Posted on 05/10/2004 5:23:18 AM PDT by OESY
Edited on 05/26/2004 5:21:42 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
'War is hell," said Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, and he was the man to know, having led troops in a war that took four years and killed roughly 618,000 American men. If war is hell, warfare as currently conducted against mostly unseen bands of enemies in civilian dress hiding among bona fide civilians - and not even faintly comparable to the Civil War or other American wars of recent memory - is its own special kind of nightmare. Added to this nightmare is the knowledge that if we cannot extirpate them in their foreign hiding places, we will have to deal with them on our own shores.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
YES - I could not think of her name; Professor Gertrude Himmelfarb is it!
Regards,
1. The United States will be able to improve intelligence in Iraq only when Iraqi resources on the ground begin to cooperate.
It is now clear that Iraqi agents who worked on behalf of US intelligence were playing a double game and aided insurgents.
2. The guerrilla movements lack coordination on a national level, let alone locally.
The Shiite-Sunni rebellion and battles that erupted in early March 2004 put paid to that assumption. Bremer was also blindsided by the military and intelligence cooperation between the two communities, nationally and with outside elements such as al Qaeda.
3. The Shiites do not pose any threat to US efforts in Iraq. Sadr is also not a danger and his power is weakening.
Bremer's miscalculation, following secret talks with top Shiites, enabled Sadr and his main sponsors, Iran and Hizballah, to easily organize a spring offensive that almost toppled the moderate Shiite leadership of the Four Grand Ayatollahs in Najef.
4. There is no link between pro-Saddam guerrilla groups and al Qaeda.
The opposite is true, as events have proven in Fallujah. Every attempt to draw Bremer's attention to the situation in Fallujah -- where thousands of Muslim madressas sprouted like mushrooms after the rain and military cooperation burgeoned between insurgents and al Qaeda -- fell on deaf ears. The alliance between the guerrillas and Osama bin Laden's terrorists groups was the bludgeon that drove the US Marines into retreat from parts of the city.
5. Suicide attacks are against Iraqi nature.
It turns out that Iraqi suicide bombers are not only prepared to die in Iraq but they also have no qualms about seeking "martyrdom" elsewhere in the Middle East, such as in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Israel.
6. Only those Iraqis without close ties to the Saddam regime should be recruited into the new Iraqi army, police and security forces that will assume responsibility for law and order in major cities.
Only a handful of officials in the Bush Administration and the Pentagon are privy to the exact number of men recruited to serve in the Iraq military, police, intelligence, border guard and security force in charge of protecting the oil fields and installations. According to Debka military sources, the figure was 250,000. But more than half - or some 140,000 men - went AWOL and refused to obey orders or even turned their weapons on the Americans after the current fighting began in April. It was all one big US logistical and financial snafu.
7. The US military in Iraq, based largely on armored forces, should become lighter and more mobile.
Insurgents launched relentless attacks in April on US convoys heading from Baghdad to Fallujah or traveling the main road linking Fallujah, Amman and Baghdad. Supply, fuel, weapons and ammunition trucks were set ablaze - proof of the folly of pulling US tanks and other heavy armor out of Iraq during the winter. Troops in thin-skinned Humvees and riding shotgun in the cabins of the supply trucks they were protecting were easy prey for guerrillas and their rocket-propelled grenades. Even the fast-moving Striker battlewagons brought in to replace the heavy Abrams tanks, found it hard to operate in flashpoint Fallujah, Ramadi and Baghdad's Sadr City without tank cover.
Question: WHY has none of this touched Bremer and the US Department of State?
When has the Department of State ever operated in the real world?
8 A Soldier's Father Speaks Out ~ "I am not fooled, when you focus on, highlight, and exaggerate the negative things that happen in Iraq, while ignoring our positive accomplishments, then tell us you support our troops." ~ NewsMax | 5/10/04
Amb. Bremer, and other CPA reps share the briefings with CJTF-7 - our military leaders on the ground in Iraq - and they work closely together daily.
While they do have different missions, roles, skills, the CPA and CENTCOM/CJTF-7 (all under SOD Rumsfeld and the DoD) have remained consistantly supportive of each other - in actions and words before the public, mostly unreported by the press - or Debka (though very public - through regular public press briefings) since the beginning of the war.
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