THE DIGNIFIED RANT
NATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS OCTOBER 2003 ARCHIVES
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“Binding Iraqis to
Our Side” (Posted
This from Foxnews:
Separately,
the U.S.-installed Iraqi Governing Council said it was moving forward with
setting up a war crimes tribunal to prosecute those accused of atrocities
during Saddam Hussein's regime.
I wrote months ago that it was important for Iraqis to try Baathists for war crimes and not leave this to us and certainly not the international community. Getting Iraqis to convict war criminals will bind Iraqis to the anti-Baathist side—our side—and make it impossible for them to ever disassociate themselves from our victory. The Iraqis will have a real stake in beating the resistance fighters and terrorists. Still, for the really high rankers, like Saddam, there could be too much fear among Iraqis for that job. But maybe not. After nailing lower ranking Baathists, they may lose the fear of trying the big ones.
“Is Debating
Fruitless?” (Posted
Honest to God, the few times I’ve visited Democratic Underground (thanks to Andrew Sullivan) while following a link, I just get depressed. I’ve written before that I’m suspicious of all those anti-war types crying that we can’t debate this issue. I’ve long had the suspicion, sometimes validated by the writings of some bolder anti-war type, that they aren’t interested in debating how to win but how to get us to lose the war. Reading the DU thread is just freaking amazing.
They honestly can’t tell the difference between a liberation and an occupation. They can’t see the difference between a Saddam and a Bush (and when they can, they seem to prefer Saddam). They don’t get that we are at war and that there are ruthless people out there that would blow up their organic grocery store with glee.
How can we debate when they are so far away from reality?
“Saddam In Charge?” (Posted
From NYT:
Saddam Hussein may be playing a significant role in coordinating and
directing attacks by his loyalists against American forces in Iraq, senior
American officials said Thursday.
Sure hope so. I’m not joking here. Saddam’s record as a military strategist is so abysmal that we can
only hope he is taking a hand. Sure, he’s survived his awful field
marshal-ship, but that is only because his enemies were unable (
Plus, if he’s not using all his effort to hide from his, he
will slip up and we will get him.
“Troop Morale”
(Posted
So far so good as far as enlistments and re-enlistments are going. I still worry about retention in the reserves if reservists are routinely used too long, but thus far the numbers are good. From the always useful Strategypage:
Lord knows I griped when I was in. But that never meant that I ever doubted that being in uniform was the right thing to do. I never was sent to war so I don’t mean to make too much of my National Guard service, but even when I spent six months figuring it was only a matter of time before my unit was called up for Desert Storm, I never even considered trying to get out. A tradition of bitching. Few jobs available outside. Military efforts to limit deployments. And of course, patriotism. Our soldiers haven’t forgotten we are at war.
I imagine that the casualty rate is also low enough and the perception of the value of our missions since 9-11 (and so, a perception that our losses are not in vain) go a long way toward retention and enlistment. This from Strategypage as well:
Despite the large number of attacks on Iraqi targets, coalition troops
are getting ambushed or sniped at some 30 times a day, more than double what it
was last month. That means that each patrol or movement (by a convoy) has about
a two percent chance of getting shot at, and maybe one chance in several
thousand of getting killed or wounded.
Our soldiers are essentially sending a vote of confidence on our war effort, I’d say.
Oh, keep hitting more on the above link. Good stuff on
resistance, the need of the Baathists to pay more for
attacks because they are getting killed and captured, and, depressingly, a note
that we really aren’t guarding a lot of those old Iraqi ammo depots. Geez, controlling the borders is largely irrelevant if the
die-hards can just get ammo inside
“Tell Me I’m Wrong” (Posted
Tell me that the Instapundit post on the ending of battalion commander slush funds to pay for local reconstruction and other needs is wrong.
I relatively low-cost method of responding quickly to Iraqi needs and that bolsters our image and the happiness level of Iraqis to our occupation is being chopped? Why? For Pete’s sake, is some bean counter in DC worried that a few thousand dollars, or tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands don’t have bidding and paperwork up the wazoo to satisfy a GAO audit? Have they looked at our budget?
If true this is ridiculous. If somebody is worried that opponents of the administration will make a big deal of some lost money, I say let them make a big deal.
Truly, only we can defeat ourselves in Iraq.
"A Heartfelt Thank You" (Posted
My old Guard Signal unit is
going to Tikrit. It seems like yesterday that we were
gearing up to go to the Gulf for Desert Storm. The rapid victory cancelled that
move. Now I am out and I feel guilty that my unit is going now when I skated
then, nearly thirteen years ago.
I briefly talked to the dad
of one of my son's classmates who is shipping off tomorrow. By coincidence I
was wearing my old Alpha Company t-shirt (they are Charlie company
now, I think). We share the same major MOS. I thanked him and wished him the
best. I hope that meant at least a little to him.
I didn't say anything about
coming back safely. Of course I wish that. And of course he is aware of the
danger. I could see that. But he did not complain. He will not see his son much
for another year. I see my son every day. Talk about life being unfair.
Sending our reserves off to
fight is a good thing, though. With civilians called up and put in uniform, we
maintain the bond between people, military, and the government. The government
will, as Rumsfeld did, ask the questions needed to
win and get better as we fight. No forgotten draftees will die in the hundreds
each week in obscurity.
We owe it to our troops to
support them, give them the means to win, and come home in victory. We owe them
honest debate over the war and not political point-scoring, too.
In only 12 years, my son will
be old enough for the military.
"Thank you" (Posted
I was getting tired of the
criticism that we failed to use the Iraqi army for security and that this was a
major error on our part. I was deeply perplexed about this charge since the
Iraqi army dissolved in the war. Disbanding it was a pure formality. From Strategypage, a reminder of this forgotten fact:
This bogus charge went
unrebutted and I was beginning to wonder if my memory was failing me.
It is not.
"
I'll say it again, were I the
PLA god, I'd attack
We are running into problems
trying to shape
The Pentagon has conducted about a dozen
assessments, reviews and studies of Taiwanese military capabilities in the past
three years, U.S. officials said, including in-depth looks at Taiwan's ability
to defend itself against air attacks, naval blockades and military landings as
well as its command and control, communications, intelligence, surveillance and
reconnaissance systems. One Pentagon report predicts that the balance of power
in the Strait will shift in
And why would we urge
reductions in the Taiwanese army as the article notes? Sure, air and naval
power will be key to stopping or cutting off the
troops landed initially in a surprise invasion. But
The Taiwanese need a sense of
urgency on this issue.
"Attacks" (Posted
From AP via Fox:
Attacks on
American troops have surged this week to about 33 per day, up from 26 per day
last week and 15 per day in early September. A series of car bombings in and
near
I would really like to see
the data on attacks from May 1 to today. I should look. Seeing the types of attacks would help, too.
More basically, the continued
resistance is fueling criticisms that the administration did not anticipate
this level of resistance. The fact that more
Americans have died in combat in the six months since May 1 as in the 5-6 week
major combat phase before it was officially declared over has especially led to
criticism. But this fact is mostly significant because of the extremely low
level of casualties we suffered in winning the conventional war against Saddam.
Few militaries in the world could mount a successful invasion and in only six
months see post-war casualties exceed war casualties. This is a function of our
strength and not a problem itself.
