I don’t normally plug DAILY STANDARD articles on the blog, but there are two excellent pieces today that I think merit some special attention. The first is by Christian Lowe, who runs Defense Tech, one of our favorite blogs, in addition to serving as managing editor at Military.com. Christian delves into the question of enemy body counts in Afghanistan, which the Pentagon has long sought to marginalize as a metric for success, but which nonetheless is a matter of great interest to observers and analysts alike. Christian reports that there have, indeed, been some impressive tallies in recent weeks, as the Taliban increasingly masses its forces for battle with Coalition troops. Christian quotes Col. Thomas McGrath, the American commander in charge of training Afghan security forces near Kandahar, on the result of the Taliban’s new tactics:

But as Christian notes, it’s not as though violence is waning in Afghanistan as it is in Iraq. Still, the upshot is that the Taliban appears to be making these tactical errors mostly out of incompetence, not because the insurgency has grown so strong as to make such losses insignificant. Again, Col. McGrath: