I love this picture! The second guy up from the bottom, the one who is hand signaling the photographer should be given a promotion!! If he had his finger on the trigger I would make him a full LT.
Posted on 11/17/2003 5:19:18 AM PST by William McKinley
Edited on 04/29/2004 2:03:27 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
When in Bush's career was he trained in terrorist tactics, leading troops into combat or any other general commander position in the use of troops?
Bush's problems originate because his advisors didn't give him good information. He selected the advisors, THAT is what he is guilty of!
Eisenhower was our only President who could make troop placement/movement decisions with any intelect because he was a General during WWII.
What experience/intelligence/military expertise do you have that makes you think you know more than the Generals in charge of this operation?
You may feel important typing grand advice at your computer, but why should anyone reading your posts think you have any more than just a personal opinion like anyone else around here?
btw, I'm no "Pollyanna." I have a lot at stake in having the military get this job done right......my son who has been in theatre since March (though I hesitate mentioning that, since doing so previously has opened me to attacks from some very ugly people).
The bottom line is, I'm not delusional enough to think that I'm in possession of more facts and expertise than the experts as you apparently are. And I'm not a hardened cynic, either......but if I appear as a pollyanna to a cynic like you, that's just fine with me. You haven't got a clue.
No one of this board can be or is aware as to what the Generals know or are planning but what they announce to the media. Blowing up empty buildings and rounding up the "usual suspects" is not a formula for success IMHO. Could I be wrong in this assertion. Of course. But these types of activities have been done before and with little success. For example, after the breakdown of talks in 2000 the Israelis confronted a new "intifada" complete with terrorism and suicide bombings. Barak instigated these very same tactics. We both know the results.
Threaten Syria to the point of submissivness, create new Gitmo's and act upon the intel gathered from them. It worked in Afghanistan and Israel. It could help bring the troops home.
I love this picture! The second guy up from the bottom, the one who is hand signaling the photographer should be given a promotion!! If he had his finger on the trigger I would make him a full LT.
Diana is an executive recruiter. She interviewed a soldier discharged from the military for a civilian job. But, she's serving her country by passing information that seems to get lost in all the "sound and fury" in the media.
Excuse me? What planet are you on?! Haven't you been paying attention to the Army recruiting posters of the past 20 years. It's all geared to the benefits you get by joining. The soldier she interviewed said they felt like they watching a movie of someone else's life.
My sister, Diana, also heard that a great many immigrants join up solely to get a green card. Or, in the case of the Iraq war, citizenship. That's their motivation! They didn't sign up to die for the USA. This is the reality of the situation.
IMHO, it smacks of the Romans and their mercenaries.
I said this was one soldier's impressions of the war. I am just passing this on. To pretend this situation does not exist is to be victimized by it. We, as citizens, need to be informed and to critically evaluate the information we receive.
BTW, I read the Newsweek article on Cheney. It was slime piece. Making it look like Cheney somehow bamboozled the President. I supposed Karl Rove & Co. want to get the blame off of Bush and maybe even dump Cheney before the election.
They'll do that without my vote. Cheney did what he felt was right. GWB made the decision. Sorry the buck stops at the Oval Office.
Hope your mind clears a bit before next November.
I will convey that to him. Thank you.
btw, I agree with your assessment of threatening Syria. My guess is that it is being done behind the scenes. But then again, I trust the Commander in Chief, and believe he will do what is necessary to obtain victory in this war, and you don't, so we probably disagree on that.
By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. Army helicopters in Iraq are flying faster and lower, hugging the ground in an effort to avoid hostile fire after a series of deadly downings and crashes, a U.S. general said Monday.
Military officials have not determined the cause of Saturday's collision of two Black Hawk helicopters in Mosul, which killed 17 soldiers in the deadliest single incident since the Iraq war began March 20.
While some witnesses have attributed the crash to hostile fire, Brig. Gen. Mark Hertling of the 1st Armored Division, told reporters Monday that preliminary findings indicate the final report will be different from what has been presented so far.
However, hostile fire is suspected in three other crashes since Oct. 25. As a result, Hertling said, the military has altered its flight patterns over Iraq.
"Our helicopters fly different tactics," he said. "They fly different routes. Every time they move somewhere, they will change the routes, they will fly lower and faster."
Although the new tactics won't eliminate the risk to helicopters, they are expected to reduce their vulnerability by making it more difficult for insurgents to target helicopters with surface-to-air missiles or rocket-propelled grenades.
A high-flying craft can be seen from a longer distance, giving an attacker more time to target it. But a fast-moving plane skimming the terrain can only be seen at the last moment, so there's not enough time to fire with reasonable accuracy, even with a heat-seeking missile.
"Flying faster and hugging the ground is going to stop helicopters being shot down in numbers," said Charles Heyman, senior defense analyst for Janes Consultancy Group in London.
"You fly like you're flying an aerial motorcycle. You come out of nowhere and you are gone before anyone can reach for their weapon."
For Iraqi civilians, the new flight patterns may mean more noise, Hertling said.
"But until we can improve and be sure that the security is improved, we're going to have to fly very low and very fast," Hertling said, adding that the military also is conducting searches of areas the fire is believed to be coming from.
