The Plan and the Problems.

Pat Dollard says the plan is multifacted, learns from mistakes, and is aggressive. A few points:

1. U.S. troops are to be gradually pulled back from all Iraqi cities and
towns and sent to seal the borders with Iran and Syria. The real insurgency is
not indigenous to Iraq, but being pumped in through Iran and Syria.

4. Generals and leaders from Saddam’s Baath party, many out of work for three years, will be encouraged to rejoin the military enticed with high-pay and bonuses designed to serve as retrograde pay for their time off. The Baath party generals will be key to victory in Al Anbar Province, as I will lay out later today or tomorrow.

9. Immediate, highly visible Infrastructure improvement first focused on the peaceful and cooperative areas of Mosul, Amara and Karbala. The idea is to make other areas around jealous of the rapidly modernizing cities, in order to incent them to tow the line of cooperation with the new Iraqi Government.

All of which begs the question of why no one thought of such before. I think that a counterinsurgency campaign is an exercise in trial-and-error; first one must accept that the insurgency exists, and second, that one can't merely blow it away either with bullets or ballots. Hopefully, this plan will yield verifiable results in a relatively quick time frame. As Lincoln in '64, we are fighting the clock as well as the enemy.

Judging by this, early signs are not promising. However, note the following:

It also appeared to fit a pattern emerging among the suspected Sunni
militants: trying to hit U.S. forces harder outside the capital rather than
confront them on the streets during a massive American-led security
operation.

Almost sounds as though the countryside was where they were coming from, don't it?