No Dots. No Connections. Never Mind

Nearly four months ago, I speculated that perhaps we were holding our combat brigades back from the day-to-day fight in Iraq in order to prepare them for conventional operations against Iran. Pure speculation that confounds the competing lines of thought that I bring to this blog of reporting on events, predicting events, and humbly stating what I would do.

Expecting action against Iran, I looked at events and tried to fit them into what I would do if in charge.

So if I was planning to hit Iran, I'd want regular Army units to move into Iran and if I want regular Army units, units already in Iraq make the most sense. But to use them, they'd need to be trained and organized for conventional actions. Counter-insurgency operations make units less suited for conventional operations. So how do you reconcile all these things? I speculated we were pulling units back from the counter-insurgency to ready them for action.

Well, I finally decided to look at some actual facts to check on whether this could possibly be true. We have 14 or 15 Army combat brigades in Iraq right now, I think. I exclude two Marine regiments since they are clearly involved in Anbar. So what might indicate whether any of the Army brigades are actually pulled out of combat? If pulled back, they would not be suffering casualties.

So I looked at a month of Army death announcements from Iraq. In looking back to August 17, 2006, I could identify at least one soldier killed in action in fourteen separate brigades in Iraq.

So with all brigades engaged and suffering some casualties, I think it is safe to say that whatever we are planning, we are not pulling brigades back from the fight to get ready.

I do take comfort that I can look at evidence and drop speculation rather than double down and take it as proof we are really good at plotting. I think in my looming old age I should be safe from becoming like those bizarre conspiracy theorists out there! So I got that going for me.

Bottom line: No dots. No connections.