight, and would likely have a things to say about that idea - which, qua dead troops, is patently stupid.

You can backtrack and justify all you want, but from your original post, it is clear what your agenda is, and where you are coming from.  You are attempting to take the discussion on a tangent now to improve the tint of your original post.  That tangent is so worthless it couldnt possibly be your original meaning.  Sorry, but I'm not buying it, and I stand by my original assessment of you.  On the off chance that you are actually as stupid as you sound, I will address a couple of your points:

You have made an assumption that is not valid: That the ability to cause deaths is an indication of the ability to fight.  I could poison your drink or put a bomb in your car, and that would have absolutely nothing to do with my ability to fight.

The topic of this discussion was not about pragmatism or even what they should or could be doing to get what they want, it was about ability.  And they have none except in the areas of planting bombs and blowing themselves up.  Period.

Nevertheless, you seem to want to believe that they are successful (a by-product of your political leanings, no doubt), but that position is absolutely indefensible.  How many casualties are we looking at?  Just over 2000 in three years?  Even from a pragmatic standpoint that is lame.  From a military point of view, it is absolutely terrible.  The only way one could conceivably say the insurgents are successful is in the arena of American public opinion; but of course that is so far removed from the subject at hand, as to be an entirely different discussion.  Something which is probably necessary for your ignorant comments to make any sense whatsoever.

Last edited by whittsend (2006-03-17 03:22:08)

I see your point whitt.  All I'm saying is that in a country full of people..there has to be some good soilders on thier side.  They definately don't fight the same way we do.  What they are doing (IEDs, Suicide bombers, scouting) is being effective.  I can tell from your history you have definately seen a good prtion of action.  But I think these guys have learned they can't stand toe to toe with us in a gun fight so they resort to what they can do...maximize damage minimize own cost.    THis Juni thing per say could be a few snipers or a lie cooked up by them. The effect would be demoralizing on our side if true and rally them on thier side.  A good reason to keep it quiet for us, good to promote it for them...

whittsend wrote:

You can backtrack and justify all you want, but from your original post, it is clear what your agenda is, and where you are coming from.  You are attempting to take the discussion on a tangent now to improve the tint of your original post.  That tangent is so worthless it couldnt possibly be your original meaning.  Sorry, but I'm not buying it, and I stand by my original assessment of you.

which is what? where is it? what's the agenda? so far, you seem deeply concerned about this, without actually being able to articulate what it is. In other words, my point stands - my original post was actually just a very simple interjection, nothing more, with no political content, which you have taken it upon yourself to overdetermine (yes, for the more astute reading this, that's a very deliberate choice to use politico-philosophical jargon) so that you can then be free to roam in any direction you want - i.e. take a massive tangent away from my original post, as well as my clarification of what I meant. That's how the device of ascribing an opposed ideological position to someone else - especially if you don't bother to back it up with any content - works: you can then say whatever you want about them and not be answerable for it in anyway. Its shadowboxing, a very narrow-minded trick to try and pull in a discussion. So I'm afraid that while, in my reply, I stuck as close as possible to my original meaning, and tried to clarify it, it was you who decided that the only way to tackle it was by taking a massive tangent.

In case the point still isn't clear enough, your ascribing of some kind of vague political agenda to me - not defined, but "bad" regardless - is irrelevant and should have otherwise just been ignored, except for the interesting logic at work in the attempt, which closely mirrors what you have to say about "the ability to fight" - namely, it's all smoke and mirrors (like you might see at a circus, along with many 'clownshoes') which has no bearing on the actually definition of "fighting".