I always expected that we
would have to fight the Baathists after the war. I
didn't spend much time thinking about this phase since the war phase was
critical. I always knew we could lose the post-war if not done right. Still,
without knowing whether this is a realistic notion, I am surprised that the
resistance isn't tapering off. Our easing off at the end of July didn't help,
when we apparently thought the war was won. Foreign jihadists
are fueling the fire, too.
But this is really a
low-level resistance and those who claimed that Iraqis would resist us based on
their nationalism have far more explaining to do. Resistance is low-level and localized, it is not a mass movement—even in the Sunni
triangle. Fallujah is probably a lost cause for a
while but with more Iraqis taking the field, we are winning. With the country
getting back to normal, we are winning. And with the enemy resorting to terror,
a step down from the continuum of Maoist guerrilla warfare from terrorism to
large-scale combat, we really are winning in my opinion. That is not just
whistling past the graveyard in my opinion.
“Our Primary Goal in
Our primary goal in
On occasion I’ve written on the danger of a European Union
that could turn hostile. When I taught introductory American history, right
after the collapse of the
But paradoxically, the most consequential reason Continental
I for one do not draw comfort from the European impulse to create their peaceful utopia. The anti-democratic nature of the EU will eventually place power in the hands of an unelected, unaccountable, and corrupt elite whose utopian dreams will instead create a nightmare. It’s happened before.
It’s high time we stopped supporting European integration. It does not serve our interests. Or even European interests for that matter.
“Dormant Iraqi
Nuclear Program” (Posted
The Iraqi nuclear program was clearly dormant since 1991. Yet not dead. Else why would Saddam defy the UN to preserve what admittedly did exist in violation of the Persian Gulf War ceasefire terms embodied in several UN resolutions?
On June 2, Obeidi led investigators to his
rose garden. There they dug up a cache he had buried 12 years before and kept
from U.N. inspectors: about 200 blueprints of gas centrifuge components, 180
documents describing their use and samples of a few sensitive parts. The parts
amounted to far less than one complete centrifuge, and nothing like the
thousands required for a cascade of the spinning devices to enrich uranium, but
the material showed what nearly all outside experts believed -- that Iraq had
preserved its nuclear knowledge base.
On October 9th, 2002, I wrote:
“Waiting
for Nukes” (Posted
A number of critics say that war against
It must be something about Saddam having
nuclear weapons that justifies invasion. This is fair enough. I actually trust
the French not to nuke us even if McDonalds opens a revolving restaurant on top
of the
So, we’ve established the following:
1) Saddam with nuclear weapons is not to be
trusted in a civilized world. And
2) Saddam will not abandon his goal of
acquiring nuclear weapons.
What should these facts teach us?
A) That we should wait until Saddam gets
nuclear weapons before we attack. Or
B) That we should strike now while he does
not have them.
I don’t know how anyone who believes 1 and 2
can possibly say the answer is “A.” It is not consistent. Those who say
deterrence is viable are at least consistent when going from their beliefs to
their policy recommendations. They are wrong, but at least you don’t go “huh?”
after they finish speaking.
Saddam is not to be trusted with nuclear
weapons and we need to stop him before he gets them.
On to
This latest report does not tell us anything that we did not
know.
The basic problem is reconciling the opinions of people
reading this report, and the Kay report for that matter. Opponents of the war
who read this say, “Aha! There was no imminent threat! We were lied to in order
to go to war.” Supporters of the war say, “Aha! I knew Saddam was determined to
get nukes! The war was just.” I recall back to the days when Blix was sent to Iraq and I feared mightily that Saddam
would admit to something, cough up some centrifuges or something, say “Ok, now
I really have given up everything,” and we would walk away with a “victory” scrap
of paper signed by Saddam and Blix showing that on
January 31, 2003, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was disarmed completely of all weapons
of mass destruction and all programs to build them. Sanctions would then be
lifted and then Saddam could go about getting everything he wanted. I felt the
scientists and technicians, plus his money, were the key rather than any one
component. Oil money also meant that it was possible that Saddam could buy a
loose nuke from
Strategypage puts it well:
That said, it
was always a mystery to UN arms inspectors as to why Saddam refused to get rid
of his weapons and allow thorough inspections to prove it (and thus lift the UN
embargo). Everyone in the WMD business knew that
Now Saddam has lost everything, and is
very weak. But anyone with the technically qualified people (scientists and
engineers, which
Now Saddam is out of the nuke business for sure. I’m sure glad. Any dissenters?
“Better Metrics for
Iraqi Success” (Posted
Max Boot put well in an
article what I previously mentioned. Namely, that while our deaths in
When I visited
By all means, report on terrorist attacks. But don't lose sight of the
bigger picture.
This is no time to panic over the continuing resistance in
I’ve long said we can lose the post-war. But the continuing insistence that we are losing and must get out when we are clearly winning is really frustrating.
“Kudos to Senators Feinstein
and Biden” (Posted
When hysteria about the Patriot Act is in full swing with baseless charges cheered on uncritically, it is very heartening to hear that two Democratic Senators are defending the act. Said Senators Biden and Feinstein:
At last week's Senate
hearing, Joe Biden of Delaware didn't have to say
that "the tide of criticism" being directed against the Patriot Act
"is both misinformed and overblown," that "I stand by my
support" of that law, and that the Ashcroft Justice Department has
"done a pretty good job in terms of implementing" the law's
provisions. But Biden did say all these things,
anyway. And
"I've tried to see
what has happened in the complaints that have come in," she said,
"and I've received to date 21,434 complaints about the Patriot Act."
Except these turned out to be unrelated civil liberties gripes, or complaints
about a "Patriot Act II" that doesn't yet exist. "I have never
had a single [verified] abuse of the Patriot Act reported to me. My staff
emailed the ACLU and asked them for instances of actual abuses. They emailed
back and said they had none."
The widespread
hullabaloo over the Patriot Act, Senator Feinstein concluded, proceeds from
"substantial uncertainty . . . about what this bill actually does
do." And "perhaps some ignorance," she added.
The Patriot Act should never be considered a permanent law. It was enacted to cope with terrorists who pray for the chance to kill millions of Americans in a single blow. In time, parts can be amended or repealed. Parts may need to be strengthened or added before this is over. It cannot be a static law immune to the real world we face.
Yet the loyal opposition seems largely unable to talk about the act with any reasonableness and indeed without any basis in reality. The good senators from the opposition represent at least a sliver of hope for me that we can fight this threat together.
My sincere thanks to them.
"Not Quite Right" (Posted
I like Sinnreich's
stuff. His
article is good and has excellent points, especially his defense of using
overwhelming force to crush an enemy.
But he is misleading when he
writes this about the continuing resistance we face:
In that stubborn resistance lies a fundamental truth that seems too often to have eluded
American political leaders since World War II: It's not the winner who
typically decides when victory in a war has been achieved. It's the loser.
While he is right that the Baathists and Islamists in Iraq have not accepted defeat,
his characterization of that fact risks adopting the "pain" strategy
of trying to inflict more casualties on the enemy than they want to accept,
thus making them "choose" defeat. This truly sounds like
The key in warfare is
overwhelming force that kills the enemy and forces the enemy to give up all
hope, forcing them to "choose" defeat. It is no rational cost-benefit
analysis that we seek to inspire, it is crushing, hope-killing defeat we try to
inflict. We did this in the Iraq War and in the Taliban War. The overthrow of
the regimes and collapse of their military power shows this.
