"Pretending things are better than they are, that's what worries me, that they don't seem to face up to it. Before you can deal with the problem, you've got to recognize what the problem is."

Arms and Aims: The Art of War vs. the Craft of Occupation:
"In one corner, the United States Army, the most advanced fighting machine in history. In the other, a group of guerrillas and terrorists, feared and disliked by a majority of the local population.

Last week, the guerrillas seemed to be the force on the offensive. "

Attacks on United States troops are not only rising, they are becoming more sophisticated. In recent days, guerrillas have destroyed a Black Hawk helicopter and an Abrams tank, two of the most advanced weapons in the United States arsenal. Last week, four car bombs exploded in Baghdad, and rockets hit a hotel where the deputy defense secretary, Paul D. Wolfowitz, was staying.

The American military is trained to obliterate its enemy with overwhelming firepower. But it is not a police force, trained to track down dangerous groups or individuals in heavily populated areas. And so, in the eyes of many Iraqis here, the American soldiers often seem impotent, unable to provide security for them or their families.

For at least a decade, the Army has worked to make itself more lethal, even though — or, perhaps, because — it has repeatedly been used in peacekeeping operations, defense analysts say. Even within the military, that strategy has caused some controversy.

Col. Stephen Kidder, director of war-fighting studies at the United States Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., said in a telephone interview that the military's attitude has been, "If we can win the big one, we can win the small one."

Colonel Kidder said he did not disagree with that strategy. But Col. John R. Martin, deputy director of strategic studies at the War College, said he believed that the Army did not spend enough time training or equipping soldiers for peacekeeping.

"We've focused on the operational aspects of winning the wars," Colonel Martin said. "I would say we cannot give that up, but we have to focus more on stability operations. It's viewed as a lesser, included, task, and that's obviously not true."

Colonel Martin said that the Army's dislike of peacekeeping operations had deepened over time, because they detracted from the primary mission of defending the United States.

But he said the pendulum had now swung too far. "War fighting has gone from being our primary focus to our only focus," he said.…

The American forces have often been operating on the basis of inadequate or bad intelligence, according to a report that was recently released by the Center for Army Lessons Learned, a study group in Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

The United States has 69 intelligence teams in Iraq, but they produce about 30 reports a day, about one-quarter as many as they should, the study found. The Army continues to suffer from a severe shortage of interpreters, and many of those it does employ are barely competent, the report says.

At the same time, the Army's efforts to counterattack against the guerrillas have resulted in a rising number of civilian deaths.

The problem is most severe around Falluja and Ramadi, cities west of Baghdad, where a rebellious local population has repeatedly clashed with units from the 82nd Airborne Division, which prides itself on its tough combat skills.

When Americans do respond, Iraqis say, they have sometimes struck in the wrong place and at the wrong people. The anti-American forces here know this, and may be goading the soldiers into fighting, hoping that ordinary civilians are killed or injured in the process. This is a strategy of guerrillas everywhere.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/02/weekinreview/02BERE.html