So let's see, we have (from memory):
160,000 American.
330,000 Iraqi police and army.
140,000 facility protection forces.
10,000 coalition forces.
30,000 tribal volunteers (Sunni Arabs).
50,000 contract security personnel.
The total is 720,000 security forces facing about 7,000 Sunni Arabs, whose strength and support is dwindling, plus Iranian-supported Shia thugs that number from several thousand to a couple tens of thousands. I tend to think the smaller number is closer to being accurate. The latter are being ramped up as Iran ups the ante in their war with us.
We have the strength in the field to win this war. This doesn't even count the Kurdish militias who keep the northern Kurdish regions safe.
What I don't know is whether we have the time to beat down the rising Iranian-sponsored thugs without going after Iran itself. We have beaten the Sunni Arab thugs without taking out Syria, but the time needed to do so has crippled our will to fight at home. On the other hand, Kurds, Sunni Arabs, and the vast majority of Shias can unite against the Persian invaders, so the Iraqi domestic front should be more robust. And Iraq is stronger now.
But a new stage of the war is starting. Since spring 2006, it was clear that the Sunni Arabs were going down in defeat and that Sadr and his Iranian sponsor was the last remaining threat. But until the surge started, the Shia thugs mostly hit Sunni Arabs as part of the enemy plan to start a civil war. But with the jihadis being hammered in our surge and the death squads failing to be as energetic as needed, the Iranians trained Shia thugs inside Iran and sent them back to Iraq to fight American forces directly. This is new.
The Sadr/Iranian Phase of the war is evolving into a direct threat. We shall see if we can successfully fight this new threat.
