[JudgeAmint]

[JudgeAmint]

Ping

[Dead Dog]

Thought you might find this interesting.

[Mister Magoo]

I suggested in a post (later moved to chat) that the Invasion should be called Operation Desert Blitzkrieg.

[blam]

"Those in the media who erroneously allege that U.S. officials promised victory in hours or days have been lying, and their ulterior motives deserve closer scrutiny. "

[Slings and Arrows]

But...but...how can this be? We're in a quagmire! Nothing's going right! We're all gonna dieeeeeeeee! The Media said so, dammit!

[TheJollyRoger]

Fools request that OTHER FOOLS believe their lies. We see before our very eyes that Jessica Lynch is freed from the torture and humiliation (?) that she endured. God DOES empower HIS warriors..IRAQ is the worldly personification of satan. Kill this WORM (Sadamn is DEAD) and then kill the NEXT worm. I apologize...my emotions overpower me..MAY GOD BLESS AMERICA...and MAY GOD BLESS PRESIDENT BUSH...if I get to make a personal request...THANK YOU Jessica Lynch!...we love you...you are an AMERICAN HERO! Get well soon.

-TheJollyRoger

[Dionysius]

An Abrams'll give you an edge!

[Fury]

The Soviet theorists of the 1960s were correct when they wrote: “Strategic missile troops will be the basic troops of modern massive armed forces. They are the decisive force at the disposal of supreme commands.” If you cannot win with conventional forces, if you are thoroughly outclassed on the battlefield, you must turn to the great equalizer. What the United States must do now, in the wake of its victory in Iraq, is anticipate the anti-American coalition’s intensification of WMD proliferation. This will be their response to America’s victory. Since this is a potentially effective strategy, the United States must solidify its defenses against such weapons.

This would seem to parallel statements made by several folks on FR concerning initial use of WMD against the US.

[Al B.]

Ping.

[Aric2000]

Thanks for those pictures, these are my babies, I was in on the turnover from M-60 A3's to the M1A1 tank, and I have been in love with them ever since.

I am in outside sales, I have a large flag lapel pin on my Left lapel, and a silver M1A1 lapel pin on my Right.

I love these beasts, they are one of the most powerful weapons in the world, and I am proud of the fact that I have worked on them, driven them and fired them. They are incredible.

Thanks for such a wonderful article and pictures...

[Bob Mc]

"Through all of this, America’s real enemies have learned an important lesson: namely, that U.S. military power can only be effectively opposed by employing mass destruction weapons at the outset of a conflict. If U.S. power is to be overthrown in the world, that overthrow must rely upon nuclear, biological and chemical munitions. Only an attack that destroys U.S. conventional military advantages is workable, and this attack must be overwhelming. In order to work effectively a mass destruction attack must decapitate the U.S. leadership. It must cripple the U.S. economy and paralyze the American military. Anything short of this merely invites destruction in turn."

"It cannot be repeated too often that the weapons of choice for such regimes must therefore be nuclear, chemical and biological. Only by leveling the playing field with such weapons do the inferior states of the totalitarian periphery stand a chance against American technological and administrative vitality."

"What the United States must do now, in the wake of its victory in Iraq, is anticipate the anti-American coalition’s intensification of WMD proliferation. This will be their response to America’s victory. Since this is a potentially effective strategy, the United States must solidify its defenses against such weapons."

Strange how this author seems to dwell on what it would take to stop the U.S. It's almost as if he his trying to drive a point home to our enemies, a useful point.

[Senator_Palpatine]

"accelerate confusion....."

[LibKill]

The demise of the tank as a viable weapon of war has been greatly exagerated. :)

[HighRoadToChina]

BUMP!

[don-o]

Not real sure why you posted those pics. off that article.

PRNK is going to school off this.

[Southack]

I'm not really thrilled with the article for this thread, but the pictures are nice.

Anyway, what better place than this thread to mention the obvious:

The U.S. has the world's mightiest military due to an amazing combination of technology, training, and integration.

It is the integration that is the least understood. Our soldiers on the ground are digitally linked through HQ to every unit in the skies and in the rear, and thus coordinated into highly effective local tactics that fit in with the overall strategy.

