The Washington Post reports this morning on the progress of a major U.S. offensive to take Samarra. A brigade combat team from the U.S. military, backed up by roughly 2,000 members of the nascent Iraqi security forces, fought their way into the city. The insurgents are reported to have suffered heavy casualties during the assault. Other reporting from the field indicates the use of a combined-arms offensive — employing ground maneuver forces, artillery and aircraft — to effectuate the assault on Samarra.

The offensive in the city about 65 miles north of Baghdad largely overwhelmed the rebel force during a night and day of occasionally intense fighting. One U.S. soldier was killed, according to military officials, who estimated insurgent fatalities at more than 100. Hospital officials said they had received the bodies of dozens of Iraqis, including women and children, the Reuters news agency reported.

The assault, which began at dusk Thursday, was intended to bring a decisive conclusion to a long-running dispute over who actually runs Samarra, which has a population of 250,000. The police department and city council were co-opted months ago by an insurgency dominated by former members of ousted president Saddam Hussein's government, officials said.

With U.S. armor leading the way for Iraqi forces that secured a sensitive religious shrine and a renowned spiral minaret, the operation was described by Iraqi officials as a model for planned joint operations aimed at putting the interim government in control of several central Iraq cities before national elections promised for January.

"We will spare no effort to clean all Iraqi cities of these criminal gangs," said Qasim Dawood, the government's state minister and national security adviser. "Through these operations, we will open the way not only to reconstruction but also to prepare the general elections to be held as scheduled."

Iraqi and U.S. officials also have vowed to wrest control from insurgents in the Sunni Triangle cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, as well as in Sadr City, the large Shiite Muslim slum on Baghdad's east side. Iraq's deputy prime minister promised this week that, after weeks of largely futile efforts to negotiate political settlements, the trouble spots would be the target of military operations during October.

Senior U.S. commanders had privately predicted such operations would come in November or December because of chronic delays in training and equipping new Iraqi troops, who would follow U.S. forces into each city and assert civil order.

Analysis: The attack on Samarra is one more indicator that major combat operations — of the kind supposedly ceased on 1 May 03 — have resumed. This is no small counter-insurgency operation, nor is it a delicate cordon-and-search operation aimed at finding certain persons or weapons caches. This is a deliberate attack being fought by a brigade-sized element supported by brigade, divisional and joint fires, in conjunction with a coordinated civil-military effort by the Iraqis and U.S. forces. It is, in essence, a major combat operation, according both to U.S. doctrine and common sense.

There are other data points too, which I noted a couple of weeks ago during a rise in the intensity of daily attacks on U.S. forces, and the declaration that certain areas had become a sanctuary for the Iraqi insurgency. Here are some other indicators pointing to the resumption of major combat ops:

- A WSJ story by Greg Jaffe in mid-September pointed to a new level of cooperation and coordination in the Iraqi insurgency attacks. "The insurgents are no longer operating in isolated pockets of their own. They are well-connected and cooperating," according to one Iraqi official. We don't face an opposing army in Iraq. But if you imagine a spectrum with ragtag rebels on one end and an army on the other, the enemy in Iraq is steadily creeping closer and closer towards becoming an organized, professionalized, well-resourced, lethal and effective fighting force.

- The insurgency now controls major swaths of territory — not just hearts and minds, not just city blocks, and not just litttle hideouts. According to the Journal: "The area referred to by U.S. officials as "insurgent enclaves" has grown from a patchwork of cities to include much of al Anbar province, which fans out to the northwest of Baghdad." This is another sign that we're not just dealing with an insurgency anymore — this an enemy bent on owning territory. That implies a much larger ambition than we previously ascribed to our enemy in Iraq. And more importantly, it probably means they're going to stand and fight their ground, instead of "praying and spraying" rounds at US troops.

- Tom Ricks' Sept. 9 report in The Post corroborated the argument with some important indicators that the Iraqi insurgency is becoming more lethal and more sophisticated. The casualty rates (both KIA and WIA) appear to be accelerating. And, the Iraqi insurgency has been steadily increasing the lethality and effectiveness of its tactics since last year. Whereas IEDs used to be haphazardly constructed and hidden in animal carcasses, they are now much more sophisticated and deadly — often constructed from daisy-chained artillery shells with enough explosives to take out an armored vehicle, carefully concealed, and detonated with alarming precision. The Iraqis also appear to have developed a sophisticated intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability, depending in large part on sympathetic Iraqi citizens and networks of insurgents who observe U.S. actions and then pass intelligence back to the insurgents.

