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

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (176595)	11/30/2005 10:49:11 PM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

That was Tommy Franks' decision. He made the call about the force levels versus possessing the element of surprise as to the actual date of the attack. Not Bush.. And Franks was correct. The Iraqi Army dissolved in the face of that relatively small force. Oh dear. That's totally contrary to every account I ever read. And the "surprise" thing is a total crock, as everybody knew what was coming, and when, everybody kept blabbing about the weather window. A long version: The military's fundamental argument for building up what Rumsfeld considered a wastefully large force is that it would be even more useful after Baghdad fell than during actual combat. The first few days or weeks after the fighting, in this view, were crucial in setting long-term expectations. Civilians would see that they could expect a rapid return to order, and would behave accordingly—or they would see the opposite. This was the "shock and awe" that really mattered, in the Army's view: the ability to make clear who was in charge. "Insights from successful occupations suggest that it is best to go in real heavy and then draw down fast," Conrad Crane, of the Army War College, told me. That is, a larger force would be necessary during and immediately after the war, but might mean a much smaller occupation presence six months later. "We're in Baghdad, the regime is toppled—what's next?" Thomas White told me, recounting discussions before the war. One of the strongest advocates of a larger force was General Eric Shinseki, the Army Chief of Staff. White said, "Guys like Shinseki, who had been in Bosnia [where he supervised the NATO force], been in Kosovo, started running the numbers and said, 'Let's assume the world is linear.' For five million Bosnians we had two hundred thousand people to watch over them. Now we have twenty-five million Iraqis to worry about, spread out over a state the size of California. How many people is this going to take?" The heart of the Army's argument was that with too few soldiers, the United States would win the war only to be trapped in an untenable position during the occupation. A note of personal rancor complicated these discussions, as it did many disagreements over postwar plans. In our interview Douglas Feith played this down—maintaining that press reports had exaggerated the degree of quarreling and division inside the Administration. These reports, he said, mainly reflected the experience of lower-level officials, who were embroiled in one specific policy area and "might find themselves pretty much always at odds with their counterparts from another agency." Higher up, where one might be "fighting with someone on one issue but allied with them on something else," relations were more collegial. Perhaps so. But there was no concealing the hostility within the Pentagon between most uniformed leaders, especially in the Army, and the civilians in OSD. Donald Rumsfeld viewed Shinseki as a symbol of uncooperative, old-style thinking, and had in the past gone out of his way to humiliate him. In the spring of 2002, fourteen months before the scheduled end of Shinseki's term, Rumsfeld announced who his successor would be; such an announcement, which converts the incumbent into a lame duck, usually comes at the last minute. The action was one of several calculated insults. From OSD's point of view, Shinseki and many of his colleagues were dragging their feet. From the Army's point of view, OSD was being reckless about the way it was committing troops and high-handed in disregarding the military's professional advice. One man who was then working in the Pentagon told me of walking down a hallway a few months before the war and seeing Army General John Abizaid standing outside a door. Abizaid, who after the war succeeded Tommy Franks as commander of the Central Command, or CENTCOM, was then the director of the Joint Staff—the highest uniformed position in the Pentagon apart from the Joint Chiefs. A planning meeting for Iraq operations was under way. OSD officials told him he could not take part. (from theatlantic.com ) A much pithier version: I know a General officer who was in contact with General Franks throughout the planning. He first went to Rummy with a request for 400,000 troops and was sent back to his office to cut the number. This happened 3+ times with Franks lowering the no. each time. He finally said to rumsfeld "give me a number." The idea that the generals have been in league with the administration is false. They are just trying to protect their very nice retirements. They worked 30+ years without all this kind of garbage. They are fed up...but hey...give up that money? washingtonmonthly.com Everything I've ever read points to Rummy micromanaging the force level. Trying to pin it on Franks fits with W's model of "personal responsibility", where the buck must be kept as distant as possible from its traditional stopping place, but otherwise seems pretty inconsistent with conventional reality.

