"David Pugh" wrote in message
...
"BUFDRVR" wrote in message
...
He set the *overall* objectives, not individual tactical objectives. As
far as
allocating adequate resources, Bush played the hand he was dealt. I
suppose
Bush could have delayed the operation until congress authorized an
increase in
U.S. force manning, then waited for that increase in manning to become a
reality, but even if he's to win a second term, he wouldn't have see
that
increase take effect.

If you can't afford to do it right, maybe you should consider not doing it
at all. Especially in a case where doing it wrong can have disastrous
consequences. With (admittedly) 20/20 hindsight, can you honestly say we
are
better off now than if we had never invaded?

Well, that depends upon how you look at it. We have an endgame at least in
sight, versus the neverending flyswatting that was going on before. We do,
however, have a bunch of misguided regional native jihadis rolling into Iraq
to take shots at our forces, true enough...but would you rather have those
same jihadis instead trying to get at civilian targets here in the US or
overseas? Then there is the question of how much our action contributed to
the rather quick Libyan turnabout, and maybe the renewed interest on the
part of the Iranians to find an amicable inspection/verification solution...
It appears that you could just as well have asked, "Can you honestly say we
are worse of now than we would have been if we had never invaded?"


Franks was told to defeat the Iraqi army and capture
Baghdad. If Franks was never told that securing the known NBC sites was
important then it is hard to hold him responsible.

By this last statement I take it you have no military experience.
"Important"
is a relative term, during a war (and even in peace) somethings are more
important than others. Because seizing Baghdad quickly was of a *higher*
priority than securing *suspected* WMD sites, doesn't mean that was not
important.

Fair enough: I should have said that the importance of securing this site
was set too low, given the potential consequences of not securing the
site.
Setting the relative importance of various objectives, especially
non-military objectives, was not Franks' responsibility.

You seem to continue to misunderstand the nature and specificity of
mission-based orders at the operational level, and how that drives the
mission-based orders process for the subordinate levels. BUFFDRVR is
right--the focus during the early phases of OIF were upon removing the
assumed immenent, deliverable weapons threat (note that the senior leaders
at the time had a "when we get hit with chems/bio", not an "if" mindset.
Your hindsight may allow you to critique that from the advantage of knowing
how things played out in the end, but looking at the situation from *their*
view at the time, with the information they then had available, it would be
danged hard to critisize their priorities. Smart CinC's don't interfere with
their warfighting command's planning by inserting a laundry list of "do
this, and this, and this..."--they provide very broad guidance and let the
subordinates do their thing as they best see fit, and provide the resources
that the subordinate requires to do it. AFAIK, it would be hard to fault
Bush in either area.


We had a choice to make in regards to priority, we choose to sieze
Baghdad. If we had chosen to secure all *suspected* WMD sites prior to
seizing
Baghdad and the Iraqi army had begun lobbying Sarin filled artilliary
shells
killing both coalition personnel and innocent Iraqi's, you would have
been
up
in arms over that choice.

I absolutely agree that moving quickly was critically important. Nor am I
suggesting that we deployed a battalion to cover each possible WMD site
(including Granny's still). By all accounts, however, Al Tuwaitha was
exceptional (recent and reliable reports about hundreds of pounds of
radioactive material). If we couldn't divert the resources to secure that
immediately, perhaps we should have waited a little (at least, for
example,
until the troops had redeployed from Turkey).

That last statement reveals a further disconnect with reality on your part.
First, where were you going to move the 4th ID(M) *to*, given that Kuwait
was already reaching the saturation point with the 3rd ID, elements of the
101st AASLT DIV, USMC units, British units, etc.? Second, doing so would
have allowed the Iraqis, operating along interior lines, to even *more*
rapidly reorient the forces they had already deployed facing the presumed
northern threat back down south. Leaving you with a diminishing return kind
of situation, right?

Brooks