What Americans wanted to hear was a genuine counterinsurgency plan, perhaps like one proposed by Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., a leading writer on military strategy: find the most secure areas with capable Iraqi forces.

President Kennedy approved a $41 million counterinsurgency plan, drawn up for President Eisenhower by General Edward Lansdale, to help the government of South Vietnam resist communist aggression.

In addition, Mrs. Aquino's Government has failed to formulate a counterinsurgency plan to the satisfaction of Pentagon officials.

In the first year of the Kennedy administration, MAAG worked closely with administration officials, USOM, and the US Information Service to develop a counterinsurgency plan (CIP).

Warns a Pentagon policymaker: The government has "regrettably failed" to develop a comprehensive counterinsurgency plan and "distrust and apathy pervade civil-military relations."

Pentagon officials and military experts generally agree that it was not until the middle of last year that the American civilian and military leadership in Iraq developed a coherent counterinsurgency plan.

In January 1961, while the Vietnam embassy and military group prepared a counterinsurgency plan, the SIGINT community did its own planning.

Almost inevitably, the army has begun to assert itself politically, putting pressure on Mr. Duarte to improve his performance in his last two years in office and pressing a new rural counterinsurgency plan called United to Rebuild.

During 1966 and into 1967, there was no coordinated counterinsurgency plan in South Korea.

That attack - like the one on May 12 - highlighted the risks that have come with sending soldiers to smaller bases as part of the new counterinsurgency plan for securing Iraq.