This may be the best response to my worry yesterday about enough troops. It’s from the British commander dealing with Basra:
“What’s going on there is there are these unconventional forces, the people who really have gripped the people of Iraq in fear, the Saddam Fedayin, for example, the Baath party militia and the special security operation, and these are bunches of determined men who will fight hard because they have no future in Iraq and it is they that we have to get at.
“We have always known we would have to get at them and we did that last night in Zubayr.
“We went to their headquarters and engaged in contact with them, killed a number of them and made it quite clear that we are up for this and you are going to have a very hard time.”
“A column of armour did try to come out of Basra last night and 20 of them won’t be going back because they had the attention of our artillery.”
“Had the attention of our artillery.” He seems confident enough. he also said that “it was ‘slightly early days’ to be expecting a popular uprising against Saddam.” He spoke too soon, it seems.
GAY DISCHARGES HALVED: It’s a revealing statistic. Gay discharges from the military are down almost a third in one year. The reason? Primarily because the military is at war and needs good soldiers. Gay discharges always plummet in wartime – they have in every modern war. But doesn’t that suggest that the policy is not in fact essential to military effectiveness? If the military keeps gay soldiers when it’s at its most stressed, it’s surely conceding that they are an asset – not the morale-busting danger they are made out to be by some. The other reason for the drop may be that gradually, openly gay and lesbian servicemembers are coming out on the job and not being fired. Good commanders just ignore the policy to keep good soldiers. There are more and more cases of this happening. All in all, a good sign. But more evidence that what Dick Cheney once called “an old chestnut” of a policy needs to be retired as soon as this conflict is over.
The Dish 