British officer likens US generals to gung-ho movie stars: report

AFP on Yahoo ^ | 4/18/06 | AFP

[pierrem15]

Note the plural, Mr. SandwicheGuy: "The parts of the anatomy ..." :-)

[the scotsman]

'The Britsih Army was given one primary objective in 2003: Basra. They failed to take the city, and the US had to peel-off units from the advance to Baghdad to guard our rear because the British Army could not (or would not) do he job.'

The British Army did NOT 'fail' to take Basra...

Let us remember that AMERICAN troops were the first in Basra,and that after resistance they left it to the British to handle.So US troops faced at least for the first few days the same problems the British would have done,so spare me the sole 'attack' on British troops.


And let us remember that both America and Britain had jointly decided NOT to storm Basra...

23 March 2003,General Tommy Franks:

'Our intent is not to move through and create military confrontations in that city', he said. 'Rather, we expect that we'll work with Basra and the citizens in Basra [who will welcome] the forces when they come in'

Todd Richissin, The Sun (Maryland), 23 March 2003

'US and British forces will not immediately storm Basra, a British military spokesman said today.

“Military commanders do not engage in urban areas unless they have to,” Lieutenant Colonel Chris Vernon said. “It was necessary in (Umm) Qasr because of the port.” '

http://archives.tcm.ie/breakingnews/2003/03/22/story92680.asp


Let us remember the timeline for Basra:

March 27: routes in the south cleared;
March 28: British ship Sir Galahad docks at Umm Qasr with humanitarian aid;
March 30: water pipeline laid from Kuwait to Umm Qasr
April 3: Basra 'screened off' preventing Iraqis interfering in US advance to Baghdad. Royal Marines of 42 Commando Battalion played football with a local Basra team and lost 9-3.
April 6: The attack on Basra commenced from south, west and north. Patchy resistance was reported.
April 7: UK forces secure strategic positions deep within Basra from which they continued to launch offensive operations. 3 Para patrolled through Basra old town.


Let us remember that when the British DID storm in,they took the city easily...

'British forces stormed the centre of Basra yesterday, wresting control of large swathes of Iraq's second city from forces loyal to Saddam Hussein. Three British soldiers were killed in the action, along with many Iraqis.

The Ministry of Defence named one of the dead as Fusilier Kelan John Turrington, aged 18, of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. He was killed by a booby trap.


British Challenger 2 tanks push forward into Basra
Challenger 2 tanks and Warrior fighting vehicles from battle groups of 7 Armoured Brigade, the Desert Rats, mounted a three-pronged assault shortly after 5.30am local time. By dusk they had fought their way to the fringes of the Old City.

British officers in Qatar said 2,000 troops backed by 40 tanks had entered Basra in an operation which would continue today.

The operation was ordered after Maj Gen Robin Brimms, commander of 1st (UK) Armoured Division, decided the situation had reached "tip point" at which organised resistance was about to collapse.

Some Iraqis cheered and waved at the British while others turned on the Fedayeen paramilitaries defending the city. Several militiamen were killed by lynch mobs.'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/04/07/war07.xml


Any idead that the British at Basra were slow when storming the city is nonsense....

[the scotsman]

Bernard Montgomery...

It is sad that several generations of Americans have chosen to believe the nonsense that 'Monty' was an incompetent who was 'too slow'.

ANYONE with any knowledge of Montgomery and the British(also the Canadians and Poles) in Normandy knows EXACTLY what they had to face:

75% of all German armour in Normandy...
90% of all SS,SS Panzer or SS Panzer Grenadier units(not to mention crack Wehrmacht units such as the 21st PZ Div and the 'Panzer Lehr')...
ALMOST ALL armoured reserves sent to Normandy by Hitler in the summer of 1944(the Brit-Can-Polish forces even faced troops taken by the Germans FROM THE AMERICAN SECTOR!)

How ANYONE can,then or now,criticise the Anglo-Canadian-Polish forces for being 'slow' is beyond me.And shows utter ungratitude on the American part,then and now....

The Anglo-Canadian-Polish forces SOLE JOB was to tie down the Germans in the east,so as to allow US troops an easier job in the west.

And those forces under Monty did a FANTASTIC JOB under incredible pressure.They DID it.They DID what was asked of them and DEFEATED the cream of German armour in the summer of 1944...

