Rowhouse Logic - Breathtaking Inanity

The head of Iraq’s intelligence service Gen Muhammad Shahwani now puts the number of insurgents at 200,000, of which 40,000 are said to be the hard core and the rest active supporters.

These figures do not represent an insurgency. They represent a war.

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Until recently, the US military has talked of there being about 25,000 fighters in Iraq.

Gen Shahwani has not just upped the estimate, but has put it into the wider context of the active guerrilla support which perhaps gives a truer picture. There are 150,000 US troops.

Anthony Cordesman, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington commented: “The Iraqi figures do… recognise the reality that the insurgency in Iraq has broad support in Sunni areas, while the US figures downplay this to the point of denial.”

Mr Cordesman has for months pointed out the weakness of the local Iraq forces, saying recently that they were basically unprepared and “sent out to die.”

The level of attacks is now so intense and sophisticated that it is not surprising that the former British representative to the former Coalition Authority, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, said recently that the insurgency was “irremediable” and “ineradicable” by US and other foreign troops alone.

“It depends on the Iraqis. We have lost the primary control,” he said.