"There is no question in my mind that the coalition and the Iraqi people are winning."
Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez, Commander, U.S. military forces in Iraq
Press Briefing in Baghdad
December 13, 2003
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December 13, 2004
Victory is Near
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7 Marines Killed in Iraq’s Anbar Province
The Army National Guard troops are one third more likely to die in Iraq than the professional army troops says USA Today. National Guards are often the logistical trail, i.e. those driving convoy, and are those with the least modern armor and weapons.
Dangers on the Ground in Iraq Lead to Increased Use of Airlifts. Didn´t the French tried this in Vietnam?
Military improvisation and initiative has to be promoted, so six Ohio-based reservists have been court-martialed for taking Army vehicles abandoned in Kuwait by other units so they could carry out their own mission to Iraq.
The Pentagon is again thinking about joining its public relation department with its psychological warfare operations. There is resistence from some top military people, but they seem to loose this fight.
Debate also continues over proposed amendments to a classified Defense Department directive, titled “3600.1: Information Operations,” which would lay down Pentagon policy in coming years. Previous versions of the directive allow aggressive information campaigns to affect enemy leaders, but not those of allies or even neutral states. The current debate is over proposed revisions that would widen the target audience for such missions.
This reinvention of the Office of Strategic Influence under Feiths man Ryan Henry was discussed and dumped three years ago, but has already happened in Iraq.
Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top commander in Iraq, approved the combining of the command’s day-to-day public affairs operations with combat psychological and information operations into a single “strategic communications office.”
Hidden in an article about a repair shop for Humvees is this nudget:
The Pentagon has prepared an unprecedented emergency spending plan totaling nearly $100 billion — as much as $30 billion more than expected as recently as October — say senior defense officials and congressional budget aides.
Upps – playing empire is expensive.
Poles are pissed. The deliver troops, but still have a hard time getting visas for the US.
Posted by: b | Dec 13 2004 13:08 utc | 1
“Didn´t the French tried this in Vietnam?”
Didn’t the Germans try this also somewhere on the Eastern Front in the winter of 1942?
Posted by: FlashHarry | Dec 13 2004 13:48 utc | 2
Slightly off topic for this thread, but
today’s antiwar.com has its usual quota of
informative links. Those of
Ran HaCohen and Anthony Zinni are up to par.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Dec 13 2004 13:54 utc | 3
Flash: Goering assured that the whole 6th Army could be supplied by air. Estimates are that 10% to 25% could effectively be supplied, and it was a nice turkey shoot for the Soviets, too.
“The current debate is over proposed revisions that would widen the target audience for such missions”
Speaking of Poles, remember Kwasniewsky, president of an “allied nation”, who said he was “taken in for a ride” with the whole WMDs stuff which convinced him to send troops there.
Posted by: CluelessJoe | Dec 13 2004 15:01 utc | 4
More potential victories.
It would be good, of course, if Secretary Rumsfeld had increased the size and strength of our army so that we now had more options. He didn’t, and we must use the assets we have. Still, real options exist. We could bomb Syrian military facilities; we could go across the border in force to stop infiltration; we could occupy the town of Abu Kamal in eastern Syria, a few miles from the border, which seems to be the planning and organizing center for Syrian activities in Iraq; we could covertly help or overtly support the Syrian opposition (pro-human rights demonstrators recently tried to take to the streets of Damascus to protest the regime’s abuses). This hardly exhausts all the possible forms of pressure and coercion. But it’s time to get serious about dealing with Syria as part of winning in Iraq, and in the broader Middle East.
Posted by: b | Dec 13 2004 15:11 utc | 5
If the President really hopes to prevail in Iraq, he will have to pay heed to Chapter 3 of The Prince: “…But when any States are gain’d in a Province disagreeing in language, manners, and orders, here are the difficulties, and here is there need of good fortune, and great industry to maintain them; and it would be one of the best and liveliest remedies, for the Conqueror to go in person and dwell there; this would make the possession hereof more secure and durable….as the Turk hath done in Greece, who among all the other courses taken by him to hold that State, had he not gone thither himself in person to dwell, it had never been possible for him to have kept it….” (tr. Dacres).
Posted by: alabama | Dec 13 2004 15:12 utc | 6
Of course he must be referring to the coalition of Sunnis and Shiites, because then his statement would be true. Oh wait… you mean the OTHER coalition….? Nevermind.
