[tw]

Reality was obvious in 2004 when insurgents (that myth promoters called Al Qaeda) could spend all morning adjusting their mortars with a transit in a neighborhood adjacent to Abu Ghriad. Why? Because no Iraqis would report the insurgents or their planned attack on Abu Ghriad. Those who 'assumed' Americans were so welcome as liberators had to completely ignore these so obvious details. Insurgents could spend all morning setting up for an attack while MPs in Abu Ghriad never knew an attack was coming. Everyone else knew it because Americans were not welcome - despite American domestic propaganda.

Again, the details are damning. This sounds too much like Vietnam. From the NY Times of 16 Apr 2007:

Attacks Surge as Iraq Militants Overshadow City
They maneuver in squads, like the American infantrymen they try to kill. One squad fires furiously so another can attack from a better position. They operate in bad weather, knowing American helicopters and surveillance drones are grounded. Some carry G.P.S. receivers so mortar teams can calculate the coordinates of American armored vehicles. They kidnap and massacre police officers. ...

As the insurgent ranks have swelled, attacks on American troops have soared. ...

On the ground in Baquba, it is not hard to see why. Despite recent seizures of stockpiles, the insurgents have a ready supply of artillery shells and material to make bombs, the biggest killer of American troops here. Some bombs destroy American vehicles. Some are used to booby-trap houses to crash down on Americans. Some are used in larger battle plans: Before overrunning an Iraqi Army outpost south of Baquba, guerrillas laid bombs on the road that Iraqi and American forces would later use to try to rescue the outpost. The minefield blocked the reinforcements, and the Iraqi soldiers at the outpost fled.

The guerrillas seem increasingly well organized and trained. An insurgent force trying to overrun an American outpost in southern Baquba was repelled only after American soldiers fired more than 2,000 Coke-bottle-size rounds from Bradley fighting vehicles and 13,000 rounds from M-240 machine guns. ...

Fighters from the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia largely loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American cleric, have also flooded north from Baghdad and now control villages west of Baquba and north of Sadr City. ...

Shiite-dominated security forces in the city inflamed tensions by persecuting Sunnis, but remain ill prepared to fight the insurgents without support of American forces. Basic government services like food and fuel deliveries have collapsed. ...

With areas like Zaganiya receiving little attention, insurgent ranks grew unchecked. Eight of the 300 soldiers in the Fifth Squadron of the 73rd Cavalry Regiment have been killed near Zaganiya since they arrived in March to secure the village. The squadron has been sweeping the area northeast of Baquba, while the Fifth Battalion of the 20th Infantry Regiment rushed north from Taji in March to reinforce Baquba....

At one newly built outpost in Baquba, nicknamed Disneyland, soldiers staff lookouts and sniper posts and sleep on cots. They say they control little outside the tall concrete barriers. "You see anybody out there with binoculars, you light them up!" ...

Deja vue Nam.

But the Iraqi soldiers said that most Iraqis assigned to the outpost had fled, kicking back some of their pay to commanders to avoid punishment. ...

The Iraqi soldiers fretted that the insurgents had better equipment compared with their two clips and rickety Kalashnikov rifles. Like Baquba’s residents, they are intimidated. An Iraqi, Sgt. Raad Rashid, said his countrymen would flee if Americans abandoned the outpost. "Twenty minutes later we'd be gone," he said. "They would surround this place and kill us."