Why doesn't the US military simply vacate the city? Withdraw to the pipeline and draw a line near al-Nasiryah and simply hold down the oil fields? Let the roaming death squads in the city from Sunni/Shia factions rip each other apart and tear the city to shreds? At this point, what US interest is there in the city itself?
Let's look at what the Bush admin really thinks, when the get the breifings they listen to from Wolfiwitz and the AEI. Most of the 9/11 attackers were Saudi, Osama is Saudi, the Bush family has deep ties with the Saudis. the Saudis control 24% of the world's oil reserves, however - Iraq has at least 12% and perhaps much much more. That's all we want - these religious matters are simply tools at the US disposal. We want to be free of the Saudi power, we're tired of their influence and we want the royal family dead and direct control of fields by the oil companies. We're tired of the Chinese and Russian oil blocks buying up interest in fields, and the Saudis playing east vs. west. Screw that, that oil is ours. France and the EU can go suck dust, or start doing the electric car - the US of A wants that crude to ease down the dependance on foreign oil slowly. Our run rate is much higher.
Let's blockade the Gulf entrance and start spending the money to start new wells and drill, pump and remove as fast as we can. Increase the US strategic oil reserve capacity by a factor of 4 - start building massive holding tanks in Alaska. Just pump the damn country dry. Most of the wells are in the desert, anybody who approaches without a US transponder gets a M1 tank round in the windshield.
http://www.judicialwatch.org/IraqOilMap.pdfWe need to pump the country dry as quickly as possible. The US went into Kurdish city and captured some Iranians who are organizing the terror. those bastards are funneling IEDs in and weapons. So are the Syrians.
In Bush's speech night before last, he mentioned bringing new Patriot missiles in. You doon't use those against insurgents. He's worried about the Iranians firing missiles into the conflict. He's sending a message. Go read the speech transcript if you don't think so, when he gets to the part about the Patriot missiles.
This is a gambit to stop the control and influence the Saudi government has by controlling so much oil. This is a gambit to break OPEC, and get the damn crude. So - let's move the army to open areas - not urban areas - and secure the stuff and get contractors in there to start as many wells and running as many barrels out of there as possible. The tanker trucks need checkpoints and driver screening, spend the money there.
20,000 troops on top of 130,000 isn't going to cut it if we just stick them into street warfare. I'm tired of the IEDs and sniping, we need to open up ranges and get out of the city. Spend some cash on RFID tags, and start using gunships to wipe out cars on certain roads who dont have them.
Read the accounts of retaking Fallujah. The intensity of the urban combat. Baghdad will be even harder to reclaim streets and start marching into Mosques and arresting clerics and insurgents. The hell with it, just burn the city - let the blood run from the gutters - we need to move south and take what we came for.
if the Iranians oppose our ships in the Gulf, or if they get snarky and try and attack us with terror - I say we use tactical nukes on their nuclear power plant facility. It may be hardened and mostly underground, but it doesn't do much good if anybody who approaches the area dies from radiation poisoning. Light that mountain range up so hot that Chernobyl looks like a resort community - turn the entire area into a microwave oven. because if you think for one moment that as soon as Chalabi figures out how to use that depleted urnaium and make a bomb, he's gonna stick that thing into a pickup truck and drive it to Baghdad and light the fuse. We have to stop him before it gets there.
The Cold War is over, global nuclear proliferation has begun. it's time to hot war the Muslim world now, before Islamofascism gets the bomb. Meanwhile, we need that oil and the damn city of Baghdad can burn to the ground for all we care.
