Spring Offensive?

Phil Carter on US unit rotation in Iraq:

Could this spike in U.S. troop strength be intended to facilitate a spring offensive against the Iraqi insurgency?

The answer is probably yes, with a couple of reservations. To date, we still have not imposed the kind of police presence we had in either Bosnia or Kosovo in Iraq — we just haven’t had the troops on the ground to put that kind of per-capita manpower on the street. There are some areas of Iraq, such as Samarra and elsewhere in the Sunni Triangle, where even reporters dare not go these days. I conceptualize these areas like South Central L.A. — bad areas in need of substantial patrolling in order to make them safe. Having an extra 100,000 troops on the ground will enable us to do the kind of security operations we’ve always wanted to do, and to focus large amounts of manpower on discrete areas in order to destroy any nascent insurgencies in those locations.

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