Very much caution on that figure of 200,000, I would suggest; it's no better founded than original estimates of "two or three thousand". It would be equivalent to about 3% of the adult male population of Iraq. In fact, given that there are unlikely to be any Kurds in that 200k, the participation rate might be even higher. This just doesn't seem likely to me, and the possibility that a police chief would exaggerate the size of the problem he is faced with to try and blag a bigger budget, does.
best dd -----Original Message----- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Yoshie Furuhashi Sent: 05 January 2005 23:35 To: [email protected] Subject: How Many Troops Would It Take to Defeat the 200,000-strong Guerrilla Insurgency? "How Many Troops Would It Take to Defeat the 200,000-strong Guerrilla Insurgency?" (based on the record of British Malaya, it would take 4 million US troops more than a decade to put down the 200,000-strong guerrilla force in Iraq, if [a big if] Washington can successfully alienate the Shiite majority from the Sunnis by the lure of an electoral path to power and actually grants them independence): <http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/01/how-many-troops-would-it-take-to.html> . -- Yoshie * Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * "Proud of Britain": <http://www.proudofbritain.net/ > and <http://www.proud-of-britain.org.uk/>
