Posted on 04/15/2006 8:11:03 AM PDT by Hadean
Understand:
Thing here is we are in a "Stalingrad" type of a situation.
Have several hundred thousand troops tied down in Iraq.
Lots of Naval assets in the Persian Gulf, would be trapped if Iran seals off the Hormuz straits.
Ship traffic thru the Hormuz straits is our main supply line to support the Iraq war.
Stateside, open borders, no telling what the hell Iran has planted here courtesy or our President "Gringo de Mexico Boosh"
My thinking is this:
They will hit us big time stateside with ABC weapons.
Will hit naval assets in the Persian Gulf
Mine the straits of Hormuz
Launch a pincer move to cut off our forces in Iraq.
Your thoughts and comments are welcome.
The best thing would be to do an aerial attack, targeting the main nuclear facilities AND the main seat of the Theocracy.
No ground troops at all. Let the Iranians sort everything out.
Does Bush have the cajones to do this? And will Congress give him prior approval?
Was talking to my son earlier today.
He is former military as am I.
Main thouht is if the Iran thing goes hot the Navy and Air Force will take care of it.
Wont be like Afghanistan and Iraq, a "boot on the ground thingy"
This will be all cards on the table
Okay, I'll bite.
First off, the comparison with Stalingrad is way off. Stalingrad was a tactical mistake made a military dictatorship with political motives, not strategic ones. The allure of Stalingrad, in Hitler's mind, had more to do with capturing something with Stalin's name on it than anything else (despite the city's strategic location). Hitler, and by extension, the Army became obsessed with the political point being made,rather than with the military considerations.
The second problem with the Stalingrad reference is that the German army became fixated on the battle to the exclusion of all other considerations, and sent more and mroe troops into a meat grinder, when a strategic withdrawl and encirclement of the city were perhaps a better way to go. Hitler's fanatic belief that not one inch of ground should be given up once German blood had been spilled in taking it handcuffed his commanders who came to the belated realization that they were in trouble. It was not the first time such stupidity hampered the Wermacht, and would not be the last time.
Our troops are not "tied down in Iraq", as I see it, as much as they are hamstrung by a lack of numbers. It is my belief that we went into Iraq with not enough INFANTRY, let alone enough troops, to provide the security that would have allowed many of the problems in Iraq to have been squashed already. We may have 150,000 troops in Iraq, but just how many of them are actual warfighters? Using a rule of thumb that 1 soldier in the field requires a minimum of 10 support troops (for everything from boots, to beans, to bullets, to bandages to someone filling in the paperwork), I believe there aren't enough actual fighters.
An invasion of Iran cannot repeat that mistake. The question then becomes; where do you find those necessary warfighters? I don't believe they exist, evenif we pulled every last swinging one from Korea, Europe and Japan. On the ground is where we run into problems, in my opinion, because we don't have the numbers and right types to secure what we have taken in any meaningful way.
As for my Navy (12 years as an aviation ordnanceman), we would not be "trapped" in the Straits. Iran cannot enforce a blockade of the Straits, only threaten to nuke or use SSM's against anything that passes through. SSM's (Chinese Silkworms, mostly) can be pinpointed and taken out from the air or by Spec Ops. The nuke is another story altogether, although if they do so, they would be harming themselves far more than they would us. As for disrupting world trade, that's an issue the United States is better economically equipped to handle than our European and Japanese allies. So, we can expect help from them, I believe, should this happen. That was the case back in the late 80's (when the US flagged Kuwaiti tankers and escorted them through the Straits -- I was there for that).
Our supply routes into Iraq can be bolstered or replaced by supply routes entering Iraq from the north through Turkey, or the south through Saudi Arabia. The difference is that these are overland routes which naturally means it will take longer for supplies to get to where they are needed,a and the security problem now becomes a bigger headache.
Stateside, I can only tell you that short of putting a military presance, with a wall, on the border and implementing a "shoot on sight" policy, I do not know how to correct that particular problem.
I don't believe they can hit us "big time" with anything here in the United States. They can certinaly make life interesting on the one hand, and damned right inconvenient on the other. They don't need nukes or dirty bombs either; hijack gas trucks, derail trains, or drive a cement mixer into a local hospital, and it has the same effect of spreading fear and paralysis.
As for going after the Iranians, the Iranian Navy is not all that great a threat, although they do have a number of diesel-electric subs that could spell big trouble.
I'd run three or four of our SSN's into the Gulf, (at least one armed with mines) and keep a CVN force circling just outside, ready to rush in if needed. You use the SSN's to hunt down their subs and mine harbors, and you augment the surface ASW force presently in the Gulf with Naval ASW (from the CVN) or from bases in Saudi, Kuwait and UAE. On the surface, the Iranians don't have much to stand up to our forces. Any Iranian Naval commander who seriously considers a surface battle against the US Navy is not worth his uniform.
Similarly, the Iranian Air Force is not all that great. It does have some of the newer Soviet designs and Chinese missiles, but they don't have numbers, nor do they have the experience and qualitative edge, that our pilots do. I don't expect there to be great air battles over Tehran or the Gulf, because the Iranians are more likely to get shot down or destroyed on the ground within minutes of hostilities opening.
