Iraq is like Vietnam -- Shame on us

[onthebottom]

Comical. It was you OTB that made the troop level mistake, not I Sir. BTW thank you for retracting (and then of course qualifying your error at least three ways, so that it was almost completely unrecognisable in the dust cloud)

You said there are 250k US troops in Iraq, that was wrong by 100k.

Be a man, it feels good.

OTB

 

[Mcluhan]

150K troops isn't close to the entire payroll -look again

You said there are 250k US troops in Iraq, that was wrong by 100k.

Be a man, it feels good.

OTB

Yes, 250K is on the high side. I was going on a ball park figure I read recently, actually, the correct figure (having just checked) for the Central Command area of responsibilty is officially estimated between 200,000 and 225,000 including those providing logistical support to operation Iraqi Freedom. Special Forces are also excluded from troop counts.

 

[onthebottom]

Yes, 250K is on the high side. I was going on a ball park figure I read recently, actually, the correct figure (having just checked) for the Central Command area of responsibilty is officially estimated between 200,000 and 225,000 including those providing logistical support to operation Iraqi Freedom. Special Forces are also excluded from troop counts.

There, didn't feel good .
OTB

 

[Mcluhan]

But we are going to win this war, you can play it anyway you want but in the end, when the administration has been asked for target dates for leaving, or target troop levels..... the answer has always been the same, we'll leave when we're done. It's not a matter of being a cheerleader, it's a matter of resolve. Nixon wanted to end the war and save face (don't know that spiriting marines off the embassy roof would qualify) Bush wants to win. There is a difference.
OTB

I came across this article today. It's interesting. This quote is from the last line.
"There's nothing that you can do in Iraq today that will work," said Lind, one of the original Fourth Generation Warfare authors. "That situation is irretrievably lost."

What I find interesting about this commentary, is this; the evolution of warfare on the planet has changed to urban warfare and has eclipsed the notion of high-intensity conventional warefare. HOWEVER, this notion does not fit well with the MIC's need for profit from the big-ticket weapons, therefore the MIC response is to ignore the fact and press/lobby for new and bigger/better generation of conventional weapons...lol..it has even found a way to sell nuclear warfare as small and tactical...almost conjuring up the notion of the usefulness of nuking a neighbourhood.

I fully expect you will (try) twist this information until appears meaningless, but here it is anyway...

Chicago Tribune

Critics: Pentagon in blinders
Long before 9/11, the military was warned about low-tech warfare, but it didn't listen


By Stephen J. Hedges
Washington Bureau

June 6, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Nearly 16 years ago, a group of four military officers and a civilian predicted the rise of terrorism and anti-American insurgencies with chilling accuracy.

The group said U.S. military technology was so advanced that foreign forces would be unlikely to challenge it directly, and it forecast that future foes would be non-state insurgents and terrorists whose weapons would be suicide car bombs, not precision-guided weapons.

"Today, the United States is spending $500 million apiece for stealth bombers," the group wrote in a 1989 article that appeared in a professional military journal. "A terrorist stealth bomber is a car with a bomb in the trunk--a car that looks like every other car."

The five men dubbed their theory "Fourth Generation Warfare" and warned that the U.S. military had to adapt. In the years since, the original group of officers, joined by a growing number of officers and scholars within the military, has pressed Pentagon leaders to acknowledge this emerging threat.

But rather than adopting a new strategy, the generals and civilian leaders in the Defense Department have continued to support conventional, high-intensity conflict and the expensive weapons that go with it. That is happening, critics say, despite lethal insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"They don't understand this kind of warfare," said Greg Wilcox, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, Vietnam veteran and critic of Pentagon policies. "They want to return to war as they envision it. That's not going to happen."

Wilcox is just one of a number of maverick officers, active and retired, who have been agitating for change. Others include Marine Col. T.X. Hammes, whose recent book on the subject is required reading in some units, as well as Marine Col. G.I. Wilson, currently serving in Iraq, and H. John Poole, a retired Marine who has written extensively on insurgencies.

Together they make up the public face of a much larger debate within the U.S. military over whether the Defense Department is doing enough to train troops to fight insurgents.

