Rolling to war with too few troops

MSNBC ^ | 03/28/03 | Col. Jack Jacobs (Ret)

[Conspiracy Guy]

I know it and you do to. I just wish these military "has beens and never weres" would realize this isn't a football game and shut up. It's funny how to the man their slant follows who is paying their check. Thank God they are retired or we would be losing. God Bless our Troops and our Leaders through His Grace we will prevail. Allah gave the Iraqis 2 days of bad weather. God has given the Coalition much better weather. For every protestor their are thousands who oppose them. Spin that liberal wussies.

[colorado tanker]

Any cachet he might have had he's pretty much pissed away on TV," says the staffer.

The latest in a series of brilliant operations by General Clark! :)

[Grampa Dave]

Speaking of Chicken Little, a perfumed pervert, Scott Ritter that great military expert agrees with the perfumed princess on MSNBC:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/876663/posts

March 26 2003 at 06:42PM

Lisbon - The United States does not have the military means to take over Baghdad and will lose the war against Iraq, former United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter said.

"The United States is going to leave Iraq with its tail between its legs, defeated. It is a war we can not win," he told private radio TSF in an interview broadcast here Tuesday evening.

"We do not have the military means to take over Baghdad and for this reason I believe the defeat of the United States in this war is inevitable," he said.

---

Alas all is lost! Our supply lines are too long and thanks to Rummy we have lost the war.

Well at least that is what the perfumed pervert Ritter says. Remember Ritter the posterboy for ABCNNBCBS for their lies that Saddam had no WMDs until Free Republic outed as the Burger King Pervert of New York.

[RightWhale]

it is difficult to understand the tactical or strategic philosophy behind the incredibly small number of troops employed so far in this campaign

I don't watch TV, so I'm a little sketchy on which news network is which, but I understand that CBS is now in the same camp with Fox and is reporting the war well. Peter Arnett in particular has divulged that there is a plan, he cannot comment on it in any detail, but the war is still on plan.

The fresh troops now being sent would be called reinforcements. Once the beachhead is secured, reinforcements begin to flood the theater. That's how it has always been.

[Grampa Dave]

Clark must have been an affirmative action Rhodes Scholar, as he is dumber than the dog Clinton in the street gutters.

[arm958]

A classic indicator of too few troops would be high casualties. Not happening.

To achieve victory, it is now obvious to all that it is necessary to have ground troops take the cities by force. So far, not happening. Why not? Too few troops and a fear of casualties.

The Army generals were right and Rumsfeld was wrong. We need two more heavy divisions on the ground NOW, not three of four weeks from now. That being said, we will be victorious anyway; it will just take a little longer and cost us dearly in the PR department. Maybe I have an axe to grind. I'm retired Army, and although I admire Rumsfeld's leadership style, his casual dismissing of the Army's relevance in the future is coming back to bite him in the @ss.

[Maigret]

I'm just saying that I personally have a bad feeling

Then those trying to accomplish fear and doubt among us have won, the least you can do is not let them win! I heard some embedded newsguy yesterday who said he'd read that WA Post story to them and got hoots of laughter and scorn from the guys on the field. Don't be of such little faith, our leaders know what they are doing! Concentrate on all the great things that have been accomplished and don't let the sowers of doubt and discord deceive you.

[The Vast Right Wing]

You are simply wrong. The war is going extremely well. The fact is, we probably won't be going in to Bhagdad for a while, for the simple reason that we want the Iraqi's to run low on supplies. Remember, every day that goes by the Iraqi's run lower and lower on fuel, ammo and food. We on the other had are reloading and restocking our supplies.

[Grampa Dave]

Here is another failure. How long can we take these failures after failures. Oh woe is me! The sky is falling!

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/878448/posts

Thousands of Peshmerga Kurdish guerrillas have overrun the main headquarters of a group of Islamic radicals in the mountains of north-eastern Iraq.

The Ansar al-Islam base at Biara fell several hours after the Peshmerga forces launched an offensive at dawn on Friday.

A senior official of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the Peshmerga guerrilla group which carried out the operation in conjunction with US special forces, said that around 70 Ansar al-Islam adherents had been killed and that all their main centres had been overrun.

He said the survivors had fled into the mountains towards the border with Iran and he predicted that the area would be completely clear of them within 24 hours.

I'm sure that the perfumed princesses and the pervert, Ritter, will say that if they were running this war, this would have have happened on 9/12/2001.

[Kevin Curry]

Going into this war both sides had ideas of what might happen and how best to meet it. After the initial encounter, both sides must make adjustments. That is what is happening now. Adjustments must be based on reality, and reality requires one to look at reserves, materiel, and morale.

Consider the situation from the perspective of the coalition forces. We have total control of the skies and at least three major airbases close to the main body of fighting forces. Our soldiers are the best trained in the world and fight willingly. In less than a week we have further devastated an Iraqi military force that is only 40 percent of its strength in 1991. We have killed perhaps as many as 25,000 of the enemy and a siggificant percentage of their tanks and armed vehicles. They are using pick-ups because--frankly--that's all they have left. We can ramp up our presence with reserves and materiel merely by deciding to do so.

Look at it from the perspective of the Iraqi regime. A force of over 100,000 (soon to be 150,000-200,000) of the best trained troops in the world have rolled to the doors of the crown jewel--Baghdad--while suffering less than 50 deaths to enemy action. Ordinary Iraqis are NOT rallying to the cause but are at best passive and acquiescent. To get any action out of ordinary Iraqis at all, Uday-the-Sadist's Fedayeen must push them toward the battle at gunpoint. Ordinary life is disrupted, food and military hardware are becoming scarcer as the noose tightens.

If you were a soldier, which side would you rather be on?

