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I believe that you will find that Hackworth was criticising WWII tactics that were used in Vietnam. For the record: Desert Storm WAS a WWII style conflict, and an anamolie (sp?) in modern warfare. So, you don't think the Air Force has an axe to grind against Hackworth? All he did was tell the truth about Desert Storm, namely that Buster Glossen promised a 50% destruction of Iraqui Republican Guards within five days, when in fact Air strikes only did 15% of them overall. Considering that Hackworth, as a combat commander in Vietnam had to coordinate airstrikes with arty, i would think he has a pretty good handle on combined arms action, in fact he has advocated for it and criticised closed-mindedness in the seperate services. i don't know what you've been reading, but it's not the same things that i have been reading. i do conceed that Hackworth is still hated by the military establishment, especially the Air Force who is likely to loose the most if there is a cut back on high priced, unneeded, expensive toys.....Calvinist_Dark_Lord

Hackworth's pissing contests with the Pentagon, Air Force, Navy or the Camp Fire Girls are of no interest to me. What I am judging is the man's ability to give a credible opinion on the outcome of a theater wide operation.

I told you what I had read and was referring to and that was his predictions prior to Desert Storm. I still have copies of all the Newsweek magazines leading up to Desert Storm and I have pulled them out of their drawer for this reply.

The cover story for Newsweek magazine for the week of January 21, 1991 was “We Will Win, But…” by “America’s Most Decorated War Hero”.

Here are quotes from Hackworth’s January 21, 1991 Newsweek cover story article article:

“Casualties won’t be 200 Americans dead a week, as in Vietnam. They will be more than 200 dead an hour in the first round.”

“The aircraft arranged in the Gulf are the wrong mix of aircraft”

“The Iraqis should give a good account of themselves in air attacks.”

“The Abrams M-1A1 tank is a fuel guzzler and a real liability in a roadless terrain”

“For the most part, from rifleman to battalion commander, these dedicated (American) soldiers and Marines have never seen war. And in my judgment they haven’t yet been made hard enough physically and mentally to survive the horror of potential combat with Iraq’s veteran Army.”

As it turned out, Iraq was totally routed at a cost of 137 U.S. dead for the entire war.

You and Hackworth still seem to have no concept of modern airpower and still insist on focusing on the Billy Mitchell inter-service pissing contests of the 1930’s.

And, no, Calvinist_Dark_Lord, the Gulf War was not World War II style conflict. In World War II, the Luftwaffe and the RAF fought for weeks to try to gain air superiority during the Battle of Britain. In World War II, the Eighth Air Force lost 50,000 Americans during their campaign to bomb the German homeland. In World War II, the enemy had relative freedom of movement behind the lines.

During the Gulf War, total air supremacy was established from Day One, the Iraqi homeland was bombed with total impunity and the Iraqi Army could do little except bury themselves in the sand and cower. When they did move the Abrams M-1A1 tank that Hackworth thought were a liability slaughtered the remaining tanks, any Iraqis caught moving joined the Highway of Death bloodbath and the American troops that Hackworth believed to be “not hard enough physically and mentally to survive the horror of potential combat with Iraq’s veteran Army” proved Hackworth to be nothing more than a Chicken Little predicting that the sky was going to fall.

Hackworth is 50 years behind the times and you both seem to be more interested in fighting past wars and in fighting silly inter-service rivalries than in learning how wars are fought and won by the U.S. in the year 2002.

Remember one thing about Hackworth: He says and does anything to get on TV.

Hackworth as well as those DoD think tanks were thiniking that a rational human was in command of Iraqui forces. Had he wished to do so, Saddam could have taken the Saudi oil fields within 72 hours after Kuwait, and the result would have been hugh causulties (Tom Clancy makes note of this in the book EXECUTIVE ORDERS). As noted earlier, air power did NOT deliver as promised. You will no doubt note the dismal failure of air power in Kosovo against a smarter enemy, again already noted. It is not unusual for a commander to change his attitudes, Gen. MacAuthur was one of the men who convicted Billy Mitchell, yet was one of the biggest advocates of air power in WWII. i have found nothing in Hackworth's writings and interviews to suggest that combined arms operations are wrong, again, it would be against his experience as a combat commander. Regretably, i must disagree with you concerning the nature of Desert Storm. It was a WWII style "war", more like N. Africa than Europe. Air was meaningless to the combat troops of the European front (although, as you correctly point out, it played hell with the German infasrtucture). The enemy had clearly defined formations and the battle was for ground, unlike Vietnam, unlike Somolia, unlike Afghanistan, et al. Hackworth is not alone in his "crusade", he is just the point man. You may recall both Lt. Gen Hank "the Gunfighter" Emerson (Hack's old brigade commander), and Lt. Gen Hal Moore,(the guy from WE WERE SOLDIERS), both forced out when they stood in the door over politically correct nonsense. Hackworth made the casualty predictions because he was at the time listening to the same pablum that DoD think tanks were feeding the public (again, not entirely their fault, they were assuming an enemy who knew what he was doing). Hackworth admits that he was wrong, and goes into detail why. "...This was not the story Americans were geting from the WhiteHouse, the Pentagon, or CNN. To hear them tell it, we were about to step into the ring with Mike Tyson on a bad hair day. I say ths ruefully because in the beginning I was as wrong as everyone else. Before leaving for the Gulf, I relied heavily on the Pentagon and my contacts within the intelligence community to draw up my assessments, a major mistake...At one point a friend gave me a study done by the Army War College predicting a bloody fight in the desert." HAZARDOUS DUTY, p.31 These are the same people who are advising Rummy, Hmmmm? Regretably, i had to go away for an hour, and there is too much to reply to, but this is representative. Some of these issues were addressed in previous replies

"You and Hackworth still seem to have no concept of modern airpower and still insist on focusing on the Billy Mitchell inter-service pissing contests of the 1930’s."

"and you both seem to be more interested in fighting past wars and in fighting silly inter-service rivalries than in learning how wars are fought and won by the U.S. in the year 2002."

Which of my posts led you to address this to me?
Semper Fi

The cynical bastard that I've become...it wouldn't surprise me to learn that Hack is our version of Tokyo Rose, getting as many Iraqi and North Korean soldiers to stop pissing in their pants and come out in the open when the shooting starts.

How else can you explain his constant presence in the face of that terrible scorecard of his on the 91 Gulf War?