The FReeper Foxhole Remembers the Armored Strike Into Baghdad (4/5-7/2003)

Blount told Perkins to go back into the city in two days, on Monday the 7th.

Blount wanted him to test the city's defenses, destroy as many Iraqi forces as possible and then come out to prepare for the siege of the capital.

Perkins was eager to go back in, but not for another thunder run. He wanted to stay. He had just heard Mohammed Said Sahaf, the bombastic information minister, deliver a taunting news conference, claiming that no American forces had entered Baghdad and that Iraqi troops had slaughtered hundreds of American "scoundrels" at the airport.

When Perkins got back to the brigade operations center south of the city, he told his executive officer, Lt. Col. Eric Wesley: "This just changed from a tactical war to an information war. We need to go in and stay."

The brigade was exhausted. It had been on the move day and night, rolling up from Kuwait and fighting Fedayeen and Republican Guard units-sprinting 435 miles in just over two weeks, the fastest overland march in U.S. military history. Their tanks and Bradleys were beat up. The crews had not slept in days. Now they had just one day to prepare for the pivotal battle of the war.

The charge up Highway 8 on April 7 was similar to the sprint by Rogue Battalion two days earlier. Fedayeen and Arab volunteers and Republican Guards fired from roadside bunkers and from windows and alleys on both sides of the highway. Suicide vehicles tried to ram the column.

Gunners pounded everything that moved, radioing back to trailing vehicles to kill off what they missed. It took only two hours to blow through the spaghetti junction and speed east to Saddam's palace complex. Schwartz's lead battalion, Rogue, rolled to Saddam's parade field, with its massive crossed sabers and tomb of the unknown soldier. Rogue also seized one of Saddam's two main downtown palaces, the convention center and the Rashid Hotel, home to the Baath Party elite.

Lt. Col. Philip deCamp's Task Force 4-64, the Tusker battalion, swung to the east and raced for Saddam's hulking Republican Palace and the 14th of July Bridge, which controlled access to the palace complex from the south.

The targets had been selected not only for their strategic value, but also because they were in open terrain. The palace complex consisted of broad boulevards, gardens and parks-and few tall buildings or narrow alleyways. The battalions could set up defensive positions, with open fields of fire.

The Tusker battalion destroyed bunkers at the western arch of the Republican Palace grounds, blew apart two recoilless rifles teams guarding the arch and smashed through a metal gate. The palace had been evacuated, but there were soldiers in a tree line and along the Tigris River bank. The infantrymen killed some, and others fled, stripping off their uniforms.

At a traffic circle at the base of the 14th of July Bridge, Capt. Steve Barry's Cyclone Company fought off cars and trucks that streaked across the bridge, some packed with explosives. There were three in the first 10 minutes, six more right after that. The tanks and Bradleys destroyed them all.

By midmorning, Perkins was meeting with his two battalion commanders on Saddam's parade grounds. They gave live interviews to an embedded Fox TV crew. Lt. Col. DeCamp and one of his company commanders, Capt. Chris Carter-both University of Georgia graduates-unfurled a Georgia Bulldogs flag. Capt. Jason Conroy toppled a massive Saddam statue with a single tank round.

As his tankers celebrated, Perkins took a satellite phone call from Wesley, his executive officer. Wesley ran the brigade's tactical operations center, a network of radios, computers, satellite maps and communications vehicles set up on the cement courtyard of an abandoned warehouse 11 miles south of the city center.

It was hard for Wesley to hear on his hand-held Iridium phone; a high-pitched whine sounded over his head. He thought it was a low-flying airplane.

Wesley shouted into the phone: "Congratulations, sir, I-" and at that instant an orange fireball blew past him and slammed him to the ground. The whine wasn't an airplane. It was a missile. The entire operations center was engulfed in flames.

Wesley still had the phone. "Sir," he said. "We've been hammered!"

"What?"

"We've been hit. I'll have to call you back. It doesn't look good."

Rows of signal vehicles were on fire and exploding. A line of parked Humvees evaporated, consumed in a brilliant flash. Men were writhing on the ground, their skin seared. A driver and a mechanic were swallowed by the fireball, killed instantly. Another driver, horribly burned, lay dying. Two embedded reporters perished on the concrete, their corpses scorched to gray ash. Seventeen soldiers were wounded, some seriously.

The brigade's nerve center, its communications brain, was gone. The entire mission-the brigade's audacious plan to conquer a city of 5 million with 975 combat soldiers and 88 armored vehicles in a single violent strike-was in jeopardy.

It got worse. As Wesley and his officers tended to the dead and wounded, Perkins was receiving distressing reports from Lt. Col. Stephen Twitty, a battalion commander charged with keeping the brigade's supply lines open along Highway 8. One of Twitty's companies was surrounded. It was "amber" on fuel and ammunition-a level dangerously close to "black," the point at which there is not enough to sustain a fight.

