THE IRAQ WAR'S CURRENT HORRIFYING ASSYMETRY

PRAIRIEPUNDIT LIKS TO A WASHPOST ARTICLE:

WAPo's Knickmeyer demonstrates how the media does not understand war:

"Using enemy body counts as a benchmark, the U.S. military claimed gains against Abu Musab Zarqawi's foreign-led fighters last week even as they mounted their deadliest attacks on Iraq's capital. But by many standards, including increasingly high death tolls in insurgent strikes, Zarqawi's group, al Qaeda in Iraq, could claim to be the side that's gaining after 2 1/2 years of war. August was the third-deadliest month of the war for U.S. troops."

PRAIRIEPUINDIT analyzes this line of reasoning - or should I say DEMOLISHES it:

Knickmeyer's fundamental error is that she fails to comprehend the military significance of attacks by US forces and the military insignificance of attacks by the enemy. Mass killings of unemployed Iraqi noncombatants does not change the corelation of forces. When US commanders talk about death counts and captures, they are talking about attriting the enemy's fighting forces. Killing non combatants does not effect the ability of US and Iraqi forces to continue their operations against the enemy. Cleaning up the enemy infestation of Tal Afar as well as the capture of enemy leadership clearly effects the enemy's ability to operate. It has effected it to the point that the enemy rarely attacks a defended position. The enemy is incapable to taking and holding any postion in Iraq. The US and Iraqi forces are capable of taking and holding any position in Iraq.

What Prairiepundit shows is that the TRUE horrifying assymetry of the "insurgency" in Iraq is NOT the US military versus the "insurgents" (because that's a confrontation we ALWAYS win!), but the assymetrical confrontation between the racist genocidal islamofascist murderers and poor innocent Shias.

The only thing I can add to Prairiepundit's fine analysis is this: at the current rate of slaughter (200/week) it would take the islamofascists 1000 years to kill all the Iraqi Shias. Unless they won and commited mass murder on the scale that Saddam did. Then it would only take a few decades. I don't think that the Shias or the Kurds would ever allow the islamofascists to take over; the Shia-Kurd coalition would win ANY civil war, and they will defeat this "insurgency."

Read the rest of what Prairiepundit has on this - and everything else.