In the U.S. we have a est. population of 303 million people. We have about 840,000 assorted law enforcement personnel. thats like 1 officer for every 362 citizens.

Iraq has a population of 28 million est. We have with the surge abot 135000 troops basically 1 military personnel for every 207 iraq citizen.

now Iraq has mulitiple armed militia's and organizations that are waging actual warfare on each other. Iraq has at least 3 very distinct and combative tribal/religious groups. Iraq has Iran funding Shia militia's and probably Saudi's funding Sunni militia's. They have syrians crossing the border to fight. The kurdish "army" is in control of the north worried about Turkey which already has engaged kurdish rebels in northern Iraq.

I would say in my opinion conservatively that Iraq is at lease 10 times if not many more times more dangerous and unstable than say here in America.
We keep control civil control with our law enforcement officers backed up if necessary by our military.
So if Iraq is at least ten times more out of control than the U.S. would not logically the saturation per citizen need to be at least 10 times greater than what we have here in the states?

1 military personnel for every 36 citizens would equate to something like 776,000+ troops in Iraq to make it a stable envirement. Not to mention the judicial system and confinement facilities to hold insurgents. That would also take at least a 10 year commitment of force to have time to build infrastructure and investment from business.

Obviously the Bush Adm. did not plan well and did not listen to the Army initially in planning nor anyone else in reconstruction. My question is what do any of the democrats who are talking about pulling troops out of iraq going to fix this?

Our economy and lifestyle is completely dependent upon oil. We cant leave iraq to become a worse mess because this violence will spread and the Saud royal family of Saudi arabia who are neighbors to iraq definately dont want this to spread to their country. Oil will go insane so how exactly will any democratic nominee propose they will pull troops and not wreck out economy?

quote:

1 military personnel for every 36 citizens would equate to something like 776,000+ troops in Iraq to make it a stable envirement.

That is not the box you want to think in. Think smaller. We do not need "776K troop" to achieve the objective - which is self government.

We need to force multiply and we are doing this. The political objective in Iraq is not simple, but not impossible. We're showing both Sunni's and Shite's that security can be shared.

Our military/political imperative - something I know will always prevail - is that a political solution is possible. Problem is this is not seen as possible among the Iraqi "power tribes." They know security can be shared, but not realizing how power can be shared.

How do we make them understand how security can be shared at the same time that power can be shared? That is the key to every problem we have in every country from Sudan to Afghanistan to Iraq to Nigeria.

We need to try in Iraq. Why? Because all the other countries are more difficult to control than Iraq. At least Iraq has had central govt. The other 3 are piss poor backwards ass training ground for terrorists.

I could go on and on, but I need to sleep

I do agree with you DD in principal, however when you have heavily armed "militias" from rival religous sects and a small organized army of Kurds that have never got along.. You have chaos and instability.

The stability of Iraq is really about economic control of oil which is concentrated in the kurdish north and the shiite southeast. The minority and central iraq concentrated Sunni's are stuck in between the two with very little oil fields control. The Shiites and kurds have a major axe to grind with the former Saddam minority population sunni's who were in control.

There is no political central solution with the economics of oil control which is all of iraqs economy basically out of the sunni's hand. They virtually have nothing to lose by continuing their war with the iranian backed shiites. The kurds who are basically autonomous dont want to share revenue with the sunni who treated them harshly during the saddam era.

The "central government" with a "central of federal army/police" will never be successful while iran exist nor while the kurds want to stay autonomous. You can not have one party with everything to lose (sunni's) including their lives and any economic control of oil and another religous party which HATES sunnis with suicidal violence. The kurds basically dont trust either the iranian controlled shiites or the former sunni who tortured and killed them in mass numbers.

The only way is thru a massive dismarming of all non central government military, and in place putting in place another ground force and sealing and control of all porous border from jordan,syria, iran. Turkey,Saudi,kuwait are not the problem and they will help in stability for their own reasons.
Business will not come in to rebuild infrastructure withour martial law type of stability that can last at least 5 years. What the Iraqi people need is business and infrastructure and a developing economy as well as social services. That will take men from the extremist because they can work and earn a safe living as well as educating the young. You can not achieve stability with multiple non government militias and no economic job availability and the services that supply them.

The Iraqi solution is readily available thru multiple examples in history. What we are doing right now is a POLITICAl SHORT TERM SOLUTION. This is completely intentional and the military and middle east experts know that it will not last and is not the solution. This is basically a move for republican government seats. They dont want to be completely swept out so this will decrease american casulties and replace them with iraqi for the short term. The public in our country only cares about what they see in the media not the ground or complicated political realities in iraq.