And lets not forget Monty's actions in the Ardennes:

'Even though he was still very much in the dark about the enemy's intentions and Eisenhower's reaction to them,he decided,without orders from Allied Supreme Command,to do something.He would place his veteran 43rd Infantry Division and the Guards Armoured Division on standby alert,on a mere six hours notice to move south.At the same time,he would send out his eyes and ears,six young officers,three British,two American and one Canadian,to find out what was happening on the long Ardennes front'

from 'Britain's Battle of the Bulge:The Untold Story' by historian(and ww2 veteran)Charles Whiting (1999)

[the scotsman]

'the US had to peel-off units from the advance to Baghdad to guard our rear because the British Army could not (or would not) do he job.'

Firstly,the British did NOT 'refuse' or 'could not' do the job.As my first post shows,you have ignored or forgotten the Allied strategy in 2003...

Secondly,what about the British troops who went north to guard your rear when you attacked Fallujah?.

Remember the Black Watch?.

[the scotsman]

Korea
The Gulf War
Bosnia
Kosovo
Afghanistan
Iraq

...yeah,what a bad ally we have been since ww2...

[the scotsman]

'One reason why we didn't make more use of British forces.'

YOUR loss,as the British armed forces are man for man the equal of any on earth,and better than 99.99%.

Only the US,Israel,NZ and the Aussies are in our class.

[the scotsman]

Chgogal,please see my posts on both Basra and Monty.

The salient points are of equal reposte to you as well.

[the scotsman]

'In the Boer War, the Brits instituted the first concentration camps, where they rounded up and starved Boer women and children to death in attempting to break the will of the Boer fighting men.'

History not your strong point is it?...

Firstly the British(and to be fair to you many here believe it too)DID NOT invent the concentration camp(which anyway cannot be seriously compared to 1933-45).

That goes to the Spanish in Cuba in 1895...

NOR did we 'starve women and children to death'.

You REALLY need to learn some Boer War history,mate.

The Boers,women and children especially,had as Europeans in a closed community,NO immunity to the diseases that ran rife in the camps.THATS why they died.

And 28,000 Boer men women and children died in British concentration camps during the Second Boer War, this amounts to a death rate of 10-20% of the total civilian population.A tragedy, but HARDLY genocide...

The British ARE guilty of incompetence,but NOT murder...

'According to this definition, the first modern concentration camps were set up not in Germany or Russia, but in colonial Cuba, in 1895. In that year, in an effort to put an end to a series of local insurgencies, imperial Spain began to prepare a policy of reconcentratión, intended to remove the Cuban peasants from their land and 'reconcentrate' them in camps, thereby depriving the insurgents of food, shelter and support. By 1900, the Spanish term reconcentratión had already been translated into English, and was used to describe a similar British project, initiated for similar reasons, during the Boer War in South Africa: Boer civilians were 'concentrated' into camps, in order to deprive Boer combatants of shelter and support.'

http://www.anneapplebaum.com/communism/2001/10_18_nyrb_horror.html

http://clublet.com/why?ConcentrationCamp

[the scotsman]

Centurion,as I have stated,it is sad that several generations of Americans have chosen to believe the nonsense that 'Monty' was an incompetent who was 'too slow'.

ANYONE with any knowledge of Montgomery and the British(also the Canadians and Poles) in Normandy knows EXACTLY what they had to face:

75% of all German armour in Normandy...
90% of all SS,SS Panzer or SS Panzer Grenadier units(not to mention crack Wehrmacht units such as the 21st PZ Div and the 'Panzer Lehr')...
ALMOST ALL armoured reserves sent to Normandy by Hitler in the summer of 1944(the Brit-Can-Polish forces even faced troops taken by the Germans FROM THE AMERICAN SECTOR!)

How ANYONE can,then or now,criticise the Anglo-Canadian-Polish forces for being 'slow' is beyond me.And shows utter ungratitude on the American part,then and now....

The Anglo-Canadian-Polish forces SOLE JOB was to tie down the Germans in the east,so as to allow US troops an easier job in the west.

And those forces under Monty did a FANTASTIC JOB under incredible pressure.They DID it.They DID what was asked of them and DEFEATED the cream of German armour in the summer of 1944...

[the scotsman]

'Now General, shall we move on next to the despicable atrocities your country committed in India?'

Shall we then(you are already batting 0 for 1)?...

Were the British hard and occasionally brutal in India.YES.

Did we commit genocide?.NO.

In fact we STOPPED many brutal practices,such as the live burning of widows on husband's funeral pyres,the brutal power of the Thuggees....

Oh and shall we 'move on next' to your own atrocities against the American Indian?...