The Baghdad raid, launched at dawn, was now approaching its sixth hour-well past the Hour Four deadline Perkins had set to decide whether to stay for the night. That benchmark was critical because his tanks, which consume 56 gallons of fuel an hour, had eight to 10 hours of fuel. That meant four hours going in and four coming out.

To conserve fuel, Perkins ordered the tanks set up in defensive positions and shut down. They couldn't maneuver, but they could still fire-and each hour they were turned off bought Perkins another hour.

Even so, time was running out for Twitty, whose outnumbered companies were clinging to three crucial interchanges.

"Sir, there's one hell of a fight here," Twitty told Perkins. "I'll be honest with you: I don't know how long I can hold it here."

Even after Twitty received reinforcements, tying up the brigade's only reserve force, his men had to be resupplied. But the resupply convoy was ambushed on Highway 8; two sergeants were killed and five fuel and ammunition trucks were destroyed. The highway was a shooting gallery. If Perkins lost the roadway, he and his men would be trapped in the city without fuel or ammunition.

American combat commanders are trained to develop a "decision support matrix," an analytical breakdown of alternatives based on a rapidly unfolding chain of circumstances. For Perkins, the matrix was telling him: cut your losses, pull back, return another day. His command center was in flames. He had spent his reserve force. And now his fuel and ammunition were burning on the highway.

On the parade grounds, Perkins stood next to his armored personnel carrier, map in hand, flanked by his two tank battalion commanders. The air was heavy with swirling sand and grit. Black plumes of oily smoke rose from burning vehicles and bunkers.

Perkins knew the prudent move was to pull out, but he felt compelled to stay. His men had fought furiously to reach the palace complex. It seemed obscene to make them fight their way back out, and to surrender terrain infused with incalculable psychological and strategic value.

Sahaf, the delusional information minister, was already claiming that no American "infidels" had breached the city's defenses. Perkins had just heard Sahaf's distinctive rant on BBC radio: "The infidels are committing suicide by the hundreds on the gates of Baghdad." A retreat now, Perkins thought, would validate the minister's lies. It would unravel the brigade's singular achievement, which had put American soldiers inside Saddam's two main palaces and American boots on his reviewing stand.

Perkins turned to his tank battalion commanders. "We're staying."

Lt. Col. Stephen Twitty is right-handed, but early that morning he found himself drawing diagrams with his left hand. He was crouched in a Bradley hatch, holding a radio with his right hand while he tried to diagram an emergency battle plan.

Over the radio net, Twitty had heard the tank battalions in the city celebrating and discussing the wine collections at Saddam's palaces. He was only a few miles away, at a Highway 8 interchange code-named Objective Larry, but he was in the fight of his life. Twitty had survived the first Gulf War, but he had never encountered anything like this.

His men were being pounded from all directions-by small arms, mortars, RPGs, gun trucks, recoilless rifles. The two tank battalions had punched through Highway 8, but now the enemy had regrouped and was mounting a relentless counterattack against Twitty's mechanized infantry battalion.

As he scratched out his battle plan, Twitty spotted an orange-and-white taxi speeding toward his Bradley. A man in the back seat was firing an AK-47. Twitty screamed into the radio: "Taxi! Taxi coming!" He realized how absurd he sounded. So he shouted at his Bradley gunner:

"Slew the turret and fire!" The gunner spotted the taxi and fired a blast of 25mm rounds. The taxi blew up. It had been loaded with explosives.

Twitty's China battalion, Task Force 3-15, would destroy dozens of vehicles that day, many of them packed with explosives. They would blow up buses and motorcycles and pickup trucks. They would kill hundreds of fighters, as well as civilians who inadvertently blundered into the fight. Twitty ordered his engineers to tear down highway signs and light poles and pile up charred vehicles to build protective berms. But several suicide cars crashed through, and Twitty's men kept killing them. Twitty was astonished. He hadn't expected much resistance, but the Syrians and Fedayeen were relentless, fanatical, determined to die.

Twitty saw a busload of soldiers pull straight into the kill zone. A tank round obliterated the vehicle-burning alive everyone inside. The driver of a second busload saw the carnage, yet kept coming. The tanks lit up his bus, too.

From Objective Moe, about two miles north, and from Objective Curly, about two miles south, Twitty received urgent calls requesting mortar and artillery fire-"danger close," or within 220 yards of their own positions. Mortars and artillery screamed down, driving the Syrians and Fedayeen back. But at Curly, a stray round wounded two American infantrymen, and the artillery was shut down there.

At Curly, Capt. Zan Hornbuckle had enemy fighters inside his perimeter. He sent infantrymen to clear the ramps and overpasses. It was dangerous, methodical work. The infantrymen crept up behind a series of support walls, tossed grenades into trenches, then gunned down the fighters inside as they rose to return fire.