Sinnreich says we are at war now in
Resistance in
His point is
thought-provoking, though. He is saying that precision warfare is too clean. He
thinks that our ability to target the enemy military so narrowly undermines our
ability to make the enemy people give up by rubbing defeat in their face by
wrecking what they hold dear. I don’t know, but this sounds an awful lot like
the arguments made by airpower advocates today that they can inflict pain on
the enemy elite and leadership by destroying their assets. It sounds like the
old airpower arguments that bombing enemy cities could bypass the whole land
warfare phase completely. I think this line of criticism is plain wrong. If a
correct criticism, the Russian strategy in
Besides, I think our public
will simply not accept the enemy death and destruction he implies we must inflict
in order to force our enemy to accept defeat. More precisely, our public won't
accept the casualties we must inflict in this view until we suffer equally
horrendous casualties. Recall the cries by some in the face of American casualties
on
Under the circumstances, I
hope our public never gets comfortable with the idea of vaporizing our enemies.
Because the only way we will ever get to that point is if we get hit too hard,
too often, here at home.
"I Could Be Wrong Here" (Posted
Baathists or Islamists? Says
this general:
Today,
the commander of the Army's Fourth Infantry Division, Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno, told Pentagon reporters that he believed that
foreign fighters accounted for "a very, very small percentage" of the
people mounting attacks against Americans and their allies in Iraq.
"My
initial feeling is, this is former regime loyalists doing this maybe with minor
coordination with a few people that might not be from
I suppose the trends may
depend on who is being most effective. Is it the Baathist-paid
attackers, the hard core Baathists, or the foreign jihadists? That is, the jihadists
may be a tiny fraction but are they doing the most damage?
"Cultural Sensitivity" (Posted
Read this:
Powerful suicide car bombs exploded
outside the local headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross
and three police stations across Baghdad Monday morning, killing at least 34
people and wounding 224 in a series of sophisticated and apparently coordinated
attacks on the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan
Remember when the
sophisticated here were demanding we halt our offensive against the Taliban
because Ramadan was starting?
As long as the Iraqis know we
will stay to help them fight, such attacks will lead Iraqis to help us finger
the guilty parties. We are making their lives better and such attacks remind
them of what can go wrong if we leave too soon. We stopped one:
A fourth police station was targeted
with a large car bomb but guards shot the driver before he could detonate the
explosives. Police officials identified the driver, who was badly wounded, as a
Syrian national. "He was shouting, 'Death to the Iraqi police! You're
collaborators!' " Sgt. Ahmed Abdel Sattar was quoted as saying by the
Associated Press.
It is good that we got one to
interrogate. I guess this may answer my question of local Baathists versus
imported Islamists. So too does the symbolism
of attacking the al Rashid Hotel in
Back to the first article, I
am still amazed, after the UN headquarters bombing, that a Red Cross
spokeswoman could say:
We were always confident that people
knew us and that our work here would protect us," she said. "This is
completely un-understandable."
They are terrorists, remember? Stop reading Reuters and taking their
terminology seriously.
I think this is a sign we are
winning. If they were successfully targeting our troops without suffering too
many casualties, they'd still be doing that. The insurgents see that Iraqis are
going back to work and looking forward to a peaceful democratic
On the hotel attack, one
American commander noted:
Yes,
high-profile attacks generate a lot of media interest that definitely takes
away from the many great things that we are doing to advance Iraqi growth,
Iraqi improvements in life, and a representative government in Iraq," the
commander said. "Yes, the target of the al-Rashid Hotel is significant,
especially since Mr. Wolfowitz was staying there at the time."
But
the attack must be weighed against increasing Iraqi frustration with the
attackers and increasing Iraqi participation in securing their own country, the
commander said, adding that Iraqis themselves are turning in more and more of
the attackers.
Ultimately,
giving Iraqis political and economic power, Dempsey said, is the only way to
win the war.
More than the military
numbers, I will really worry when the trend lines of turning over political,
economic, and security functions to the Iraqis go backwards. The military
casualties hurt more on a personal level, but as long as we are winning, we
have to suck it up.
Our President won't be pushed
out of
"Counter-Insurgency" (Posted
This article
rightly notes that much of pacification is political. It rightly notes that we
cannot use a sledge hammer to kill the few gnats who buzz about the new
This should be a caution to
those who want to just increase the number of US troops in
However, we should be open to
shifting US troops from the quieter north and south to the Sunni triangle to
start securing small zones at a time and then moving on, leaving Iraqis behind
to maintain the success with American and allied special forces to assist the
security situation.
The resistance in
Iraqi is being successfully
rebuilt and the casualties should not scare us away. Clearly, the increased
friendly casualties must be addressed. In the last two weeks, it has actually
gotten to the one-per-day rate that reporters have long asserted. Is it a trend
or a desperate surge? It is still low-level so talk of
Oh, one thing could reflect
Maintain the initiative.
"The Death of the Brezhnev Doctrine" (Posted October 25, 2003)
Twenty years ago, only two days after the Marine Corps Beirut barracks bombing, American forces invaded Grenada to overthrow the Marxist regime that aspired to be a forward base for the Soviet Union and Cuba. While the progressive class finds it easy to deride the attack, the short-notice invasion was tactically difficult and the strategic implications great. No more would people around the world think we were only playing defense, trying to delay the inevitable triumph of communism.
On that day we went on the offensive, leading directly to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Hooah!
“Another Reason
This fact, and the
nature of the debate surrounding it, was revealed in a thoroughly reported
front-page article by Douglas Farah and Dana Priest
in the October 14 Washington Post. According to a consensus of American,
European, and Arab intelligence officials, the article said, the "upper
echelon" of al Qaeda--including a favored older
son of Osama bin Laden and the group's de facto
secretary of war and secretary of the treasury--"is managing the terrorist
organization from
The intelligence
agencies, said the Post, have known about the relocation at least since May,
when it was learned that the May 12 Riyadh suicide bombing that killed 35 people,
including eight Americans, was conceived, planned, and ordered by high al Qaeda officials in eastern
Target:
Were I God, special forces and intel people would be inside
“Switched Roles?”
(Posted
Lileks did some Googling on
Googling the
I don’t believe Lileks is right on this. It isn’t an exact reversal.
Now, I guess I won’t try to project my views on this to all politicians
who switched roles on
But for me, I guess I always felt that the
To generalize, yesterday’s
Today, those who support nation building in
Now I’m not saying that there isn’t something to the generalization that for many, reaction to the president’s actions was affected greatly by whether he was their president or the other party’s. But for Haiti versus Iraq, national interest criteria remains constant. What changes is what one should do about dictators.
"Smaller Brigades" (Posted
So, with an increase from 33
active component brigades to 48 by making the brigades smaller (and pushing
divisional support units down to brigade to make them more self-contained) and
a similar move with the enhanced separate brigades of the National Guard
increasing those brigades from 15 to 22, I wonder if we are going to round out
at the brigade level?
That is, we used to round out
our Cold War-era 2-brigade active duty divisions with a reserve component brigade.
