Posted on 10/24/2006 5:50:50 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher
THE US could defeat any enemy with overwhelming power but any new conflict would involve more brute force and civilian casualties than in Iraq, the top US general said today.
Asked about any potential threat from North Korea, Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he did not know the intent of the Pyongyang leadership but the US military could cope with any potential enemy.
"It is true that our units that are here at home are not fully equipped, as they would be if there wasn't a war going on," Gen Pace said at the Pentagon.
"But none of our potential enemies should miscalculate the capacity of this nation to generate overwhelming combat power, tomorrow, to defend our national interests."
Gen Pace said the conflicts in both Iraq and Afghanistan meant some precision weapons and intelligence systems were already in use and could not be immediately be deployed elsewhere.
"It would be more brute force, wherever we might have to go next, than it would be if we weren't already involved in the war we have going on in Iraq or Afghanistan," Gen Pace said.
"You would end up not having all of the precision weapons that you might otherwise have going into a second theatre, wherever it might happen to be, and therefore you would end up using more dumb bombs, so to speak, more brute force, than you would otherwise," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
If we had to go into Korea right now it would be a slugfest.....and make Iraq look like a Sunday walk in the park.....we would win...but at a terrible cost.
I think we fought too clean in Iraq.
If too many Democrats get into office here, they will draft all of our young men into a huge army to fight more enemies with much older equipment and tactics.
precision carpet bombing
Too bad we don't have the balls to do it now.
Homosexual activists that sometimes those slogans included vernacular words that are slurs on gay men, and complained bitterly.
I guess a realllllllly dirty war is where we ignore, say, 1/2 of such complaints....?
The problem I see is not winning the wars but that we cannot occupy the world. Its the occupation that is extremely messy as shown in Iraq. Iraq isn't even an occupation anymore and its still wobbly. So political solutions are needed. We can't fix everything militarily. NK is a classic example.
I will argue we still do.
LOL
We need a test, though.
Iran and Syria are raising their hands.....
I guess when we get hardcore, that goes down to....5 years? Oh, that and the punishment for aiding terrorists will be upped to 3 years.
And I pray sir you are correct.
If our Backs are to the wall.....we fight....go Roman on someones butt.
I'm glad we don't need to now.
Same here.
I blame the media coverage for this. Too much media coverage. GW1 - all the coverage aired about when the Iraqi's fled Kuwait and we caught them out in the open. You can tie this back to Uncle Walter and 'Nam, if you want. But, for me, the constant exposure of the "carnage / destruction / did the US go to far?"...sealed the deal.
Colon Powell did not help, after, saying that maybe we were a bit to zealous. Bleeding heart liberal he turned out to be.
It's war. A new type of war. The bad guys hide amoung civilians. Ok.
I think a few demonstrations of "this city will cease to exist after 3:00pm tomorrow" would change a lot.
It would change the bad guy tactics - can't hide here anymore, I'll die anyway.
It would change the local population attitude - if we let the bad guys hide here, we are toast.
I also blame the politicans involved.
I also blame the American public for being really stupid and not recognizing what a real threat is.
Once again, the world is safe - because I'm not in charge.
Half of the mid-east would be a waste-land by now.
"If you are going to shoot - shoot. Don't talk."
/johnny
/johnny
"If we had to go into Korea right now it would be a slugfest.....and make Iraq look like a Sunday walk in the park.....we would win...but at a terrible cost."
Certainly Seoul would take a hit. But knowing that is the case, we would have no reason to hold back anything, all the way to fuel air explosives. North of the DMZ would be charcoal, no way to mess around on this one. Doubt the Chinese would lift a finger to intervene.
Your point is valid and one I've raised but it is not enough as I mentioned in my post. Our handling of modern conflicts will require a bit more sophistication than just killing people.
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