Genesis (VII)

Greyhawk

An ongoing series. Part one is here, previous installment here.

"This place is not a town, it's a cemetery. It is the lowest of the low in Iraq. It needs to be cleaned out."
-- Najim Abdullah Jabouri, in an interview the day before the September, 2005 battle for the town began.

But this is how 2005 would end in Tal Afar: Iraqis in former rebel stronghold now cheer American soldiers.

The story might have surprised any Americans who happened to read it, but it appeared in the London Telegraph, and it's not likely that many did. After a brief mention of the "largest military operation of 2005" and acknowledgement of reconstruction efforts ("new sewers have been dug and the fronts of shops, destroyed in the US assault, were replaced within weeks. Sunni police have been hired and 2,000 goats were even distributed to farmers") the author declares "...there is no doubt that something has been achieved."

"More remarkably, the approach of an American military convoy brings people out to wave and even clap."

The 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment had arrived in northern Iraq in the Spring of 2005. They would be in the Tall Afar area throughout that long hot summer before moving into the town in force in September.

When the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment moved into northwest Iraq last May, it faced a mess. Just as Fallujah had become a major staging point for attacks into Baghdad, Tall Afar was being used as a base to send suicide bombers and other attackers 40 miles east into Mosul, the largest city in northern Iraq.
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McMaster had his unit bolster the security operation along the Syrian border, in an effort to cut off support and reinforcements coming into Iraq. He also sought to eliminate havens in the desert, beginning in June with a move against the remote desert town of Biaj, which had become a way station and training and outfitting post for fighters infiltrating from Syria. As he made the move, he brought Iraqi troops with him.

We've already seen the American media coverage of that preparation as it was ongoing - little beyond the death toll, and reports of atrocities inflicted on the citizens of the town by "foreign allies" of certain local insurgents. But...

In late summer, McMaster started receiving greater cooperation from Sunni leaders who had been sympathetic to the insurgency. One reason, according to U.S. military intelligence analysts, was that some insurgents were unhappy with foreign allies who seemed determined to start a civil war.

There were reasons for that "unhappiness". As the Telegraph story had noted, "The insurgents who used to control this city of 170,000 were amongst the most barbaric in Iraq. They beheaded, executed and shot locals who questioned their brand of fundamentalist Islam."

"With the insurgency's support infrastructure weakened in outlying areas" the Washington Post would report after the battle, "McMaster moved on the city."

But even then he didn't attack it. First, following the suggestion of his Iraqi allies, he ringed the city with dirt berm nine feet high and 12 miles long, leaving checkpoints from which all movement could be observed. This was a nod to the counterinsurgency principle of being able to control and follow the movement of the population.

Building on that idea, U.S. military intelligence had traced the kinship lines of different tribes, enabling the unit to track fighters traveling to likely destinations just outside the city. About 120 fighters were then rounded up from among those fleeing the impending attack.

Next, McMaster and his subordinates recalled, civilians were pressured to leave the city for a camp prepared for them just to the south. Some more insurgents were caught trying to sneak out with them.

In September, after four months of preparatory moves, McMaster launched the attack.

The Post's Jonathan Finer accompanied the unit into combat. His outstanding coverage could be found buried in the back pages of the newspaper throughout the battle.

5,000 U.S. And Iraqi Troops Sweep Into City Of Tall Afar

Urban Assault Is Largest Since Last Year

TALL AFAR, Iraq, Sept. 2 -- It was a clear and quiet dusk, with only the call to prayer echoing from minarets across this city, when a roadside bomb blasted an M1-A1 Abrams tank, shaking nearby buildings and filling the indigo sky with a plume of black smoke.

Crackling small-arms fire clanged off the damaged vehicle from an adjacent house. U.S. soldiers answered with increasingly violent volleys -- .50-caliber machine gun bursts, tank rounds and a TOW missile -- but the shots from inside the house kept coming. Finally, an ear-splitting succession of five rounds from the tank's big gun reduced the building to flaming rubble and lit the empty streets with white sparks from exploding power transformers.

In the largest urban assault since the siege of Fallujah last November, more than 5,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops entered this northern city before dawn Friday. But the 45-minute firefight at day's end suggested that the insurgents who have controlled much of Tall Afar for almost a year would not relinquish it easily.