The theory was they would quickly be mobilized and sent to war. The Persian
Gulf War showed us that we couldn't get them in action that fast. Even the
enhanced separate brigades of the Guard that were supposed to get extra
training and priority on equipment could not make the grade in a ninety-day
period.
Yet we've mobilized 5 of our
15 enhanced separate brigades. I believe these are mostly broken down into
battalions where they have performed quite well during the Iraq War. Perhaps
we've decided that battalions in the Guard are capable of being brought up to
speed in time to fight and we are now going to round out our active 2-battalion
brigades when needed. The numbers fit, with the National Guard e-brigades
numbering about half the active duty brigades. Not all brigades will have just
two battalions so the numbers can be jiggered a bit.
I'd dismissed this concept in
favor of rounding out by brigade in a Military Review article a few years ago, but tremendous
advances over the last three years in communications and aerial firepower may
make this feasible. Rounding out AC brigades with NG battalions certainly
exploits the ability of the Guard to have excellent smaller units while the
lack of opportunity for large-scale training limits the quality of the larger
units. (Please note: the editors garbled the text in a couple places when they
stripped out supporting graphics. The cleaned up version is on my web site here.)
"Combat Intensity" (Posted
We are experiencing an
elevated—but still low-level—casualty rate in
From a press
conference:
Q Okay. And why the -- why the ratcheting up of attacks in the Sunni
triangle, from your perspective?
GEN. SCHWARTZ: I think there is a -- they are -- have decided to engage
us, and they are doing so. But I think it is important to recognize that
some of that is a result of our own activity. The 82nd Airborne has been
focused on the Fallujah and al-Ramadi
area. That is where a lot of these attacks have occurred. So the
bottom line is, this -- there's a combination of things: some elevation,
as General Sanchez has indicated, in the attacks by the enemy, but likewise --
and he also indicated that we have increased our tempo as well to take these
guys out.
Later:
GEN. SCHWARTZ: The answer to your
first question is that we are experiencing in the neighborhood of 25 attacks a
day throughout all of
I recall at some point in
maybe August we were seeing 40 incidents per day. So we have a recent increase from
several months ago (July? when we eased off thinking we'd broken the back of
the Baathist resistance?) that still doesn't appear
to match the highest point of attacks. And we are partly responsible for at
least some of the increased contacts by going on the offensive.
Not a reason to worry as long
as reconstruction is going along and locals are going on line in security
operations.
"It Becomes Clearer" (Posted
I've never quite fully trusted
William Arkin's writings on defense issues. Somehow
they have just seemed… off.
I remember a piece Arkin wrote some time ago. A year?
Two? Anyway, he wrote a critical article stating that
the
That was such a basic mistake
for a military writer and former military analyst that I have been suspicious
ever since.
Now I
know why.
"The Sadness is Unbearable" (Posted
When you read this, you can see
how human rights organizations can speak out for those who die in silence,
rather than the trendynistas who target
I'm only part of the way
through the long report. So much is shocking to read even knowing
intellectually what is going on:
Semi-starvation yields large numbers of informants
among the prisoners, leading to a prison culture of distrust and hostility.
Prisoners fight each other over scraps of food or over the clothing of deceased
inmates. The camps feature the gamut of abnormal and aberrant human behavior
that results from treating people like animals.
Can people honestly say the
We cannot reward this regime.
Not ever.
And I truly feel sick believing that we must put off the
day of reckoning with an overweight, movie-viewing, sexual predator psychopath
simply because addressing
Whatever we do, regime change
must be the goal.
"Make Them Choose" (Posted October 23, 2003)
A separate EU defense
organization is not in
our interests. Indeed a politically unified EU is not in our interests. The
details of the EU constitution oozing out are frightening to me. When we are
seeking to spread democracy to eliminate the hatred that has boiled over into
Islamist terrorism,
We must resist this move
toward EU dictatorship. Otherwise, we will one day find that we have not fought
our last war in
The EUros
want NATO to be subordinate to the EU defense organization. No way. NATO must
surely evolve to make it relevant to our security and one way to do it is to
make first allegiance to NATO the basic requirement of membership. If
Oh, discovered a good
article:
Late
or not, however, the
NATO primacy must be our
goal.
“Bush Thanks
Australians” (Posted
Bush personally saluted Prime Minister John
Howard as "a leader of exceptional courage" for not buckling earlier
this year to his nation's largest peace marches since the Vietnam War. Instead,
Howard sent 2,000 troops to
“Rate of Attacks”
(Posted
The rate of attacks in
"The number
of wounded and the number of engagements in last three weeks have been a little
bit higher than we've seen before," Sanchez said. "We've had an
average number of engagements from 20 to 25 (daily). We've seen a spike up to
35 in last three weeks."
Still not the July rate but this is a spike. We’ll see if
they can sustain it or if the Baathists are being killed and captured.
“No Need to Wonder
After All” (Posted
Television reports on the Rumsfeld memo, even on Fox, surprised me. I should not be shocked that Daschle and Hillary Clinton slammed the administration over the Rumsfeld memo, claiming we are admitting to not doing well.
Opponents of the war like to claim that pro-war people unfairly blast them for offering criticism of the war. Dissent is not treason, they rightly say.
Yet when an administration official is found to be asking questions to make sure we win, to make sure we don’t declare victory and bury our heads in the sand, then the opposition is unable to constructively participate in the debate. Instead, they try to score cheap political points.
I wanted to believe that this memo wouldn’t prompt exactly the reaction it got from the usual suspects. I really did. I’m sometimes too damn idealistic.
Shame on them.
“Oh, Those Gulags” (Posted
Multi-generational prison labor camps. Perhaps 200,000 North Koreans enslaved in them:
Three generations of family members are
sometimes given life terms along with family members charged with political
crimes, said David Hawk, a longtime human rights advocate and author of the
report who interviewed more than 30 former prisoners and guards
Repeat after me, “Axis of Evil.” Is it really so damn hard?
"Turks to the Border" (Posted
As I've already advocated, Safire is
discussing sending Turkish troops to the Iraq-Syria border.
"Because the UN General Assembly Has Done So
Much" (Posted
Fair is fair. After the UN GA
has done so much to stop suicide bombers from killing innocent Israeli
civilians (and Americans too) as they eat pizza or use mass transit, it is only
fitting that the esteemed body protest
the wall the Israelis are building to stop suicide bombers from
infiltrating.
I mean, the Palestinian
Authority doesn't seem to be able to do anything. Shoot, the PA could have had
the vast majority of the
Blowback is a bitch, ain't it?
"We'll See" (Posted
In a joint statement with Britain,
France and Germany, the Iranians pledged "full cooperation" with the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to deal with all of its concerns
about Iran's nuclear development activities
Since I don't think that we
plan any regime change until spring of 2005, we have time to see if
Of course, this requires us
to have faith in the word of the mullahs and faith in the
multi-lateralists in
I wonder what will happen.
And there is still that small
matter of sponsoring terrorism.
"The Memo" (Posted
This is the memo
that amazingly seems to have led some to conclude it is a secret admission of
failure (thanks to Instapundit for the first link to the USA Today memo--the link is now to the DOD pdf version):
TO: Gen. Dick Myers
Paul Wolfowitz
Gen. Pete Pace
Doug Feith
FROM: Donald Rumsfeld
SUBJECT: Global War on Terrorism
The questions I posed to combatant
commanders this week were: Are we winning or losing the Global War on Terror?
