Steve Gilliard is using a video game comparison that I must admit I don't get, because I haven't played that game: Traveller 2000, the Iraqi edition 09/24/04.
But his read on the situation in Iraq is probably realistic:
There are three things one needs to understand to get how bad the situation in Iraq is:
One, even if we had a draft, and it's passage through Congress is unlikely, because the class of Duke 2006 isn't going to Samarra for George Bush, it would take up to five years for the draftees to become part of the Army. Why so long? Because they would have to be trained and infantry school is a year. The 82nd Airborne took over a year to get into combat in WWII, the 101st, two years. Only the divisions with a hard core of regulars, the Big Red One and the 25th ID, were able to get into combat quickly, and even then took serious losses from inexperience.
The draft is not a short term solution to our problems in Iraq. And we need a short term solution. Desperately. And that can only come from large armies like the Indians, Pakistanis and Egyptians. And they aren't coming. Not after Abu Gharib. More Muslims live in India than Pakistan. Egypt is on tenderhooks as is with their own fundamentalist problem.
Two, the resistance has waged a brilliant campaign of economic warfare. While everyone looks at the war for Al Anbar province, but it's been the dedicated, coordinated sabotage of the pipelines which has paralyzed Iraq. Then they made the highways too dangerous to traverse. Only heavily armored convoys can move to and from Baghdad.
This is what drives the kidnapping. It isn't so much the demands, but the fear which cripples people. ...
Three: Personal safety in Iraq comes from the barrel of a gun. Without bodyguards, you risk kidnapping at any time of the day or night. The kidnappings have become so brazen, so aggressive, they are a major threat. When armed gangs can crash into private homes and kidnap and murder people with no fear, there is NO security in Iraq. You have entered a land of anarchy and madness.
The Iraqi police are either infiltrated or openly hostile to American and Coalition troops. Of the 25,000 cops in Basra, not one lifted a finger to help the British. The Guardsmen are little better. They walk around with their faces hidden so they won't have their families threatened. Anyone who becomes a governor in Iraq either helps the resistance or faces humiliation or outright assassination.
Steve's chances to become a commentator on Fox News are small.
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