The Ex-Agents Speak to the Company

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) tries to communicate with the Dem Senate the same way it tried to tell the 'Thuglicans and the Preznit that Colin Powell (among others) was blowing gas at them about Iraq's WMD. But the Flatulence-in-Chief knew that all along. It was his gas, after all.

It's current talking points?

* The vast majority of the violence in Iraq is sectarian in nature and involves a multifaceted civil war mostly pitting Sunnis against Shias. However, the violence also entails secular Sunnis fighting Sunni extremists linked to al-Qaeda and secular Shias battling Shia extremists. The civil war aspect includes (as the January NIE put it) "the hardening of ethno-sectarian identities, a sea change in the character of the violence, ethno-sectarian mobilization, and population displacements": in other words, a rabid dog fight with our troops in between. The only thing the various factions share is unflinching opposition to US occupation. But the notion that there is a monolithic group of "insurgents" or "enemy" falls far wide of the mark.

* Strategy in Iraq is based on the false assumptions that the "people" and the "insurgents" in Iraq are two distinct and opposing groups, and that US and Iraqi forces will be able to "clear" the insurgents and "hold" the people. In fact, the resistance will be suppressed in one area, only to re-emerge somewhere else (the attempt to suppress is appropriately called "Operation Whack-a-Mole"). It goes against virtually all historical precedent to suppose that an unwelcome invader with 150,000 troops - and Iraqi security forces that the NIE judged to be "persistently weak" - can occupy and subdue a large country with a population of 26 million and long-porous borders.

* The United States does not have enough military forces on the ground in Iraq to provide effective control of the cities and key regions to prevent violence and destroy insurgent infrastructure. Moreover, the US lacks sufficient soldiers and Marines in its current globally deployed force to provide sustained reinforcements. And absent is the political will to bring back the draft to obtain the number of troops required to get better control of the situation on the ground in Iraq. Even with a draft, the United States would require two years at a minimum to train and organize the new units for any mission in Iraq. Given these facts, there is no military solution to the situation in Iraq.

* A surge in US troops in specific areas, specifically Baghdad, may bring more than a momentary lessening in the violence, but it will not end the fighting. In fact, this concentrated surge will enable insurgent forces in other areas of the country to expand their operations and control. A de facto partitioning of Iraq is under way. Since the surge started, we have already seen an increase in violence in the Kurdish-controlled north.

* At current casualty rates, twelve more months will mean at least 1,000 additional US troops killed and 18 more months will bring at least 1,500 - not to mention Iraqis killed, and thousands upon thousands seriously wounded. The various Iraqi insurgent groups will probably fade into the woodwork for a while, but at a time and place of their choosing they will surely be back, in force. In the end, aside from the deaths, nothing lasting will have been achieved.

* Senior US civilian and military officials still don't get it. "They can't beat us in a stand-up fight," bragged our vice president just two months ago, echoing recent words of a US Army colonel in Iraq. This completely misses the point, and calls to mind the sad month of April 1975, when Col. Harry Summers was sent to negotiate with a North Vietnamese colonel the terms of American withdrawal from Vietnam. Summers reported the following exchange: "'You know, you never beat us on the battlefield,' I said to Colonel Tu, my North Vietnamese counterpart. 'That may be so,' he said, 'but it is also irrelevant.'"

* The critical parts of Iraq - Baghdad and southern Iraq - will be under the control of the Shia. Iran in turn will try to expand its aid and influence among both the Shia populace and the secular Sunnis.

* The US occupation continues to be a windfall for terrorist recruiters. An NIE of April 2006 on terrorism noted that the war in Iraq has become a primary recruitment vehicle for violent Islamic extremists, whose numbers, it said, may be increasing faster than the US can reduce the threat. There is wide consensus among experienced observers that the war in Iraq makes it immensely more difficult to deal with the real threat of international terrorism.

* Violence in Iraq, at least for the midterm, will continue regardless of the presence. Once a departure is under way, there is an increased likelihood that the Sunnis and Shias will move toward a political accommodation of some sort, since at that point neither can count on the United States to fight on their side. The only thing in doubt is the timing of the US departure, and whether it can be accomplished without the massacres the British experienced trying to extricate themselves from earlier expeditions into Iraq. The lack of a substantial military presence in Iraq will have the counterintuitive effect of increasing the likelihood that neighboring countries will be more willing to take steps to help reduce the violence in Iraq.

Not that the Company cares, but it's nice to know somebody does.