Is DoD changing fast enough
to deal with the new 21st century security environment? Can a big institution
change fast enough? Is the USG changing fast enough?
DoD
has been organized, trained and equipped to fight big armies, navies and air
forces. It is not possible to change DoD
fast enough to successfully fight the global war on terror; an alternative
might be to try to fashion a new institution, either within DoD
or elsewhere — one that seamlessly focuses the capabilities of several
departments and agencies on this key problem.
With respect to global terrorism, the
record since Septermber 11th seems to be:
We are having mixed results with Al Qaida, although we have put considerable pressure on them —
nonetheless, a great many remain at large.
USG has made reasonable progress in
capturing or killing the top 55 Iraqis.
USG has made
somewhat slower progress tracking down the Taliban — Omar, Hekmatyar,
etc.
With respect to the Ansar
Al-Islam, we are just getting started.
Have we fashioned the right mix of
rewards, amnesty, protection and confidence in the
Does DoD need to think through new ways to organize,
train, equip and focus to deal with the global war on terror?
Are the changes we have and are making
too modest and incremental? My impression is that we have not yet made truly
bold moves, although we have have made many sensible,
logical moves in the right direction, but are they enough?
Today, we lack metrics to know if we are
winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing, killing or
deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas
and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?
Does the
Do we need a new organization?
How do we stop those who are financing
the radical madrassa schools?
Is our current situation such that
"the harder we work, the behinder we get"?
It is pretty clear that the coalition
can win in
Does CIA need a new finding?
Should we create a private foundation to
entice radical madradssas to a more moderate course?
What else should we be considering?
Please be prepared to discuss this at
our meeting on Saturday or Monday.
Thanks.
The NYT
says this about the memo:
The
memo, dated Oct. 16 and first reported by
Rumsfeld repeatedly says this is a long war and that we face
difficulties ahead before we can ever think about declaring victory. Just what is the author of the
NYT article talking about? Happy talk from Rumsfeld?
I mean seriously, "stark?"
This is a memo to keep people focused on doing more to win and to avoid passing
out medals and declaring the war over. What on Earth is wrong with that and how
does it in any way indicate that the administration secretly knows we are
losing? The President's reaction is right on the money:
``I've
always felt that there's a tendency of people to kind of seek a comfort zone
and hope that the war on terror is over,'' Bush said. ``And I view it as a
responsibility of the
I know I wrote go on to the next
grievance but I hoped there would at least be a shadow of reality to back it
up. If this truly has legs to become the next Pelosi talking point, I will
seriously wonder about the anti-war side.
"Good God" (Posted
You know, you can go to
school in these places and still I can be shocked.
We have our own madrassas, it seems.
Truly, it is discouraging to
have to fight a war with the like of these educated fanatics pulling for our
defeat.
"Constabulary Units" (Posted
Strategypage.com has an
article urging the creation of American Constabulary
units—units designed for peacekeeping missions and not major combat operations.
I would like to take issue with this specifically:
These constabulary troops may be
recruited from existing sources, with military-style but slightly longer
enlistment terms and contracts. There will be a noticeable point in time during
a military operation, where the conventional units are overkill and unsuited to
police duty. That is when the Constabulary unit should take over. The
constabulary brigades ought to rotate in and out on regularly scheduled
multi-year deployment (say two or three years). This allows enough time for a
rapport to be built up between the natives and the troops. The quantity of
these constabulary units also places a de facto limit on peacekeeping
commitments. When you run out, more hard decisions have to be made, forcing the
powers-that-be to examine more closely potential peacekeeping situations.
Forming dedicated constabulary units
would also provide a focus for experiments and research on the subject. This is
different from current efforts, that are focused more
towards converting units from warfighting to
peacekeeping, and back again. The existence of constabulary units will also
reassure conventional warriors that they will not be used up on peacekeeping
missions, which are demonstrably not popular (to the point of discouraging
re-enlistment) for a variety of reasons. The conventional military may then
confidently return to focus on it’s core mission,
while the constabulary provides an outlet for the peacekeeping mission.
If peacekeeping missions
deter soldiers from reenlisting, just what existing sources will be used to
recruit soldiers specifically into units that only do peacekeeping? So a
soldier who might do peacekeeping for a year will want out but some guy who
will do it for a 2 or 3 year stretch in a longer term of enlistment will
eagerly sign up? I don't think so.
And how on earth would having
a set number of constabulary units limit our peacekeeping? We have none now.
How many do we do now? I guarantee that political leadership will never respond
to an Army that says we are tapped out on constabulary units by saying,
"well ok then, we'll say no to this mission." Hell no, in will go the
infantry. So much for reassuring the combat guys.
Also, this suggestion implies
that constabulary units will be new units. If we went this route, I bet combat
units would be converted to constabulary units.
Truly, I would rather have
combat units retrained for peacekeeping and then deprogrammed after the mission
to become a combat unit again.
Hell, in an ideal world, I'd
rather minimize the amount of time our combat units are committed to
peacekeeping. The Balkans wars were truly luxury wars although we are now
drawing down.
But the article does have
important points on the vast differences between combat and peacekeeping. These
are real and must be addressed.
In my opinion, raise more
military police units. They are police and outstanding light infantry that
won't need to level a block to kill armed enemies. Plus, base security is in
higher demand now when they aren't in the field on peacekeeping. Send those
National Guard tankers who are lugging around M-16s back home.
Just say no to constabulary
units.
"The Imminent Crisis/No Crisis Issue"
(Posted
How is it that some see a slight decrease in the rate of increase for their
favorite
This guy is
defending his "imminence" claim. (again
from Sullivan).
Here's his first defense:
Exhibit
A offered by readers in defense of the president was this quote in his State of
the Union speech of 2003: "Some have said we must not act until the threat
is imminent."
But
Mr. Bush went on: "Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their
intentions, politely putting us on notice before they
strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions,
all words, and all recriminations would come too late."
That
sounds to me as if he was saying the threat could well be imminent, so we'd
better not take a chance and hit Saddam Hussein before he hits us.
Well, no, it sounds to me
like he was saying that the threat is coming and when it is imminent, how will
we know? They won't tell us. And the CIA apparently can't tell us. So how do we
know it is imminent? We can't, the President said, and the only way to judge
what to do is to look at the regime's ghastly record, reasonably conclude it
will do so to us when it can, and rightly determine it must go.
Or this one:
In
his speech in
He
continued: "Some ask how urgent this danger is to
He goes on:
The
point of the column to which the e-mail readers complained was not, however,
whether Mr. Bush or any cabinet member ever used the exact words "imminent
threat" (which were not used with quotation marks
in the column).
The
point was that the president, Mr. Rumsfeld and other
architects of the war insisted before launching it that deliverable weapons of
mass destruction existed in
Here the author is conflating
different types of WMD. We believed Saddam had chemical weapons since he had
them and used them repeatedly. The current and prior two administrations
operated under this assumption and so did the rest of the world. Indeed, the
anti-war side said that these chemical weapons were reason not to invade. They said we could contain Saddam and
that invading would provoke Saddam
into using weapons they now insist he never had. I still want to know why the
CIA didn't know that
But we also feared he would
develop and use or distribute biological weapons and we knew he pursued this
option. Disease isn't too hard to spread once the infection gets going. One guy
spewing small pox in an airport could do a lot of damage. The worst case
scenario was that Saddam would get nukes. And we know he had a program and was
far closer to having such weapons in 1991 than we realized.