The Americans were killing fighters by the dozens, but the infantrymen were getting hit, too. Their flak vests protected vital organs, but several men were dragged back with bright red shrapnel wounds ripped into their arms, legs and necks.

Dr. Erik Schobitz, the battalion surgeon, treated the wounded. Capt. Schobitz was a pediatrician with no combat experience. He had never fired an automatic rifle until a month earlier. Schobitz wore a stethoscope with a yellow plastic rabbit attached-his lucky stethoscope. It was hanging there when a sliver of shrapnel hit his face, wounding him slightly.

With Schobitz was Capt. Steve Hommel, the battalion chaplain. He moved from one wounded man to the next, talking softly, squeezing their hands. Hommel had been a combat infantry sergeant in the first Gulf War, but even he was alarmed. He feared being overrun-there were hundreds of enemy fighters bearing down on just 80 combat soldiers, who were backed by Bradleys but no tanks. Hommel tried to appear calm while comforting the wounded.

Enemy fighters were firing on the medics, and some of them fired back. The chaplain grabbed one medic's M-16 and shot at muzzle flashes east of the highway. Hommel didn't know whether he hit anyone, and he didn't want to know. He was a Baptist minister.

Several miles north, at Objective Moe, Capt. Josh Wright was struggling to keep his perimeter intact. Two of Wright's three platoon sergeants were wounded, and two engineers went down with shrapnel wounds. A gunner was hit with a ricochet. An infantryman dragging a wounded enemy soldier to safety was hit in the wrist and stomach. One Bradley's TOW missile launcher was destroyed. Another Bradley had a machine gun go down. One of the tanks lost use of its main gun.

Wright radioed Twitty and asked for permission to fire on a mosque to the north. Through his sights, he could see an RPG team in each minaret and another on the mosque roof. Under the rules of engagement, the mosque was now a hostile, nonprotected site. Twitty granted permission to fire. All three RPG teams were killed, leaving smoking black holes in the minarets.

By now, Wright had managed to get infantrymen and snipers into buildings north of the interchange. They were able to kill advancing fighters while mortar rounds ripped into soldiers hiding in the palm grove.

Then the mortars stopped. The platoon mortar leader at Objective Curly radioed Wright and apologized profusely. He was "black"-completely out of mortar rounds. He couldn't fire again until the resupply convoy was sent north.

Wright's own men were now telling him they were "amber" on all types of ammunition. Wright wasn't certain how much longer he could hold the interchange.

At Objective Curly, Hornbuckle tried to sound positive on the radio but Twitty could hear the stress in his voice. He asked the captain to put on the battalion command sergeant major, Robert Gallagher. A leathery-faced Army Ranger of 40, Gallagher had survived the battle at Mogadishu, where he had been wounded three times. Twitty knew Gallagher would be blunt.

"All right, sergeant major, I want the truth," Twitty said. "Do you need reinforcements?"

"Sir, we need reinforcements," Gallagher said.

Twitty radioed Perkins and told him he could not hold Curly without reinforcements.

"If you need it, you've got it," Perkins assured him.

Twitty called Capt. Ronny Johnson, commander of the reserve company defending the operations center, which was still burning.

"How fast can you get here?" Twitty asked.

"Sir, I can be there in 15 minutes," Johnson said. It was only about two miles from the operations center to Curly.

"That's not fast enough. Get here now."

Johnson and his platoon raced north on Highway 8, fighting through a withering ambush. With 10 Bradleys and 65 infantrymen, the convoy bulked up the combat power at Curly. They plunged into the fight, stabilizing the perimeter.

At the burning operations center, executive officer Wesley was directing casualty evacuation and trying to build a makeshift command center, combining computers and communications equipment that had escaped the fireball with gear salvaged from burning vehicles. Within an hour, they had fashioned a temporary communications network across the highway from the scorched ruins.

Back in radio communication, Wesley resumed helping Perkins direct the battles. He offered to send the rest of Johnson's company to Curly to solidify the interchange. That left the stripped-down operations center virtually unprotected.

At Objective Larry, Twitty's men were beginning to run low on ammunition. He could hear his gunner screaming, "More ammo! Get us more ammo!"

Twitty had to get the supply convoy to the interchanges, a dangerous endeavor. The fuel tankers were 2,500-gallon bombs on wheels. The ammunition trucks were portable fireworks factories. In military argot, they were the ultimate "soft-skin" vehicles. Worse, there were no tanks or Bradleys to escort them; they were all fighting in the city or at the three interchanges.

Twitty called Johnson at Curly and asked for an assessment.

"Sir," Johnson said, "what I can tell you is, it's not as intense a fight as it was an hour ago but we're still in a pretty good fight here."

Twitty asked to hear from Gallagher. "Boss," Gallagher said, "I'm not going to tell you we can get 'em through without risk, but we can get 'em through."

