http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EL12Ak02.html
from which...
The next three months will likely prove crucial in this regard. Should the insurgents be capable of extending their reach well beyond their Sunni home ground and be able to score military successes and political points in the south and northeast, their influence and longer-term threat potential would grow. Should they fail in that endeavor, one would have to place one's bets on Coalition Provisional Authority boss L Paul Bremer and Rumsfeld. Both sides' strategic plans have come into clearer focus. The outcome remains in doubt."
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The article is filled with facts and numbers for which only very meagre attribution is offered.
For example:
* It is estimated by Middle East intelligence services sources that the guerrilla core units' head count is about 2,000. In addition, there exist hundreds of more loosely organized "freelance" units with several thousand members, for a grand total of 4,000-5,000 fighters. In their new pro-active stance, US forces have over the past several weeks killed or captured over 600 guerrillas, but the intelligence gleaned from prisoners has been sparse. *
This sounds definitive but does not stand up to scrutiny because we must depend upon *middle east intelligence sources*. This is so vague that you could replace that phrase with this - *a bunch of guys who've watched CNN a lot* and have a citation of equal quality.
Also, there's the problem of trying to determine who's going to *win*, the guerillas (whoever they are) or the Americans.
What would a guerilla *win* look like? An American withdrawal I suppose but beyond that?
And as for the Americans...
Well, we know the US didn't invade Iraq to protect the homeland from attack (those missing, imminently deployable WMDs). We also know that Iraq wasn't invaded to liberate anyone, liberation not being the sort of thing nations generally do because it'd be nice to help.
So this leaves us with geopolitical advantage and some sort of economic dominance or exploitation as the most logical explanations for this apparently illogical invasion.
If we accept this, we can ask ourselves the following: is it possible for the Americans to accomplish either their geopolitical or economic goals in Iraq? I believe the answer - both in the short and long term - is no. The situation is too complex, there are too many ways it can slip out of Washington's grip. Violence (that is, insurgency) is only the most dramatic. In fact, the situation is already out of Washington's grip and so would have to be seized through an extraordinary use of firpower, repression of the populace and infusion of capital. And, even then, the established grip would be shaky.
I now apply the following rule to articles on Iraq: if the author starts talking about who's winning or the situation being *in doubt* or describes the steps the Americans must take to *regain the initiative* or any related, binary *victory or defeat* fixations I immediately assume this person is talking about some parallel universe about which I need not be concerned.
DRM