So, to sum up—we thought he
had chemical weapons (useful on the battlefield against unprepared enemies) and
we knew he was seeking bio and nuclear weapons. Since Saddam used chemicals
lavishly, we had reason to believe he would use the rest.
The quotes he lists in no way
indicate to me that the administration was implying imminence. I read the
statements to say that the threat is real. It will arrive. But will it arrive
tomorrow or next week? Who knows? But it will arrive and we must destroy the
threat while we can. The consequences of trusting Saddam were just to great to do otherwise.
And as I've noted before, if
the President believed the threat from
Imminent,
by butt. We knew the threat was
real and we took care of it.
Please, just bring on the
next ridiculous charge. I'm getting bored.
"Some Answers to My Questions" (Posted
Ok this CSM
article answers some of my recent questions about the fighting in
• Meanwhile, the pouncing
raids that US forces initiated two months ago have hurt the guerrillas. More
than 1,000 fighters have been arrested and many others killed. The bounty paid
by ex-Baathists toinduce
attacks on American soldiers has had to be increased from $1,000 to $5,000 to
find takers.
We are on the offensive in
the field. This is good. An increased toll while sitting on our butts would be
bad news. The increased price the Baathists need to
pay to get people to attack us is good too. I imagine that the quality of
attacks is bound to go down as the price goes up. People want to live to spend
that kind of money so they are more cautious, I suspect. Plus, early
retirements would be encouraged thus reducing the experienced attackers. I'm
just speculating on this impact, however. Still another posting my Sullivan
indicates that the number of attacks are going down:
One thing is certain. The attacks are
less frequent than say two months ago. The attacks lately have been harming
more Iraqis than Americans. Mortar shells in Ba'quba
three weeks ago took 12 innocent lives at a grocery market. A bomb planted
beside the sidewalk in Adhamiya exploded when a bus
stopped next to it killing 7 people. This has made people very bitter and
critical whenever they hear about attacks. More and more people are informing
against others they know involved with attacks. Large numbers of Arab
infiltrators have been arrested. Of course they came from
Good, if true. I'd like to
see more reliable stats on this feature. I really should look for this.
Patience,
people. This isn't
Shoot, in sixty years, Iraqis
could be as loyal friends as the Belgians, French, and Germans are today. (Oh
God, what am I saying?)
"Potential Problems" (Posted
An article
on Iraqi resistance. Our goal
to reduce our troop strength depends on how we cope with these problems.
While I am optimistic that
But three months later the insurgents
appear to be as determined as ever. Their attacks have become more
sophisticated while terrorist bombings have emerged as a major threat. American
commanders insist they are making headway in bringing order to Iraq, but the
indications are that the fight will be difficult and prolonged.
Yes, the opposition is paying
for attacks, so this undercuts the ideological component which is good. But the
attacks continue.
I wondered if we were still
on the offensive which might account for the uptick
in casualties since mid-September. But this article notes:
"It
is my impression that the guerrilla campaign against us is spreading and
intensifying and the other side does not seem to be losing enough people in the
process," he said. "They are doing well and I am not too happy about
that."
Since I'd earlier read over
the summer that we were knocking any attackers back with heavy casualties and
going after them quietly but effectively, this is very bad if true. The problem
is, I don't want a body count mentality to set in by
providing the numbers to judge this by. If we start judging by kill ratios and
body counts, both will go up and God knows if they will be insurgents or
civilians unlucky enough to be in the way. Our goal is to lower this into a
police problem and not push it into a military problem.
Better to soldier on,
fighting back to contain the low-level resistance without escalating, and
working to undercut the Baathists and cut off their money. In time, Iraqis will
be fighting the Baathists and they will not be
And at the risk of falsely
hoping for the best, get Saddam.
"North Korean Agreement" (Posted
More details on the proposal
by the President for some type of agreement with
One of the problems I have
with the security agreement is why would
I think we can reasonably
rule out that
So what's in it for us?
First, I think
Second, we will give the
world time (while we use time constructively) to demonstrate that
"We could demonstrate to the world
that it's time to take more decisive action, from cutting off their oil, to
seizing their ships, to having unpleasant things happen to their suspected
sites," the official said.
We will then be much freer to
squeeze
I certainly hope the State
Department can manage to string some words together that do not, in fact,
prevent us from tightly containing
"War on Terror—Home Front" (Posted
If you can read this Steyn piece and still say that our government's actions
at home are too harsh and suppressing civil liberties, well I don't know what
to say.
Islam isn't our enemy, but
the Wahhabi scum sure are. Keep them out.
”Iraqi Troop
Strength” (Posted
Before the war, I expected our troop strength in
The Army is setting a goal of 50,000 by summer 2005.
I based my estimate on assuming a corps of seven combat brigades
(two divisions and a separate regiment/brigade) plus support units. I assumed
that by then they would be more in the nature of a garrison force. Say a heavy
division in the south to watch the Iranians and a light division in the north
to reassure the Kurds. Another brigade could be in the
The article outlines the following scenario:
There are now 130,000
While an optimistic assessment at this point with the Baathists still resisting at a low-level after nearly 6 months, this is what we could see:
"By my estimate, we can sustain six brigades in
This ‘timetable’ is based on events and not the calendar, but I don’t think it is an unreasonable goal at all. Still, it does depend on certain things happening. Like increased numbers of Iraqi security forces taking over and being effective against the Baathists.
And reconstruction. We need to get
And it sure wouldn’t hurt to get Saddam.
“Reassuring
The President will not sign (and try to get the Senate to
approve) any formal
non-aggression pact with
U.S. officials
stressed that any agreement would not be a bilateral one between the United
States and North Korea, but a multilateral accord within the format of the
six-party talks.
I’ve been strongly opposed to any formal guarantees but I’ve
been open to some restatement of generally accepted generalities about not
attacking others. I suppose something with the Pacific powers and the
But if this leads to some in the West saying we now no
longer need to worry about
Also, unless the other side of the bargain is thoroughly intrusive inspections to verify nuclear programs are halted, this will be less than worthless.
On top of all this, even if the promises are all good
enough, we must still squeeze
It’s the regime, stupid. We should not trust our safety to
the good will of Kim Jong-Il and his merry band of thugs. Nor should we rest
easy believing that we can maintain perfect vigilance to watch
One question on all this, however.
Given the North Korean paranoia that the
One other question. Just how did this whole crisis evolve into the question of how we can reassure them? Truly this is bizarro world.
Just asking.
"Our UN Victory" (Posted
We got our unanimous
resolution without turning over
Amazingly, even this 15-0 gesture
of approval has been spun into a defeat by the Washington
Post:
The 15 to 0 vote, bringing in not just
The NYT
opines "President Bush's victory in the United Nations on Thursday has
brought him at least the veneer of international backing[.]"
Just the
veneer.
Amazing. I thought the international community's blessing was
always a good thing.
Apparently
not.
