Military Commanders’ Decisions in Fallujah Overridden by Politicians (CONFIRMED)

Fox Live Broadcast / USA Today Interview ^ | 5/3/04 | Jim Michaels

[elfman2]

Freepers have been hotly debating whether politicians or military commanders made the decision to cancel the Fallujahn offensive.

Today Fox News Live’s Jon Scott (I believe) interviewed Jim Michaels (USA Today Reporter) just back from Fallujah. I transcribed the relevant portion of the interview. In summary he said that the Marines were told to stop the attack by Administrator Bremer under pressure from the Iraqi Governing Council.

MICHAELS – “No one [in the Marines] was happy with the cease fire. The American contractors were killed.

“They got the order to go in, as we know, on a big offensive. They were in the offensive for whatever, seven or eight days and boom the politicians said no, hold back, there’s too many casualties.

“The governing council, the Iraqi governing council, was really upset. They went to Mr. Bremer. Mr. Bremer in turn sort ‘a put in the order to hold back.

“While they were in this cease fire meanwhile the insurgents were in there, the insurgents were in there rearming re-supplying you know, taking advantage of of the lull in activities, so they were in a real bind here, and they really had no choice, they say, except to come up with the idea for a Fallujah Brigade.

“Otherwise these guys would still be in there and the ceasefire would still be going on, and these talks that they were having were going nowhere. The sheiks (sp?) were just kind ‘a sipping tea with coalition officials and were nowhere, It was just getting nowhere at all. “

SCOTT –“So very quickly Jim, Do the bad folks in Fallujah think that they’ve won?”

MICHAELS – “They do indeed! They’re running around the past couple of days, celebrating and saying you know that they’ve fought things to a stand still. They’re really taking a propaganda victory out of this. “

“They’re really running around saying, you know, they fought the American forces to a standstill. You know they’re pushing it for all it’s worth.”

SCOTT –“So how does that effect their overall strategy to win the hearts and minds of the the Iraqis - the fact that they’re claiming a victory in Fallujah?

MICHAELS – Well pol… It doesn’t help. And it’s one of the biggest fears that the Marines have is that a week, 10 days down the road, this things going to continue to snowball, and and these guys are going to claim victory, and it presents a BIG propaganda problem for the American forces there. It its a big risk.

"The Marines said that they had no choice, that they were in a stand off and the ceasefire whas going nowhere."

[B4Ranch]

>>Some time ago, I pointed out that the cease fire had the same ring as LBJ saying, "The US Air Force can't bomb a $hithouse in N.Vietnam without my knowing about it."

Some laughed. I didn't.<<

He was speaking for the Russian UN Security representative> All the bombing in RVN was approved by the UN and had to wait 48 hours before we attacked. This gave the NV's time to move their SAMs into place.

(think I'm kidding? I'm not!)

[TomasUSMC]

One other thing; at the time we were going to go in, jihadist strength was at its height. Now, not so strong.

---

I would say that since the siege is over, there are now many more, better armed, better coordinated guerrillas in Fallujah now, and they now probably have brand new body armor.

MOAB. Use it before it is used on US like they did in Lebanon.

[A Jovial Cad]

For crying out loud, no one, but *NO ONE* here is "blinking." The call has been for the use of *more* force in Fallujah, not less.

[cajungirl]

You choose to interpret it that way. What I saw was considerable ordnance being dropped in an amazing way in that area and now an attempt to let Iraqis go into that town and make it peaceful thus saviing our lives and testing their resolve. We are right there with more firepower and can if we are willing to do some dying take that town. We may be surprised if the Iraqis pull it off and we may be unsurprised if they don't. But we are still there. And terrorists died this week iin that bombing. And if Muslims want to dance, well, I don't think it helps us for Freepers to dance with them.

[cajungirl]

They start to think what with their having nothing else to do but clean up the rubble in their town. They having gotton over their little premature celebration of hubris, look around and hopefully begiin to wonder if it is worth it to have these old Bathists around. And their own citizens come in to help them clean it up. And they drink tea and mistreat their women and tell stories.

[FreeReign]

“The governing council, the Iraqi governing council, was really upset. They went to Mr. Bremer. Mr. Bremer in turn sort ‘a put in the order to hold back.

The military doesn't take orders from Mr. Bremer. The military only takes orders form the politician CIC. Even the description, "Bremer...put in order to hold back" from the unnamed source is vague.

“While they were in this cease fire meanwhile the insurgents were in there, the insurgents were in there rearming re-supplying you know, taking advantage of of the lull in activities, so they were in a real bind here, and they really had no choice, they say, except to come up with the idea for a Fallujah Brigade.

No. There were reports nightly of the Marines fighting and killing insurgents during the so-called ceasefire. Add to that the reports, that the entire city was surrounded and that the neighborhood of Golan was surrounded making it imposible for the insurgents in Golan to get "rearmed". Yet this unnamed sources claims that, "the insurgents were in there rearming re-supplying you know".

What you have described in the above two paragraphs by these unnamed sources is a real pant load of lefwing BS.

IMV, the politician CIC on advice from many people including Bremer, ordered the Marines to stop their advance short of the Golan neighborhood and have simply tried to finish the job with an Iraqi Brigade.

Stay tuned.

[Proud Legions]

Actually, I am not sure that in the long run you are wrong.

We may very well have to go back in with force. And I must admit I would like to see more combat troops around Fallujah before we go in to take it.

The general rule of thumb is 3:1 advantage needed against the enemy in a conventional battle, and 10:1 in an urban counter-insurgency battle. If we assume there are 2000 bad guys in town who would be willing to fight our Marines, that would mean we should have about 20,000 Marines ready to go.