As for the Iranian Army, they may have revolutionary and Islamic zeal, but they are limited to how they get at US Forces in Iraq. Overland, there is but one way (through the border region near Basra). I wouldn't count on the Iranisn dropping masses of Paratroops or mustering anything close to an amphibious invasion of Iraq. The Iranian army would be chewed up by American air power, and countered by American and British Armor the second they passed the border. Logisitcally, they probably could manage to maintain the offensive for very long.
I don't mean to pain a rosy scenario for us, because that would be stupid, but realistically, in a conventional military fight, Iran is on the short end of the stick. They will certainly kill some of us, and we a lot of them, but nothing will be solved because neither of the sides with the present array of forces available to them, can take and maintain the initiative, or maintain a regular tempo of attack.
Any American attack on Iran assumes a long lead time to build up forces and supplies, and when the attack is launched, it must be an effort at delivering total war to the Iranians, not the mere achievement of a few politically-strategic landmarks. "Surgical" won't work here -- it (the assault) has to be an all-out effort with the main goal of laying waste to everything in it's path, sapping the enemy's ability and means to fight, until he's prostrate and begging for peace.
Why in the world would we want to occupy Iran? Have we not learned anything from the fiasco in Iraq?
Let the Iranians fight and die for their freedom, not American troops.
End of discussion.
It's news to me. I thought he was a greeter at Caeser's Palace.
There is no "pro-democracy" or "pro-freedom" faction in Iran, nor are there enough "Westernized expatriates" around to make it so. To pretend there is, is bordering on sheer stupidity. Iranians will not fight for democracy and freedom because they do not know what either means. The only way to show them is to invade them, conquer them and provide the example -- just like we did to the Japanese.
The Iranians, if pressed, will fight and die, but not for freedom and democracy.
We are in the mess of Iraq precisely because of the belief that Iraqis would fight for themselves and that we would be welcomed as "liberators". That assumption was way off base, wasn't it? What makes you think it would be any different in Iran? We're dealing with a mindset that hasn't made the great leap out of the 7th century, where there are no democratic traditions and institutions and where such things don't just materialize out of thin air.
I don't advocate an inavsion of Iran, either. I'm just giving an opinion on what should be done should our political leadership decide on that particular course of action.
"The third option is that he underestimates the US and is betting the entire farm that we won't do anything."
As a rule, whenever the Arabs/persians figure we will or will not do something, they always miscalculate.
Bin Laden did, Saddam did. Now it's "Almond-ding's" turn to fatally miscalculate.
God bless you!I live in Tx.,and am glad to know they are in my backyard!
Appreciate that:
A lot like the S&W .357 I keep close.
Hope the hell I never have to use it but great to have it near in case I do.
I have been thinking the same thing. Why would Iran's General Yahya Rahim Safavi say, "The Americans know better than anyone that their troops in the region and in Iraq are vulnerable. I would advise them not to commit such a strategic error." This tells me that they already have nukes and they have been moved into Iraq across the border by the insurgents. The thing I would be concerned about is the nuclear fallout which would kill people in the entire region.
I am reminded of a timeless "Simpsons" episode in which an axiom was shouted out at the town square upon unveiling of a jimmah statue....a lone voice yelled out..
"HE IS HISTORY'S GREATEST MONSTER"...in classic Simpsons fashion a riot quickly erupts and the mobs takes down the statue in a very saddamesque and and undignified fashion.
" Either he is very stupid, or Iran has available to them weapons we are not aware of - yet."
I suspect iran has capabilities currently not being discussed publicly which the admin knows about and which are greatly influencing policy with iran. Specifically I would be surprised if iran didn't have some number of nukes, ex-soviet or small-project construction of whatever provenance. As far as maintenance on any ussr nukes, that might be another matter.
regime change, new-style, is to leave most of your enemies alive and let them into the new government.
"You're making the assumption that all the Iranian generals and their sub-commanders (who would have physical control of the weapons)are all also 12th imam-Allah-told-me-Jell-O-is-the-food-of-the-Antichrist types, who do not care about or recognize, the consequences of their action"
A plane of officers including some high-ranking IRCG officers did 'crash' in iran a month or two ago. I never was able to find anything on the political slant of those involved, but given the journalists plane crash, it is hard not to think the new iranian leadership was purging some undesirable elements.
"Ahmadinajad is all bark and no bite. Just like Hitler."
by hitler you refer to the german leader who conquered france, benelux, denmark, occupied norway IIRC, divided poland with russia and then took the russian part away, invading up to moskow deep into russian territory, all while exterminating 10+ million civilians? during a 6-year european war with 10's of millions dead?
What on earth do you consider a 'bite" if not that?
Sure...I had heard that terrorists were going to knock down the World Trade Center...I thought that was the most absurd paranoid thing I had ever heard.
Are you denying at that most of Europe despises Israel and sees Israel as the root cause of the Islamic hatred toward the West? You don't believe that the powers at be in Europe don't believe that many of their problems would go away if Israel went away? If not I would suggest paying closer attention to the UN.
You're right- the Iranians are a different kettle of fish (or cup of tea!). It's intriguing the people themselves are by and large moderates, but their leaders are living in another world.
The reasons to elect a Republican are too numerous to mention- but this looming nightmare is probably the most important for our future- as a reason. The thought of a Democrat in the White House is chilling.
With the exception of Zell Miller:)
Wait till they find out they shouldn't have based their opinion of U.S. military readiness and capabilities from CNN reports.
EXCELLENT point:)
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