Perspective: Military adviser -- only way to deal with insurgents is capture or death

WASHINGTON, Dec. 15, 2006 — Insurgents in Iraq cannot be coerced. They must be killed or captured.

That is the view of one of the authors of the military's new counterinsurgency manual.

Released today, the document is the first significant update of America's counterinsurgency doctrine in more than two decades. It comes more than three years into the insurgency in Iraq, and during a time when President Bush is rethinking his Iraq strategy.

The manual is blunt.

Counterinsurgency operations (COIN), it says, "generally have been neglected" since the end of the Vietnam War. "Armed forces cannot succeed in COIN alone," it goes on to say.

Lt. Col. John Nagl, who wrote a book about counterinsurgency, "Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife," helped prepare this new manual for the Army and the Marines.

While it is written for counterinsurgencies around the world, Nagl said they did learn specific lessons about Iraq.

Roadside and other bomb attacks "are not aimed at killing U.S. soldiers," he says.

Instead Nagl asserts the insurgents conduct the attacks for propaganda.

"They want those pictures to show up on TVs in America, and they use it to recruit on the Internet," the lieutenant colonel says.

Read the rest at ABC News