Does not have to be that way...and certainly our advantage in technology and air power permits us to fudge those ratios quite a bit. Just I would feel more comfortable with more boots ready to go in and clean out the bad guys. I guess we just have to count on the Marine Generals to know what they are doing!

My biggest concern is actually not Fallujah. I think we could ignore it and let the new Iraqi government handle it except for one thing. There are some number of extremists in that town who will leave and come to where we are in order to try and kill US and coalition troops and civilians. So somehow we need to weed those folks out. Not sure how to do it.

I am worried that so many are so concerned about our body count. I do not mean that flippantly, as I mourn for every lost American and coalition military and civilian who dies over there. But it is very tough to fight a war when every night you are asked why you are losing the war because 1 soldier, or 2 soldiers (or 8) were killed, while in the same battle hundreds of insurgents were taken out.

In Vietnam, Ho had 14 million recruits to keep replacing his losses...these guys causing the trouble do not (at least not in Iraq).

I am still optimistic about the whole thing...and truly believe much of the moaning and groaning is due to bad press...at least from those who didn't support the war in the first place. Time will tell. Anyway, thanks for your pleasant comments...it sounds like we might not disagree so much after all.

[B4Ranch]

>>You know, "It's Bush's fault!" just gets tagged onto everything.<<

Bush gets the credit for every good move that earns praise and he gets the blame for every bad move that gets derision. They come hand in hand.

[cajungirl]

Your post makes sense, is thoughtful and interesting. I think you are right.

[TomasUSMC]

We are talking about an area about 1/8 the size of Brooklyn with roughly 1000 enemy combatants hiding behind 15,000 or so civilians. - The media did this with Tet years ago ..

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If the area is sooo small and the enemy so insignificant - Then why not go in and take care of this little crap?

The difference between Tet and now is that - In Tet we took back everything that was overrun including the city of Hue. We did not REPOSITION, WE RETOOK.

[section9]

I disagree, Tomas. You have to think of the insurgents in the Golan neighborhood as a coalition. A lot of them have been killed, more than the Marines have publicly admitted. The core are the jihadi. They won't run. But the local Sunni are on again/off again, depending on which way the wind blows and where the cash is coming from. In addition, the tribals have a big say in rebel strength right now.

I think that insurgent strength peaked out at a couple of thousand two weeks ago. Now, they are probably down to seven hundred or more.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

[FreeReign]

"The lead foreign reporter's source is unnamed. There is no burden to disprove what an unnamed source is saying."

Only when the source is a credible reporter speaking the obvious nationally. I don’t care if you don’t recognize the obvious. The rest of the world moves on without you.

(MY bold -- your word)

Your logic is circular. You claim that what an unnamed source is true because it's obvious. Yet what is so-call "obvious" by you is really just a week or tens worth of unnamed sources that, repeated often enough, becomes fact.

Objectivity, moves on without -- you.

[Proud Legions]

Chris,

No fair quoting Sun Tzu!

By the way, your assessment is pretty close to what my old company commanders from the battalion I commanded, who are now on the ground in Iraq, are telling me as well.

[McGavin999]

When does he get credit B4, I haven't seen that yet.

[ASA Vet]

58,169 KIA in VN

[B4Ranch]

Look back to the day on the Navy carrier when everyone here thought he was the best thing since cinammon toast. He declared the fighting was over, we had taken Iraq.

You do have a short memory!

Praise for President Bush was the only thing to be found on FR.

[Robert_Paulson2]

nice cliche.
but....
fallujah really IS looking more and more, like a flawed operation, policy and political sidestep into a bad moon rising.

bush has my vote, regardless.
but, fallujah should be dead now.
all and for very long dead.

and I do NOT care a whit about the alleged innocents.
there ARE no innocents in fallujah. only human shields, terrorists and their supporters.... in fallujah.

sadaam is gone. so are the evil seeds.
the baath party is decapitated.
so a partial victory is a just claim regarding the whole of Iraq.

however.. fallujah, as a political territory was never defeated or subjugated, we never went to war against the fighters of fallujah... we sniped at them, mightily, and now we have retreated. So, in a way, we won a war, but lost a key battle. Najaf is the next failure zone.

there is NO good way for ME to put a good face on it.
I hope we go back in and flatten it.
we won't, but I still hope.

[Eurotwit]

Thanks for a great post.

[section9]

Well now wait a minute, I wasn't directly quoting Master Sun. But I was pulling in a bit of Karl von.

Were you Army or USMC, btw?

What's interesting is that the rest of Iraq is fairly quiet. Even Najaf hasn't gone south. Al-Sadr has been marginalized and has been neatly outflanked by Sistani and the rest of the Shi'a heirarchy. They want nothing to interfere with the rise of a Shi'a majority Arab state at the end of the year. Al-Sadr was a hothead who was in the pay of the Persians, and that was an unforgivable mistake. To be in the pay of the Americans is one thing. To be in the pay of the neighbors? Not good. Now Sadr is losing men to a shadowy group associated with the Badr Brigades. Sadr will have to humble himself before the Don and learn to bide his time and wait; otherwise, he will meet a terrible end.

Sistani will want us to handle the Fallujah problem so he doesn't have to dirty his hands. That's where I see this going. But the tactical obstacles I spoke of above are real, though I suspect that the enemy is fewer in number than a couple of weeks ago. Fallujah is not only Scout Sniper Heaven; it's also real dangerous work for Sappers and Combat Engineers.

Be Seeing You,

Chris