Likewise, the only backtracking that has happened is your own, in the sense of adopting a more calm and measured tone, to make your reply actually something that someone might actually care to read. Presumably this is either in response to a) my pointing out that your first reply to me was a largely mindless rant, which was fueled by your pre-occupation with assholes, pricks, balls, and pissing on people (I'll leave others to read all they want into those particular choices of mental images), or b) that had been an attempt to intimidate me into not replying, which failed. Whatever,I congratulate you on bothering to try and appear coherent and older than 12 years of age.

whittsend wrote:

You have made an assumption that is not valid: That the ability to cause deaths is an indication of the ability to fight.  I could poison your drink or put a bomb in your car, and that would have absolutely nothing to do with my ability to fight.

rubbish. here's a definition of the word "fight", here's another one, as your obviously not that familiar with the different forms that the concept can take, despite your descritptions of military action that you apparently took part in. Your poisioning my drink or blowing me up in my car fit more than nicely within the domain of the definitions which state that the "general term "fighting" can refer to any violent conflict" (I'd say a fatal explosion was pretty violent), let alone "Combat, or fighting, is purposeful conflict between one or more persons or organizations, often involving violence and intended to establish dominance over the opposition.' (I'd say this apply describes the reasons they are blowing our troops up), let alone "Militant groups are contending for control of the country" (exactly what both we and they are trying to do), let alone having your nose broken in a schoolyard spat.

Here's what the structure of what you are actually suggesting about "fighting", and their inability to do it, is composed of: we go over there as a large military force, which if taken on its own terms (i.e. fought using its own tactics) will annihilate the enemy. However, the enemy knows this and doesn't react on our terms. They use other tactics. In so far as these tactics work, they are still not legitimate because it's not what we would do. Therefore, they can't fight, even though we are dying. The logical gap is unmissable, and as is obvious, leaps of logic like this are always only perpetrated (mental infirmity aside) by ideological (read: politcal) discources.

There is a point to this, of course, and it's really very simple. De-legitimising their tactics is a way of containing the impotent rage we feel at being supposedly superior and yet still not being able to wipe out the threat. Like I said, rather simple.

In case anyone still doesn't get what I'm saying, it's this" what's the point of asking a question you already know the answer to? What's the point of criticising the enemy for not doing what you know they can't do? The only reason to bother doing this is to try and make oneself feel more secure in one's tactics, even though they don't work 100%, like we would want them to. Returning to what I said above, this is related to why you would ascribe an identifiable but very opposed political position to someone else in an argument - so that you can feel safe in not thinking about what they are actually saying (i.e. actually finding excuses not to think). Your main problem above was that you didn't even bother trying to fill it with any 'content'.

This had already occured in your initial response, where you decided, based on a one line interjection, that I couldn't be connected to someone who had died in Iraq:

whittsend wrote:

I actually knew some of the dead, and you didn't.

This is actually not true, but that's not even the point. The point is you have to believe it to make your vitriol-fueled response to my point make any sense. Don't bother calling me a liar - I have about as much chance of proving this on the internet as you have of proving your war stories. There's no point, and to bother would be yet one more way of trying to derail the discussion so you don't have to think.

whittsend wrote:

How many casualties are we looking at?  Just over 2000 in three years?  Even from a pragmatic standpoint that is lame.  From a military point of view, it is absolutely terrible.

What's that? Only 2000 troops dying over 3 years? Why, that's militarily disasterous! Well, actually, no, it would be disasterous to a force as large and well organised as the coaltion's, but a group of untrained, underground partisan fighters, it's not.

whittsend wrote:

Nevertheless, you seem to want to believe that they are successful (a by-product of your political leanings, no doubt), but that position is absolutely indefensible.

As you seem to be incapable of working out why I'm making this point for yourself, let me spell this out for you: I am not legitimising what they are doing politically, due to some ghostly agenda, I am saying that this is a tactic that, if ignored and delegtimised as "not fighting", will mean that many more lives will be lost, and war will drag on, because rather than face their effectiveness, you want to bury your head in the sand to feel better. To suggest that they cannot fight, when people just keep on being killed by them, is to misapprehend the nature of the conflict, and be too narrow minded to deal with it accordingly. To raise my original post again - and here it is, spelling mistake and all -

I wrote:

i think you mean "everyone that's been there and made it back says more or less the same thing", don't you? go and say this to one of the many families who've lost someone over there, they miht have a story or two for you.

what was being pointed out that the idea that "they can't fight" is stupid, as if they couldn't fight, then people wouldn't be dying. I am absolutely astounded that this fact is one that you cannot assimilate. Numbers have nothing to do with it. Death and ideology are the only relevant factors.

whittsend wrote:

The topic of this discussion was not about pragmatism or even what they should or could be doing to get what they want, it was about ability.  And they have none except in the areas of planting bombs and blowing themselves up.  Period.

