Choking the Insurgency

In response to my post below, Jayne sent me to the indefatigable and invaluable Michael Yon.

I hadn't caught up with him in a few weeks and it was definitely my loss. The unit that Michael was covering, along with Iraqi security forces, captured a rather large arms cache. This is what he found regarding armor penetrating munitions:

Shaped Charges: Over the past few months, the enemy has been experimenting with new ways to penetrate our armor with smaller but mathematically enhanced shaped explosives.

Go read the whole thing and take a look at the pictures of said munitions (I'll save his bandwidth from a 6 strings-alanche).

Recent the news of Marine combat fatalities in Western Iraq make this even more disturbing. Is our enemy getting more lethal? Are they gaining, rather than losing support? Are they gaining the ability to inflict more damage on us than imaginable a year ago?

If I was a member of the press, and thus incapable of rational, analytical thought, I might make this conclusion. Thankfully, however, we have another invaluable source. Here is Wretchard commenting on the "River War" taking place in Western Iraq:

There are probably many similar operations that are taking place along the river and to its north, as per the Di Rita briefing. One of them may have been undertaken by the US Marines at Haditha, during which 21 Marines were killed. One possible reason why this operation has been kept low key, despite its size, is that it may be literally ripping up the insurgent base of support along the upper Euphrates. If the LA Times article is accurate, the insurgents essentially took the whole population of Rawah with them; if the phenomenon is being repeated elsewhere, the displacement of the Sunni population must be huge. To the north there is the unsustaining desert; to the south across the river there is the sweep of the Marines; for the insurgents to leave the population in place would risk leaving intelligence in the hands of the Americans. This has got to hurt and it is only the beginning. The LA Times notes the abandonment of RPGs, sniper rifles, mortars -- stuff you wouldn't leave behind -- not willingly. The whole point of strangling the enemy lines of communication while building support bases is to set up the stage for pursuit. And they will be pursued. The focus of newspaper coverage in the coming days may abruptly shift from 'poor helpless Marines from Ohio' to 'we're slaughtering them! We're killers!' These are the hard choices of war, and as Hemingway once wrote "all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you."

The insurgents are trying to hit hard with, yes, more lethal weapons than before. But, the reason they are hitting hard now is because they might very well be trapped. The insurgency is at its most powerful when it is able to hit soft targets and run on their own terms. This is sustainable. What isn't sustainable is direct contact with U.S. Marines--this isn't mere hyperbole either. Western Iraq is crawling with U.S. and Iraqi security forces and if the insugency is no longer able to run, they have to turn and fight. Expect the "news" to get worse before it gets better, but if Wretchard is right, we could be watching a major victory for the Coalition in Iraq.

(Jayne, thanks for the link)