Twitty put the radio down and lowered his head. He had to make a decision. And whatever he decided, American soldiers were going to die. He knew it. They would die at one of the interchanges, where they would be overrun if they weren't resupplied. Or they would die in the convoy.

He picked up the radio. "All right," he said. "We're going to execute."

Just north of the burning operations center, Capt. J.O. Bailey was in a command armored personnel carrier, leading the supply convoy-six fuel tankers and eight ammunition trucks. He felt vulnerable; he had no idea where he was going to park all his combustible vehicles in the middle of a firefight.

The convoy had gone less than a mile when Bailey spotted a mob of about 100 armed men across railroad tracks. He was on the radio, warning everyone, when the convoy was rocked by explosions.

Near the head of the convoy, Sgt. 1st Class John W. Marshall opened up with a grenade launcher in the turret of his soft-skin Humvee. Marshall was 50-one of the oldest men in the brigade-and had volunteered for Iraq.

Marshall had just sent grenades crashing toward the gunmen when the top of the Humvee exploded. In the front seat, Spc. Kenneth Krofta was stunned by a flash of light. Black smoke was blowing through the Humvee. Krofta looked up into the turret. Marshall was gone. He had been blown out of the vehicle by a grenade blast.

The driver, Pfc. Angel Cruz, stopped and got out, looking for Marshall. He saw gunmen approaching and squeezed off a burst from his rifle. Bullets ripped into the Humvee.

The radio squawked. Cruz was ordered to move out. Soldiers in another vehicle had seen Marshall's body. He was dead. The convoy was speeding up, trying to escape the kill zone. A week would pass before the battalion was able to retrieve Marshall's corpse.

As the convoy raced through the ambush, an RPG rocketed into a personnel carrier. Staff Sgt. Robert Stever, who had just fired more than 1,000 rounds from his 50-caliber machine gun, was blown back into the vehicle, killed instantly. Shrapnel tore into Chief Warrant Officer Angel Acevedo and Pfc. Jarred Metz, wounding both.

Metz was knocked from the driver's perch. His legs were numb and blood was seeping through his uniform. He dragged himself back into position and kept the vehicle moving. Acevedo was bleeding, too. Screaming instructions to Metz, he directed the vehicle back into the speeding column with Stever's body slumped inside.

Riddled with shrapnel, the convoy limped into the interchange at Curly-and directly into the firefight. Bailey was trying to move his convoy out of harm's way when something slammed into a fuel tanker. The vehicle exploded.

Hunks of the tanker flew off, forming super-heated projectiles that tore into other vehicles. Three ammunition trucks and a second fuel tanker exploded. Ammunition started to cook off. Rounds screamed in all directions, ripping off chunks of concrete and slicing through vehicles. The trucks were engulfed in orange fireballs.

Mechanics and drivers sprinted for the vehicles that were intact. They cranked up the engines and drove them to safety beneath the overpass, managing to save five ammunition trucks and four fuel tankers-enough to resupply the combat teams at all three intersections.

Fuel and ammunition were unloaded under fire. The surviving vehicles headed north to Objective Larry, escorted by Bradleys, breaking through the firefight there and arriving safely.

Twitty felt overwhelming relief. He knew he could break the enemy now, and so could the combat team at Objective Curly. But he still had to resupply Capt. Wright at Objective Moe.

Capt. Johnson, whose Bradleys had escorted the convoy to resupply Twitty, headed north toward Moe. By radio, Johnson arranged with Wright to have Highway 8 cleared of obstacles so that the convoy could pull in, stop briefly and let the resupply vehicles designated for Wright peel off. Then Johnson's vehicles were to continue on, obeying a new order from Perkins to secure the mile-long stretch of highway between Objective Moe and Perkins' palace command post in the city center.

The convoy broke through the battle lines and stopped at the cloverleaf at Moe. But there had been a communication breakdown. The full convoy, including the supply vehicles, pulled away under heavy fire, leaving Wright's company still desperate for fuel and ammunition.

Wright's heart sank. He had been forced to tighten his perimeter to save fuel, giving up ground his men had just taken. Now he watched his fuel and ammo disappear up the highway. But the smaller perimeter also meant Wright could afford to send two tanks to a supply point a mile away that Johnson set up near the palace. There the tanks refueled as their crews stuffed the bustle racks with ammunition. A second pair of tanks followed a half-hour later, bringing back more fuel and ammunition. Wright's men were set for the night.

In the city center, the tank battalions led by Schwartz and DeCamp were holding their ground but still desperately low on fuel and ammunition. With the combat teams at all three interchanges able to hold their ground, two supply convoys were now sent up Highway 8 toward the city center. It was a high-speed race. Every vehicle was hit by fire, but the convoys rolled into the palace complex just before dusk, fuel and ammunition intact. Tankers at the 14th of July circle cheered, and there were high-fives and handshakes when the trucks set up an instant gas station and supply point next to the palace rose beds. Perkins was convinced now that Baghdad was his. He didn't need to control the whole city. He just needed the palace complex and a way to get fuel and ammunition in.