"We knew they were going to fight," said Pfc. Johnny Lara, a machine gunner from Blue Platoon, Eagle Troop, 2nd Squadron of the Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, who watched the clash with a reporter from a rooftop about 100 yards away. "Now it's a fight."
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Col. H.R. McMaster, commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry, said Tall Afar's complex demographics would make it difficult to pacify. As many as 75 percent of residents are Sunni Turkmens, many of whom held prominent political and military positions when Iraq was ruled by Hussein. Increasingly threatened by the rise of the country's Shiite-led government, they have clashed with local Shiite Turkmen tribes and with the mostly Shiite and Kurdish security forces deployed to Tall Afar.
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"The city is basically a microcosm of all the problems, all the divisions that exist in Iraq, in one place," McMaster said.
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In recent meetings, McMaster said, tribal leaders implored the Americans to invade Tall Afar again, but this time not to leave so quickly.
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"I don't want to kill this city, I want to bring it back to life," McMaster said. "We are taking steps to minimize destruction. I want to do it right."

September 3, 2005

After spending the night in abandoned homes, the more than 5,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops who had swept into the northern city of Tall Afar awoke Saturday morning to broadcasts from mosques calling residents to fight the invasion.

But the troops met little resistance as they continued raiding houses Saturday to gather information about the insurgents who have controlled large parts of the city for nearly a year.

In one of the few pockets of fighting, insurgents fired seven rocket-propelled grenades at U.S. tanks from adjacent buildings in the western neighborhood of Qadisiyah. A U.S. jet destroyed much of the block with a 500-pound satellite-guided bomb, commanders said. Soldiers also destroyed at least half a dozen roadside bombs and discovered a large cache of artillery rounds hidden in one of the many lush valleys that divide the city.

For the second consecutive day, U.S. forces reported no casualties.

"We expected them to fight back more than they did today, especially given some of the neighborhoods we were moving through," said Capt. Alan Blackburn, 30, of Mooresville, Ind., commander of Eagle Troop, 2nd Squadron of the Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which is leading the assault.

Blackburn said the estimated 300 to 500 insurgents believed to be operating in Tall Afar appeared to be massing in the restive neighborhood of Sarai, east of downtown, where U.S. patrols are frequently attacked.

As with most newspapers without enough reporters in Iraq to cover the story, the Los Angeles Times had to rely on military spokesmen and "special correspondents" for news of the battle:

Meanwhile, in the northern city of Tall Afar, Iraqi and U.S. forces remained locked in an intense battle with insurgents.
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In Tall Afar, U.S. and Iraqi government forces continued to bombard suspected insurgent positions in an intense campaign that has largely shut down the city west of Mosul.

Witnesses said U.S. planes carried out hours of bombing raids over the city Friday night, and Iraqi national guard and U.S. troops blocked streets and shut down access to the city.

"The situation in Tall Afar is moving from bad to worse," said Sheik Salim Ibrahim, a tribal leader who complained that efforts by the Mosul governor to enlist the help of local sheiks to reestablish calm were failing.

The director of the Tall Afar Hospital said it had received the bodies of three people killed by shrapnel. A U.S. military spokeswoman said only that American soldiers were engaged in operations against insurgents in an effort to secure the city for the October elections.

More from Jonathan Finer, in the Washington Post:

U.S. Troops Cordon Part Of Iraqi Town To Trap Insurgents

TALL AFAR, Iraq, Sept. 4 -- Under the cover of a moonless night, U.S. soldiers on Sunday strung nearly a mile of razor-sharp concertina wire across the northern edge of a neighborhood dominated by insurgents to prevent them from fleeing without a showdown.
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"The idea is to trap them in Sarai or force them toward our checkpoints to the south," said Col. H.R. McMaster, commander of the Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, referring to the neighborhood that U.S. forces believe has served as a launching point for many attacks in the city. "We don't want them to slip out."
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About 500 people attempted to leave the city this weekend through the U.S.-manned checkpoints. At least one man suspected of kidnapping and beheading several residents in recent weeks was apprehended when he tried to leave the city with a group of children, McMaster said. When soldiers interviewed the children, they said they did not know the man but went with him because they had been threatened.

