The White House yesterday drew up emergency plans to accelerate the transfer of power in Iraq after being shown a devastating CIA report warning that the guerrilla war was in danger of escalating out of US control. The report, an "appraisal of situation" commissioned by the CIA director, George Tenet, and written by the CIA station chief in Baghdad, said that the insurgency was gaining ground among the population, and already numbers in the tens of thousands. One military intelligence assessment now estimates the insurgents' strength at <b>50,000</b>. Analysts cautioned that such a figure was speculative, but it does indicate a deep-rooted revolt on a far greater scale than the Pentagon had led the administration to believe. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1083847,00.html --------------------------- The top general in the region, Gen. John Abizaid, estimated Thursday that insurgent fighters in Iraq total no more than <b>5,000</b>, and he said the largest and most dangerous groups are Saddam loyalists. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...re_mi_ea/us_iraq_the_threat&cid=540&ncid=1473
Well, if the CIA is doing what they're supposed to be doing in regards to tracking, infiltrating, and assessing threats and whatnot, I would think their numbers would be closer to accurate. The military, though heavily involved in fighting, wouldn't necessarily be properly equiped to estimate the numbers of the enemy in a guerrilla fighting situation. But sitting here in Texas, I couldn't even begin to accurately try to figure out which is closer to correct (keeping in mind that it's even possible that one of the two news outlets may have made a typo and there's no descrepancy).
Certainly the fighting thus far looks like it's done by small groups who are only able to carry out a small attack at any given moment using terrorist tactics for the most part. I mean, it doesn't take a whole lot of people to do what's being done against the troops. Maybe they're just really bad guerrilla fighters.
I can't say anything about Afghanistan, but in the past, the CIA has much more accurately assessed covert resistance than the military.
I saw some report, I have absolutely no source for this, that said numbers had grown to over a 100,000...
The numbers are, in many ways, meaningless. The real issue is reflected in the first paragraph of the initial post.
Idiotic. It's not even a hindsight issue. Anyone could have anticipated serious resistance, particularly when you talk about occupying for an extended period. The impression that this Administration was going to take it's time with the occupation now appears accurate, and again, idiotic.
[QUOTEIt's not even a hindsight issue. Anyone could have anticipated serious resistance, particularly when you talk about occupying for an extended period. [/QUOTE] But it was anticipated, just ignored.
I think it is a typo, carried over from one news source to the next. Not too many places are saying 50,000. 5,000 is still plenty of trouble.
