Posted on 02/26/2003 5:39:15 AM PST by Axion
War Diary: Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2003 The commander of the U.S. Central Command, Gen. Tommy Franks -- who will have responsibility for an invasion of Iraq-- arrived at Camp As Sayliyah in Qatar on Tuesday, Feb. 25. Qatar houses the primary command facilities for U.S. forces deployed around Iraq. Franks is now at his command post. His command normally is housed in Tampa, Fla., and a "senior command official," probably Franks himself, said that he probably would be returning to Tampa in a few days. The official also said, "Modern command and control does not require him to be here all the time. Don't place a lot of importance on where he is ... Good military commanders focus on strategic surprise."
Feb 26, 2003
The desire for strategic surprise is certainly true, although achieving strategic surprise in this war is going to be tough. What can be a surprise in this war is timing. Everyone is focused on mid-March as the beginning of the war. While it is not necessary for the senior commander to be present at the battlefield, it has certainly been standard practice in the U.S. military that the commander be as close to the battlefield as possible. Even with superb information flows, a commander needs to be seen by his troops, and he must have the ability to move about the battlefield to absorb realities that the finest digitized information doesn't provide. Finally, given the culture of the U.S. military, it is just hard to imagine a senior commander staying behind in Tampa while a multidivisional force under his command engages the enemy. It just isn't the way it's done.
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said that U.S. forces are ready for combat, and Franks is in theater, at his command post, which has been fully tested and exercised. His staff is there. And the commander is speaking about the need for surprise. The biggest surprise at this point would be if an attack were launched this weekend, while everyone was still focused on the diplomatic ballet. As the senior commanding official put it, "Clearly, the closer you can be to your component commanders the better. But it's not a limiting factor. Anything he (Franks) can do here, he can do from Tampa." Except lead by example. We will be interested in seeing if Franks returns to Tampa in a few days.
Also on Tuesday, the United States continued its systematic attack on Iraqi rocket-launchers. An Astros-2 rocket-launcher was attacked at 5:45 p.m. local time near Basra, in southern Iraq. The launcher can fire a variety of munitions to a range of more than 50 miles, which would have made it a danger to any troops attacking from Kuwait. In addition, an anti-aircraft site was hit in the south and three others were attacked near Mosul in the north. Simply from the publicly released information, it seems that the Iraqis are becoming more aggressive in forward-deploying their systems, and the United States is getting more aggressive in attacking them.
Meanwhile, U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki said the occupying force needed for Iraq will number in the hundreds of thousands. While testifying before Congress, he said Iraq is a "significant piece of geography" and that the ethnic tensions alone would require substantial force to contain. Put another way, the force that will be invading Iraq will not be returning to the United States any time soon. There will be rotations, of course, but Iraq is going to become a significant base for U.S. operations for some time to come.
Obviously, hundreds of thousands of troops will not be needed to maintain the internal peace of Iraq. The internal peace of Iraq isn't all that important to the United States, in the final analysis. Therefore, the decision to deploy several hundred thousand troops has everything to do with putting a military force in place that can bring enormous pressure to bear on other countries that concern the United States, including Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran.
At this point, two things are happening. First, the final movements toward war are taking place in or near the battlefield. Second, the cover is being lifted from the post-war reality. Congress is being told what it already must have known -- that the war in Iraq is simply a campaign in a much longer and much more complex war, and the forces that invade Iraq will remain there, for future potential operations.
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