Regards, Ivan
Posted on 04/09/2003 5:19:57 PM PDT by MadIvan
Adml Sir Michael Boyce, the Chief of the Defence Staff, tells John Keegan that, with two exceptions, the Iraq war has gone generally to plan
Things have gone generally according to plan in Iraq, the Chief of the Defence Staff, Adml Sir Michael Boyce, told The Telegraph yesterday. The chief exceptions to that were in the timing of the British advance to Basra and the organisation of the campaign in the Kurdish region.
Originally the British planned to advance on Basra about two days later than they did in practice. The timetable was advanced because of the Iraqi missile bombardment of Kuwait and the Faw peninsula, which led the high command in Qatar to fear that resistance in the south of the country might be stiffer than expected. The decision was therefore taken to hasten the commitment of 40 and 42 Commando, to which the Faw, and the nearby port of Umm Fawr, then rapidly fell.
Adml Boyce discussed the situation in northern Iraq at length. He was insistent on dismissing the idea that the region could have been taken by using Kurdish irregulars as the Northern Alliance was used against the Taliban two years ago. First, the region is only partly Kurdish, while the problem of liberating the cities, particularly Kirkuk and Mosul, remains. Second, the Kurdish fighters were not numerous enough, nor well-enough armed, trained or organised to take on the local garrison, composed of the Iraqi regular army. Heavier external forces were always going to be necessary.
Asked if he accepted that, during the planning stage, there had been two distinct schools of thought in the Pentagon, a "Rumsfeld school" which advocated a "light " war and a Colin Powell school which counter-proposed a "heavy" war, he said he thought the conflict between these "doctrines" had been exaggerated. He agreed that Donald Rumsfeld probably hoped to fight the war with comparatively limited numbers of troops but doubted that the American defence secretary believed that there was a possibility of clearing the northern region without the deployment of some conventional American - or British - troops.
As to why the coalition had done so well and the Iraqi opposition so badly, the secret, he said, lay in speed of operation. The coalition had "got inside the decision loop", by which he meant that the Iraqi commanders were unable to react in time to events. For example, the Americans arrived at crucial bridges over the Euphrates and Tigris so much sooner than was expected that the local commander did not have time to ask higher authority for permission to blow the spans. Moreover, they were probably frightened to pass on the news that the bridges were under threat. As a result, nothing was done and the bridges were captured intact.
Some of the bridges had been prepared for demolition, with charges in place. When the moment came, however, the right messages did not go up and down the Iraqi chain of command, so that they were not detonated.
There were the same defaults at Umm Fawr and Baghdad airport. The loss of the airport must have been particularly grievous to the enemy since none of the damage done by coalition bombing, would take very long to repair. The airport has a 6,000-feet runway, capable of accepting the C17 giant military transport. Reinforcements were already arriving. As a result the coalition was flying in reinforcements to within 12 miles of the scene of combat in the Baghdad government quarter.
Adml Boyce also discussed why the Iraqi armed forces had put up such poor resistance. The so-called regular army, he said, had just "shoved off". As soon as the soldiers realised that the fighting was going to get serious, they took the earliest opportunity to discard their uniforms and go home. The security forces tried to coerce the soldiers, particularly those of the Republican Guard, to the point of carrying out executions behind the front line. There were simply not enough security men to go round, however, so that the Republican Guard took its chance to desert wherever possible. It had also suffered terribly from coalition air attack, which destroyed most of its heavy equipment.
The security forces, fedayeen and Ba'ath militia, who have been responsible for most of the resistance the coalition has encountered, both in Baghdad and Basra, have fought for lack of any other option. Their members are identifiable as Saddam Hussein supporters and have no life outside his state apparatus. Given how poor their equipment was, mainly hand-held weapons, many fought with remarkable bravery, the admiral said.
He was satisfied with the way British equipment performed. The modified Challenger 2 tank had done particularly well. He put down the satisfactory equipment state to the decision taken two years ago to conduct the scheduled large exercise not in "green" but desert conditions. Exercise Swift Sword, held in Oman, was reported at the time as a worrying demonstration of defects. The point, the admiral said, was not to run a trouble-free manoeuvre but to find out what did and did not work and to correct the faults. The faults were corrected, with the result that the Challenger, for example, had not succumbed on active service to the tendency to stop, with clogged air-filters, discovered in Oman.
He also believed that the command and control system has worked well during Operation Telic, as the Iraq war is code-named. As far as his own involvement, as Britain's senior serviceman, goes, he talks about twice a week to his American opposite number, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff in Washington. He also talks several times a day to Lt-Gen John Reith, the commander of Joint Headquarters, at Northwood. He declined to say whether he thought the war was over and, if not, how long fighting would last. He preserved, nevertheless, a distinctly relaxed manner and the air of a man in charge of a thoroughly successful organisation.
Regards, Ivan
It's not just the equipment, the performance of the British troops has set a textbook example to be carefully studied. Bravo!
Where's Peter Arnet, hiding in a bunker with his gracious and friendly minders?
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