Hertling brushed off speculation that insurgents are getting more sophisticated in targeting U.S. choppers with missiles.
"I think we've had a couple of incidents where it has been quite frankly luck," he said. "An RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) launch against a helicopter. It's a big target and I think that's murder too."
Hertling said the use of such weapons works against the Iraqi people by delaying the opening of airports to full commercial service.
There have been allegations that some of the helicopters that went to Iraq from National Guard units did not initially have the anti-missile defenses.
Following complaints from Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the Pentagon acknowledged that some helicopters from Guard units sent to Iraq between June and September lacked missile defenses but that all were upgraded by mid-September.
Two U.S. Soldiers Killed North of Baghdad
By JIM GOMEZ, Associated Press Writer
TIKRIT, Iraq - Two U.S. soldiers were killed Monday in separate incidents north of Baghdad, while an American patrol killed three people at Baghdad's gun market after apparently mistaking the test firings of customers as an attack, officials and witnesses said.
Earlier, in a show of force backed by tanks and mortars, U.S. forces assaulted dozens of suspected guerrilla positions in Saddam Hussein's hometown before dawn, killing six alleged insurgents and capturing others, officials said.
Faced with a deteriorating security situation, the military in past days has reacted with heavy raids and dramatic bombings in central and northern Iraq (news - web sites) in an effort to intimidate the resistance. U.S. forces fired a satellite-guided missile armed with a 500-pound warhead at a target near Tikrit on Monday, the second use of the weapons in as many days.
The military also announced that soldiers in the city of Ramadi west of Baghdad arrested Kazim Mohammed Faris, a suspected organizer of the Fedayeen guerrillas responsible for anti-U.S. violence.
The American soldiers were killed Monday near the town of Balad, 45 miles north of Baghdad, the military said.
One soldier died and two others were wounded when insurgents engaged their patrol with small-arms fire at 7:30 a.m. Another died when a convoy was struck by a roadside bomb near the town at 7:48 a.m., the statement said.
More than 400 U.S. service members have died since military operations began in Iraq, more than half of them since May 1, when President Bush declared major combat operations there over.
Meanwhile, an Italian official resigned from the U.S.-led administration running Iraq, saying it has only angered Iraqis and encouraged attacks with its policies
"The provisional authority simply doesn't work," Marco Calamai told reporters Sunday as he resigned as special counselor to the coalition in the province of Dhi Qar, according to the Italian daily newspaper Corriere della Sera.
Calamai said only an interim authority headed by the United Nations could turn things around.
In Baghdad, a U.S. patrol opened fire at the gun market , a witness and Iraqi police Maj. Ali Rykan said. The three dead included an 11-year-old boy. Four people also were wounded, hospital and police officials said.
Iraqis reacted with anger also from a U.S. sweep for weapons in the middle-class Baghdad neighborhood overnight,
Some 2,000 troops of the 1st Armored Division sealing off a 20-block area in the Azamiyah district and searching every building, arresting 21 people and siezing weapons.
But residents said those arrested included men who had revolvers or bird guns that could not have presented a serious threat to the security of the occupying forces.
"Of course everybody has weapons," said Samir al-Hadith, an engineer who works in Saudi Arabia and had returned to Baghdad to check on his home. "There are so many thieves nowadays. We have to defend our families.
In Tikrit, U.S. forces carried out more than 38 attacks from Sunday night to early Monday, destroying 15 suspected safehouses, three training camps and 14 mortar firing points, said Lt. Col. William MacDonald, a spokesman of the 4th Infantry Division.
Six suspected Saddam loyalists were killed and 21 arrested, he said.
"Clearly, we're sending the message that we do have the ability to run operations across a wide area," MacDonald said. "We have overwhelming combat power that we will utilize in order to go after groups and individuals who have been conducting anti-coalition activities."
Tikrit, about 120 miles north of Baghdad, is part of a region north and west of Baghdad dominated by Sunni Muslims and regarded as a hotbed of anti-American sentiment.
In Samara, three Iraqis who fired on American soldiers were killed in an ensuing clash Sunday night. In Muqdadiyah, two Iraqis fired a rocket-propelled grenade on U.S. soldiers on combat patrol aboard a Bradley fighting vehicle. The soldiers returned fire, killing the two, MacDonald said.
Simultaneously, the U.S.-led coalition has bowed to demands from Iraqi politicians and agreed to speed the transfer of power.
The new formula, announced Saturday by the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, calls for a provisional, sovereign government to be established by June.
However, France's foreign minister said in an interview published Monday in the French daily Le Croix that the plan still moves too slowly. Dominique de Villepin urged the Americans to have a provisional government in place by year's end.
Meanwhile, a tape purportedly made by Saddam Hussein urged the rebels to escalate attacks against the occupation and "agents brought by foreign armies" — an apparent reference to Iraqis supporting the coalition.
The CIA (said Monday the latest audio message, aired on Al-Arabiya television, cannot be authenticated.
"The evil ones now find themselves in crisis and this is God's will for them," the speaker on the tape said.
The top U.S. administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, dismissed the message as "a voice from the wilderness." He appeared on NBC's "Today" Monday
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