Now he had both.

"We had come in, created a lot of chaos, lots of violence and momentum all at once," Perkins said later. "We had speed and audacity. And now with the resupply, we were there for good and there was nothing the other side could do about it."

The next morning, Capt. Phil Wolford's Assassin tank company would repel a fierce counterattack at the Jumhuriya Bridge across the Tigris River. Rogue battalion would engage in running firefights throughout central Baghdad. At the three interchanges on Highway 8, Syrians and Fedayeen mounted more attacks for much of the day, bringing the China battalion's casualties to two dead and 30 wounded. But the American forces now fought from a position of strength. On the third day, April 9, Saddam Hussein's regime collapsed.

On the night of April 7, after a long day of sustained combat, there had been an extended lull at the palace complex and up and down Highway 8. The tankers and the infantrymen sensed a shift in momentum. Some dared to speak of going home soon, for they now believed the war was nearly over. There would be two more days of fierce fighting before Saddam Hussein's regime collapsed. But on the night of April 7, theirs would be a decisive victory, the last one in Iraq for a long time

Additional Sources:

www.arcent.army.mil
www.theage.com.au
www.ireland.com
www.spokesmanreview.com
www.simhq.com
www.telegraph.co.uk
www.stewart.army.mil
www.defendamerica.mil
news.bbc.co.uk

How the Bold Run to Baghdad Paid Off

Maj. Gen. Buford Blount, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division that dashed from Kuwait to Baghdad in two weeks, has much in common with a fellow southerner, Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Robert E. Lee may have been the most respected Confederate general during the Civil War, but Forrest, famous for lightning strikes with his division of mounted infantry, was the most feared. The self-taught Forrest distilled his military philosophy into a single phrase: "Git thar fustest with the mostest."

Forrest knew intuitively, and demonstrated repeatedly, that success on the battlefield is determined more often by shock and surprise -- by-products of speed -- than by superior firepower.

The 3rd Infantry employed all three in Iraq, and it also benefited from vastly superior real-time information about enemy movements. That is why Blount and his troops now hold the world's record for the most rapid armored advance.

George Patton's Third Army, in what had been widely regarded as the most impressive armored attack in history, took four months to battle from the Falaise Gap to the Rhine. The 3rd Infantry traveled the same distance in two weeks.

Of course, the 3rd Infantry barely beat the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force to Baghdad, which encountered more resistance on its approach from the east. "Speed, speed speed," emphasized Maj. Gen. James Mattis, the commander of the 1st Marines, according to reporters embedded with his units.

The arrival of U.S. forces in strength in places where the Iraqi military did not expect them is the main reason Baghdad was seized so quickly, with so little loss of life, U.S. and foreign military analysts generally agree. The rapid fall of Baghdad, in turn, appears to have prompted the disintegration of virtually all remaining organized military opposition.

Blount's bold decisions -- to bypass opposition on the way to Baghdad, to grab Baghdad International Airport, to launch a "thunder run" through the capital last Saturday and then to occupy the heart of the city -- were based on his rapid exploitation of intelligence indicating that indicated Iraqi military leaders had no idea U.S. forces were moving so fast.

One Republican Guard colonel was captured on Baghdad's door step, reportedly expressing complete surprise that U.S. armored forces were anywhere near his position.

The disorganized state of Baghdad's defenses astounded foreign military observers like retired Indian Maj. Gen. Ashok Mehta: "There was no preparation by the Republican Guard for the battle of Baghdad -- no defense fortifications, no mines, bridges were not prepared for demolition, nothing at all to suggest they were going to fight a major battle."

There were plans for such defenses, prepared with the assistance of two retired Russian generals who were decorated by Saddam Hussein's defense minister just days before the war began.

"U.S. tanks would be burned if they entered the city, and U.S. infantry would be slaughtered," retired Lt. Gens. Vladislav Achalov and Igor Maltsev told the Moscow Times.

And the Iraqi/Russian plan was a good one, according to U.S. Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, one of the Army's leading strategists until his retirement a few years ago.

"Far from being technically incompetent, Saddam's plan was right out of Clausewitz," Peter said. "Its models were the Russian defeat of Napoleon in 1812, and the Soviet victory over the Germans in the Second World War... Saddam didn't so much plan the defense of Baghdad as he tried to re-fight the defense of Moscow."

However solid the Iraqi/Russian plan was on paper, it was frustrated by the unexpected arrival of the 3rd Infantry and the 1st Marines at the gates of the city.

