We're Surrounded!

 If you have one bucket that contains 2 gallons
and another bucket that contains 7 gallons,
how many buckets do you have?
--Idiocracy (2007)

 We know where they are.
They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad
and east, west, south and north somewhat
--Donald Rumsfeld (on Iraqi WMD) 

It's not the voting that's democracy;
it's the counting
--Tom Stoppard
 ______________________

Some Ranger geometry:

The newscasters crowed recently that Iraqi forces had the city of Ramadi "surrounded on three sides".

Surround, tr. v.

• 1. To extend on all sides of simultaneously; encircle. 

• 2. To enclose or confine on all sides so as to bar escape or outside communication. 

If the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad were surrounded on only three sides, they would not have been defeated and captured. Ditto the Confederate Army at Petersburg, Virginia, in the United State's Civil War.

So ....

If a force is surrounded on only three sides, then they are not surrounded, duh! They may break out from an encirclement by reading how Lee and Gordon did it 140 years ago. If one is surrounded on all four sides, or 360 degrees, the one may cash in one's chips, but three out of four is not all.

Please lord protect us from ignorance, which is a bigger threat than ISIS.