Here is a link that describes the Army's force structure. I know I have used some of these terms incorrectly. From the smallest to the largest we have: the individual soldier, squad (9-10 soldiers), platoon (2-4 squads), company (3-5 platoons), battalion (4-6 companies), brigade (2-5 combat battalions), division (3 brigades), corps (2-5 divisions).

The Marines went into Fallujah with two battalions and have called in another battalion for reinforcement. A battalion is between 300 and 1,000 soldiers. That was to secure a heavily armed city of 300,000. Also, when you hear talk of needing another division, we are talking about 10,000 to 15,000 soldiers and all their equipment. Just some perspective.

Army Force Structure

The basic building block of all Army organizations is the individual soldier. A small group of soldiers organized to maneuver and fire is called a squad. As elements of the Army’s organizational structure become larger units, they contain more and more subordinate elements from combat arms, combat-support and combat-service-support units. A company is typically the smallest Army element to be given a designation and affiliation with higher headquarters at battalion and brigade level. This alphanumeric and branch designation causes and “element” to become a “unit.”

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Juan Cole continues to have the best coverage of what is going on...

What Went Wrong in Washington and the Green Zone

Jeffrey Gettleman of the New York Times has two important articles today. Since he was almost killed getting them, I hope someone is paying attention. One forthrightly acknowledges the instigating role of the Israeli assassination of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin on the blow-up in Iraq. The other talks about the ugly mood brewing, of hatred for Americans and cross-sectarian sympathy born of Iraqi nationalism. It should not be taken for granted that Iraqis can be divided and ruled. Remember that they united to fight off Iran for 8 years in the 1980s, and that relatively few Iraqi Shiites defected to Khomeini. It is also worrisome that the trained battalion of the new Iraqi army that was ordered to go fight in Fallujah refused to go, according to Thomas Ricks of the Washington Post. The battalion came under fire from the Mahdi Army on its way out of Baghdad and just went back to barracks. They said they hadn't signed up to fight Iraqis. This phenomenon had been seen many times before. The police in Fallujah refused to fight insurgents not so long ago when they had a firefight with US troops. Same reason. This is further evidence of the collapse of American authority in Iraq, such as it was. Robin Wright of the Washington Post goes Bernard Lewis one better with an insightful piece on What Went Wrong with the American enterprise in Iraq. The Post is on a roll today, with an excellent overview of how things spun out of control in recent weeks by Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Anthony Shadid . (I had to scroll down to see it at the MSNBC site in IE for some reason). The article argues for arrogance and ignorance as motives in coming after Muqtada and his people right before Arba'in. But I still wonder about a darker side. The CPA told them that they cracked down on Muqtada because his militias threatened to make democracy impossible. I wonder if what they really meant to say was that his militias threatened to make it impossible for the Pentagon to install Ahmad Chalabi as prime minister.

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Here are links to the articles Juan Cole mentioned...

War’s full fury is suddenly everywhere across Iraq

Anti-U.S. Outrage Unites a Growing Iraqi Resistance

Iraqi force refused to back Americans

Series of U.S. Fumbles Blamed for Turmoil in Postwar Iraq

U.S. Targeted Fiery Cleric In Risky Move
As Support for Sadr Surged, Shiites Rallied for Fallujah

The last two are must reads. here are three more posts from Juan Cole that should give everyone some things to think about...

Muqtada's Fate

Revolution in Baqubah

Virulent Racism, Disregard for Civilian Life Mar US Military Approach: British Commander

Sean Rayment of the Telegraph reports a story today that should be on the front pages of every American newspaper. He reports extremely deep dissatisifaction in the British officer corps with American military counter-insurgency tactics. The critique begins with attitudes. The officer quoted says that the US military looks at Iraqis as "Untermenschen," a Hitler-derived term for inferior human beings. ' "My view and the view of the British chain of command is that the Americans' use of violence is not proportionate and is over-responsive to the threat they are facing. They don't see the Iraqi people the way we see them. They view them as untermenschen. They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life in the way the British are." ' This attitude tracks with what I know of racial attitudes in US military ranks. The US military is disproportionately Southern whites and they tend not to be educated outside the officer corps (and even there the education is often narrow). I think we all know what most US soldiers think of Arabs. Even calling them "hajjis" and "Ali Babas" betrays the attitude. (Hajji is a strange thing to call Iraqis, who have lived under a militantly secular socialist regime for 35 years and most of whom couldn't have gone on the pilgrimage to Mecca even if they wanted to). The contempt for Iraqis and Arabs and Muslims that is widespread in the ranks, the British maintain, spills over into operational plans, creating a contempt for human life and a willingness to endanger and kill civilians in a ruthless effort to get at insurgents. This approach produces, of course, further insurgents.