This point is already moot given what I have said above, but I can't help myself: That's right! That's all they can do, so they do it, as the other poster said. And western troops die. So, because the attempt to criticise (delegitimise) this behaviour because it's your only way of dealing with the fact that it works and you can't stop it from happening means resorting to ridiculous notions about what "ability" and "fighting" mean, you are actually doing precisely what you suggest the insurgents are doing with this video  - attempting to bolster you position in a non-believable fashion. The video is very likely a fake, a very low-tech attempt at propagada, composed to make try and enlist more people to become insurgents, and perhaps even fight us by attempting to blow themselves up and take some of us with them. The fact that this is the core of your whole approach is made even more explicit when you say this:

whittsend wrote:

sfg-Ice wrote:

But I think these guys have learned they can't stand toe to toe with us in a gun fight so they resort to what they can do...maximize damage minimize own cost.

I suspect that is true, but as I noted above, they aren't really even very good at that.

In other words, you concede the point that they are fighting in the only way they can, but you have to have a final, negative statment to make about it, even if it has no content. It's just designed to make you feel better.

whittsend wrote:

The only way one could conceivably say the insurgents are successful is in the arena of American public opinion; but of course that is so far removed from the subject at hand, as to be an entirely different discussion.  Something which is probably necessary for your ignorant comments to make any sense whatsoever.

While the last bit of this statement makes no sense, given that you are the one who has raised the idea, it just reinforces that you cannot grasp these concepts beyond your own political agenda, which is made very clear by the fact that it is only the American public opinion which matters, as opposed to any other nation fighting alongside America in the coalition, (let alone anyone else). But I won't bother tackling this problem, because as you rightly point out, it's a different discussion and I wouldn't want to get sidetracked by your attempt to introduce yet another tangent.

I have much more to say about all this, of course, but it's just a waste of time really, because with each response I just come back and watch you shadow boxing instead of thinking about what I'm actually saying, and engaging me. So it's a waste of my time. All I'll bother saying to conclude is that it's sad to see (if your posts about where you've served are true, this being the internet), you could be so narrow-minded about how to deal with the fact that people are still dying over there, even with the main fighting force defeated. This ham-fisted, ideologically-closed approach is the negative side of how America is being percieved at the moment, and all you can do is perpetuate that fact. It is also the reason that is it so frustratingly difficult to actually try and make a workable democracy happen over there - because we who have charged ourselves with the massive task of doing so, are filled with people too narrow-minded to see the current approach isn't working, and we need another one.

oberst_enzian wrote:

Likewise, the only backtracking that has happened is your own...

I thought I did rather well getting back on the subject we were origninally talking about...the subject you have tried to introduce has been addressed (twice) and left behind, as it isn't really what this is about.

oberst_enzian wrote:

whittsend wrote:

You have made an assumption that is not valid: That the ability to cause deaths is an indication of the ability to fight.  I could poison your drink or put a bomb in your car, and that would have absolutely nothing to do with my ability to fight.

rubbish. here's a definition of the word "fight", here's another one, as your obviously not that familiar with the different forms that the concept can take, despite your descritptions of military action that you apparently took part in....

If you are too dense to figure out the subject of the conversation after reading it, I can't help you.  Sue your teachers.  Your definitions don't change anything I have said.

oberst_enzian wrote:

There is a point to this, of course, and it's really very simple. De-legitimising their tactics is a way of containing the impotent rage we feel at being supposedly superior and yet still not being able to wipe out the threat. Like I said, rather simple.