Tactical surprise was achieved not only by the speed of the American advance, but by the sluggishness with which the Iraqi high command assimilated information and made decisions. Saddam has a history of taking out his frustration with bad news on the messenger, which made subordinates reluctant to tell him when things go wrong, according to one U.S. intelligence officer quoted in the Los Angeles Times.

"Nobody wants to tell Hussein and senior leaders bad news, so lots of times they don't. They tend to believe things are going better than they are, and before you know it, coalition forces are up close and personal."

Fearing a coup, Saddam organizes top echelons of both his intelligence and military services so that top officials cannot easily contact each other, which further complicates the Iraqi military's ability to respond quickly to changing conditions on the battlefield.

Iraqi decision-making was also slowed by American air attacks on leadership and communication facilities, which made it hard to get information from the field to the high command -- and made the high command reluctant to transmit orders back in ways that might make them targets for a satellite-guided bomb.

The combination of the audacity of the American battle plan, its prompt and effective implementation by field commanders, and the impediments to prompt decision-making the Iraqis imposed upon themselves made it easy for Americans to operate within what maverick U.S. military strategist John Boyd called the "OODA loop."

The acronym stands for: Observation. Orientation. Decision. Action. Whoever works through that cycle fastest in making decisions on the battlefield would win, Boyd theorized, often with little bloodshed.

Boyd's ideas were unpopular with most generals, even after his death in 1997. But Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were big fans, and Boyd's ideas went on to inform "rapid dominance" and other such theories that the Pentagon clearly applied in Iraq.

The Iraq war plan called for a speedy advance on Baghdad, bypassing Iraqi garrisons in the south, much as Douglas MacArthur had bypassed Japanese outposts in New Guinea on his "island-hopping" campaign to re-take the Philippines in World War II.

"It was an audacious plan, a risky one," retired Air Force Lt. Col. Rick Francona, an expert on the Iraqi military, told the Washington Post.

The plan received savage criticism from retired and even active-duty officers after the U.S. advance was halted for several days to permit the logistics "tail" to catch up with the combat "teeth." The war had begun with too few combat forces in the region, retired Gens. Wesley Clark and Barry McCaffrey said, and it was a mistake to bypass Iraqi units, which posed a threat to supply lines.

The attack on the maintenance unit to which Pfc. Jennifer Lynch belonged received a great deal of publicity, but it was the only successful attack by Iraqi irregulars on U.S. supply lines. U.S. forces did take some other casualties behind the front lines, and the relatively small size of the combat forces employed is making it more difficult to control looting and other law-breaking in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. military's northward march, as well.

Nevertheless, from a strictly military point of view, it is hard to argue with a three-week drive that brought down a regime and caused a sizable military machine to collapse. And to keep peace now, additional troops can be flown directly to Baghdad.

The results of the war appear to support those who had confidence in the U.S battle plan. The 3rd Infantry and the 1st Marines easily swatted aside such opposition as they encountered. More combat troops at the outset turned out to be unnecessary to bring down the Saddam government and would have imposed a greater burden on the logistics system.

The debate between the overwhelming-force and speedy-action schools of military strategy is sure to continue, although the Rumsfeld rapid-maneuver side of the argument is sure to be ascendant for some time. It has simply been going on too long to stop.

In the Civil War, Union Generals George McClellan and Henry Halleck followed the overwhelming-force model. They slowly built up huge troop concentrations, and then used them cautiously, more concerned about minimizing risks than in seizing opportunities. They never won a battle.

Ulysses S. Grant and Tecumseh Sherman behaved in an "audacious, risky" manner. They won the war.

Jack Kelly

On This Day In History

Birthdates which occurred on January 26:
1748 Emmanuel Aloys Forster composer
1763 Charles XIV French marshall, king of Sweden & Norway (1818-44)
1804 Eugane "Marie Joseph" Sue France, novelist (Wandering Jew)
1814 Rufus King Brigadier General (Union volunteers), died in 1876
1816 Lloyd Tilghman Brigadier General (Confederate Army), died in 1863
1831 Mary Mapes Dodge New York City NY, writer (Hans Brinker & the Silver Skates) (No! Not THAT Mary Mapes.)
1852 Pierre Brazza explorer/colonial administrator (French Africa)
1880 Douglas MacArthur Little Rock AR, General of the Army (WWII), he did return!
1887 Marc A "Pete" Mitscher US Lieutenant-Admiral (WWII-Task Force 58)
1902 Laurence "Bill" Craigie jet pioneer
1905 Maria Augusta von Trapp Austria, singer, inspired "Sound of Music"
1913 Jimmy Van Heusen songwriter (Love & Marriage)
1918 Nicolae Ceausescu Romanian "President" (1967-90)
1925 Paul Newman Cleveland OH, racer/popcorn mogul/actor (Hud, Hombre, Hustler)
1927 José Simón Azcona Hoyo President of Honduras (1986-90)
1928 Eartha Kitt South Carolina, singer/actress (Catwoman-Batman)
1928 Roger Vadim France, director (And God Created Women, Barbarella)
1928 Philip José Farmer Indiana, science fiction novelist (Riverworld)
1929 Jules Feiffer New York City NY, cartoonist (Passionella) author (Little Murders)
1934 Huey "Piano" Smith pianist (Having a Good Time)
1935 Bob Uecker Milwaukee WI, catcher/actor (Mr Belvedere)
1942 Scott Glenn (actor: The Right Stuff, Silverado, The Hunt for Red October, The Silence of the Lambs)
1944 Angela Yvonne Davis communist/professor
1952 Mario Runco Jr Bronx NY, Lieutenant-Commander USN/astronaut (STS 44, 54, 77)
1957 Eddie Van Halen Nijmegan Netherlands, rock guitarist (Van Halen-Jump, 1984)
1958 Ellen DeGeneres New Orleans LA, comedienne (Ellen Morgan-Ellen)
1961 Wayne Gretzky (hockey: Edmunton Oilers, LA Kings: NHL Season Point Record [215][1985-86]; MVP nine times [1980-'87 & 1989]; Stanley Cup Individual Career Record: 110 goals, 346 points scored [1979-1993])
1977 Cindy Cesar Miss Mauritius-Universe (1997)