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (176595)	12/1/2005 12:04:00 AM
From: geode00	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Wrong. Bush is the Commander in Chief. He is no longer the juvenile delinquent escaping from responsibilty by plunging into the tequila bottle. He is the CIC and is RESPONSIBLE. It is a sad state of affairs that this is so but there it is. You do understand, right, that the idea of Iraq was to cut off the head of the snake, put Chalabi in charge, privatize the oil and/or flood cheap oil into the world, decimate OPEC and make Israel the most powerful country in the region....or something to that effect. The actual mystical fantastical goal depended on whose oily dream it was. Disbanding the Army without removing weaponry was a mistake? How about INVADING A SOVEREIGN COUNTRY ILLEGALLY? You still don't get it do you. Why is that? Did you read what I said? The Selective Service says it can implement a draft in 6 weeks. That means, in 6 months or so you can have fresh recruits. The invasion of Iraq was by choice. There was no timeframe involved. Bush could have gotten his 500,000 troops together and THEN invaded Iraq but he didn't think anything through. Bush doesn't read, doesn't understand history, doesn't understand anything but his personal entitlement to squat in the oval office and DO NOTHING but what he dang well pleases for his own personal profit. Do you not understand that this is how this adminstration thinks? Recruitment sucks in the Army, but not so in other branches, because it's the Army that's mired in Iraq. Therefore, your idea of employment doesn't hold true. I have no problem with a no-deferement draft and an across the board mandatory service. You're telling me what you see. I'm telling you what has been reported by more than one media outlet including that bit about in room internet access. I'm not criticizing individual soldiers, I'm critizing THE WAR. Morale would be boosted across the board if all soldiers and marines et al could COME HOME ASAP. The power and the criticism belongs to Washington. Since IEDs appear to be such a significant source of casualties and fatalities in Iraq, I believe a bomb guy should have more than a Leatherman in his pants pockets. That bomb guy is very important to the effort and should be well protected so he can teach his skills to others. I don't know why he can't get $600s for his brakes or why the only options for him are street clothes or the michelin man outfit in 120 degree heat. I'm saying as in all things...put the dang resources into solving the real problem. What you still fail to understand is that the Bushies never meant to leave Iraq...ever. There's the $1-2 billion most-expensive-building-ever 3,000 person largest-embassy-in-the-world somewhere in Baghdad. There are the 14 permanent bases. They meant to occupy it as the outpost for the ExxonMobil Empire. Who knows if they still do or not? Gee. Have you gone off your rocker? The fundamentalism, the Constitution, the divisiveness, the weak federalism, the violence have nothing to do with being Iraqis or Chinese or British or Dutch or Americans or Canadians or anything. It has to do with a region that has strong ethnic and religious divisions and a history of oppression and repression suddenly thrust into a POWER VACUUM. When humans are presented with this once in a century opportunity, they look for personal power out of that chaos. It's a POWER GRAB courtesy of the Bush administration. If China came and took out the government in Washington and told Republicans that majority Democrats were now going to take power, what would Republicans do? Would they go home and say, okey dokey? Of course not. It's a human thing. My, agenda, is to stop bleeding the US taxpayer dry for war profiteering and gross incompetence. My agenda is to have a decent government that can balance the budget, stay out of ruinously stupid ventures, not steal from me and take the problem of competitiveness seriously. Why isn't that YOUR AGENDA as well?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (176595)	12/1/2005 4:23:18 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<Why don't I up you one and call for mandatory service for every able bodied man and woman?? It doesn't even have to be military service, but medical students working off their service in low-income communities, or in the Peace Corps (which should be increased in size).> Why not really get some patriotism and public spirit inculcated and start conscription and the draft for government service at age 15 and make it compulsory for everyone until age 80? You and Geode are such liberal sissies. Enough of the freedom cant. Let's have some good old compulsion for the collective good. And no pay either. Room and food and a uniform is all people should want. And a little red book so they can chant the ideology correctly when called to kneel in obeisance towards Washington monument or the White House, or perhaps where the constitution is kept. No, hang on, age 15 is far too old. Indoctrination from age 3 is much more effective. 1984 Rulz OK. Mqurice