COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

Bill Roggio has an outstanding infographic up on his site here:

http://billroggio.com/flashplayer.php?media=anbarcampaign&w=800&h=600

It's really a shame we don't get this from traditional media outlets, who are so caught up in the play-by-play they forget to look at the scoreboard.

Roggio's grasp of the difference between a sweep operation and a clear and hold operation is key - and it's an aspect of the conflict that traditional media outlets have across the board failed to understand.

Watch the graphics. Watch how the red blips - representing towns in which coalition forces could not keep a robust security force on station to combat the insurgents - turn blue. The blue blips don't represent sweetness and light. But they do represent towns where pro-Iraqi forces have taken ground, are consolidating gains, and are now developing their own human intelligence networks with which to take the fight to the enemy at the time and place of our own choosing.

This does not mean that fighting will end tomorrow. The blue blips don't mean guerrilla resurgence is impossible. The insurgents can elect to concentrate their forces anywhere they think they can get to.

But it does mean that they will have to try to do so, and to consolidate and leave a healthy footprint in areas where Iraqi forces have set up increasingly strong and credible intelligence networks of their own, and it will be increasingly difficult for insurgents to concentrate in strength, undetected. Out-of-towners, especially foreigners - stick out like sore thumbs in Iraqi neighborhoods, and every time they try to gather 100 people or so to pick a fight they run the risk of exposing themselves.

For this reason, the pressure on insurgent leaders to localize the fight - to limit themselves to troops and weapons available locally - will be powerful, which will cramp his ability or willingness to attempt to concentrate in force they way he was allowed to concentrate in Fallujah.

It will also force them to rely increasingly on less secure means of communication, and will slow down his optempo. More and more security forces are becoming available to conduct traffic control points of the sort that nearly snagged Zarqawi, and forced him to abandon his laptop a few months ago.

These checkpoints can of course, become targets of attack themselves. But their increasing frequency must interdict the flow of cash and ordnance into Iraq, and will make long-range movement of same difficult and risky.

Coalition forces may be challenged in the cities. But the insurgency cannot challenge them on the desert highways, where coalition firepower and air mobility can be brought to bear. The coalition will seek to force the insurgent to duke it out in the countryside in order to move supplies and cash to their operatives in the country's interior, hundreds of miles from the Jordanian border.

The insurgent will, for his part, be tempted to confine his activities to close to the Syrian border. Trying to do otherwise forces him to run a gantlet of TCPs between Syria and Ramadi or Baghdad. Local insurgents in these areas may be largely cut off from Syrian support.

Syria has the power to cut the insurgency off at the knees. The most delicate game in town is the one to entice Syria to do so, while maintaining a credible stick with which to beat the crap out of him if he does not.

This will potentially pose some interesting policy questions for the US, as Syria could potentially offer to help crackdown on border movement with Iraq in exchange for us turning a blind eye towards their support of terrorism in Lebanon, Israel, and Golan/West Bank. Syria may try to drive a wedge between the US and Israel in this fashion.

Do we take him up on it?

Tough call.

But Bill Roggio's grasp of the significance of political and police gains in these locales is critical to understand.

Splash, out

Jason