Professor Juan Cole, writing in his blog Tuesday, states that about 80% of US military casualties are caused by Sunni ‘insurgents’ which most likely include all the various dissident groups in Iraq other than the Shiite militias loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, which are basically centered in Baghdad.

Professor Cole cites an ABC News Blotter column by Christopher Isher and Elizabeth Sprague which details this information with some statistical backup. In October 67 troops died in Sunni areas, compared to 43 who died in Baghdad and its immediate surroundings and can be reliably considered to have been killed by Shiites,

Isher and Sprague quote Caleb Carr, Professor of Counter-Insurgency at Bard College, who told ABC news,

"If American troops are getting killed in predominantly Sunni areas, then they are getting killed by Sunni insurgents[.]"

"The one thing we know for sure in the Muslim world in general, not just Iraq, is that everybody knows what the radicals are up to[.] "There are no hidden Shiite activists hiding out in Sunni areas because the populations won't tolerate it."

Baghdad is the prize jewel in the occupation because it is the seat of government. Traditionally countries just don’t stay in business if their capital cities are occupied, and that is why there has been so much emphasis lately on increasing security there.

There has been discussion of the fact that the Sunnis seem to be attempting to surround Baghdad and isolate it from the rest of the country. Inside the city, Shiite militias continue their struggle to ethnically cleanse entire districts of the city, as do Sunnis and attacking US troops and Iraqi army and police when the opportunity presents itself. It’s not a good situation and the problems might well be compounded by the fact that after 3 ½ years of occupation US commanders seem to not be certain just who is who.

Despite the geographic data, U.S. military officials seemed unprepared or unwilling to describe which groups were causing the majority of U.S. casualties. When asked whether Americans were being killed primarily by Sunni or Shiite militants, Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, Director of the Combined Press Information Center for the Multi-National Forces in Iraq, said that he did not have the breakdown. "I would not want to categorize that...I would just be guessing," he said.

While some might consider such lack of intelligence (military, not brainpower,) appalling, the fact is that the US Army is just not set up to conduct occupations, nor to conduct extensive counter-guerrilla warfare. The lack of a dependable supply of service translators forces CENTCOM to rely on Iraqis, who might be compromised and are always under threat of death from the resistance. The use of “presence patrols” in the name of shows of force are of limited value; too large a force rarely draws a response other than the opportunistic IED. Too small a force is vulnerable to an overwhelming gunfire attack whose goal might not be to kill the entire patrol, but rather to just inflict some losses.

McClatchy News reported a story yesterday that further underlines the damage caused by the lack of troops.

Two years after American troops launched a devastating ground assault aimed at purging the heart of the Iraqi insurgency, Fallujah once again is a violent place.

In recent months, insurgents have filtered back into the city, despite tight controls that limit access to only six checkpoints. Residents must submit to an extraordinary identification system that includes fingerprinting, retina scans and bar-coded identification cards.

The story explains that Fallujah (or what is left of Fallujah) has experienced a steady return of armed resisters, despite the US attempts to block it off.

Fallujah has mostly Sunni inhabitants, and the police, approximately 1,500, are drawn from that group. There have been many resignations lately, and some estimates place the current size at closer to 700. There are about 1,200 Iraqi soldiers, but they are Shiite and do not trust the Sunni police. Reports indicate only a few hundred US troops are tasked with the city blockade, and maintaining order. Lt Colonel James Teeples, assigned as the senior adviser to the Iraqi army there, estimates that a city of 250,000 needs 6,000 to 6,000 troops to maintain security.

"We just don't have the manpower to maintain surveillance on the entire city," Teeples said.

All of this sadly points to one conclusion: poor preparation. The question is whether the fault lies in the lack of planning and lack of imagination to think through the problems (that were obvious to many) on the part of the services, primarily the Army, or whether the real cause stems from somewhere above the Army’s Chief of Staff.