What does all of this mean? It means that simply copying American technology *won't* give pipsqueak nations a competitive force to challenge us. It means that simply adapting our training won't allow another nation to match us.

But what the Iraq war illustrates is something even more amazing: that even with ex-Soviet military advisors, the latest in French and German military equipment, the breaking of all military rules of acceptable behavior, and willing suicide volunteers, that a 600,000 man army is little more than modern roadkill for any sizeable U.S. military force (in this case, 1/6th the size of the defenders).

Or put another way: the rest of the world is failing to match the U.S. in *any* significant category (e.g. technology, training, integration, et al).

And the so-called "great equalizers" are being threatened by our new dominance in ABM interception technology, special forces operations in strategic areas, as well as our electronic eavesdropping capabilities.

Thus, the rest of the world is not only wasting every penny that it spends to try to compete with our own military, but it is also playing into our strong suit by insisting upon military solutions to conflicts with us (a *clever* Iraq would have played a South Africa-style hand, completely disarmed in an open, visible fashion, and simply held on until GWB was no longer in office, for instance).

So North Korea wants a nuclear war with us and old Europe wants an economic trade war with us, the strongest economy in the history of this entire planet?!

B.r.i.n.g. I.t. O.n.

[Southack]

"Only an attack that destroys U.S. conventional military advantages is workable, and this attack must be overwhelming. In order to work effectively a mass destruction attack must decapitate the U.S. leadership. It must cripple the U.S. economy and paralyze the American military. Anything short of this merely invites destruction in turn."

Even if all of that were achieved, that would still leave our boomers available for global retaliation on a scale never before witnessed.

No, the *only* answer to American military power is to channel any conflict with the U.S. away from our storng suits (e.g. economic or military wars) into areas in which we've traditionally been more vulnerable, such as diplomacy, negotiations, and trade relations.

...But it won't hurt my feelings if the rest of the world never figures that fact out.

[nicollo]

Fascinating article. And I agree entirely that the lesson for despots will be to have the nuke threat before menacing the USofA.

That said, I don't think it will work, not even for Iran, N. Korea, Brazil or other wanna-be world powers. Going nuclear requires inherent stability to sustain both the program to get there and infrasture, international prestige, and constancy in purpose to maintain it. Nukes for North Korea is a short term goal. Whatever long-term benefit it brings is beyond them. They will assume it will bring parity to the U.S. It won't, for the US, as this article notes, will not sit still. We are a dynamic, fluid force that adapts faster than our enemies can deploy.

The strategic and long term challenge for the United States is to manage this world of both asymetrical threat (aka, those who cannot face our conventional forces, or who avoid U.S. retaliation via amorphous, non-state structures), and nuclear parity. The question shall be what constitutes nuclear parity. One bomb? Ten? A hundred?

Would we have invaded Iraq were it nuclear? I say yes, for we would have brought our full might upon that threat. When it was removed, or nuetralized via retaliation, or threat thereof, we could move with the conventional war (which we have redefined, yet again, and less than a year past the last war... hell, the Iraqis have been fighting Somalia and Bosnia while we were fighting an entirely new war, constituted of old methods with new capacity).

We have a tremendous challenge in front of us, but it has been made infinitely simpler with the removal of Hussein.

America is defined by collective self-interest, the fountain of our genius. We will always prevail.

Southhack, your no. 31 in part answers my query, but not fully.

CT, JH2,thought you'd like to see this one.

[Teacher317]

We'll never see positive and complete reporting like this on TV or in the major papers.

[yarddog]

Here is an interesting story about the M-1 Abrams.

During the mid 1950's our preacher at a small Southern Baptist church in the Florida Panhandle had a PHD from Yale. Dr. Lett was semi-retired and served trying to help a struggling country church. One day the preacher and his wife showed up at church driving a brand new Chrysler. My Mother told me later that their Son who was an engineer at Chrysler, had designed the car and given one to them.

I basically forgot about it until one day I was watching the History Channel program on the development of the Abrams tank. They interviewed the head of the Chrysler design team several times and he was identified as Dr. Phillip Lett. I noticed he had a strong resemblance to the old preacher and asked my Mother what the preacher's Son's name was.

She told me his name was Phillip. I guess it is possible there is another Dr. Phillip Lett who looks like our old preacher but I am reasonably sure that is him.