Risks for US troops increase dramatically

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As of Sunday April 18, the new prime minister of Spain announced that he will be pulling out his troops effective immediately. Spain has 1,600 troops, mostly stationed around Najaf which is under siege by the Americans. There is a stand-off between US forces and Islami cleric Al-Sadr.

The risks to americans have increased exponentially. Ordinary Iraqis now have access to weapons, which they will not hesitate to use as anger burns out of control in all areas of Iraq.

We should not overestimate the superiority of American troops. Just because we have the firepower does not mean we are guaranteed to win. The scales are more balanced than people realize.

Stan Goff is a retired Seargeant of Special Forces with combat experience in such places as Haiti, Somalia, VietNam and others. Here's his take on the American military:

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Aside from that sort of macro-analysis, one thing that stands out in my mind is how badly many of the operations went, and how important it is for the U.S. military to spend huge sums of money on arms and high technology. Grenada and Somalia are examples. Real emblems of stupidity in planning and execution. That's why I tell people not to buy into the hype about US military invincibility. Person for person, and dollar for dollar, the US military is the most inefficient in the world. And the most fragile. They are fragile because of their overwhelming dependence on high technology, and fragile because the troops come out of a pampered consumer culture where real hardship is anecdotal. Sustained hardship, as we are seeing in Iraq now, devastates morale.

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Bring our troops home yesterday.