[Keith]

I gotta say that Whoraldo has been pretty good since 9/11. He is with the newly deployed 101st, and he said he remember the same kind of "woe is me" crap in Ashcanistan. Then suddenly several cities fell within a few days. He said he has the same feeling right now in Iraq.

I think Bush and the generals are playing to the psy-ops with this "Geez, it might take months" stuff. I think we are confident that we can wait to degrade the snot out of the RGs and soon several cities will fall into our hands...Tikrit, Mosul, Kirkuk, and of course Baghdad.

[exmarine]

You watch too many talking heads on TV. The war is only 7 days old! And troops are going to die - that's war. Did you expect an "antiseptic ground war" - that's an impossiblity. Air power is the key - numbers on the ground are secondary to the effect of air power. Air power is what won the 6-day war for Israel against insurmountable odds. If they use WMD against the troops the gloves will come off and you will then see the 15,000 lb. daisy cutter bomb on steroids obliterate entire brigades in one boom.

Besides, the Marines took Seoul street by street in 1950, and no one then was terrified of casualties. Are we a sissy nation that can't handle casualties? If we are, then let's all lie down and die right now because that will be the end result anyway.

[TomB]

It's my understanding that the 4th ID was to go in through Turkey. Now that their equipment has to go in through Kuwait, they were delayed in being deployed. Now their deployment can begin.

I fail to see how the media can spin this as something unexpected. And I wish the military would point this out more loudly.

[arm958]

You are simply wrong.

I sincerely hope you are right about that. I know our troops are doing well and, believe me, I take those media naysayers with a grain of salt. However, I'll bet our troops on the ground would love to have the 4th I.D. and the 1st Cav Div on the ground with them NOW.

[exmarine]

The Marines had 7,000 casualties on Iwo Jima alone - they didn't cry about it - they did the job - and the American people understood the cost of winning a war. The naysayers and sissies should be ignored - the real MEN will win the fight.

[Leatherneck_MT]

At Ease people

Things change in war, it changes on a minute to minute, second to second basis. Just because the leaders did not see the difficulty that these paramilitary troops would have doesn't mean we're in trouble. War is a killing game. People get killed. We will take casualties but so will they. We are sending more troops to Iraq and more may go after that. We are in a war for our Survival lest we forget. These people over there wish our destruction and will go to whatever lengths they can to achieve that goal. Our troops will have a hard fight. Alot of them will probably die. But what choice do we have?

Buck up and steel your resolve. We are in this for the long run.

Semper Fi

[XJarhead]

I think you're right.

Yeah, Rumsfeld probably had an overly rosy estimate. More troops on the ground would be helpful, and to claim otherwise is ridiculous. For starters, it would be nice to have a division on the left flank of I MEF as it proceeds up the Tigris-Euphrates valley. It'd be nice to have another division in trail of the 3rd as a reserve.

But, that's not to say that the mission won't succeed with what is already there, and what is coming in addition. The intensity of the resistance in the south is more than expected, but it does not have a significant impact on the drive to Baghdad. The Iraqis have shown a complete inability to stop us. They can slow us down, and inflict some casualties. But giving up so much ground in such a small country can't be what the Iraqis really would like to see.

[WRhine]

But it is difficult to understand the tactical or strategic philosophy behind the incredibly small number of troops employed so far in this campaign.

This "incredibly" small number of troops are pulverizing, decapitating and routing the enemy while taking VERY FEW CASUALITES. Meanwhile many more thousands of troops and resources are streaming into the region every day. You can take it to the bank that no matter how well our military performs it will be spun in the negative by the media. And if the media can't find enough negative stories to dwell on, they predictably fall back on the ol' reliable "civilian casualties" sob stories. Never mind that Saddam has killed and brutalized hundreds of thousands of his own people and have sent millions more to their deaths in his wars with Iran and Kuwait.

If I didn't know any better I'd say that most in the media are secretly rooting for Saddam and his regime of murders and cut throats. Maybe they are.

[SamAdams76]

First of all, let me state that I am not addressing you personally but all those for whom the following words apply: The arm-chair generals around here (both in the media and on Free Republic) really piss me off.

We are engaged in a massive military exercise and by virtually all standards, it is going pretty well. Minimal casualties and the bulk of those were self-sustained, that is to say, accidently shooting our own planes, taking wrong turns in the desert and the usual accidents that occur anytime you combine a large number of troops with heavy military equipment. Hell, when I was stationed at Camp Pendleton with the Marines, you were always hearing about somebody tipping over in a jeep or a helicopter crashing or whatnot. The military is a dangerous business, in peace and in war.

In fact, I would go as far as to say that our casualties are so far astonishingly low, considering all that they have accomplished in the past week under combat conditions (not to mention the worst sandstorm in memory). People who are questioning the conduct of this war ought to be ashamed. The results so far speak for themselves. Everyday we liberate more Iraqi ground and everyday the Iraqi military and its infrastructure is getting hammered. We have 100% control of the skies. Has an Iraqi air force plane even taken off during this war? We are crushing Iraqi armored vehicles at will, pretty much whenever one pops up, we take it out. We are shooting their scuds from the skies. We are taking out their artillery and their AA guns day by day. We are taking thousands of prisoners (and treating them well).

Anybody questioning our success in this war so far ought to have their heads examined. Unless you are at the drawing board with General Franks, you have no idea about what our plans are and thus no idea what you are talking about with respect to our overall strategy. All you defeatist types who are wringing your hands and whining about why we "aren't there yet" like a spoiled 8-year-old kid should keep your damn mouths shut and support our troops.

[goodnesswins]

And, you BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU HEAR on the radio....and YOU BELIEVE.....everything you hear from the DOD is TRUTH? HA...HA...HA...Even I, a woman with ZERO military service....am not believing all the propaganda out there.