- The New York Times' exclusive report from early September on the National Intelligence Estimate done by the CIA paints a very grim picture of what's going on. My sense is that they're looking at certain indicators — especially the size of the insurgency and presence of multiple warring factions — in order to make a short/long-term prediction of instability for the foreseeable future. "The estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war, the officials said. The most favorable outcome described is an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms." This estimate describes a nation which is still at a war with itself — and not likely to settle down anytime soon.

- The Post and other media reported on outgoing Marine leader Lt. Gen. James Conway's comments that the Fallujah attack was ill-considered, and once decided on after the gruesome contractor lynching, ill-pursued by political leaders/generals who didn't have the stomach for casualties. This is really the heart of the problem, I think. Our enemy has ratched up the fighting to such a high level of intensity that we not have the political will anymore to fight them as they need to be fought. To beat this insurgency in the near term, we will probably have to respond with the violence that only major combat operations can entail. But that will require an enormous amount of political will — both to inflict casualties and to take them. I just don't think the White House wants to do that, especially with the election looming.

However, I'm not sure that an enormous act of force (such as this op in Samarra) will necessarily pacify the country. The insurgency has developed into a fairly decentralized, dispersed, and amorphous enemy. We may succeed in crushing it in Samarra, and possibly in Fallujah and Ramadi as well. But I don't know that this will end the insurgency. The best long-term answer for the U.S. will probably be to set up the Iraqi forces to take on the insurgency, because they will have the greatest chance of political success against their fellow countrymen. When we open up a can of whoop-a** on Samarra, it breeds resentment. When the Iraqis themselves take ownership of this problem, and crack down on these insurgents, it will not breed the same kind of resentment. We must hasten the day when that kind of engagement will happen, by doing more to build up the Iraqi security forces.

So why does it matter that we're back at war? Well, if you're the type who likes to keep score, it matters. If you're going to judge this president on his wartime record, it matters. This administration, though a series of major miscalculations, has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Our best hope in Iraq is to leave some sort of lasting democratic government there and to set up the Iraqis as best we can to manage their own security mess. But hope is not a method, and this will be a gamble. Nonetheless, I do not see any way for the U.S. to impose order on Iraq, short of committing 2-4 times as many troops as we have there now and imposing absolute U.S.-controlled martial law on the country. And even then, we would continue to bleed slowly from IED attacks and ambushes on a regular basis. There aren't a lot of good options out there — just varying degrees of bad ones. The tough part is picking the least bad option that will not lead to a failed state of Iraq that we must come back to again in 5 or 10 years.

Owen West, a former Marine officer who now trades on Wall Street, writes in Slate about a big problem in the military today: the tendency to award combat medals disproportionately to officers and senior sergeants. He makes a great argument about how the system is broken, and some ways it ought to be fixed:

The current medal gap actually has three dimensions. First, the different services have different criteria for the same medals. Second, support staff are rewarded more generously than are soldiers on the front lines. Third, officers receive medals that are superior to those given to the enlisted ranks.

Start with the variance among the military branches. The Air Force awarded 2,425 Bronze Stars and 21 Silver Stars from March 2002 to August 2004 for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Twenty-seven airmen were killed in combat during that time, making the Air Force's ratio of top-level ground-combat medals to fatalities 91-to-1. (This figure doesn't include medals awarded for airborne bravery.) As of July 31, 2004, the Army had awarded 17,498 Bronze Stars and 133 Silver Stars in Operation Iraqi Freedom, while 636 soldiers have died, an awards ratio of 27-to-1. And the Marine Corps has awarded just 701 Bronze Stars, 12 Silver Stars, and six Navy Crosses (the Navy's second-highest award) for combat in Iraq, while 264 Marines died—a ratio of less than 3-to-1.

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... even in the Marine Corps, known to have few caste barriers, the officers are disproportionately represented among the top award winners. As of Aug. 18, Marine officers had received nine times as many Bronze Stars as the enlisted Marines (225 times as many on a per capita adjusted basis) and 1.2 times as many earned Bronze Stars with Valor (30 times as many on a per capita basis). "I believe that the awards process has always been biased towards officers," says Maj. Gen. Smith. "Part of that can honestly be explained by the 'burdens of command' consideration. ... That said, I must admit that most of the bias is unexplainable."

This skew occurs in part because officers are expected to lead from the front. In the infantry, command-and-control is most effective when it's located in the dangerous battle space where the lead elements are clashing. Indeed, in the Marine divisions, the commanding general often moves with lead companies. Casualty rates reflect these officers' dangerous positions. Removing air units from the equation, officers account for 4 percent of the total Operation Iraqi Freedom force but 8 percent of the fatalities.

Still, some soldiers criticize the preponderance of awards for officers because it encourages politicking and smacks of careerism.

