Iraq War: You say there's *how* many enemy fighters?

This from Al-Jazeera: Spy chief says 200,000 fighters in Iraq 01/03/05

The head of the Iraqi intelligence service has estimated that there are more than 200,000 active fighters and sympathisers in the war-torn country.

Service director General Muhammad Abd Allah Shahwani told journalists on Monday that his assessment included 40,000 fulltime fighters and about 200,000 Iraqis involved part-time. ...

And in stark contrast to many US assessments of success in Falluja, the spy chief said the November campaign against the town was far from a military triumph.

"What we have now is an empty city almost destroyed and most of the insurgents are free. They have gone either to Mosul or to Baghdad or other areas."

Shahwani stopped short of saying that anti-US fighters were now taking control of the situation in Iraq, but warned: "I would say they aren't losing."

Terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman and military analyst Anthony Cordesman both give some credibility to these estimates, which are far higher than the US government's official estimates.

We'll soon be having the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. How many other wars has the US ever had where we had such trouble not only identifying the number of the enemy fighters, but even who they are? In Vietnam, the Pentagon's estimate of the guerillas was notoriously fluid, but at least they knew who the National Liberation Front was.  About all we ever hear in the American press is about Al Zarqawi, who the Bush admistration has built up to mythical proportions because he are (now!) connected to Al Qaeda.

One of many strange things about the Republican Party way of war.