A cacophony of gunfire and explosions filled the air around Tall Afar on Sunday, the heaviest day of fighting since the invasion began. Soldiers continued methodically searching homes and questioning residents, frequently coming under small-arms fire that whistled overhead as they passed from house to house or leapt across gaps between rooftops.
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Elsewhere Sunday in Tall Afar, an Iraqi army unit freed 35 hostages held in a house south of downtown, according to Maj. Gen. Khorsheed Salim, commander of the army's 3rd Division, which is heavily involved in the operation.

Soldiers in the western part of the city found a laboratory rigged with explosives, McMaster said. The lab also contained a chemical that burned the troops' throats and eyes when they entered. The Army is trying to identify the substance.

September 5, 2005

In Tall Afar, U.S. and Iraqi soldiers entered the fourth day of an offensive against insurgents who have controlled large sections of the city for nearly a year. On Monday night, soldiers dropped leaflets from helicopters in the eastern neighborhood of Sarai, where commanders believe insurgents are entrenched, warning noncombatants to evacuate the area.

About 5,000 soldiers from the Army's 3rd Armored Reconnaissance Regiment and the Iraqi army's 3rd Division continued advancing toward Sarai from all directions, searching homes, confiscating weapons and interrogating residents.

Early Monday morning, six members of an elite U.S. special operations unit were wounded in what was to have been a raid on the home of a suspected insurgent leader, according to U.S. commanders. Members of the unit, which is charged with searching for high-level insurgents, and the Army in Tall Afar would not provide details.

September 6, 2005:

With Death At Their Door, Few Leave Iraqi City

Civilians Urged to Flee Before U.S. Assault

"Steps are being taken to ensure that this is done with the least possible amount of harm done to civilians," McMaster said.

But several Sarai residents said they had been warned that Shiite residents or policemen, who are concentrated in southern Tall Afar, would attack if they left in that direction.

"I would rather die from American bombs in my home with my family than walk south," a man in a gray dishdasha , or robe, and white head scarf explained to soldiers. "People are saying the Shiites will kill you or kidnap you. That is a disgrace."

The evacuation of Sarai, the oldest section of Tall Afar and a web of narrow streets where fighting is expected to be difficult, was supposed to help prevent civilians from being hurt or killed during the offensive's final phase. The military strung nearly a mile of concertina wire along Bel Air, on the northern edge of the neighborhood, on Sunday to encourage people to migrate south, where it had established checkpoints to prevent insurgents from fleeing undetected. Among 200 people who followed instructions and fled south Tuesday, soldiers discovered a man suspected of being an insurgent who was dressed as a woman, complete with prosthetic breasts.

For the military, problems began at 8 a.m. Tuesday when soldiers who had spent the night in an abandoned house awoke to about 300 Sarai residents who had picked their way across the wire and were sitting in the street outside the house, asking how they could get out of Tall Afar.

The soldiers escorted the crowd back to the other side of the wire but found that at least 500 other people were waiting to come across. To block them, they placed tanks and Bradleys along Bel Air and sent soldiers with rifles to the roofs overlooking the street.

Men who identified themselves as tribal leaders of the people attempting to flee would periodically walk across the street -- which is pockmarked with dozens of craters caused by explosions -- stepping gingerly over the wire to negotiate with soldiers. Some residents said that their relatives were too sick or frail to travel south of the city or that their tribe was located in the north so they needed to go in that direction. Others said they actually lived outside Sarai but had spent the night in the neighborhood and were trapped by the concertina wire. The soldiers refused to let them pass.

"I am sure 99 percent of you are good people who are telling us the truth," Capt. Alan Blackburn, commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment's Eagle Troop, 2nd Squadron, which was policing the area around Bel Air, told one of the men who wanted to go north. "But I am sure that there are a few people in that crowd who are not good people. And we don't have the facilities here to check them. You have to go south."

"I am not going unless you drive me in a tank," the man said. "There are no bad people in Sarai. If you come with me, I will take you to all the houses and you can see. The bad people are the Shiites in the south."

Late in the afternoon, the soldiers relented and offered a compromise. They told the residents they could exit to the north if they agreed to board military trucks bound for a base just outside the city where they could be processed and then released if they proved not to have ties to the insurgency.

"It sounds like a trick to take us south to the Shiites," one man said.

"We will go only if we can drive our own vehicles," another countered.