It is a debate with enormous consequences. Though most of the more than 1,350 American combat deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan have been caused by low-tech insurgent weaponry such as roadside bombs, the Army plans to spend more than $120 billion in the next decade on a future combat system of digitally linked vehicles, weapons and unmanned aircraft. It is based largely on conventional warfare theory.

The Army also is reorganizing its 10 divisions into 43 more flexible, 5,000-soldier brigades that can be plunked down in a war zone. But the weapons and training those forces receive still will lean heavily toward the traditional view of conflict, with heavy tanks, helicopters, close air support and terrain-holding troops.

 

[Mcluhan]

part II

Soldiers take initiative

The mavericks' Fourth Generation Warfare theory is about as far as one can get from current Pentagon doctrine. But many of the captains, corporals and privates fighting today have adopted the mavericks' theories and tactics.

"So much of it was validated that it's theoretically right on the money," said Jim Roussell, a chief warrant officer in the Marine Reserves who focuses on gang crime in Chicago as a sergeant in the city's Police Department. He recently returned from Iraq after leading a Marine unit against insurgents.

Army and Marine Corps officials in Washington declined to answer questions on the changes suggested by the mavericks.

But in November, the Army issued a revised field manual on fighting insurgencies that had not been updated in more than a decade. It has received a mixed reception.

"We really have a lot of institutional friction right now," said Lt. Col. Jan Horvath, the Army manual's primary author. "There are a number of junior officers who understand this." Senior officers, Horvath said, have been less accepting.

Still, some units are adapting. The Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, for instance, last month began its second tour of Iraq after months of innovative training, including a requirement that all officers and soldiers receive basic Arabic language and culture training.

"It's working," said Col. H.R. McMaster, the regiment's commander, who has lectured at U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., and written a book about the failures of the Vietnam War. "It's a hard problem. Nothing is easy over here. But I'm telling you we're getting after it, we're pursuing the enemy, we are totally on the offensive right now."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's office has given irregular warfare a "higher priority" in the upcoming 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review, according to an excerpt of the document. But the report will not be completed until next year. Real war, the mavericks point out, is happening now.

Chinese war philosopher "Sun Tzu had it right," said one Army lieutenant colonel who spent a year fighting insurgents in Iraq and who requested anonymity. "If you know your enemy and if you know yourself, you'll never lose. We know about half of what we should about the enemy, and we don't know ourselves. We can't figure out what kind of Army we want to be."

The 1989 article that broached the rise of terrorism and insurgencies sprang from a group of officers who met regularly to discuss tactics and strategy. The group gathered in the Alexandria, Va., home of William Lind, a military analyst and former Senate aide who is director of the Free Congress Foundation's Center for Cultural Conservatism.

Lind already had written about the first three generations of modern warfare: Napoleonic-style lines of battle, World War I trench conflict and the swift-moving "maneuver" warfare that the German army displayed in World War II. In the 1980s, the Marine Corps adopted maneuver warfare as its official doctrine.

What, the group wondered, would be the next generation of war?

 

[Mcluhan]

Part III

Read the rest of the article here...The mavericks' Fourth Generation Warfare theory is about as far as one can get from current Pentagon doctrine.

 

[Vietor]

The above repost was first and now simply a cut & paste job providing no new ideas or information, just a regurgitation of the "Oh, woe is me" attitude of losers. The fact is that the US and its allies, including the legally and freely elected government of Iraq have been and are affecting great changes in the Middle East. We can (and probably should) debate the effect of these changes.

Issues (only illustrative, not exclusive):
1. Was getting rid of Saddam worth the effort? Short term, long term?
2. Are Iraq and Afganistan the correct places to confront Islamic terrorism?
3. Will our resolve in Jihadistan be sufficient to stop the expansion of radical Islam (Wahabism, etc.)? Will our resolve last long enough, or will it be undermined by the naysayers sufficient to break it?
4. When will Europe understand the dangers of radical Islam? When it's too late to effectively answer without a great war?
5. Will the naysayers on this continent change their views if/when a repeat of 911 occurs? Particularly, if it occurs on Canadian soil because it is more convenient?

These are among the issues that can be debated without sinking to the level of obnoxious namecalling so frequently demonstrated hereinabove.

