Posted on 03/31/2003 9:32:55 AM PST by JohnHuang2
WITH THE 3RD INFANTRY DIVISION, Iraq--Friday morning, after a gas scare (an Air Force plane bombed an Iraqi fuel or cargo truck nearby and the resulting fire had triggered a false reading), Sgt. Federico Alzerreca, of Bangor, Maine, took off his gas mask, his rubber boots, his rubber gloves and his cloth gloves underneath. He loosened the hood of his nuclear-biological-chemical suit. He lit a cigarette and pulled in some smoke and said, ``It's a shame America is so (blanking) nice. Otherwise, we would have taken this (blanking blank) out in a day.''
The war that the United States is waging against the regime of Saddam Hussein is a critical test of several related and very ambitious concepts. First it is a test of an evolving military doctrine. This holds that the American armed forces' uniquely massive superiority in weaponry and in observation and communication allows it to conduct war, in a sense, on the cheap: To achieve even very large goals (for instance, the invasion and liberation of a good-sized country) with relatively little force in little time at little cost in American lives.
It is secondly a test of systems--a hugely complex system of integrated battlefield command and control, and a hugely laborious system of training officers and troops. These are intended to produce an armed force comprised overwhelmingly of soldiers who will perform in their first real battles as they have been taught to perform in years of mock battles. More than 90 percent of the soldiers and probably three-fourths of the officers now in Iraq have never seen combat.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
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