Word: pentagonal
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According to the Pentagon, less than half of Iraq's forces are combat ready. But that perception may be based on an unnecessarily strict standard. For instance, the Defense Department doesn't consider an Iraqi unit ready to fight until it can sustain itself with supplies, intelligence and communications--a combination that takes U.S. forces years to develop. A Pentagon official said last week that 87,000 of the 212,000 Iraqis that the Defense Department classifies as "trained and equipped" are actually "in the fight," meaning fully capable of planning and waging active combat. The Iraqis have taken over...
...from insurgents. But many commanders, including Army General John Abizaid, head of Central Command, argue that more U.S. troops would just mean more targets for insurgents. And some defense analysts contend that the war has so strained the U.S. Army--especially the National Guard and Reserve--that the Pentagon could not send more troops even if it wanted...
...insurgents have been able to feed off the dislike most Iraqis have for the occupation. "The slow withdrawal of U.S. forces should eat away an important part of the insurgents' support base" and diminish their strength, predicts Seth Jones, an Iraq analyst at the Rand Corp. who advises the Pentagon. Many Sunni Arabs who boycotted Iraq's elections last January appear genuinely interested in participating in the Dec. 15 vote, while Iraqi nationalists and former regime members active in the insurgency are signaling an interest in forming political parties rather than in continuing armed jihad. At the Cairo meeting, Iraqi...
...withdrawal could help the U.S. redeploy to fight terrorists elsewhere. Iraq has placed a particular strain on forces belonging to the Pentagon and the CIA. The U.S. Special Operations Command, which Rumsfeld has ordered to lead the Pentagon's part of the war on terrorism, has 88% of its 7,000-odd commandos deployed overseas assigned to the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. The CIA's clandestine service has only about 900 to 1,000 operatives, a large number of whom have rotated in and out of its Baghdad station, which has had as many as 500 spies and analysts...
...Pentagon officials routinely characterize anti-insurgent operations around Iraq as great victories. But just as Operation Steel Curtain, targeting insurgents in towns near the Syrian border, wound down, fighters loyal to al-Qaeda's top man in Iraq, Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, popped up in Ramadi. The insurgents' ability to preserve and regenerate their forces is a hallmark of the war. The official American tally for the Nov. 17 battle in Ramadi: 33 insurgents killed, 1 Marine slightly wounded. But Blue Platoon knows it has not delivered a knockout punch...