The US has the most sophisticated military? Why can't we get it done?

[Leroy J]

This is what's called assymetrical warfare.

In conventional war or "total warfare" nations fight each other. All of their resources and industry are seen as contributing to the other's ability to fight and thus become targets.

In assymetrical war, the insurgents rely on our benevolence. If we wanted, we could simply kill everyone in Iraq or nuke it or carpet bomb it. We have the ability. But we choose not to because we try to respect innocent lives.

This puts us at a huge disadvantage, because we then become very selective and discriminate about killing the right people. The enemy will do EVERYTHING in their means to kill as many people as possible. If they had nukes they would nuke it.

So the bottom line is that we can but don't because we believe it's wrong. The bad guys can't do that much by comparison, but kill everyone they can. Nice guy finishes last.

[Ed F]

Our military has been designed and prepared to fight a ligitimate enemy with a REAL military, such as the U.S.S.R or China. The military was never trained to fight the Flintstones. If is extremely difficult to pick one person out of a group of identical looking people. We are trying not to kill civilians. You can't tell what one person believes just by looking at them. The real war against Saddam Hussein was won a long time ago. We are now fighting a different type of enemy, a philosophical one.

[Chad P]

dude, you spelled "intelligence" wrong. also, we arent trying to wipe out these people, we are trying to establish a country in iraq. you cannot compare WWII this war. sure if we threw all of our manpower at iraq and afghanistan, we would completely obliterate them, but that not the point of this conflict.

[UK Wildcats fan]

We are fighting a small, "invisible", guerrilla fighters, not the big Nazi army.