About 3 p.m., Lt. Col. Christopher Hickey, the Squadron commander, arrived to make a final plea. "I am trying to help you to get out of a very dangerous situation. You are going to be in danger if you stay here, I am telling you," he said. "Please, this is your last chance."

As he turned away from the crowd, one family emerged, with nine adults carrying baggage and eight children in tow. "Anyone else?" Hickey asked, beckoning. "Okay, then we will save these people," he said, and walked away.

September 8, 2005:

The U.S. soldiers sensed something wasn't quite right when an ambulance carrying two dead bodies arrived Thursday morning at a checkpoint for people evacuating this city under siege.

Hanging off the sides of the vehicle were three young men who said they were escorting the remains of family members killed in the previous night's bombardment to a local hospital. But when an Iraqi policeman looked them over, he pointed to a man who wore white sweatpants and a white shirt and appeared to be in his early twenties. "I know him. He must be detained," the officer said. "He murdered a policeman."

The interrogation by American soldiers initially went nowhere. The man insisted he spoke Turkish, not Arabic, and therefore could not communicate with the Americans' interpreters. Asked his name, he kept alternating between "Habib" and "Faris." At one point, he rolled on the floor making retching noises as if he were going to throw up. But everything changed when exasperated soldiers said they had no choice but to turn him over to the Iraqis, who were anxious to take him into custody.

"Yes, I am a terrorist, yes," the man said in perfect Arabic, his ailment apparently forgotten. "I would rather you shoot me in the head than give me to them."
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"Please no," he repeated several times. Once soldiers realized they had a lever to extract information, they called for Iraqi policemen to sit in on the questioning. The officers said the man was involved in a gruesome killing of a local policeman who was beheaded, his corpse placed on the street with a bomb lodged inside of it that exploded when a dog began sniffing at the body.

When the policemen first entered the room, the man turned to face the corner, refusing to look at them. After a series of increasingly pointed questions shouted at him, he became defiant.

"No matter what you say, I am a holy warrior. I am going to paradise," he told the interrogators, referring to the belief cited by many insurgent fighters that those who die for their cause have a special place in the afterlife. "The rest of you are infidels who will go to hell."
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Heavy bombing continued Thursday evening, as U.S. jets dropped 500-pound J-DAM precision bombs and other munitions into the insurgent-controlled neighborhood of Sarai, while playing messages over loudspeakers that called on residents to evacuate. Nearly 1,000 people left the city through U.S. checkpoints Thursday, and commanders said intelligence showed that insurgent leaders were attempting to vacate the city.

Iraqi policemen and soldiers are fully integrated into nearly every aspect of the Tall Afar operation, often attached to units from the U.S. Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which is leading the assault, or advised by small groups of U.S. Special Forces soldiers. Among the units here are several battalions of the Iraqi army's 3rd Division, which is based in northwestern Iraq, and a battalion of Kurdish soldiers assigned to Tall Afar for this operation. Hundreds of regular Iraqi policemen and police commandos are also being brought to the city to man stations that U.S. forces have said they will establish once the fighting wanes.
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"When we started with them, whenever they would receive a little fire they would either run or do what we called the 'death blossom' -- basically spraying in all directions, which was dangerous for us and dangerous for the town," said Lt. Col. Christopher Hickey, who leads the 3rd Armored Cavalry's Sabre Squadron and works closely with Iraqi commanders. "Through leadership and experience, they have become more disciplined."

September 10, 2005

U.S. Troops Sweep Into Empty Insurgent Haven In Iraq

Rebels Apparently Fled City as Word Of Invasion Spread

The moment the Iraqi troops launched their attack just after 7 a.m. Saturday, the bullets began to fly. Gunfire echoed off centuries-old stone buildings in the insurgent-controlled neighborhood of Sarai: machine-gun bursts, booming tank rounds and an incessant crackle of AK-47s that lasted for most of an hour.

But the shooting spree was only going in one direction.

"So far, Iraqi army reporting no enemy contact," came the word over the radio, 45 minutes after the first shots were fired, to U.S. troops waiting to join the assault.