[the scotsman]

'Reminds me of Patton and Montgomery in Sicily and France in WWII.
In both cases it's a matter of the Americans fighting a war in a way that the Brits can't and don't want to.'

Firstly,as I have explained(and you SHOULD ALREADY KNOW),both in Sicily and Normandy,the Anglo-Canadian-Polish forces were the ones tying down the German armour so as to allow the larger US forces free reign.

In Sicily,Patton faced mainly Italian units whilst we faced the 15th PZ Div and the Hermann Goering Pz Div...

[the scotsman]

'Monty' on the American soldier,May 1945:

"I first saw him in battle in Sicily and I formed a very high opinion of him. I saw him again in Italy. He is a very brave fighting man, steady under fire and with that tenacity in battle which marks the first-class fighting soldier. I have a great affection and admiration for the American soldier. I salute the brave fighting men of America. I never want to fight alongside better soldiers. I have tried to feel that I am almost an American soldier myself so that I might take no unsuitable action or offend them in any way ... Rundstedt was really beaten by the good fighting qualities of the American soldier and by the team work of the Allies."

[pierrem15]

Yes, and I remember how British commanders got their own men killed by having them not wear armor and helmets (unlike those brutish Americans) when they started operating in Sunni areas.

I have no complaints about the capability of British forces on the squad level, where they have a well deserved reputation for competence and valor.

But the idiocies coming out the mouths of the officer corps and the Labour government have led me to believe that the Army command can no longer distinguish between a war-fighting force and a constabulary.

In any case, the whole discussion may be moot, as the Labour government seems intent on dismantling the British Army.

This may be the last time US and British forces cooperate, not only for political reasons, but also because there simply won't be much of a British Army left in a few years.

[pierrem15]

"Let us remember that AMERICAN troops were the first in Basra,and that after resistance they left it to the British to handle.So US troops faced at least for the first few days the same problems the British would have done,so spare me the sole 'attack' on British troops."

Basra was never a primary objective of US forces. The British Army was supposed to secure the Faw Peninsula and the Basra area to leave the Marine column advancing along the east side of the Euphrates free to advance on Baghdad.

[the scotsman]

Correct me if I am wrong,but the Marine march wasnt stopped or affected.The British ops around early April 'tied down' any resistance to the British sector.

[the scotsman]

'Yes, and I remember how British commanders got their own men killed by having them not wear armor and helmets (unlike those brutish Americans) when they started operating in Sunni areas.'

The British policy and the US policy re the above BOTH have good and bad points...the 'darth vader' look worked against American troops at times,and the 'softer' British way worked well.And at other times,vice versa...

..'because there simply won't be much of a British Army left in a few years.'

Incorrect.The British Army IS far too small in my opinion,but it is much stronger than many think:

'The United Kingdom fields one of the most powerful and comprehensive armed forces in the World. Its global power projection capabilities are second only to those of the United States Military. The UK has the 3rd highest military expenditure in the world, despite only having the 27th highest number of troops. It is also the second largest spender on military science, engineering and technology.

Despite Britain's wide ranging capabilities, recent defence policy has a stated assumption that any large operation would be undertaken as part of a coalition. Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq (Granby, Desert Fox and Telic) may all be taken as precedent - indeed the last true war in which the British armed forces fought alone was the Falklands War of 1982.

The Royal Navy is the second largest navy in the world in terms of gross tonnage, with 90 commissioned ships. The Naval Service (which comprises of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines) had a strength of 36,320 in April 2005 and is in charge of the United Kingdom's independent strategic nuclear arm, which consists of four Trident missile submarines, while the Royal Marines provide commando units for amphibious assault and for specialist reinforcement forces in and beyond the NATO area.

The British Army had a reported strength of 102,440 in April 2005 and at this time 9.0% of the regular Armed Forces were women.

The Royal Air Force had a strength of 49,210 - though this figure is set to be reduced by as much as a fifth by the end of the decade. This puts the total number of regular Armed Forces personnel at around 190,000 (not including civilians).

This number is supported by reserve forces, including over 35,000 from the Territorial Army. The total number of serving personnel, including reserve forces, is therefore in the region of 250,000 (taking into account Navy, Marines and Air Force reserves).'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_the_United_Kingdom

[RobbyS]

BTAIM. the two forces have different styles.

[the scotsman]

BTAIM?....lol

[RobbyS]

As Shaw, said, divided by a common language.

[sono]

Brits didn't like him either ...