A springtime offensive in Iraq

An interesting article in Phil Carters Intel Dump bq. The New York Times reports today on the "logistical ballet" that will take place over the next several months in Iraq, as 125,000 soldiers rotate home and 110,000 soldiers rotate into Iraq to replace them. There will be overlap between the two sets of units. Primarily, such overlap is intended to let the new units learn from the old ones, such that the new units will not hit the ground blind and without a clue. The overlap is also intended to make the logistical effort easier. Ostensibly, we can use the same ships that take new units over there to bring the old units home. (Doing it in reverse would require 2 round trips, a very expensive proposition.) But there's something else -- something much more operational in nature -- and Eric Schmitt alludes to it in his article: bq. During this rotation, about 110,000 fresh troops will flow into Iraq to replace 125,000 who have been there for about a year. The first 200 returning soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division arrived home this week in Fort Campbell, Ky. Soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division were also heading home, to Fort Bragg, N.C. bq. At the peak period of overlapping forces, commanders will be able to capitalize on having as many as 200,000 troops in Iraq. But the rotation also poses new risks as American officials say they fully expect guerrillas to try to exploit the transition to new, less experienced troops. bq. "The shifting focus of their attacks is relentless," said Maj. Gen. Stephen M. Speakes, the senior Army officer here overseeing the troop rotation. "But this will not be a period of vulnerability." bq. Analysis: I'm not the first to key in on this fact. Several of my colleagues at JOForum, including Mark Lewis and Michael Noonan, noticed it before I did. But I think it deserves mention again, because it's an issue that has not been reported by the major media in any depth. Could this spike in U.S. troop strength be intended to facilitate a spring offensive against the Iraqi insurgency? bq. 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. bq. While I don't think we're going to see a full-scale, high-intensity offensive this spring, I do think we will see a redoubled "law enforcement"/"order maintenance" (hat tip to my undergraduate thesis adviser James Q. Wilson and his Broken Windows thesis) offensive in Iraq. The task/purpose will be to conduct security patrols of the country in order to pacify those areas which have remained unruly since the regime's demise in April 2003. The intended goal will be to facilitate the transfer of power to the infant Iraqi Governing Council in June/July, and to increasingly hand more of the security mission over to the Iraqis. The article gives a bunch of links and cites other sources - excellent and interesting writing