Posted on 10/26/2003 9:29:06 AM PST by Pikamax
"...Blood spots marked the stairway, as the 16 wounded made their way down to the lobby. Wolfowitz was there, before security aides took him to a shelter. He was unhurt and seemed angry but otherwise unfazed by the attack.
Wolfowitz lunched later with soldiers from the Army's1st Armored Division, who had captured the makeshift rocket launcher and towed it back to their headquarters. The launcher was a crudely soldered array of 40 rocket tubes, hidden in a freshly painted blue electrical-generator van. It had been parked near the hotel about 15 minutes before the attack and fired by a battery-operated timer, army officers said.
Army officers said that the 40 rockets in the launcher included 20 that appeared to be French-made and designed for use with the Alouette helicopter. The officers said these rockets were of relatively recent vintage, and might have been obtained by Iraq illegally after the imposition of a U.N. arms embargo. The other 20 missiles appeared to be Russian-made, the officers said.
Brig. Gen. Jack Dempsey, a senior offifcer in the division, told Wolfowitz the launcher was a "Rube Goldberg device" and that its crudeness indicated the weakness of the forces opposing U.S. occupation, rather than their strength. He insisted, as Wolfowitz did through his quick trip here, that the security situation is actually improving in Iraq.
Wolfowitz went on patrol with Dempsey's troops. He traveled in an armored Humvee that rumbled through the neighborhood near the Rasheed where the missile had been fired.
The rest of Wolfowitz's the day was a series of meetings that had been arranged days before to encourage his strategy of stabilizing Iraq by giving Iraqis greater responsibility for security. He met in the morning with newly retrained Iraqi police in the New Baghdad neighborhood of the city. His host there was Iraq's deputy interior minister Ahmed Ibrahim, a career cop who was imprisoned under Saddam Hussein. "
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
a "Rube Goldberg device" and that its crudeness indicated the weakness of the forces opposing U.S. occupation
A common error made by "higher-ups" in Vietnam.
We need to stop under-estimating our enemies, and I'm afraid that is what's going on here.
Richard W.
I guess my point was that we need to look at the motivation and organization of our adversary, not just whatever specific weapon was used in a particular attack.
Westmoreland used to give these exact same reassurances- every attack against us just proves how well the war is going for us. It didn't make sense then, and it doesn't make sense now. Didn't we learn ANYTHING from Vietnam? God knows the lessons were expensive enough.
What is he in denial about? That we're fighting a guerrilla war with the remnants of Saddam's regime and AQ imports? What is your solution to Iraq and the War on Terrorism?
This was a bold and successful attack -- something Wolfy and his pals didn't think could happen or they wouldn't have been staying in the hotel.
Are you trying to claim that "Wolfy and his pals" had no security around them? I hope you apply your standard of perfection (ie. should have known this would happen) to your own life. It's clear to me that you are a member of the Lawsuit Culture where, when anything bad happens, you flail about looking for someone to blame.
Actully I'm laughing about how the "everything is great in Iraq" PR and propaganda campaign just suffered a major discrediting hit.
Richard W.
Who said "everything is great in Iraq"? Bush hasn't, Rumsfeld hasn't, Wolfowitz hasn't.
BTW, where's your solution to Iraq and the WOT? You must have missed the question in my earlier post. Quit throwing rocks and start creating solutions.
What, you mean things aren't great? Darn
Richard W.
That idiotic statement is righly hammered here. I remember talking with a Filipino guerilla from WWII about how they got their guns. It seems the U.S. air-dropped single-shot 12 gauge shotguns to them, which they used on the Japs to get their guns.
The thing was, those "shotguns" were nothing more than a piece of pipe that slid horizontally on a wooden "stock". You slid the barrel forward, loaded a shell, got REAL close to a Jap, slammed the barrel back towards you, which jammed the shotgun shell against a small tit which fired the gun. Crude as Hell, but dead is dead, no matter how you do it.
We also made smoothbore single-shot pistols that fired the 45 ACP cartridge and dropped them to the European underground. Same deal - walk up to a Kraut, shoot, drop the old gun and pick up a new one and run like Hell.
Then we had the VC make a mine out of a 50 cal cartridge that sat on a nail. Step on it and get your foot messed up. Then we have their "Punji sticks" . . . The "crude weapons" BS goes on and on. Our big shots over there better re-read history in this matter and cease making these embarrassing statements.
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