Posted on 03/12/2006 11:00:01 PM PST by jmc1969
The war was barely a week old when Gen. Tommy Franks threatened to fire the Army's field commander.
From the first days of the invasion, American forces had tangled with fanatical Saddam Fedayeen paramilitary fighters. Gen. Wallace, had told reporters that his soldiers needed to delay their advance on the capital to suppress the Fedayeen.
Soon after, General Franks phoned Gen. McKiernan, to warn that he might relieve General Wallace.
A US Marines intelligence officer warned, that the Fedayeen would continue to mount attacks after the fall of Baghdad since many of the enemy fighters were being bypassed in the race to the capital.
Instead of sending additional troops to impose order after the fall of Baghdad, Rumsfeld and General Franks canceled the deployment of the First Cavalry Division.
General McKiernan was unhappy with the decision, which was made at a time when ground forces were needed to deal with the chaos.
General Franks eventually went along. He later acknowledged that the defense secretary had put the issue on the table. "Rumsfeld did in fact make the decision to off-ramp the First Cavalry Division," General Franks said in an earlier interview.
General McKiernan, the senior United States general in Iraq at the time, was not happy about the decision but did not protest.
"The insurgency surprised us and we had not developed a comprehensive option for dealing with this possibility, one that would have included more military police, civil affairs units, interrogators, and Special Operations forces," said Gen. Keane of the Army, who served as the chief of staff.
"If we had planned for an insurgency, we probably would have deployed the First Cavalry Division and it would have assisted greatly with the occupation. "This was not just an intelligence community failure, but also our failure as senior military leaders."
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
You can't know for certain, although you can make educated guesses. But because you can't know, you are supposed to analyze the enemy's capabilities, and at least consider the possibility that the bad guys might do what they are able to do. Most military disasters in history are a result (at least in part) of disregarding this fundamental rule.
Well, we can always count on the New York Times to win our wars.
I'm no general but Saddam's huge weapon/explosives dumps throughout the country made me go "Hmmmmmmmm?" If they weren't used in fighting the war, what were they for?
It seems to me anyone who's observed America over the past 50 years, especially in Vietnam, should know we can probably be beaten by fighting a guerilla war of attrition against us and letting our own Far Left/media/intelligentsia bring us to our knees.
I noticed the NY Times byline, so I assumed (apparently rightly so from the comments) that there's nothing true or worthwhile in the article.
I suspect that this war won't be won until the regime is removed in Tehran, since that's who we're actually fighting now..
I suspect you're right. What does the NYT recommend in that case?
Our experience with defeating and then pacifying nations should refer to Germany and Japan.
We bombed them killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. Perhaps more. We destroyed their infrastructure.
In Germany we stationed a large occupying force, and scrutinized every single citizen, for continuing Nazi sentiments.
In Iraq we surgically took out only some infrastructure, hoping to save as much as possible to keep the civilians happy.
And we presumed the civilians would like us better than they liked Saddam.
Our plans WERE deficient for the longer term pacification and occupation. We DID miscalculate.
Stated elsewhere, but not in this article was the decision to completely disband the Iraqi military. Perhaps a big mistake.
Hey, did you get some snow?
Lay it on em Jim....this hindsight is ridiculous!
Preemptive surrender. :)
Getting into Baghdad as soon as possible was an important strategic goal, both militarily and politically. It seems the 2nd part of the plan was to lure the terrorists to Iraq after the invasion and destroy them there. The terrorists fell for it and received the biggest sucker punch in history.
"The Iraqis didn't have anything planned except for the most typical, routine tactics."
It was always the Baathists plan that if the US invaded, they would fade away and start a Guerrilla type war. The most important tactic that all insurgent groups learned from the Vietnam War was to use the West's media against it. Fortunately, thanks to the internet, cable and satellite broadcasting, etc., there are many more sources of information available to the average citizen then the MSM of yesteryear. Still, the MSM is a powerful influence.
Right....
Iraq is really just a battle in a larger War, but the Times doesn't want to talk about that!
Franks also talked about the mistakes in Afghanistan a couple months ago. The biggest thing he said was we should have put our troops on Pakistan border instead of relying on Pakistani troops. The mistakes in Afganistan in my view were just as large as the mistakes with Iraq. The difference is that there is ten thousand times the amount of explosives in Iraq and Zarqawi has a near limitless supply of money from rich Arabs in the Gulf as well massive supply of potental suicide bombers who just have to walk to Iraq.
Rummy's idea of lighter, faster, cheaper wars work to take down regimes, but they don't work to deal with the after affects of the war and it doesn't work to keep insurgencies from forming. Only large numbers of troops on the ground can keep insurgencies from forming. As we have seen in both Iraq and Afghanistan when the enemy is allowed large areas of unprotected territory they are able to reorganize, plan, and start conducting attacks again.
Pentagon should have heeded predictions.
See #37!
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