 

[TOVisitor]

Let's add to your list of "fair and balanced" questions ...

6. When did you stop beating your wife?

 

[langeweile]

Let's add to your list of "fair and balanced" questions ...

6. When did you stop beating your wife?

Another classy response from a kinder and gentler liberal...going from being a racist of being a wife beater.

You used to piss me off, now I am actually starting to feel sorry for you...must be lonely out there in cyberspace..........

 

[Vietor]

Where did I say that the questions were "fair and balanced"? Several are in fact. Nevertheless, instead of substantive debate, you resort to that with which you are familiar - obnoxoius buffoonery.

In an effort to foster debate, I offer as follows:

The invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam was worth the effort, both in terms of the costs (human and economic) invested by the allies and in terms of the human costs and infrastructure damage done to Iraq. Two major factors (and many other minor factors) combine to compel this conclusion. First, Saddam and his government were the most brutal among advanced states in actions against the majority of his countrymen: he had engaged in genocidal actions against the Kurds and the Shiites resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths. If invasion of the states that constituted the former Yugoslavia was justified, invasion of Iraq was justified in spades. Second, Saddam had demonstrated the ability to develop, acquire and use weapons of mass destruction. His scientists had developed, for instance, mobile labs used for biological weapons development. There is no debate that he had used WMD's against the Kurds. So, where are these highly mobile labs? All we know at this point is that thier products have not been used on anyone since Saddam was ousted.

Thus, getting rid of Saddam and changing the government has at this time meant: (1) no continuation of the Saddam inflicted genocide and (2) no continued use of the WMD's he had used before.

This does not address the longer term justifications for the invasion, a subject perhaps for a later note.

 

[*d*]

Where did I say that the questions were "fair and balanced"? Several are in fact. Nevertheless, instead of substantive debate, you resort to that with which you are familiar - obnoxoius buffoonery.

In an effort to foster debate, I offer as follows:

The invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam was worth the effort, both in terms of the costs (human and economic) invested by the allies and in terms of the human costs and infrastructure damage done to Iraq. Two major factors (and many other minor factors) combine to compel this conclusion. First, Saddam and his government were the most brutal among advanced states in actions against the majority of his countrymen: he had engaged in genocidal actions against the Kurds and the Shiites resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths. If invasion of the states that constituted the former Yugoslavia was justified, invasion of Iraq was justified in spades. Second, Saddam had demonstrated the ability to develop, acquire and use weapons of mass destruction. His scientists had developed, for instance, mobile labs used for biological weapons development. There is no debate that he had used WMD's against the Kurds. So, where are these highly mobile labs? All we know at this point is that thier products have not been used on anyone since Saddam was ousted.

Thus, getting rid of Saddam and changing the government has at this time meant: (1) no continuation of the Saddam inflicted genocide and (2) no continued use of the WMD's he had used before.

This does not address the longer term justifications for the invasion, a subject perhaps for a later note.

Absolute nonsense! Both Amnesty Int. and the Human Rights Watch agree that the war on Iraq was not a humanitarian intervention. The genocide and use of WMD you are talking about happened years ago when the US couldn't care less.
http://hrw.org/wr2k4/3.htm
"...we(HRW) are aware of, but reject, the argument that past U.S. complicity in Iraqi repression should preclude U.S. intervention in Iraq on humanitarian grounds. This argument is built on the U.S. government’s sordid record in Iraq in the 1980s and early 1990s. When the Iraqi government was using chemical weapons against Iranian troops in the 1980s, the Reagan administration was giving it intelligence information. After the Anfal genocide against Iraqi Kurds in 1988, the Reagan and first Bush administrations gave Baghdad billions of dollars in commodity credits and import loan guarantees. The Iraqi government’s ruthless suppression of the 1991 uprising was facilitated by the first Bush administration’s agreement to Iraq’s use of helicopters – permission made all the more callous because then-President Bush had encouraged the uprising in the first place. In each of these cases, Washington deemed it more important to defeat Iran or avoid Iranian influence in a potentially destabilized Iraq than to discourage or prevent large-scale slaughter."

