Reply #30: The almost entirety of the US force is air-mobile

[davepc]

You might off been on to something except you fail to recognize this point.

While its to the insurgents favor to lengthen and wear down supply lines, the fact is the US military has the airlift capacity to air supply any force in the country indefinitely.

Our ability to maneuver strategically (and tactically in most cases) far surpasses the insurgents. They're not "pushing" us north by selectively squeezing us that way because it offers no benefits to them and no disadvantage to us. The further north they get the further from the base of their support they get in the Sunni dominated areas (especially in relation to the Kurdish dominated North).

They're attacking us where they have localized momentary tactical advantage, then they retreat to wait for another opportunity.

Quite frankly with our superiority in fire and maneuver it is very difficult for the insurgents to defeat us in a battle, the best then can achieve is picking off a few stray units here and there, and they can not cut off any maneuver units of any consequence do to our overwhelming air power.

Their only hope is to grind us around the edges and hope popular opinion here in the United Sates changes far enough that we summarily disengage our forces.

The Bush plan is to not allow that to happen until the puppet Iraqi governments own military can take our place.