Nightmare Scenario (from Common Dreams - good read)

[TomInTib]

Is the badly outnumbered American expeditionary force in Iraq in trouble? Is it in danger of being trapped? With all our firepower, are we looking at the possibility of some kind of a military defeat?
As the bad news continues to seep in, debates about exit strategies are going out of date. Another year like the last three and the deteriorating military situation will have us debating what tactics will be necessary to extract our people with a minimum of loss.

We could be moving toward an American Dunkirk. In 1940 the defeated British Army in Belgium was driven back by the Germans to the French seacoast city of Dunkirk, where it had to abandon its equipment and escape across the English Channel on a fleet of civilian vessels, fishing smacks, yachts, small boats, anything and everything that could float and carry the defeated and wounded army to safety.

<snip>

Filtering out from Iraq are indicators of a military organization in danger of creeping disintegration. For three years our troops have been in a foreign land fighting God knows who for God knows why for God knows how long and God knows how many times. This now well-quoted paragraph from the June 12 edition of Newsweek hints at the price paid in order and morale: "The wife of a staff sergeant in the 3/1 battalion--members of which are currently accused of murdering Iraqi citizens in Haditha--says that there was 'a total breakdown' in discipline and morale after Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani took over as battalion commander when the unit returned from Fallujah at the start of 2005.... 'There were problems in Kilo Company with drugs, alcohol, hazing, you name it,' she tells Newsweek...'I think it's more than possible that these guys were totally tweaked out on speed or something when they shot those civilians in Haditha.'"

a good bit more of a good read is here:

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0613-24.htm

[Selatius]

1. The war is lost at this point, IMHO. America won't tolerate another draft.

For every soldier they've killed, the US has killed dozens of theirs, yet they keep rising up each time to fight us some more. They won't stop no matter how much firepower or how many troops we throw into the country. We've turned entire cities to rubble, yet they still insanely insist on fighting us as if RPGs and AK-47s are a fair match against napalm and tanks and B-52s dropping smart bombs. The only way to win this guerrilla war is to terrorize them into submission or kill so many Iraqis that the only ones left are unable to fight. The price for "winning" is the loss of America's soul, and that's too high a price.

Escalating the occupation to 500,000 troops won't "win" the war against the insurgency anymore than escalating the number of troops in South Viet Nam did. Increasing the tonnage of bombs dropped and missiles used won't do it either. It's useless in the face of this kind of resistance.

[TomInTib]

2. As Vo Nguyen Giap told Macnamara..

Macnamara asked his counterpart Giap how the NVA had persevered in the face of the horrific casualty rate.

Giap answered, "It was our Country".

I spent 39 months of my life and lost 62 of my best friends in a clusterfuck just like we are slogging through now.