 

[langeweile]

Absolute nonsense! Both Amnesty Int. and the Human Rights Watch agree that the war on Iraq was not a humanitarian intervention. The genocide and use of WMD you are talking about happened years ago when the US couldn't care less.
http://hrw.org/wr2k4/3.htm
"...we(HRW) are aware of, but reject, the argument that past U.S. complicity in Iraqi repression should preclude U.S. intervention in Iraq on humanitarian grounds. This argument is built on the U.S. government’s sordid record in Iraq in the 1980s and early 1990s. When the Iraqi government was using chemical weapons against Iranian troops in the 1980s, the Reagan administration was giving it intelligence information. After the Anfal genocide against Iraqi Kurds in 1988, the Reagan and first Bush administrations gave Baghdad billions of dollars in commodity credits and import loan guarantees. The Iraqi government’s ruthless suppression of the 1991 uprising was facilitated by the first Bush administration’s agreement to Iraq’s use of helicopters – permission made all the more callous because then-President Bush had encouraged the uprising in the first place. In each of these cases, Washington deemed it more important to defeat Iran or avoid Iranian influence in a potentially destabilized Iraq than to discourage or prevent large-scale slaughter."

I agree that there was some mistakes made by the administration in the past, which are not excusable.
The USA was and is not the only country, that has had their fingers in the pie, or has tried to influence this part of the world.
France, Germany, England and Russia had their share as well. Probably on a s much snaller scale, but that comes with the territory.

 

[WoodPeckr]

Veterans Injuries in Iraq far more Severe than in Nam

In this respect the Iraqi War is much worse than Viet Nam. The disabling crippling injuries being sustained presently are far more severe and grotesque than have ever been experiened in the past, unfortunately far worse than what happened in Nam.

Here is a sad sobering article on how the VA is being flooded with injured returning from Iraq.


Stockpiling the Wounded from Iraq
Inside Walter Reed Hospital

By NICOLE COLSON

The flights almost always land at night--and the wounded are brought off planes in the dark. Kept away from the news cameras, the nightly parade of the injured who arrive at Maryland's Andrews Air Force base from U.S. Army medical facilities in Germany are driven--sometimes in vans or school buses converted into ambulances--to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., the nation's top military hospitals.

These soldiers have gone from the front lines to the back door--brought back to the U.S. under the cover of darkness to keep them hidden from the media and the public.

According to the Pentagon, the soldiers arrive at night because "operational restrictions" at a runway near the military's main hospital in Germany, where the wounded from Iraq are brought first, affect the timing of flights.

But Paul Rieckhoff, founder and executive director of Operation Truth, an advocacy group for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, told Salon reporter Mark Benjamin that there is a different reason. "They do it so nobody sees [the wounded]," Rieckhoff said. "In their mindset, this is going to demoralize the American people. The overall cost of this war has been...continuously hidden throughout. As the costs get higher, their efforts to conceal those costs also increase."

For the nearly 4,000 U.S. troops wounded in Iraq who have been brought through the doors of Walter Reed as of March, the personal cost of the war is staggering. Despite the Bush administration's repeated claims of reaching a "turning point" in the occupation of Iraq, the 250 beds at Walter Reed have been filled to capacity since the invasion--and before that, since the early days of the war on Afghanistan in 2001.

In late 2003, press accounts reported that medical staff at Walter Reed staff were working 70- to 80-hour weeks to handle the influx of patients. Overcrowding was so bad, in fact, that a number of the less seriously wounded were sent to stay in hotels near the hospital--transported during the day to Walter Reed for outpatient treatment. The situation is no better today--though it is more hidden than ever because of the media blackout that the Pentagon has tried to throw over Walter Reed.

Among the patients, the number of seriously injured--suffering from burns, amputations, brain damage, infection and combat stress--show anything but a "turning point" in Iraq.

Ironically, the main reasons for the overflow of seriously injured are improvements in body armor and the use of better medical technology on the battlefield. Because of this, many soldiers today are surviving with more severe injuries than in previous wars.

