Posted on 03/20/2005 6:17:12 PM PST by WaterDragon
Donald Rumsfeld explained today what has always seemed to us to be one of the decisive factors in some of the problems faced in the occupation of Iraq: Turkey's refusal to allow US forces to pass through and attack Iraq from the north, allowing a pincer movement on the capital.
The level of insurgency in postwar Iraq wouldn't be so high if the U.S.-led coalition had been able to invade from the north, through Turkey, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Sunday.
Rumsfeld told "Fox News Sunday" that if the United States had able to get its 4th Infantry Division into northern Iraq through Turkey, more of Saddam's Baathist regime would have been captured or killed, diminishing the insurgency.
U.S. forces had to enter Iraq from the south, so by the time Baghdad was taken, much of Saddam's military and intelligence services had dissipated into the northern cities, Rumsfeld said. "They're still, in a number of instances, still active," he said.
There are a couple of other factors the SecDef was too diplomatic to mention. One is that the WMDs were spirited out of Iraq, probably into Syria and ultimately the Bekaa Valley, as US forces moved north. The Other is that Secretary of State Colin Powell was responsible. We lost the vote in Turkey's parliament by 3 votes. Powell blew it. You should never lose close, when you can make the bribes. Turks go cheap.
No don't blame Powell. The Turks would have waffled on Rice too......
blame the turks.
Turkey is still a muslim nations and thus is a terrorist nation that is an enemy of America. Some people want to believe otherwise but reality will sink in. Hopefully Turkey will be a member of the EU and finish off its existence soon.
France has made it abundantly clear they want no part of any EU that has Turkey in it. As long as they retain the ability to say no, they will. They couldn't help themselves if they wanted to.
The muslims in France will change that. When they can get Turkey's muslims to travel freely in Europe they will be set for their civil war.
Blame the French, who put the screws on the Turks!
Blame the rules of Turkey's parliament, which invalidated the vote to allow 4ID through Turkey, even though it passed with a bare majority.
The problem wasn't fighting the war, that went incredibly smoothly by anybodies definition of war. The problem has been controlling it ever since. We are already there, we DO NOT NEED to go through Turkey. This is just a blatant blame shift.
Go back and re-read what was said.
You missed the point.
LVM
OK, I reread it.
I still say its Rumsfeld trying to shift blame.
1 - So Turkey didn't go along, for good or bad, that was their call. When you are planning a war, you have to expect that everyone is not always going to fall in line.
2 - If Turkey had gotten "directly" involved we might have lost Kurd support, still losing us the North.
3 - This article presupposes that the resistance is a "Baathist resistance". I've seen a lot more reference in their rhetoric to religion than Sadam. Baathists or no Baathists, there is no shortage of people in the middle east who want to stick it to an American troop. I said it before the war and I'll say it now, anyone who thinks the U.S. is going to walk into ANY country in the middle east, topple a government AND NOT meet resistance is an idiot.
4 - Check your record player guys, it seems to be skipping..... France, click France, click France, click France, click.....
Or maybe I'm still missing the point.
Actually, blame Tony Blair.
While the man has certainly stood by us, he also requested, and received, going back to the UN to get another resolution which wasted quite a bit of time...
It can if your willing to grease the palms! Rice would have gotten them in. Powell was an ineffective wimp as a SOS!
"It can if your willing to grease the palms!"
[insert hindsight 20/20 cliche here]
Really my bigger point was that I don't believe it would have mattered in the least if we came from the north south east and west and even dug up from below with little folding shovels. The resistance would have happened regardless, hell I saw it coming and I'm nobody. The bigger problem of control was in an underestimation of troop numbers.
except 4th ID was already offloaded in Turkey and ready to go. Turks gave us the go and then screwed us over because Germany and France threatened them. This, after we spent billions on Turkey during the cold war.
You seem so entrenched in your "I told you so" mode that you continually miss the point.
If the 4th ID had entered from the north, with as many troops has the 3rd ID had coming from the south, there would have been more troops, wouldn't there? Am I missing something or is it just you? Looks to me as if we would have had twice as many. There was simply not enough staging area in Kuwait for all those troops. We needed Turkey and they had already approved it or we wouldn't have gone there. Then with a new Parliament they tried to overplay their hand for the big bucks. We stayed there for weeks while Powell haggled with them. By the time we saw we weren't going to be able to offload and stage there, we were in Bahgdad and the war was basically over.
Had the 4th come from the north that area of the Ba'athist triangle which caused so much trouble would have been quickly subdued and any outsiders would have had no place to gather and coordinate. We would have had twice as many troops in Iraq and the problems would have been solved much sooner.
All of us have correctly said"I told you so" on something or other but most of us have learned it is unseemly to keep patting ourselves on the back, especially when we are wrong!!
1 - So Turkey didn't go along, for good or bad, that was their call.
That's the problem with dealing with other countries. They sometimes don't do what you want.
No, I see your point, I just disagree.
The insurgency has little to nothing do do with the number of Baathists caught or not caught at the beginning of the war. It has to do with the underlying current of anti-american feelings prevalent in the Middle East. Fallujah for example is not in the far North of Iraq against the border of Turkey, It's only about 50 miles East of Bagdad.
You don't need massive numbers of troops to win the war, well placed bombs do that. Where we need the troop numbers is during the occupation after the fact. Yes this is 20/20 hindsight on my part, but I don't manage troops for a living, but troop size WAS a debated issue at the time of invasion and the call to go in with less than the number of troops required was a flawed call.
The idea of using overwhelming force was at one time referred to as the "Powell Doctrine" and to now try to make Powell out to be the faulty member is bogus. Had Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld actually followed his doctrine, the problems would, I believe, be lessened although still present.
You can't have it both ways - massive troops and not massive troops.
Had the 4th come down from Turkey they would have proceeded all the way to Baghdad to meet up with the 3rd, crushing the resistence on the way. The Marines finally squashed Fallajah on their own to accent the point. Had that been done earlier, by the 4th, the "insurgents" would have had no base and peace would have emerged much quicker.
To repeat, Kuwait could not and was not willing to handle the number of troops that would equal the 3rd and 4th combined so Turkey was necessary. As in all wars, the good plan hit a snag. Second guessing is now the order of the day,
By the way, the so called Powell doctrine got its name because in the 1st Gulf War, Powell, as CoS, would not OK an attack until he had massive forces in place, many more than needed. He was much like Monty Montgomery in WWII.
I just noticed that you are new to Free Republic. Welcome to FReeperhood.
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