Deaths which occurred on January 26:
1109 Albericus of Cîteaux French saint, dies
1824 Edward Jenner discoverer (vaccination), dies
1885 Charles George Gordon British Governor-General, executed (slain with troops by Sudanese in Khartoum) at 51
1891 Nicholaus Otto auto pioneer (internal combustion engine), dies
1893 Abner Doubleday credited with inventing baseball, dies
1932 William K Wrigley owner (Wrigley Gum, Chicago Cubs), dies
1942 Gerard L F Philips Dutch manufacturer (Philips), dies at 83
1949 Victor Fleming director (Wizard of Oz, Gone With Wind), dies at 65
1962 Charles "Lucky" Luciano New York City NY Mafia gangster, dies at 65
1973 Edward G Robinson [Goldenberg], actor (Little Caesar), dies at 79
1979 Nelson Rockefeller former Vice President & 4 time Governor of NY, dies at 70
1983 Paul "Bear" Bryant college football coach, dies in Alabama at 69
1992 José Ferrer Puerto Rico, actor/director (Cyrano de Bergerac), dies at 80
1998 S P Leary Texan Blues drummer (Muddy Waters), dies at 67

Reported: MISSING in ACTION

1966 GRUBB WILBER N.---ALDAN PA.
[03/13/74 REMAINS RETURNED]
1967 MORGAN THOMAS RAYMOND---AKRON OH.
[REMAINS ID 07/28/97]
1968 DUNN MICHAEL E.---NAPERVILLE IL.
[REMAINS RETURNED 12/09/99]
1968 EIDSMOE NORMAN E.---RAPID CITY SD.
[REMAINS RETURNED 12/09/99]
1969 SINGLETON DANIEL L.---AKRON OH.
1969 UTLEY RUSSEL K.---SAN FRANCISCO CA.
1971 CARTER GERALD LYNN---WINSTON OR.

POW / MIA Data & Bios supplied by
the P.O.W. NETWORK. Skidmore, MO. USA.

On this day...
0066 5th recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet
1340 English king Edward III proclaimed king of France
1531 Lisbon hit by Earthquake; about 30,000 die
1654 Portuguese troops conquer last Dutch base on Recife
1697 Isaac Newton receives Jean Bernoulli's 6 month time-limit problem, solves problem before going to bed that same night
1699 Venice, Poland & Austria sign peace treaty with Turkey
1802 Congress passed an act calling for a library to be established within the U.S. Capitol.
1736 Stanislaw Lesczynski flees Polish throne
1784 Ben Franklin expresses unhappiness over the eagle as America's symbol
1788 Captain Arthur Phillip forms English colony at Sydney, Botany Bay New South Wales as a penal colony
1790 Mozart's opera "Cosi Fan Tutte" premieres in Vienna
1802 Congress passes an act calling for a US Capitol library
1837 Michigan admitted as 26th US state
1838 Tennessee becomes 1st state to prohibit alcohol
1841 Hong Kong proclaimed a sovereign territory of Britain
1850 1st German-language daily newspaper in US published, New York City NY
1861 Louisiana becomes 6th state to secede
1862 Lincoln issues General War Order #1, calling for a Union offensive
1863 War Department authorizes Massachusetts Governor to recruit black troops
1863 54th Regiment (Black) infantry forms
1870 Virginia rejoins the US
1871 US income tax repealed
1875 Electric dental drill is patented by George F Green
1885 Muhammad Ahmed ("Mahdi") rebels conquer Khartoum
1886 Karl Benz patents 1st auto with burning motor
1905 World's largest diamond, the 3,106-carat Cullinan, is found in South Africa
1907 1st federal corrupt election practices law passed
1907 J M Synge's "Playboy of the Western World" opens
1910 Heavy rains cause floods in Paris
1911 Glenn Curtiss pilots 1st successful hydroplane, San Diego CA
1913 Jim Thorpe relinquishes his 1912 Olympic medals for being a pro
1915 Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado established
1918 US food administrator Hoover calls for "wheatless" & "meatless" days for war effort
1926 Television 1st demonstrated (John L Baird, London)
1932 British submarine M-2 sinks in Channel (60 dead)
1934 Nazi Germany & Poland sign non-attack treaty for 10 years (That worked out real well)
1939 Filming begins on "Gone With the Wind"
1939 Franco conquers Barcelona
1940 Nazis forbid Polish Jews to travel on trains
1942 1st US force in Europe during WWII goes ashore in Northern Ireland
1942 Italian supreme command demands dismissal of German marshal Rommel
1945 Soviet forces reach Auschwitz concentration camp

