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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neeka who wrote (183418)	9/18/2001 5:19:19 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

Hi moenmac; The US has weapons systems that are specifically designed for clearing mine fields. If mine fields alone were an issue the Gulf War wouldn't have turned out the way it did, Saddam had months to deploy them in optimum position. When the Russians were in Afghanistan they had to put up with the US supplying Afghanistan through Pakistan. The situation was similar to how the Russians supplied the rebels in South Vietnam through North Vietnam. In the current world situation, it appears that no one will be supplying the Afghanistanis. Here's a US Army analysis of wound types for Russian soldiers in Afghanistan. Note the preponderance of artillery and mines at the end (when the US was supplying the Afghan rebels): wood.army.mil The US is famous for high effectiveness of its counter-battery fire. If you want me to dig up links to accounts of our artillery versus Saddam Hussein's I'll do it. Basically, counter battery fire requires radar ranging of the enemy's rounds. When you detect a launch, you fire at the source of the launch. The US is good enough that they fire back before the other guys' rounds land. The whole purpose of the US Army from 1945 to 1979 was to defend against the Russians in Europe, and the Russians are famous for bringing lots of artillery to the party. For this reason, the US is particularly adept at counter battery operations. War is a horribly expensive operation, and this will be true for both sides in Afghanistan. But without new sources of supplies, the Taliban will run out of ammunition. They have something like 25 stinger missiles left, when those are gone they will only have small arms fire. Think back to what they were saying would happen to the US in the Iraqi operation. We were going to require several years of fighting with 10s of thousands of deaths. They were the "battle hardened veterans" of 8 years of war against the Iranians. The fact is that every government that rules by force mistakenly believes itself to have more force than it actually possesses. Nazi Germany thought it could not be beat, the Soviet Union thought it could not be beat, Iraq thought it could not be beat. The sequence is that we keep finding weaker and weaker fanatics to fight against. The United States military has a reputation for being slaughter happy. When you're assessing US military power, *instead of talking to American soldiers, go talk to the guys who were on the other side.* This reputation, particularly in the Middle East, was only extended by what we did to the Iraqis. Some of the Taliban soldiers would have either been involved in the Gulf War, or heard about it. In fact, Afghanistan sent a contingent to fight on our side. (I seem to recall that it was only something like 200, and they were for military police or something like that.) We also have a reputation for treating prisoners very well. This combination makes it extremely attractive for enemy soldiers to surrender to US troops. Expect to see a lot of this. In addition, the US has a long standing reputation as a non colonial power. We won't be trying to put a stupid Communist puppet regime in a backwards Moslem country, so we're likely to get more support from the locals. The Taliban will probably have more problems with this than we do, as they are the ones that have forced a radical religious government on a population that is more used to freedom. In addition, they rely on a lot of Arab volunteers (while Afghanistan has little native Arab population). So don't worry too much. -- Carl