Posted on 03/26/2003 8:08:17 PM PST by KQQL
The Persian Gulf War of 1991 was regarded as the most impressively successful in American history, and the present war is going much better than that war.
Now ... that's funny!
The halls of power are Mr. Rumsfeld walking with his boss, George W. Bush.
Bush approved the strategic plan and authorized it's start. Rumsfeld is the civilian supervisor of the day to day issues. General Meyers and Joint Chiefs get any inter-service conflicts, problems and issues coordinated and solved.
Tommy Franks and his CENTCOMM command execute the battle plan. Without meddling. They move the pieces around the board. They decide the timeline and the tactics. They are the best in the world, they will do what it takes to complete their mission objective successfully.
The politicians need to kick the Military officers in the butt, because their nature is to want one more day, one more asset, one more piece of info and one more chance to plan contingencies. Forever. As they should, they know the risks and their rewards are military, not political. Once they are kick started, these guys go into a groove, ply their trade, and direct the most powerful and agile military organization in World History. They are the best of the best in their profession, directing the best skilled warriors weilding the best weaponry and supported by the best logistic and technological assets ever.
How do I know? I watched "McHale's Navy."
Rummy advises the President on the timing, scale and objectives of the mission, is the civilian contact and manager of their day to day activities, and is the public liason to the Pentagon Press Corps/Day Care Toddlers and the barely sober Democrat Senate vagrants and ugly House howler monkeys.
Get Pershing on the radio to nitpick Ike's strategy!
FIRE MARSHALL! FIRE IKE! WHAT THE HELL IS NIMITZ DOING? LOL. Island hopping? Bypassing urban centers of little military value? Specially trained AIRBORNE assault units? Dropped from planes, in a matter of hours, behind enemy lines? Whose going walk next to the tanks and ride by the dozen for days on end in the back of trucks?
This is insanity. Day to day microanalysis of every mile traveled, every mission ordered.
I really don't understand what another heavy armor division is going to achieve at this point. I don't think we are being beaten back by the power of a superior Iraqi battlefield force.
If we wanted to level Baghdad, we could have done that the first night. This is a more subtle and specialized mission.
Maybe some folks are hoping Rommel and his full Panzer Afrika brigade will emerge from the nether-mist and we can line our M-1s up and get into a good ole slobberknocker.
The dirty little secret ... they are yearning for casualties, severe casualties. On all sides. So they can both grieve and feel vindicated. Lack of grief is not an acceptable tradeoff for lack of vindication.
These people are mentally ill, and news units just can't resist putting them on the 6 o'clock news. "Could you do a street theatre thing or get some lifesized puppets or something ... we covered a die-in already this week. Do you have any naked people or anyone who will set themselves on fire?"
It's a safety thing. And it's worth having on the ground if it does nothing more than prevent a dozen additional combat casualties.
Even without the Fourth Infantry, we could almost certainly take out the RG armor which remains after our bombardment. But if we use twice as many tanks in that battle, we could reduce our losses from, say, two or three tanks, to, say, zero.
Inasmuch as there doesn't seem to be any downside to waiting for the Fourth Infantry, I say we ought to wait.
(The Fourth could also make the eventual thrust against the city of Baghdad proper more quickly and dramatically effective.)
I saw the same thing. He was very confident, as were Captain Nash and General Scales. Mcinerney, said the 173's drop was turning point the the battle outside baghdad will be the culmination point.
In defense of Howlin, I would rather have her watching my six than anyone on this forum.
If she has a fault, it is that she is too passionate, too defensive and often too right!
She protects her turf and I admire that.
There's no way to sue for peace with the remaining crowd. They have blood on their hands. They need to be betrayed, isolated and killed. One by one if necessary. The lower grade guys will come forward to give up their superiors if they are relatively clean and they value their lives.
A reign of terror needs an enforcement sanction. I don't believe Saddam and his psycho brood are alive. They are on an autonomic response level now. Where's THEIR bold gambit? Where's THEIR ace in the hole?
You get one sucker punch at Frank Shamrock. That's it. It's not worth it.
They're waiting for Kofi and Jaques to pull some diamond out of their ass.
Good for you, Todd! We need more of this kind of graciousness and civility on this forum.
With posts like this, you set a great example for us, and believe me, it's getting noticed.
Some of the stupidly nationalistic civilians who are resisting us (or refusing to resist the Fedayeen to death) will throw down their arms (or, better still, turn them on the Fedayeen) if they see that their resistance to the coalition is even more surely fatal than siding against Saddam's thugs.
But, the Fedayeen can't sustain that program. The next Iraqi guy is going to resist his knock at the door. His neighbor is dead on the street in front of his house. The neighbor knows he was a carpenter, not a soldier.
The guerilla campaign is unsustainable. These guys will become nothing more than criminals holding hostages. There's one chance for surrender. Then the boys go in.
But even if the regime is running on auto-pilot, we need to remember that "shock and awe" may still have its place. It just hasn't worked yet. (It hasn't worked at the level of the RG.)
Why not? Why hasn't it worked at the mid-level of the RG? It's because of the residual but fierce terror which still pervades the mid-level officers under the doomed regime. They have examined their odds and made their best calculations for survival. Alas, they have made the wrong calculations. Despite the fact that they have thus far refused to surrender, 60 officers were executed last night by the regime--and replaced with Fedayeen militants.
These poor bastards in the RG keep making fatal mistakes--because they aren't scared enough of us yet.
This terror-wrought stupidity is something we still have to deal with. Still, I think that the civilians are the ones whom we need to terrify the most. (Some people say we shouldn't scare the civilians, but just try to woo them to our side. This is utter nonsense. The dynamics of the situation are those of terror. We need to fight terror with terror.)
You hope for the best and plan for the worst. A quick zip into Baghdad would have been nice with popular revolts, but it didnt happen, yet all we've lost is 24 troopers so far.
Believe me, what you see is nowhere near "worst case". This War will be essentially over after we engage the RG in earnest.
You, Clark , McCaffery and the rest of the handwringers will have to find something else to carp about.
Turkey's abandonment at the last second has been the single most detriment to our forces.
Put the blame on Turkey - where it belongs!
Their Islamic stubborness and not allowing our northern flank to come through has cost American lives.
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