According to Pentagon statistics, approximately 6 percent of the more than 12,000 troops wounded by bombs or bullets in Iraq or Afghanistan have required amputation--three times the rate in Vietnam. About 20 percent have head or neck injuries, and many more have suffered breathing and eating impairments, blindness or severe disfiguration. Dr. Roy Aaron of Brown Medical School in Rhode Island told the Boston Globe in December that the Veterans Affairs system "literally cannot handle the load" of amputees.

A recent USA Today report found that between January 2003 and January 2005, more than 400 cases of traumatic brain injury--usually the result of a bomb or rocket attack--were diagnosed among wounded soldiers at Walter Reed alone. Slightly more than half of those were left with some form of permanent brain damage.

Sadly there is more to article below:

http://www.counterpunch.org/colson06062005.html

 

[*d*]

I see once again *d* stupidity and grass anti-american bigotry rises to the occassion. In fact this post actually makes me want to re-think my original support for the AI position (except for the Gulag comment).

Like all true bigots *d* once again tries to compare apples with oranges and expect the same result - news flash *d* nothing geo-political that occurred in the 1980's is at all the same as the situtation today.

Complain if you must but put that tired old and error propaganda away - it serves no one including the people of Iraq, who I suspect you couldn't give a rats ass for anyways - they just happen to fit your anti-american and anti-isreal view of the world.


bbk

Apples and oranges? Do you read these posts or are you just finding opportunities to insult people and spread unfounded lies? 'Vietor' commented that the "..invasion of Iraq was justified in spades" because of genocide at the hands of Saddam. I disagreed and gave the Human Rights Watch document for the reasons why. The war in Iraq was not a humanitarian intervention. Please wake up bbk and understand that I no longer accept your insults and abuse as humour and next time I'll complain to the moderators.

 

[cyrus]

Apples and oranges? Do you read these posts or are you just finding opportunities to insult people and spread unfounded lies? 'Vietor' commented that the "..invasion of Iraq was justified in spades" because of genocide at the hands of Saddam. I disagreed and gave the Human Rights Watch document for the reasons why. The war in Iraq was not a humanitarian intervention. Please wake up bbk and understand that I no longer accept your insults and abuse as humour and next time I'll complain to the moderators.

Come on *d* by now you should know where BBK is coming from!
The crimes that you have talked about in your original post is a taboo topic (except in an intellectual/academic context) and it upsets certain groups when spoken in a public forum, I am not going to name names because I will be accused, Anti-Semitic just like you for being Anti-American!

 

[y2kmark]

Absolutely Right!!!

The Vietnam / IRaq comparison is one of the most misleading and false comparisons

After all, Bush had a plan to get out of Viet Nam!!

 

[cyrus]

I agree that there was some mistakes made by the administration in the past, which are not excusable.
The USA was and is not the only country, that has had their fingers in the pie, or has tried to influence this part of the world.
France, Germany, England and Russia had their share as well. Probably on a s much snaller scale, but that comes with the territory.

I agree! They all had their hands deep in it and millions died as a result!

 

[langeweile]

I agree! They all had their hands deep in it and millions died as a result!

The question is why do some poeple on this board chose to ignore this fact. If we are talking about how the west has screwed up the middle east, we should have a broader discussion on it.
To blame the current mess on the USA alone is dishonest.

 

[Mcluhan]

reason #42 how like vietnam - the public perception

"The American public, according to a just-released Washington Post/ABC News poll, has not been taken in by the administration's Panglossian pronouncements. Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe that the U.S. military is bogged down in Iraq. Nearly 60 percent said that the Iraq war was not worth fighting. More than 40 percent thought the Iraq war had made that country "a new Vietnam." And 52 percent maintained that the Iraq war has not made the United States safer."

Juan Cole

 

[Keebler Elf]

I agree that other nations have had their "hands in the cookie jar" when it comes to the Middle East but, by the same token, the USA is THE nation that has had the greatest ability to influence and change things. To be the world's superpower and say "But nation X is/isn't doing anything either..." (imagine whiny tone of voice) is an act of irresponsibility. With great power comes great responsibility (or so the saying goes), so IMO it is the place of the US to exert pressure/influece on the Middle East. Invading a sovereign nation under false pretenses, however, probably wasn't the way to go about it. But heh, that's par for the course for the Bush administration... (who aren't exactly the "sharpest knives in the drawer", if you get my drift )