By the time the Americans entered Sarai -- in a rare supporting role to an Iraqi battalion comprising mostly the Kurdish pesh merga militiamen, who led the charge -- the labyrinthine warren of close-packed structures and streets too narrow for armored vehicles was eerily deserted.
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Commanders proclaimed the relative lack of resistance a sign of the success of the operation, in which at least 550 suspected insurgents have been killed or captured, the vast majority of them Iraqi, including six of the 10 top targets the U.S. military had identified here. One U.S. soldier and five Iraqi troops also have been killed.
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In recent days, U.S. and Iraqi soldiers operating throughout the city had converged on Sarai, where fighting was expected to be fiercest. One U.S. squadron of just over 1,000 soldiers had planned for roughly 10 casualties per day during the assault. The night before the attack, commanders pored over aerial photographs of the neighborhood, which is so densely constructed that buildings were all but indistinguishable, making it difficult to plot a route for the attack.

"It's pretty much the worst urban terrain for fighting imaginable," said Capt. Alan Blackburn, commander of the Eagle Troop of the 3rd Armored Cavalry's 2nd Squadron, as he peppered his platoon commanders with questions about how to deal with wounded soldiers or large numbers of dead civilians.
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The soldiers walked quickly along both sides of a wide avenue, into what could have passed for a Hollywood version of a war zone: buildings missing roofs destroyed by explosions; blackened vehicles, some still smoking; shattered glass littering the road. They stepped over shell casings of all shapes and sizes.

It was impossible to determine how much of the destruction was recent and how much had been left unrepaired for months, or years.

The soldiers gathered material they considered suspicious, labeled it with permanent markers and placed it into garbage bags: in one house, military handbooks with diagrams showing how to conduct ambushes and make explosives; in another, three molotov cocktails; in a mosque, which had three large holes in its ceiling and shrapnel from a Hellfire missile among the rubble of its floor, grenades in a side room.

They confiscated computer disks and video controllers with the wiring removed, which can help trigger roadside bombs, and poked long sticks into water drums and baskets of grain to search for weapons.
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McMaster said the reconstruction of Tall Afar would begin soon after offensive operations were complete and insisted the city would not fall under insurgent control again. Already, $2.4 million in U.S. money has been allocated for infrastructure projects, but because of the violence, the military had been unable to persuade contractors to work here.

"They want this city to fail. They want Iraq to fail," McMaster said of the insurgents. "But the No. 1 priority is being met by this operation, which is to defeat the terrorists so they can no longer prevent reconstruction from happening."

September 11, 2005

As Offensive In Iraq Continues, Troops Find Unexpected Quiet

By Jonathan Finer, Washington Post Foreign Service

For the second day, U.S. and Iraqi forces mounting a large-scale offensive in this northwestern city had little contact with insurgents Sunday, as troops conducted house-to-house searches through largely abandoned neighborhoods and detained a handful of young men.
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Hundreds of insurgents have been captured in the offensive. The military reported that 156 insurgents had been killed in the fighting so far, revising downward an earlier estimate of more than 200.

"The shaping operations that we conducted before crossing into Sarai are the reason why we haven't seen the resistance we expected," said Maj. Chris Kennedy, executive officer for the Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which is leading the assault.
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For the second consecutive day, U.S. forces followed several hundred Iraqi soldiers, from a unit made up mostly of troops from the Kurdish pesh merga militia, into a section of Sarai, where most residents are Sunni Muslim Turkmens, ethnic relatives of Turks.

With no one to fight and few suspects to detain, the troops treated the neighborhood as a large crime scene, gathering items they found suspicious from the dozens of homes they entered and searched over several hours. The only sounds of battle were occasional sporadic gunfire and resounding booms -- the controlled detonations of roadside bombs that were discovered throughout the day.
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A group linked to the insurgent organization al Qaeda in Iraq published a statement on a Web site used by such groups saying it would retaliate against Iraqi security forces in Baghdad for the operation in Tall Afar, according to the Associated Press.

"The Taifa al-Mansoura Army has decided to . . . strike at strategic and other targets of importance for the occupation and the infidels in Baghdad by using chemical and unconventional weapons developed by the mujaheddin, unless the military operations in Tall Afar stop within 24 hours," the statement said.

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They didn't. And if the "insurgents" thought they could move back in right away they can be forgiven for that miscalculation. To this point the story of Tall Afar, 2005 sounded exactly like that of Tall Afar 2004 - right down to the "weaker than expected" resistance. But as with so many other places in Iraq, once the shooting stopped, the battle began.

