Trouble is, that depending on which military professional youre talking to, the magic ratio of troop to civilian is between 1 trooper per six civilians and 1 trooper to 10 civilians. This is considered the ratio that transforms an army from an occupying force subjected to combat to a pacifying force-- in other words the occupying force is so ubiquitous and dominant that further struggle is obviously useless. Making the math easy , using the lower 1 to 10 ratio, we would need about two million troops there, or roughly 18 times what we currently have. Obviously there's no way of doing that without reinstituting the draft, and even then, there are nowhere near enough training officers and noncoms to process all these raw, sullen, don-t-wanna-be- there new troops. The process would take years.

The reason the US military brass is concerned about all these different factions in Iraq has nothing to do with political correctness. It has everything to do with anxiety about the potential of a sort of urban Tet Offensive, a sudden organized swarm over US controlled firebases and such. "Just getting the job done" in an urban setting will mean unfathomable civilian casualties, which fuels, rather than dampens, the ardor of the average, mostly reluctant insurgent. But kill a man's family, and he's suddenly in play as a potential terrorist, regardless of how lazy or pacifist might be his nature.