Problem is, I haven't deligitimized anything.  Go back and read what I wrote.  At no time did I say that what they were doing was not a valid way of acheiving their goals in the circumstances (in fact, I implied otherwise)...those circumstances being that they are patently pathetic at acheiving them in any other way.  Again, if you are incapable of extracting the subject and meaning from a conversation by reading it, you are beyond my help.

oberst_enzian wrote:

In case anyone still doesn't get what I'm saying, it's this" what's the point of asking a question you already know the answer to? What's the point of criticising the enemy for not doing what you know they can't do?

Because, if you read this thread you would realise some don't know it.

oberst_enzian wrote:

Returning to what I said above, this is related to why you would ascribe an identifiable but very opposed political position to someone else in an argument - so that you can feel safe in not thinking about what they are actually saying (i.e. actually finding excuses not to think). Your main problem above was that you didn't even bother trying to fill it with any 'content'.

Content?  Ah, you mean a political axe to grind.  I don't, simply because this is a discussion about military facts.  My political feelings have no place here.  If the facts don't fit your political world view, that's too bad.

oberst_enzian wrote:

whittsend wrote:

How many casualties are we looking at?  Just over 2000 in three years?  Even from a pragmatic standpoint that is lame.  From a military point of view, it is absolutely terrible.

What's that? Only 2000 troops dying over 3 years? Why, that's militarily disasterous! Well, actually, no, it would be disasterous to a force as large and well organised as the coaltion's, but a group of untrained, underground partisan fighters, it's not.

Um, yeah, it is.  They are trying to inflict the maximum number of casualties on the enemy.  By any standards of doing so, they aren't doing a good job.  They aren't interfering with supply, they aren't interfering with presence, and they aren't interfering with operations.  I don't know how you measure a military action, but by any of the ways I measure it, they aren't being successful.  If you want to say they are affecting public opinion...that is a political discussion...not a military one.  Start a new thread.

oberst_enzian wrote:

whittsend wrote:

Nevertheless, you seem to want to believe that they are successful (a by-product of your political leanings, no doubt), but that position is absolutely indefensible.

As you seem to be incapable of working out why I'm making this point for yourself, let me spell this out for you: I am not legitimising what they are doing politically, due to some ghostly agenda, I am saying that this is a tactic that, if ignored and delegtimised as "not fighting", will mean that many more lives will be lost, and war will drag on, because rather than face their effectiveness, you want to bury your head in the sand to feel better. To suggest that they cannot fight, when people just keep on being killed by them, is to misapprehend the nature of the conflict, and be too narrow minded to deal with it accordingly. To raise my original post again - and here it is, spelling mistake and all -

I wrote:

i think you mean "everyone that's been there and made it back says more or less the same thing", don't you? go and say this to one of the many families who've lost someone over there, they miht have a story or two for you.

what was being pointed out that the idea that "they can't fight" is stupid, as if they couldn't fight, then people wouldn't be dying. I am absolutely astounded that this fact is one that you cannot assimilate. Numbers have nothing to do with it. Death and ideology are the only relevant factors.

Ok, if you want to insist that you do not have a political agenda, then I will take you at face value, and re-evaluate your comments...

Napolean wrote:

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.

Apparently I owe you an apology for violating the philosophy enumerated above.  I assumed that your patently ridiculous statements were the result of malice rather than gross ignorance.  Now that you have made what you are saying very plain, I won't make that mistake again.

It seems to me that I keep saying the same things, but I intend for this to be the last time:  The statements I have made in this conversation are not about the avenues open to the insurgents (except where stated so explicitly), nor about the political ramifications of their methods, nor about the utility or judiciousness of the various methods they use.  It is about their military ability, which is in dramatically short supply no matter how you look at it.

