BRILLIANT! I just love the ideas from these left-over 0bama Pentagon Perfumed Princes.
If this article is true (from the Wall Street Journal), then the Commander is an idiot.
How did the 3rd ID in Iraq help end the war? My son’s company, the 299th Engineering Company MRB and the 54th Combat Engineers had an amphibious assault on Iraqi forces on the eastern banks of the Euphrates River at Hindaya (Objective Peach), seizing and clearing enemy positions there so that the rest of the Bridging company could put up the first ribbon pontoon bridge in US military history.
This enabled the 3rd ID lighter vehicles to cross, under sporadic enemy fire (my son was a boat driver at this site, which meant holding the pontoons in one position because of the downstream currents of the river). They brought the men and supplies over to support the tanks who had seized the concrete bridge upriver.
Army elements had seized the remaining concrete bridge over the river from the Republican Guard so that the heavier Abrams tanks could use it to cross and start the “Baghdad Run” from the West (while my son-in-law’s 4th Marine Division started their run from the East).
Islands in the Pacific have rivers and creeks etc. running all thru them (as our Marines and Army found out at great cost during WW2). The same happened in Vietnam (Dong Ha bridge and NVA riverine forces in Quangtri Province.
You need bridges to help get troops and equipment over them. Period.