Iraq War Fighting Strategy

I want to focus here on the war in Iraq and the application of standard American military strategy to the fighting in Iraq. I want to do this based on the lessons learned from the Vietnam War. It seems to me the mistakes we are making in Iraq are similar to the mistakes we made in Vietnam as described in Col. Harry Summer's book On Strategy.

Here is a list of the military principles from Field Manual 100-1, The Army.

Objective
Offensive
Mass
Economy of Force
Manuver
Unity of Command
Security
Surprise
Simplicity

In subsequent posts I intend to cover one or more topics until I get to the end of the list. Since the Objective is the foundation for all the rest of the topics that will be covered in a post of its own.

I present this list as a kind of warm up so you can get oriented to what is coming next.

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at Classical Values