"David Pugh" wrote in message
...
"Kevin Brooks" wrote in message
...
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?

Ah yes, the tactic of infuriating the masses so the radical elements
attack
your military and die. sarcasm That has worked so well in the past.
After
all, the Soviets spent a decade killing "misguided regional native
jihadis"
in Afghanistan and it was such an effective tactic that not only did the
surviving Afghan's establish an enlightened secular government but none of
them ever considered supporting the Chechen resistance. The French in
Algeria and Isralies in the West Bank are also examples of how effective
this particular tactic is. /sarcasm

Can you name one place where this tactic has actually worked?

How many attacks here in the US have you seen since we went into Iraq?


Add in that the majority of the MRNJs would probably not bother to take
direct action against the US if we were not simultaneously ****ing them
off
and providing a nearby target. More worrisome is that only the stupid ones
are going to Iraq (where they become dead or experienced and stupid). The
smart ones are raising money and/or plotting major attacks outside of
Iraq.
And, of course, for everyone we kill there is a distinct possibility of
creating more than one MRNJ.

Must not be many smart ones, then.


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.

Hardly.

Well, you have already established beyond a doubt that you "hardly" have any
idea how military operations are planned, so your disbelief is
understandable.

If I was arguing from hindsight then -- given the lack of dirty
bombs exploding in NYC using material from Al Tuwaitha -- I'd have to say
the correct decision was made. Based on the available intelligence at the
time, however, it seemed a terribly stupid risk.

That "expert" analysis coming from...a guy without a clue. Yeah, right.


Add in that CinC's do give the military objectives that are for
essentially
non-military reasons. The scud hunt of the previous Gulf war is a good
example of this. Arguably, the decision to send the Marines into Fallouja
was another.

Excellent example! The Scud Hunt drained off resources that would have been
better used for other tasks, and was considered largely a waste of resources
by the folks tasked to make it happen. How many Scuds were found and
destroyed by those hunters? Versus how many resources were committed to that
endeavor? Yep, that is a good example of why the CinC should stay out of the
operational details when it comes to fighting a war.


Note also the requirement, however, to provide the appropriate resources.
There have been many comments that US forces were inadequate (not to
defeat
Iraq but secure the peace afterwards). Dismissing General Shinseki soon
after he estimates that several hundred thousand troops would be needed in
postwar Iraq has the distinct flavor of shooting the messenger.

LOL! Shinseki was the guy who was basically told, "Don't let the door hit
you in the ass on the way out." Now look at his estimate--it would take
"several hundreds of thousands soldiers"; interestingly, from the time that
comment was made by him in Feb 2003 until Sep 2003, he had apparently
revised his estimate down to 200K. Last I heard we have around 130K in
country, and no plans to increase that drastically (we have, however,
delayed the previously planned reduction down to the 115K figure). Being as
we are getting the job done with 130K, why do you say that Shinseki was
right when he claimed it would take "several hundreds of thousands"?

I wonder why
none of the military commanders after that claimed they needed more
forces.
Was that because they truly felt they didn't need them or they felt any
such
request would be a ticket to an early retirement?

You must have missed the FACT that Franks, who was commanding CENTCOM at the
time, did not request a drastic increase in manning for the stabilization
phase--and guess what? He retired. If you check into your history a bit, I
believe you will find that *most* CENTCOM commanders have retired from that
post--it is considered by most to be a career capstone assignment. The C/S
who *replaced* Shinseki came out of...*retirement*. So this theory of your's
theory falls about as flat as your earlier posits.


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.?

I hadn't quite realize that all of Kuwait was packed tread to tread to
tanks
and could have sworn there was a much higher density of forces in the run
up
to the previous Gulf war. But, I'll grant you, that it would have been a
concern.

Uhmmm...you do realize that during ODS we had that much larger force spread
over a large chunk of Saudi Arabia, which is a hell of a lot bigger than
Kuwait, and is served by multiple ports of entry, unlike Kuwait? Consider
Saudi Arabia as an olympic swimming pool you are filling with a 12" water
main direct to the pool, while Kuwait is more like a child's wading pool you
are trying to fill via an itty-bitty little ol' quarter-inch piece of
tubing.

Brooks