1948 Executive Order 9981, end segregation in US Armed Forces signed

1951 Mel Ott & Jimmie Foxx elected to Baseball Hall of Fame
1954 Ground breaking begins on Disneyland
1956 Hank Greenberg & Joe Cronin are elected to Baseball Hall of Fame
1957 India annexes Kashmir
1961 1st woman "personal physician to President"-JG Travell
1961 "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" by Elvis Presley peaks to #1
1962 US launches Ranger 3, misses Moon by 22,000-mile (37,000-km)
1962 Bishop Burke of Buffalo Catholic dioceses declares Chubby Checker's "Twist" is impure & bans it from all Catholic schools
1962 Canadian Marine Service renamed Coast Guard
1963 Major League Rules Committee votes to expand strike zone
1965 South Vietnam military coup under General Nguyen Khanh
1978 International Ultraviolet Explorer placed in Earth orbit
1979 "The Dukes of Hazzard" premieres on CBS's vast wasteland
1980 Israel & Egypt establish diplomatic relations
1985 Edmonton Oiler Wayne Gretzky scores 50th goal in 49th game of season
1987 Hart Foundation beat British Bulldogs for WWF tag team title
1988 Australia's 200th anniversary-parade of tall ships in Sydney Harbor
1990 Annular eclipse visible over Antarctica & South Atlantic
1991 Jan Stenerud becomes 1st pure placekicker to make NFL Hall of Fame
1992 Americans with Disabilities Act went into effect
1998 Intel launches 333 MHz Pentium II chip
1998 President Clinton says "I want to say one thing to the American people, I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky"
1999 Pope John Paul II arrived in St. Louis and began his seventh pilgrimage to the United States. He was greeted by Pres. Clinton at Lambert Int'l. Airport and called on the president to protect unborn children and end armed conflict abroad.
2000 The UN appointed Hans Blix of Sweden to be the new weapons inspector for Iraq.
2001 A UN panel criticized Saudi Arabia for discriminating against women, harassing minors and for punishments that included flogging and stoning.
2004 President Hamid Karzai signed Afghanistan's new constitution into law,

Holidays
Note: Some Holidays are only applicable on a given "day of the week"

Arkansas : General Douglas MacArthur Day
Dominican Republic : Duarte's Day/Dia de Duarte
India : Republic Day (1950)
Michigan : Admission Day (1837)
Australia : Australia Day (1794 - Present)
US : Meat Week (Day 4)
US : Glaucoma Awareness Week (Day 4)
US : All You Can Eat Day
National Soup Month

Religious Observances
Roman Catholic : Feast of St Paula
Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran : Memorial of SS Timothy & Titus, companions of Paul
old Roman Catholic : Feast of St Polycarp, bishop/martyr (now 2/23)
Moslem : Night of Power (Ramadan 27, 1418 AH)

Religious History
1564 Following the closing of the Council of Trent, Pius IV ratified its enactments by the bull "Benedictus Deus." Included among the Tridentine decisions were decrees concerning the creation of an Index of Prohibited Books (a list of condemned authors and their works).
1779 Pioneer American Methodist bishop Francis Asbury wrote in his journal: 'We should so work as if we were to be saved by our works; and so rely on Jesus Christ, as if we did no works.'
1906 The first General Assembly of the Church of God convened. Headquartered today in Cleveland, TN, the Church of God is the oldest Pentecostal Church denomination in the U.S., with roots going back to 1886.
1951 The Temple Beth Israel of Meridian, Miss. became the first Jewish congregation to allow women to perform the functions of a rabbi.
1967 Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth wrote in a letter: 'What God has done is well done.'

Source: William D. Blake. ALMANAC OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1987.

Thought for the day :
"You're smart when you only believe half of what you hear, Wise is when you know which half to believe."

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January 26, 2005

Tried And True