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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KLP who wrote (47305)	9/26/2002 6:24:37 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

.Please provide some proper documentation.... "Google" under "Gulf War One" lindybill@iraqisareeasy.com

To: KLP who wrote (47305)	9/26/2002 7:23:06 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi KLP; Re: "I have NOT seen a single reputable article even suggesting that Iraq will be easy. Please provide some proper documentation." I love easy pitches. Here's what the Administration told Congress on September 18th: Myers: The first thing that I wanted to cover with you was the nature of the threat that Iraq presents to us and the capabilities of our armed forces today, but I don't think there's anything that I can add to Secretary Rumsfeld's remarks. I agree with those. And so I'll leave that point and go on to my second point, and that is to tell you that our nation's military forces are ready and able to do whatever the president asks of them. Your armed forces have made dramatic strides and capabilities over the past decade, and let me just highlight a few. ... Rumsfeld: The numbers of troops that it would take in the early period, I don't think it's probably useful to discuss in this forum. It's interesting to go back to the Gulf War, the Iraqi army demonstrated its attitude about Saddam Hussein when 70,000 or 80,000 members of the Iraqi army surrendered and changed sides almost instantaneously, within a matter of days, some surrendering -- hundreds surrendering to single soldiers, because they have no great respect for their leadership in that country. ... There's no question but that Saddam Hussein's military capability today is less than it was during Desert Storm. And there's also no question but that the capability of the United States is considerably greater than it was during Desert Storm in terms of lethality. And there's also no question but that, as General Myers said, the United States is capable of doing those things that the country decides it would like it to do. Myers: His ground forces are roughly about half of what they were a decade ago. He's got 23 divisions today, of which six are Republican Guard. You never know for sure, but the *reports are that the morale is low, particularly in the regular army units, higher in the Republican Guard units, because the regime pays more attention to those units. He's got about 300 combat aircraft, of which less than half are mission capable on any given day. And from what we can tell from reactions to some of our reconnaissance vehicles, not very tactically adept*. ... defenselink.mil The reason that all the above is misleading is that the real problem with Iraq is not in the invasion. As I've already posted, I've been saying that the US could easily defeat Iraq (and depose Saddam Hussein) as early as just a few days after the WTC attack. Instead, the problem is the occupation. The US did not have its butt kicked in Vietnam because of an inability to defeat the local government. We got kicked out because of our inability to control the population. Our problem with the Arabs is similar. If Arabs were that f'ing easy to control the Israelis wouldn't be scraping pieces of babies off of ice cream store chairs. Think about it. The Israelis have had 40 years to figure out a solution to the Arabs. No solution. They've more or less quickly defeated every conventional military force they've come up against. So we're going to go in to Iraq, quickly defeat a conventional military force, and then our foreign policy is going to somehow suddenly diverge from the Israeli one? The problem is that going into Iraq will simply convince the locals that the US truly is allied with Israel, and should be subject to the same terror attacks that Israel is subjected to. We made the same mistake in Vietnam, where we thought that we could somehow shovel cash and weapons to the (evil) French colonizers but somehow convincing the locals that we were in favor of their freedom etc. Back then we did the same thing we're doing now. We publicly asked the French to let Vietnam become free and independent, but we gave the French assistance even though they didn't. Instead, the French supported a puppet regime, but the locals kept fighting. And when our soldiers showed up, the locals shot at us. This thread has been outraged that Saddam Hussein gives money to the families of "martyrs". But the fact is that if you took a poll throughout the Arab world, the support for that policy would easily win by a landslide. When we come in with our bombs and guns it is simply going to more fully convince the locals that Israel and the United States are the same thing, and that the United States is conquering Iraq in order to keep the Iraqis from sending money to Palestinian baby butchers. Yeah, I'm sure that you see right through this. You understand completely that the US isn't there to subjugate the Arabs, (though you have a repeated refrain that suggests that you are less than honest about your desires for their oil), but that's not how it's going to play in Baghdad. If our guys marched into Baghdad the locals would shoot at them, Saddam or no. It's not that they hate us, it's that they hate the Israelis, and we're the big allies of the Israelis. Similarly, the Vietnamese didn't have anything against us, just that we helped the French, and were all too willing to shoot at them. This is basic simple human nature, not rocket science. -- Carl