Quote Originally Posted by Xiahou
Oh Iraq needs more troops to be sure- but they should be Iraqi troops. American soldiers should be doing what they do best- winning battles. We need to have more Iraqi troops doing the patrols backed up by American troops and command & control support.
True, but more importantly you'll need loyal troops, something that haven't been that common among the Iraqi troops trained this far.

Quote Originally Posted by Xiahou
Doubling or tripling (or whatever the fashionable figure is now) the numbers of American forces would only serve to increase American casualties in the long term. Assume we did so- where would it leave us? You'd still have an Iraq incapable of defending or policing itself without American support... how is that achieving our objectives? What we need to look at is how to best train and equip reliable Iraqi forces under the control of the central government.
The point of increasing the troop numbers (although it should've been done for 3 years ago or something like that) is to secure larger parts of the country and to reduce the amount of attacks. This will give time to rebuild and to screen the Iraqi troops. Although the Iraqi troops will then be fewer, fewer troops will be needed as the job needed to be done is less. What's also very important is that if successful, I'll break the feeling of it being slowing going into a loss.

Notice that I'm not sure if increasing troop numbers will succeed, but currently it's the best course of action to achive victory IMO. Any suggestions yourself?

Quote Originally Posted by Xiahou
Personally, I think we'd be in alot better shape now had Bremer not completely disbanded the previous Iraqi army... but that's in the past- we now need to focus on building a coherent, effective force.
There's a whole bunch of screw-ups in the beginning, that still cost you and will continue to cost you.