In purely military terms, it is very simple:  Causing 2000 casualties to an enemy in three years is dreadful military performance.  Nothing you say can change that.  You seem committed to the idea that killing ANY people indicates an acceptable level of military performance.  Let me assure you that if the best army the world has ever seen meets the worst army the world has ever seen on the field of battle, the best army will suffer casualties.  That does not mean that the poorer army has any military skill, it is siimply the nature of the beast.

To rationalise this in any way takes the conversation out of the realm of military, and into the realm of the political.  This is very simple, why can't you grasp that? 

oberst_enzian wrote:

In other words, you concede the point that they are fighting in the only way they can, but you have to have a final, negative statment to make about it, even if it has no content. It's just designed to make you feel better.

I never said that they weren't fighting the only way they could...I have always maintained that they are doing it because they aren't very good at fighting any other way.  It's simple.  You could replace the names of the combatants, but if you left the numbers the same, I would make the same conclusions.

oberst_enzian wrote:

whittsend wrote:

The only way one could conceivably say the insurgents are successful is in the arena of American public opinion; but of course that is so far removed from the subject at hand, as to be an entirely different discussion.  Something which is probably necessary for your ignorant comments to make any sense whatsoever.

While the last bit of this statement makes no sense, given that you are the one who has raised the idea, it just reinforces that you cannot grasp these concepts beyond your own political agenda, which is made very clear by the fact that it is only the American public opinion which matters, as opposed to any other nation fighting alongside America in the coalition, (let alone anyone else). But I won't bother tackling this problem, because as you rightly point out, it's a different discussion and I wouldn't want to get sidetracked by your attempt to introduce yet another tangent.

It did, and still does make perfect sense.  You aren't talking about the same thing I am.  If you are, you aren't well informed enough to make intelligent statements.  I am, and have always been, talking about pure military performance, and I stand by my analysis.  As far as American public opinion goes, that is outside the realm of this conversation as well, but I'm feeling froggy so I'll take your ignorance of that subject on as well:

There are 130,000 US troops in Iraq.  There are less than 20,000 of all the other coalition parters combined...and decreasing.  Public opinion in almost all (if not actually all) of the coalition partners is demonstrably opposed to action in Iraq, and has been since before the war started.  Only in the US was there ever any support.  From this information we can deduce that: The US is, by an overwhelming margin, the mainstay of the force and could (in a pinch) proceed alone; and that public opinion in other countries hasn't made any difference yet, can hardly get worse, and is unlikely to make any difference now.  US opinion, on the other hand, has changed, is still changing (for the worse) and can force the vast majority of the troops over there to be withdrawn.  US opinion matters, that of other coalition partners, as far as the viability of the mission goes, does not.

Folks should not be offended by this, it is a dispassionate analysis of the facts, and is not meant to support any political position.

oberst_enzian wrote:

I have much more to say about all this, of course, but it's just a waste of time really, because with each response I just come back and watch you shadow boxing instead of thinking about what I'm actually saying, and engaging me. So it's a waste of my time.

It is a waste of time, because you insist on addressing a subject about which you are woefully ignorant.

oberst_enzian wrote:

All I'll bother saying to conclude is that it's sad to see (if your posts about where you've served are true, this being the internet), you could be so narrow-minded about how to deal with the fact that people are still dying over there, even with the main fighting force defeated.

I am addressing a subject about which I am very well informed: Military ability.  And I am addressing it dispassionately, as one MUST be able to do if one is in the business of making war.  If one gets all weepy every time one tries to plan a mission, it is unlikely that person is going to be a good soldier.

You, on the other hand, seem unable to separate the fact that casualties WILL occur, from the ability to recognise the success (or lack thereof) of a military mission.  If you are going to start talking about the rectitude of ANY soldiers dying over there (a fact which was certain before the first troop hit the ground), you are making it political.  I don't like it when some clown makes the deaths of soldiers a political talking point - especially when they intend for it to reflect poorly upon the troops....which is why you offended me.  Again, if you didn't intend for it to be political, you have my apology for my initial reaction; and my scorn for making so much of an issue you are absolutely unequipped to discuss.