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I originally saw this link at AntiWar.com. Read the rest of Juan's comments and original article...

US tactics condemned by British officers

This is from an Iraqi that supports the coalition...

One year after Saddam

A whole year has passed now and I can't help but feel that we are back at the starting point again. The sense of an impending disaster, the ominous silence, the breakdown of most governmental facilities, the absence of any police or security forces, contradicting news reports, rumours everywhere, and a complete disruption in the flow of everyday life chores. All signs indicate that it's all spiralling out of control, and any statements by CPA and US officials suggesting otherwise are blatantly absurd.

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  thanks to The Agonist

Steve Gilliard has some disturbing analysis of the military situation...

Failure in Iraq

US Marines are sitting outside Fallujah, using a cease-fire to reenforce their two outnumbered battalions, and hoping that some Iraqis can decide to stop killing each other and them. Despite all the big talk of "surrender or die" US forces are essentially stuck a mile inside the city and unable to move father without calling in the big guns and air support. If a regular Iraqi battalion held the town, US forces would make short work of them. But the fact is that this is as much political as military and all the resistance has to do is kill Americans and hold on. They have turned one of the most hated towns in Iraq into a nationalist symbol across the country. The commanders tell the reporters one story, their unit movements say another. One exmple, the use of the AC-130. That plane is never used in offensive operations. It can kill a football field's worth of soldiers. No one can move forward when Spectre is above, unless they want to die. It is usually used when US forces are pinned down. Then, it can wipe an attacking enemy out. The fact that it was used in Fallujah indicates that their attack stalled out. Then, they had to call in more AF fighters, which means they were in serious trouble. Marines hate calling in the Air Force because they have a habit of killing Marines. Then, of course, they bought up a third battalion. A full regiment of troops still stuck in that one mile area of Fallujah. In no war game you could play, in no Lessons Learned, do you bring up another unit if your attack is going well. You do that when your other units are getting hammered. [...] We will never control Fallujah. We will use the cease-fire as a fig leaf to hide our defeat, and that's what this is, and shove some Iraqi cops and Civil Defense troops in as a shield. Nor will more troops help, because they don't exist. We already have 24 brigades deployed out of 33, the rest are refitting and losing men who don't want a return to Iraq. No country is going to send men to put down an Iraqi rebellion at this point. The thousands of Pakistanis, Nigerians and Bangladeshis we used as our infantry will stay home and watch this debacle devolve. People think we mean NATO troops when we say adding troops to the coalition, we don't except in a symbolic way. We really want Egyptians, Nigerians, Pakistanis and even Indians, who have large battalions and brigades and who troops can walk around towns and have enough discipline to not rob the locals. They are not going to send their troops to kill fellow Muslims for us and our vague goals of democracy. Any attempt to expand the Army will come way too late to solve our troubles in Iraq. We need 3-500K men on the ground today, not three years from now. You don't send two battalions to take a city the size of Albany. You send a division to do that. You had a division in Fallujah, there would be sniping, not fighting and a cease-fire. We don't have a division to send there. We will not get a division to send there. We may have problems getting the First Marine Division home. [...] We are failing in Iraq. Our mission, our war, lies in shambles. How many more Americans and Iraqis have to die before we decide to walk away?

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Here are some comments from Ralph Nader that should give us all a pause. I don't support Ralph in any way, but Kerry is making noises of sending in more troops and we need to think about what that may mean.

Message To America's Students
From Ralph Nader
Nader: The War, The Draft, Your Future

Today, the war is in the quicksands and alleys of Iraq. Once again, under the pressure of a determined resistance, we see an American war policy being slowly torn apart at the seams, while the candidates urge us to "stay the course" in this tragic misadventure. Today's Presidential candidates are not Nixon and Humphrey, they are now Bush and Kerry. Once again, there is one overriding truth: If war is the only choice in this election, then war we will have. Today enlistments in the Reserves and National Guard are declining. The Pentagon is quietly recruiting new members to fill local draft boards, as the machinery for drafting a new generation of young Americans is being quietly put into place. Young Americans need to know that a train is coming, and it could run over their generation in the same way that the Vietnam War devastated the lives of those who came of age in the sixties.

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Have a nice weekend.