Here's how it was lost in 2004:

The U.S. military launched a major pre-dawn assault Sunday to wrest the northern city of Tall Afar from insurgents but encountered almost no resistance, leaving uncertain the whereabouts of fighters who have battled U.S.-led forces for months.
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Ham said U.S. commanders concluded that some of the insurgents had probably fled in anticipation of the attack.
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"Having us stay there is exactly the wrong thing," Ham said. "First of all, we don't have enough forces to stay in the city. But it also sends a message to those that oppose us. It lets them say, 'See, we told you, they really are occupiers. They've taken over a city.' "
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On Monday, U.S. troops pulled back to a forward operating base on the outskirts of Tall Afar and were no longer operating continuously inside the city, Army Maj. Thomas Osteen said.
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"As you know, this is a very important time for Tall Afar," responded Lt. Col. Kevin Hyneman, the deputy commanding officer for the 2nd Infantry Division's 3rd Brigade. "I don't want to rebuild it like an American would. I want to rebuild it based on your own priorities."

"But the most important thing is security," Hyneman said. "We don't want to have to go and do all of this again months from now or a year from now."

But there's where the similarities between the two campaigns end. The 2004 strategy was to turn over control to Iraqis within days of the conclusion of the operation (a microcosm of the broader situation in Iraq since April, 2003) and American commanders were under intense political and media pressure to execute that pre-planned strategy.

In 2005 the goal was the same - but the timelines were more realistic:

McMaster had a clear plan in hand for his next step. He also knew how he wanted to measure his success: Would Iraqis -- especially Sunni Arabs -- be willing to join the local police force? Would they "participate in their own security," as he put it?

The first step in this phase was to establish 29 patrol bases across the city. That, along with steady patrolling, gave the American military and its Iraqi allies a view of every major stretch of road in the compact city, which measures about three square miles. And that amount of observation made it extremely difficult for insurgents to plant bombs.

"It gives us great agility," said Lt. Col. Chris Hickey, a 1982 graduate of Chantilly High School in Virginia, who commands the U.S. troop contingent in the city. Hickey said that he can order an attack to come from two or three of the patrol bases instead of predictably rolling out the front gate of his base.

Hickey also has spent months living in the city, perched in the Ottoman-era ramparts that dominate it. He slept at the base only rarely. From his position downtown, he said, "I hear every gunshot in the city." His conclusion: "Living among the people works, if you treat them with respect." When the electricity goes out for Iraqis, he noted, it does for him too, even though he has a generator for military communications.

Hickey also moved a U.S. firing range out of earshot of the city. "I like quiet," he said.

Ultimately, 1,400 police officers were recruited, about 60 percent of whom were Sunni Arabs, many of them from elsewhere in Iraq. In addition, the city has about 2,000 Iraqi troops, and a working city council and an activist mayor. A few feet from where the city council meets is a new Joint Operations Center, set up to collect intelligence tips and act on them. The Army officer running the center, Lt. Saythala Phonexayphoua, said he has been surprised by the amount of "actionable intelligence" troops receive.

Phonexayphoua noted: "We get cell phone calls -- 'There's an insurgent planting an IED.' "

Last summer, there were about six insurgent attacks in the area each day. Now there is about one, according to U.S. military intelligence.

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By December, 2005: Iraqis in former rebel stronghold now cheer American soldiers

As noted previously, the 3d ACR was a vanguard for a "new" strategy whereby "units' readiness for war should be judged not only by traditional standards, such as how well they fire their tanks, but by the number of foreign speakers in their ranks, their awareness of the local culture where they will fight, and their ability to train and equip local security forces."

It worked. But:

The biggest problem U.S. troops in Iraq face is Baghdad, a city about 30 times the size of Tall Afar. With the current number of American troops in Iraq, it would be impossible to copy the approach used here, with outposts every few blocks.

"Baghdad is a much tougher nut to crack than this," said Maj. Jack McLaughlin, Hickey's plans officer, who attended Robinson Secondary School in Fairfax, Va. Standing in the castle overlooking the city, he said, "It's a matter of scale -- you'd need a huge number of troops to replicate what we've done here."

A solid opinion that echoed one already expressed - and explained - in the British press at the close of 2005:

But the success in Tal Afar only highlights the problems of replicating it elsewhere.

The strategy will require more troops, which is politically unacceptable right now in America, given growing public doubts about the war.

A dew days later (on Western calendars) 2006 began.

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More to follow...