This is a fact:  Casualties are happening at such a slow rate for our army, that victory is almost assured, if given tiime.  This is a fact that does not take politics or public opioion into mind...IT IS A SET OF FACTS OBTAINED BY ANALYSING THE SITUATION PURELY FROM A MILITARY STANDPOINT.  I take no pleasure in the fact that soldiers have been killed - in fact, I suspect it means far more to me than it means to you.  But I can separate the fact that there have been and will be casualties with whom I have been personally connected, from an analysis of the facts on the ground (most soldiers can).  And the facts on the ground include the fact that the enemy is, in terms of pure military ability, incompetent.  You are trying to manufacture ability where it doesn't exist.  I say you are wrong.  Pretty simple.  I'm dealing with facts, you are dealing with imagination.

Last edited by whittsend (2006-03-20 07:37:46)

And for those that can't find the video anymore, here's the google video version:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid … amp;q=Juba

UnOriginalNuttah wrote:

Do you have the figures for casualties for the Resistance army to compare?

I read recently (think it was in The Economist, but might have been a different journal) that it was in the tens of thousands.  Sorry don't have a link.  If I come across one I'll post it.

UnOriginalNuttah wrote:

So how can you make a judgement that US military performance is better than the anti-US military performance based on US casualties suffered, given that General Tommy Franks was quoted saying “We don’t do body counts”?

What GEN Franks meant was, we don't do body counts as an objective, in and of itself.  The strategy of body counts and pure attrition was attempted under GEN Westmorland in Vietnam, and was widely considered to be a mistake.  In any case, body counts are not the only way to measure military success.  As I mentioned above, disrupting the enemy's operatiions and supply is a very important measure of success.  The best way to measure how well you have disrupted the enemy's operations is throgh the damage he inflicts upon your forces.  By any measure, the insurgents aren't doing that much damage to coalition forces.

Major_Spittle wrote:

How would a soldier defend against this or catch the sniper.

Generally, you send a sniper to kill a sniper.  Unfortunately, given that insurgents can blend in (as you mentioned), you pretty much have to catch him in the act in Iraq.  Tough to do.

I should add that I calculated using the peak figures of troop deployment for both wars, which I understand to be about 400,000 for Vietnam, and about 100,000 for Iraq (e.g. ignoring rotations of troops and duty service.  This I agree is a limited way of working out the KIA %, but I applied the same formula to both.  I have no figures for the total number of troops rotated through service in Iraq, please provide them and I will recalculate.).

wannabe_tank_whore wrote:

UnOriginalNuttah wrote:

In purely military terms, it is very simple: Still taking casualties from a war you originally claimed would be a walk in the park, and claimed to have won 3 years ago is dreadful military performance. 

13% of American forces were KIA in Vietnam, and that went on for 8 years.  The figure is rapidly approaching 3% for American KIA in Iraq in 3 years.  (100,000+ / 2,500, rounded up if you want to know where I got that figure).

Call your high school and ask for a refund.

Currently there are ~130,000 troops in Iraq and ~2,300 have died.  And they rotate.  Some have already come home and were replaced by fresh/2nd/3rd tour soldiers.

The point remains that if the peak deployment of troops is used for both wars the figures very high.  Especially considering that the total casualties in the first Iraq war were in the low hundreds.  Like I say, give me better figures (e.g. the total of number of troops who have passed through Iraq on rotation, which I cannot find) then I will recalculate using those figures.

The corrected figures of 2300/130,000 yield ~2% of peak deployment KIA instead of ~2.5% (which if rounded comes is closer to 3%), but I said 'approaching' 3%, which is still true even with your corrected figures.  3 is the next number after 2, in case you had forgotten.  I would tell them they didn't teach me maths properly but as I was top 1% in my exams they might dispute that.