"Brigade-Based Army" (Posted
From
strategypage.com. Interesting:
October 17, 2003: The
U.S. Army is moving ahead with a major reorganization to make the brigade the
major combat unit, with the division replacing the corps as a headquarters.
Details of the new organization are not yet set, but active duty combat
brigades will probably increase from 33 to 48 and reserve/National Guard combat
brigades from 15 to 22. This makes available some 60 combat brigades, but only
about 140 infantry and armor battalions. That's because the new plan calls for
frequently using only two combat battalions per brigade. The idea behind that
is to mix tank and infantry companies more frequently, and regularly. This is
an idea that has been bounced around for decades, because in combat, you often
have tank battalions broken up so the tanks can operate with infantry
units.
There is already considerable experience
with "independent brigades," as the army has maintained some of these
for over half a century. Artillery, engineer and other support units are added
to a regular brigade (that is part of a division), and much is known about what
works and what doesn't with independent brigades (that can operate by
themselves without being part of a division). Artillery and aviation, however,
is likely to be more centralized, and parceled out to brigades as needed by the
division headquarters (just as corps have long parceled out stuff to
divisions). Artillery units, especially MLRS (rocket) battalions, have
sufficient range that they can easily support several widely dispersed brigades
if the communications are available. Aviation, of course, has even greater
range. The new organization could send a division with one to five brigades,
depending on the mission. Such a division would have a
strength of from 7,000-30,000 troops. The first two divisions to go
through the reorganization are the 3rd Mechanized Infantry and the 101st
Airborne.
It seems like what is going
on is that we are essentially replacing divisions in favor of brigades as the
major combined arms maneuver element and making the divisional headquarters
function as the corps headquarters functions. We currently expect a corps to
command 2-5 divisions so this new divisional pseudo-corps fits nicely at 2-5
brigades. Since 3rd ID fought in the Iraq War as separate brigade
teams with air power providing the major firepower, perhaps this is the model.
It is really interesting that the brigades may be two-battalion units. Like the
old US armored combat commands of World War II. Our tank divisions essentially
had two-battalion combat commands (brigades) with one tank and one armored
infantry battalion as the core.
This seems reasonable
although I am not convinced that communications mean that span of control means
we can have so many brigades under one division flag. I'm assuming from the
upper end of 30,000 that up to 7 brigades means line brigades and does not
include artillery, aviation, support, etc. brigades. Also, the shrunken line brigades
will not be as robust as larger brigades. As long as we can fight opponents
like
But if we must fight and
endure casualties, this may be too fragile an organization. It has no depth. At
first blush, by abandoning the third battalion, it looks like we would be
abandoning the concept of an organic reserve, with 2 battalions up front and
one back. Are we counting on information dominance to avoid surprise and commit
other units if needed? But it also sounds like we will cross attach companies
to make combined arms task forces. Will these be brigades be organized into one
tank heavy task force (2 tank companies and 1 mechanized company) and one
infantry heavy task force (2 mechanized companies and 1 tank company)? Or will
there be three balanced task forces of 1 tank company
and 1 mechanized company each? No apparent headquarter element for the latter,
of course. I will note, however, that later in World War II when manpower
shortages hit, the Germans used infantry divisions with three regiments and
each regiment had only two infantry battalions. I must concede that they fought
well on the vicious eastern front against the Soviets. As long as their
artillery functioned, they could fight quite well. So maybe ours will be robust
enough.
Or, the Army may plan to plug
in National Guard battalions to fill out a 2-battalion brigade in case of a
tougher fight. Guard divisions and brigades take a while to train up to active
duty competency. Battalions are easier to keep at a high standard of training. The
Guard won't like that if it sacrifices Guard divisions. I don't get the
article's number of Guard brigades increasing from 15 to 22. This must mean the
enhanced separate brigades, of which there are 15. The Guard also has 8
divisions that this apparently doesn't include and a few other separate
brigades.
It certainly adds flexibility
to tailor divisions for particular missions. It also relies on secure
communications, God-like battlefield awareness, and absolute air supremacy to
compensate for being thinner on the line.
I wonder how many divisional
flags there will be. I'm assuming we'll have more.
"Troop Morale" (Posted
An unscientific survey
of soldier morale in
A broad survey of
Not sure what to make of
this. Is it bellyaching and normal or is it a sign of a problem?
"The numbers are consistent with
what I suspect is going on there," said David Segal, a military
sociologist at the
Even in the article, it is also
noted:
Some military experts pointed to good
news for the administration in the survey. Military historian Eliot Cohen, who
serves on a Pentagon advisory panel, noted that the proportion that said the
war was worthwhile -- 67 percent -- and the proportion of troops that said they
have a clearly defined mission -- 64 percent -- are "amazingly high."
He added that complaints are typical. "American troops have a God-given
right and tradition of grumbling," he said.
Let's look at some of the
figures the article reports from the survey.
First:
The survey, conducted by the Stars and
Stripes newspaper, also recorded about a third of the respondents complaining
that their mission lacks clear definition and characterizing the war in
This doesn't seem too
unreasonable. I've noted before that a lot of troops in
The article also reports:
In the survey, 34 percent described
their morale as low, compared with 27 percent who described it as high and 37
percent who said it was average; 49 percent described their unit's morale as
low, while 16 percent called it high.
We can see a situation where
a person with more positive (or less negative) personal views is unwilling to
generalize and assume the group is equally satisfied. I'd like to see if the
specialist troops doing guard duty are the ones with low morale. This doesn't
strike me as a terribly alarming statistic thus far.
The only other number noted
is this:
A total of 49 percent of those
questioned said it was "very unlikely" or "not likely" that
they would remain in the military after they complete their current
obligations. In the past, enlistment rates tended to drop after conflicts, but
many defense experts and noncommissioned officers have warned of the potential
for a historically high exodus, particularly of reservists.
I don't find this too
surprising. Lots of people get out in peacetime every year when their terms are
up. Plus, our soldiers went to war. When their time is up, it will be
understandable if they want to go home. Shoot, in World War II, the morale of
our troops in
I've long said I prefer that
American soldiers limit their peacekeeping work. They are superb fighting
machines and are wasted on guard duty. Getting a unanimous UNSC
resolution on our occupation should help get foreign troops. Training Iraqi
security, police, and army units will help more. In time, the fewer troops we
have in
I'm glad the military watches
for morale problems. You never can tell. But I'm not alarmed just from this. As
long as the troops are doing their jobs and not getting themselves or others
killed, bitching is fine. Nor were dog and pony shows invented in this war.
Shoot, the only time in Basic Training I ever saw soap and water before chow in
field training was when some general came to visit …
"Letter Writing" (Posted
The U.S. military's public affairs
office in Baghdad has slapped the 503rd Regiment on the wrist, telling the unit
not to send anymore of them, but no action will be taken against the 503rd.
Officials said the Pentagon considers the matter closed.
