How the stinking liberal media helped shorten the war in
Iraq....... bogged down my ass.....
<font size=4>Dust storm
General Tommy Franks writes about a key episode of the Iraq war. What he says shows that following the progress of a military campaign through the media doesn't necessarily give you the key to what's going on. As Franks tells it, the campaign was effectively won in what seemed, then, the least promising phase:
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The big sandstorm was even worse than predicted. Reddish brown dust formed a high dome in the western desert and rolled over southern Iraq - and over 170,000 coalition troops. Visibility dropped to 10 metres or less. Rain pounded down through the red dust, turning the air to mud.
Our long logistics convoys crawled ahead, however, eventually linking up with the armour and infantry units that were managing to creep forward during lulls in the sandstorm. And, as the troopers inched on, scouts and special forces reconnaissance teams infiltrated more Iraqi positions, identifying the precise GPS co-ordinates of enemy armour and artillery.
As the sandstorm rose in intensity and movement on the battlefield virtually stopped on March 25, Gene Renuart came to see me. He said he had been talking to Buzz Moseley, commander of Centcom's air component.
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"Don't tell me, Gene." <font color=blue>I held up my hand. <font color=red>"There's going to be an air force coup. My palace is surrounded."
"Not yet, boss. We've actually been discussing how to take advantage of this shitty weather."
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Gene called for Jeff Kimmons, and the two of them spread a stack of reconnaissance pictures on the conference table.
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"We can use the sandstorm to destroy the Republican Guard formations,"<font color=blue> Gene said, pointing to the orange blocks of the Medina and Hammurabi divisions spread out south of Baghdad.
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"They started to manoeuvre a little when 3rd ID's scouts pushed north,"<font color=blue> Jeff explained. <font color=red>"Then the sandstorm blew up, and they decided not to move because we seemed to be bogged down."
"Where'd they get that idea?"<font color=blue> I asked.
Gene pointed to the television on the wall. Some retired
officer was holding forth, saying: "We are seeing what the
military calls a 'pause'. The coalition has stopped to
rearm and refit. They've sort of run out of steam..."
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"The enemy formations haven't moved for 16 hours," <font color=blue>Jeff said. <font color=red>"They're hunkered down. The old see no evil, hear no evil..."
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What Gene and Jeff were suggesting was a tactic that might win this war, at a time that many were characterising as our darkest hour.
That night B-52s, B-1s and a whole range of fighter-bombers flew above the dense ochre dome of the sandstorm, delivering precision-guided bombs through the zero-visibility, zero-ceiling weather. I was confident we were looking at the end of organised Iraqi resistance.
I sat alone in my office watching the air picture. Strike aircraft of all sizes were moving over a wide, curved kill zone that stretched from Al Kut in the Tigris Valley in the east to the Karbala gap in the west. The sand continued to blow. The Republican Guard units were hunkered down, and they were being destroyed piece by piece.
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The bombardment, which lasted from the night of March 25 to the morning of March 27, was one of the fiercest and most effective in the history of warfare. Nobody in the international press understood what was happening. All the embedded reporters were with ground units, except for some with ships. There were no correspondents in the cockpits of our strike planes or in the targeting cells in the combined air operations centre.
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