HOW TO WIN THE WAR AGAINST TERROR
Rule 2: You have to use the right weapon.
Terrorist are murders, criminals in every respect, not an army. What is needed in Iraq is law informant. People that know the language, can cultivate informants, settle civil disputes and with the help of the Iraqi people root out the terrorist. The US military is not trained to do this. For the most part they do not speak the language, understand customs, or have the trust of the people. What the US military has is tremendous firepower. When the US uses that firepower the results are Iraqi civilian casualties, about 13,000 so far
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/. As the number of casualties grow, the number of insurgents increase and our position in Iraq grows weaker.
At Fort Bliss we are now training troops to act more like policemen than soldiers in Iraq. With an understanding of the language and customs they should hopeful be able to settle disputes and gain the trust of the people. This is the kind of training all of our troops in Iraq need.
We need to provide real training and equipment to the Iraqi police. Most of the training so far has been a joke. We have not provided some of the most basic equipment. Many times the police are sent on streets unarmed.
If there is any way to correct one of the biggest snafus of the war we should do so. At the end of the war we sent home Saddam's army fully armed with no job. They were the only group in the country that was trained to handle internal upheaval and they were ignored. Many of these people having no jobs continued to do what they were trained to do, that is they continued fighting. Surely some of these people can be recruited.
