Hi Nadine Carroll; Re: "But the fact that there are not massive mobilizations right this minute is supposed to prove that we do not intend to fight a war in Iraq?"
That's right. If the reserves have to be called up for an emergency they can be called up in a matter of days. But Iraq is not an emergency. You and Bush have been talking about it for nearly a year, but no action. If we were going to attack Iraq, the reserves would be called up about 3 or 4 months before hostilities begin, just like with the Gulf War. I know that you think that Afghanistan is a counter-example to this, but the facts are that Iraq is not Afghanistan. Saddam has already proved that his regime is immune to our aircraft. To take him down we will have to send the grunts, and the reserves have to be mobilized months in advance for that. If the Reserves were thrown into combat days after being called up it would be an f'ing disaster. Such has never happened before and it ain't going to happen now, in a non emergency situation. Instead, if the reserves were going to be used in Iraq, they'd be called up for extra training, just like they always have before.
Re: "Why do I sense a 'heads I win, tails you lose' style of argument here."
This is what everyone says when they lose a debate. Face it, you lost. You've been talking about the imminent invasion of Iraq for most of a year and you came up empty. Your invasion is farther off now than it was at the beginning of the year. Even the Republican party faithfuls are split on it, and not a single ally is making nice noises about it. It's over. Here's a reminder:
Nadine Carroll, January 2, 2002
Right now you can bet that both Washington and Jerusalem are concentrating not on whether the US attacks Iraq, but on assessing the maximum amount of damage that Saddam Hussein will be able to accomplish, because that is exactly what he will try to do. #reply-16854910
January 16, 2002
All that Bush would need to do to take us into Iraq is make a case for it. The Defense Department hawks all want it, and I think President Bush does too. #reply-16916350
Nah, that argument doesn't fly. Even without Saudi Arabia, we have Turkey, Bahrain, Kuwait, de facto Kurdistan in the northern no fly zone, the southern no fly zone, (probably) Jordan. Russia and Israel are not far off, beside our own fleet parked in the Persian Gulf. #reply-16919830
January 21, 2002
As Newsweek just explained, the administration has formed a consensus around a compromise between Defense and State that takes us into Iraq. #reply-16940702
I just happened to see Evan Thomas, the author of the Newsweek article, on Hardball. Chris Matthews asked, is this non-unilateral approach just a cover for doing nothing with Iraq? Evan Thomas replied, no, he thought they would really go in, it takes time to prepare the ground politically and logistically, and they were starting the process. #reply-16941410
This process has already been started by Bush's announcement during his press conference with Turkish PM Ecrevit. Personally, I would bet on the shorter end of the timeframe [six to 18 months] -- who wants to wait until Saddam has nukes ready? #reply-16939920
April 11, 2002
Like my prediction that we would go into Iraq this year? In case you've lost track, we are now in April. The year ends in December. #reply-17320590
July 10, 2002
David Warren on the coming US attack on Iraq: ... There can be little question that the U.S. will act, in the time horizon of the next nine months. #reply-17714649
Nadine Carroll, August 10, 2002
Perhaps this show will get on the road sooner than we think? #reply-17861536
Now about the calling up of the Reserves. Yes, they can be called up on a moment's notice. But that's only for an emergency. No, an attack on Iraq is not an emergency. Only an idiot general would release 2000 reservists per week in the knowledge that he was going to have a full scale war on his hands in a few months. Before soldiers are sent into combat that are trained for months in conditions similar to the unique situation that they will be facing, unless there is an emergency. This is not some new consequence of pansy American generals. It has been a constant of intelligently fought combat since the Germans tried it late in WW1. Since the war with Iraq is not an emergency, there is plenty of time for training, and so the reservists would be called up and put through extensive training if a war were imminent. So yes, before any attack on Iraq there would be a long build up of very considerable US forces and a massive calling up of the reserves.
Let me repeat my argument on the reserves from another side. During the Gulf War, the number of reservists that were called up was nearly 200,000. This is about 2x as many as were called up for Afghanistan, at the peak. This makes sense because the Afghanistan conflict required a very light US ground presence as we had a stronger ally (i.e. Northern Alliance) on the ground than we had with Kuwait (i.e. flaky Arab allies). If we go into Iraq again, we will first call up the reserves just like we did the first time, but if we did it unilaterally (BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! LOL!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!) we'd call up a lot more than we did the first time. Of course because of the diplomatic situation we cannot get anyone to "ally" with us, so we're not going to go in.
Either Bush will stop making the war noises after the elections, (and give the public 2 years to forget about it), or he will keep making them for the reset of his term and you will remain hopeful of an attack on Iraq until November 2004 when he is voted out of office for "screwing up the economy" (despite the fact that it wasn't his fault), rather than for screwing up the "war on terrorism", which he has already won handily.
Watch and learn.
-- Carl |
