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Surge Short

The New York Times is reporting at a U.S. military assessment finds they aren’t where they had hoped to be by now:   

The American assessment, completed in late May, found that American and Iraqi forces were able to “to protect the population” and “maintain physical influence over” only 146 of the 457 Baghdad neighborhoods.

In the remaining 311 neighborhoods, troops have either not begun operations aimed at rooting out insurgents or still face “resistance,” according to the one-page assessment, which was provided to The New York Times and summarized reports from brigade and battalion commanders in Baghdad.

…

The operation “is at a difficult point right now, to be sure,” said Brig. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, the deputy commander of the First Cavalry Division, which has responsibility for Baghdad.

In an interview, he said that while military planners had expected to make greater gains by now, that has not been possible in large part because Iraqi police and army units, which were expected to handle basic security tasks, like manning checkpoints and conducting patrols, have not provided all the forces promised, and in some cases have performed poorly.

That is forcing American commanders to conduct operations to remove insurgents from some areas multiple times. The heavily Shiite security forces have also repeatedly failed to intervene in some areas when fighters, who fled or laid low when the American troops arrived, resumed sectarian killings.

This elaborates on what we already know, and in fact what they repeat here, that may was a bad month, the Iraqi police remain a problem, and they won’t know until the fall, and even then there are likely to be ongoing problems. For what is happening now, the article goes from very broad macro to very narrow micro, which paints a picture anedotally but its hard to tell how useful a picture it really is.

Topics: Iraq, military

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 12:20 am Comments (4) on Monday, June 4, 2007

4 Responses to “Surge Short”

1. JM Hanes Says:
   June 4th, 2007 at 1:44 am

   Maybe Petraeus should expand his two clock theory to three:
   

   Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the senior American ground commander in Iraq, said in a brief interview that he never believed that a midsummer timetable for establishing security in Baghdad was realistic. “This was always going to be conditions-driven,” he said, noting that he always had expected it would take until fall to establish security across much of the city.

   There’s the Iraqi clock, there’s the conditions-driven Coalition clock in country, and there’s the New York Times driven clock back home — where it’s already September.

2. TBinSTL Says:
   June 4th, 2007 at 3:38 am

   JM-
   And guess who’s timetable we will be held to……
   Maybe Hugo has a point….

3. Commanders Say Push in Baghdad Is Short of Goal « Michael P.F. van der Galiën Says:
   June 4th, 2007 at 6:23 am

   [...] at State of the Day, Jules Crittenden and The Moderate [...]

4. TBinSTL Says:
   June 5th, 2007 at 12:30 am

   And furthermore….I had hoped to be the King of all Londinium and wear a shiny hat by now.

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