Posted on 04/20/2003 12:42:05 PM PDT by American Jingo
French Believed Iraq Victory Possible
The Moscow Times runs a column by Pavel Felgenhauer about Ramjaz, a group of anonymous, former Russian intelligence operatives who briefly filed stories on the Iraqi war. Apparently, like others, Ramjaz proved to be unduly optimistic about Iraqi military prospects. Felgenhauer notes in passing: This week, with the fray over, another official connected to the intelligence services (not retired) told me: "Our leadership never had any illusions about an ultimate American victory. It was the French that genuinely believed a miracle Saddam victory was possible and scolded us for being 'fatalistic.'
(Excerpt) Read more at themoscowtimes.com ...
Interesting they stopped at about the time their inaccuracy became glaring.
People have a tendancy to believe bad news, and consider good news to be propaganda. In the case of our war in Iraq, the good news was all accurate and the bad news was all lies. I only have to cite Robert Fisk to remind you of this point. But oh, what colourful reports he wrote! What a crackling feel of blood in the air, of eager Iraqis steeling for a fight!
Perhaps they were all wrong because they were all having fun. I know that's a funny thing to say about a war. But the problem is that I understand something people hate to admit: War is great entertainment. If you survive it, that is. For a few brief moments Robert Fisk felt he was the most important person in the world. He should lose his job over it, but he should have lost his job over in Afghanistan for similarly inaccurate reports. My bet is that he didn't lose his job because people loved to read his stuff.
Even when it was all wrong.
D
There is always an element of risk when you go to war. Think about it...war is simply the breakdown of any semblence of humanity. The only part of war that any longer resembles humanity is the restraint that the warriors bring to the show. If one group or the next elects to check their humanity at the door, at least for the moment, whom do you go to see about it?
That said, these days the US is at the top of the heap when it comes to war making ability. Face it, you have in many respects the same fighters...or their close relatives in Afghanistan that drove out the Soviets just a decade or so ago. When the US decided that 9-11 was about enough, it took about 3 weeks to rout through that "quagmire." Think about it. Three weeks. In terrain that favored the defenders like no other terrain in the world.
Same thing in Iraq. The Iraqi had and have no chance. It might be interesting some time to have a philosophical historian wax on about how lucky the world is to have "absolute power" vested in such a benign "empire." Or, as Secretary Powell once so eloquently put it, "Everyone hates the US until you NEED a cop, then who are you going to call?"
Some of the technology we saw in Iraq is as far advanced from Gulf War I as that of Gulf War I was from WWII. And, it seems to me we are on the precipice of things that will dwarf anthing we saw in the last month.
Anyone that thought the Hussein really had a chance in that war...well, I really want some of that rope they were smoking. It must be potent. It's still a horribly dangersous world. I hope the boys that make the decisions hereabouts continue to recognize how fast things change and how serious the need to stay on the cutting edge of what it takes to win. I also hope we can still keep turning out the best of the best in terms of people to fill the necessary billets.
All the claims made by aviation commander of the coalition, general Michael Mosley, about ??Iraqi army, as an organized structure consisting of large units, exists no longer?? are contrary to fact and, according to analytics, are probably connected with severe pressure put on the military command by American financial groups that desperately needed good news from the US-Iraqi front by the end of the financial week. In fact, the Republican Guards defending Baghdad have not lost even 5% of their numerical strength and military equipment. Most of those losses were due to bombardments and not land combats. The total losses of Iraqi army since the beginning of the war have not exceeded 5-8% of their defensive potential. This means the main battles are still to be seen.Looks like they actually believed Baghdad Bob.
D
People are afraid to ignore bad news and are afraid to accept good news uncritically.That implies that the easiest way to grab people's attention is with a negative headline which people will fear to ignore. The whole phenomonon of "bias in the media" pretty much boils down to the institutionalization of that skewed perspective among journalists. Hey, it works--the journalists who employ that principle survive commercially.
Which explains why journalism leaves a niche wide open for commentary which is consistently more accurate than "The News." Any commentary which is not negative and superficial--ie, not anticonservative--will almost inevitably have a better track record than herd-mentality "pure journalism." Thus, talk radio. Thus, Fox News.
That's true, they fought for a week or two and inflicted several thousand combat losses on us and the Brits. More damning in my opinion was their reaction to the German descent on Tunisia immediately afterward.
We came in assault waves off landing craft with naval gunfire support and all the trimmings - and they fought. The Germans flew in on unarmed transport planes, seized the airfields when they arrived, flew in more men, grabbed ports, crossed in overloaded barges - and the French sat silent, did nothing, turned over arms, returned to barracks.
Free French came over to our side later, and several divisions eventually fought for us, that we armed. But we spent months fighting for Tunisia because the French garrisons there let the Germans in without firing a shot. If they hadn't, Rommel's force (still far to the east, running from the Brits at that point) would never have made it back to Tunisia. We'd have been there first.
One of the unsung sellouts of WW II...
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