Andy, securing Baghdad sounds like a great idea. But how does Gerecht propose doing it? If he wants to apply the Tal Afar model–given the ratio of troops we had to the native population–that would probably mean having about 500,000 troops in Baghdad.

Like you, I too wish we could conduct combat operations in Iraq (and lots of other places, for that matter) without any regard for local political conditions on the ground–but wishing it doesn’t make it any more plausible…