Posted by: semper fubar | Dec 13 2004 15:19 utc | 7
Um, do the Pentagon planners think that anyone in a country with a half-functioning media is going to believe a damn word that spoken by or on behalf of the US government for the next four years? Really? These guys are listening to their own propaganda I think.
Some reality based analysis: CNN LATE EDITION WITH WOLF BLITZER
ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI, FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Well, it’s not just an intelligence blunder. It’s a question of the mindset. There was such fervor to go to war against Iraq. And it was propounded with such intensity and, I’m sorry to say, demagoguery by a bunch of fanatics that it was quite natural for them also to argue that it’s going to be very easy, that we’d be welcomed as liberators, that the aftermath would be very simple.
I think we’re dealing here with a problem which goes beyond intelligence. It’s a fundamental misjudgment, and it’s a consequence of a decision-making process in which skeptics, questioners, people who disagreed really didn’t play much of a role.
BLITZER: Well, you use a tough word, “fanatics.” Who do you mean, when you say fanatics, talking about fanatics?
BRZEZINSKI: I’m not going to mention names, but people who, either for religious or strategic reasons, have a very one-sided view of Iraq and of the Middle East and what needs to be done in the area.
BLITZER: When you say “religious reasons” — I’m pressing you, because these are strong words that you’re throwing out, and you’re a man of very precise language.
BRZEZINSKI: Well, I think we all know that in American politics, particularly in recent times, there has been an intensified linkage between extreme religious views and politics. And there are a number of people who have very, very intense feelings about the Middle East. And I think that has colored our approach to Iraq and has colored our assessments of what would happen.
BLITZER: Well, maybe I’m missing something. Are you talking about fundamentalist Christians? Are you talking about Jews? Specifically, what are you trying…
BRZEZINSKI: I’m talking about all of them. I’m talking about all of them: people who approach this issue with a very strong religious fervor or a kind of strategic fanaticism, the kind of fanaticism that leads some people currently, for example, to argue that we should attack Iran, that we should bomb Iran.
BLITZER: And is this related to support for Israel is coloring their…
BRZEZINSKI: In some cases, I’m sure it is. In some cases, it isn’t. It’s a mixture.
You know, this is a very diversified country, and there’s a variety of viewpoints.
But in recent times, and particularly after 9/11, there has been an intensification in intensely views, intensely views. And when that is translated into the decision-making process, in which you really don’t vent alternatives very systematically, you are inclined to get into difficulties of the kind that we’re now facing in Iraq.
Posted by: b | Dec 13 2004 17:39 utc | 9
sanchez must have gone to the general westmoreland academy of informed commentary for his stunning interpretation of events
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 13 2004 19:29 utc | 10
Thanks for that gem @1239 B.
Blitz Mas seemed a little slow on the uptake.
Old Zbig should have just called them M#ther-####ing assholes, instead of fanatics.
That way, Blitz Mas, Michael Powell, and CNN would have had to have sorted it all out.
Posted by: FlashHarry | Dec 13 2004 20:18 utc | 11
Guardian art. Linked to kick-off this thread is gone. Does that mean Sanchez’s remarks are “inoperative”?
Kristol’s comments, cited by b:
“It would be good, of course, if Secretary Rumsfeld had increased the size and strength of our army so that we now had more options. He didn’t, and we must use the assets we have.”
Maybe this is why NeoNuts so hot to dump Rummie. His refusal to implement a draft is thwarting their wet-dreams. I hadn’t realized that. Maybe that’s his compromise w/Imperial Pragmatists – Brz., Scowcroft etc. Reading Kwiatkowski columns on NeoNut take over of Pentagon suggested to me he was one of them.
Pat, are you around? Any thoughts on this?
Posted by: jj | Dec 13 2004 21:20 utc | 12
“It would be good, of course, if Secretary Rumsfeld had increased the size and strength of our army so that we now had more options. He didn’t, and we must use the assets we have.”
What fabulous effrontery. I still have a magazine article he wrote in 1996, saying that Clinton’s hollowing-out of the military (a puny $260 billion in spending) needed to be upped by at least $60-$80 billion. And thanks to Bush/Rumsfeld, in inflation-adjusted terms, it’s increased by about that much! But with all those other Muslim countries to whack, even a $400 billion budget is dangerously pre-9/11.
Posted by: Harrow | Dec 14 2004 5:48 utc | 13
Posted by: A message from the Iraqi resistance | Dec 14 2004 6:03 utc | 14