Analysis: I have seen other statistics to corroborate this argument too. In "Thunder Run", the outstanding book by David Zucchino chronicling 3ID's assault on Baghdad, the author reproduces a list of combat awards from the 2nd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division. Without diminishing anything that unit's officers did, I found it quite surprising that so few enlisted soldiers were represented among Silver Star recipients — but nearly every battalion and company commander was. The same trend continued through the rest of the awards, including Bronze Star with Valor device, and Bronze Star.

Also, there's a second rank issue within the officer and enlisted ranks themselves. For the Silver Star in this brigade, no awards were given to lieutenants, or anyone below the rank of Staff Sergeant. I find that quite surprising, given the exploits that I read about. However, there were lots of Bronze Stars given out to lieutenants, privates, etc. And I imagine there were a number of Army Commendation and Army Achievement medals given out to the most junior enlisted soldiers too.

This pattern replicates the peacetime structure for these awards that you see anytime a soldier "PCS's" between assignments. A junior soldier will usually receive an Army Achievement Medal or Army Commendation (less often), each respectively approved by a Lt. Colonel or full Colonel. A young lieutenant or sergeant will usually receive an Army Commendation. A mid-level officer or non-com will be awarded a Meritorious Service Medal, and senior officers and sergeants might be awarded something higher depending on the character of their service and whether it's a final award for retirement. This scheme usually applied regardless of the soldier's individual performance — something that led many to view these awards as cheap and barely worth the money they cost at AAFES. The command's justification was that these higher awards should reflect the increasing responsibility of higher rank. But when you looked at some of the tremendous contributions made by junior soldiers — like one young Specialist who single-handedly kept the 1st Brigade TOC computer systems running during a digitized NTC rotation — you've got to scratch your head at an argument like that.

I'd only add one last comment, and it comes from my grandfather, a WWII Navy flier. The difference between a Silver Star and the Medal of Honor, in his opinion, were the literacy and political connections of the officer writing the recommendation. There's still a grain of truth in that statement, unfortunately. But today, we also add rank to the mix, perhaps diluting the integrity of the awards system even more. I agree with Mr. West that we need to change it.

Bradley Graham has this report in today's Washington Post on the about-to-be-completed rudimentary missile defense system and the ongoing debate over whether the U.S. should build it. As one of the most expensive procurement programs in history (particularly if you lump in the 1980s expenditures on SDI), a lot of people say that the current missile defense system is failing to... err... hit its targets, either in terms of effectiveness or efficiency. This report details some of the questions which have emerged over the efficacy of the system, and the liberal testing policy of this Pentagon adopted as a way of pushing this program towards completion.

Is Florida really the best example to strive for in planning the upcoming Iraqi election?

"My belief is that elections will occur in the vast majority of the country," General Abizaid said. "I can't predict 100 percent that all areas will be available for complete, free, fair and peaceful elections. I assume that there will be certain areas of the country that will have to be fought over in order to have the elections take place."

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"If I recall," he said, "looking back at our own election four years ago, it wasn't perfect either."

-- Gen. John Abizaid, CENTCOM Commander, on Meet The Press

I wrote last week on the need to hold full elections in Iraq that do their absolute best to enfranchise the entire country. I've listened to the arguments of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and Gen. Abizaid to try and find a good way to hold partial elections without undermining the long-term stability of Iraq. I've also read about how a coalition of Iraqi political parties may coalesce in the election to provide a "super-majority", thus bolstering its legitimacy. And yet, I remain unconvinced that this is a good idea. It's one thing to strive for full and fair elections, but to miss the mark due to the exigencies of the moment. It's quite another to set the bar so low at the outset, accepting imperfect elections as a matter of policy. I think this move, along with the disbanding of the Iraqi army and the de-Baathification of the Iraqi government agencies, will go down as one of the great strategic blunders of our occupation if we continue down this road.

Harvard President and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has a famous quote: "In the history of the world, no one has ever washed a rented car." The quip is meant to make a point about ownership and stakeholding, and how people generally invest their resources in things they own. The same is true, in a sense, of Iraq. We must get as many Iraqis as possible to invest in the future of their nation, either by service in the security forces, by joining the Iraqi economy, or by participating in the democratic process. As these Iraqis gradually invest themselves in Iraqi civil society, they will take ownership of it, and resist any insurgency that seeks to tear apart their society. Over time, that is the formula for long-term stability in Iraq. Free and fair elections which are secured so that 100% of the country may participate are an important milestone on the way to this civil society.

Intel Dump will slow down this week to accomodate my work on a few article projects. And as a more general matter, this site will adjust to a fall schedule to reflect the hours I keep at the firm. Law school was fun, and it allowed me to do a lot of writing, but all good things must eventually come to an end. Instead of frequent posts, I will try to write a few times a week on the subjects I feel deserve the most attention.

Thanks for your readership, and for your support.