That is, the 2nd
battalion of the 503rd airborne infantry regiment. News writers
rarely seem to understand the numbering of our units. (or
that not everything big and green is a "tank") We have a kind of
regimental-based system for numbering battalions to carry on the legacy of the
regiment. So we have battalions named after regiments. And a brigade of three
battalions won't usually be composed of the 1st, 2nd, and
3rd of XYZ regiment. So, 2-503 is a battalion, the second, of the
503rd regiment. Calling the unit the 503rd regiment makes
it sound larger than it is. Of course, this assumes anybody knows the
difference between a battalion and a regiment…
Shoot, when I was in Basic
Training, I was in some training division's 3rd brigade. My unit was
E-3-10. Even our drill sergeants were confused when somebody asked just what
the heck "E-3-10" meant. The drill sergeants though
the 3 referred to 3rd brigade. Later, out of ear shot of the
drill sergeants (I'm not stupid), I explained that we
are Echo company of the 3-10 Infantry regiment (training, of course, not real
infantry). Third battalion of the Tenth regiment. Simple.
Here's a link describing units
in the Army. Note that other than Rangers and cavalry regiments, we don't
actually organize the Army into regiments despite the use of regimental numbers
to identify our battalions. Roughly speaking, our brigades are kind of like
regiments. Kind of.
And here's 173rd
AB Brigade. It has two battalions: 2-503 and 1-508.
Hmm. Went
off on a tangent. My real point was leave the 2-503 alone. They're busy.
"Letter Writing Scandal" (Posted
It's a small world.
I met the commander of the
173rd Airborne Brigade parachute battalion who is behind the
letter-writing "scandal." I hope this dies out. I met then-Major
Dominic Caraccilo six years ago when we were in the
same forum on Army issues. We showed each other pictures of our kids and I sat
next to his wife in the audience waiting my turn at the podium while he
presented his paper. While I cannot claim to know him well at all, my
impression of him was that he was a smart, dedicated, and decent soldier. He stands
by his actions and I trust his motives.
Of course, as a former E-4, I
can see some platoon sergeant growling at one of his PFCs
who balked at signing to "stop belly aching about his freaking
constitutional rights and sign the damn letter."
But LTC Caraccilo
was not trying to pull a fast one, in my judgment. Give him a break. He's doing
a tough job far from home, and I for
"Casualties" (Posted
Although our casualties in
Iraq are still low from a military standpoint (and not—obviously—from the view
of those who have died or their friends and familiy),
I've noticed that since mid September, combat deaths have inched up to about 3
every 4 days. While not up to the July peak, is this from more effective
resistance or from more active offensive operations by our side?
"We Can Turn
Safire calls for squeezing Syria
to get them to change their tune.
I think this would work.
Of course, the billions of
dollars
"Intelligence on
Intel is never perfect and rarely
certain. Those who argue it should be before acting are exemplars of
Churchill's "unwisdom." Pathetic Neville
Chamberlain waited for absolute proof of Hitler's perfidy. He got it -- Nazi
blitzkrieg.
Smart enemies hide "proof," so intel analysts probe
"indications" and make educated assessments. Analyses are bound to
conflict. That doesn't make the mistaken analysis a lie.
Saddam was Hell-bent on
getting WMD, and with his Western friends and the corrupted Oil for Food
program to help him ride out our sanctions, the world would have completely
abandoned us (as they were gradually doing over the 1990s) and
There was no lying to get us
into war. No hyped threat. Just the guts to destroy an
obvious threat before we took it on the chin.
Did September 11 teach us
nothing? We are not dealing with people who deserve the benefit of the doubt. They
hate us enough to kill us in mass murder. Never forget that chilling fact.
"Reaction to the Turks" (Posted
From the
wires:
A car bomb blew up near the
Turkish embassy in
Well, I guess we know the Baathists vote 'no' on letting the Turks into
Kind of a
good reason to put the Turks into Iraqi Sunni areas. I'm still rooting for Al Anbar
Province.
"Ammo Dumps" (Posted
The many former regime
ammunition sites in
The two most recent suicide bombings
here and virtually every other attack on American soldiers and Iraqis were
carried out with explosives and matériel taken from
Saddam Hussein's former weapons dumps, which are much larger than previously
estimated and remain, for the most part, unguarded by American troops, allied
officials said Monday.
So, do we really have these
sites unguarded?
It is such an important thing
to do that it defies imagination that they are truly unprotected. If the
attacks really are reliant on raiding these depots for arms, it seems that we
would be in pretty good shape if we sealed them off and protected them.
Given this, I wouldn't rule
out the possibility that this is information warfare to lull Saddam's people
into visiting them.
Of course, note that the
report only says "unguarded by American troops". And we have
excellent surveillance equipment. I assume anybody who wanted to carry out
significant acts of resistance would need to roll a vehicle up to the depots to
haul out weapons. We could spot that and then nail them as they left. American
troops can be nearby even if they aren't technically "guarding" the
depots. That is, rather than a hole in our security, this may be a kill sack.
But who knows? Militaries,
even excellent ones like ours, can make boneheaded mistakes. I just don't
assume it.
"Terrorism and Nukes" (Posted
If you ever have your doubts
about why
Iran is on the Axis of Evil:
Some
of this is bluster, but for the most part it is an honest statement of
There
is another November date our leaders should take seriously: the 25th, the
anniversary of the disappearance of the twelfth imam, and thus the most
significant date in the Shiite calendar. Reports from
With even Canadians upset
over the murder of their reporter; with American troopss
in
Of course, this threat of a
nuclear test raises the question of whether we can afford to wait until 2005 to
overthrow the mullahs
I guess the real question is
what is our estimate of when
Sure damn hope so.
"Why I Can't Give Up Hope" (Posted
Despite the disgusting
collaborationists in
Via Instapundit,
this sign:
Sabine
Herold, to put it mildly, is not your typical Frog. Herold, the 22-year-old leader of Liberté, J’ecris Ton Nom (Freedom, I Write Your Name),
has in the last few months emerged as the massively popular and highly
photogenic leader of -- zut! -- a burgeoning pro-market, pro-American counterculture in
It
is startling to hear any Parisienne, let alone a
college student, drop references to F. A. Hayek in casual conversation,
describe Communists as "disgusting," or lead
pro-war demonstrations in front of the American Embassy. Herold
is fond of issuing heretical statements guaranteed to make any good fonctionnaire’s
skin crawl.
Go Harold. I don't want to despise
"We Really Are At War" (Posted
Lileks
has an excellent post fisking a letter written by the
FBI whistleblower Colleen Rowley who says that we are not in fact free people
and that we are enduring a siege on our civil liberties from the government.
Very clearly, the people with this mindset deny the very idea that we are at war. They see no connection between our troops overseas and 3,000 dead on 9-11. With that assumption in mind, it is perfectly rational for them to wonder about all this extra security and troops overseas and more money for defense. If I thought we were at peace I'd be worried about this too, I guess.
And if we are not at war, those people who challenge your anti-war views are clearly trying to silence you. It becomes easy to believe that the government is really checking out your library reading habits. From there it is a short logical step to believe that you are an oppressed dissident, just praying you can make it to the safe house behind the organic market to avoid the Bushstapo on your trail.
And of course, they can enjoy this Disneyesque Liberal World fantasy secure in the knowledge that the rides are all safe, with just the illusion of danger. They really aren't in any danger of going to the gulags in our
And yet she dares to write the lead guest edit on the front page of the most widely-read newspaper in town, on the day with the biggest circulation. How she got past the guvment sharpshooters in the book depository across the street from the Strib I’ll never know. Hell, those boys have been eager to ping someone since Ruby Ridge.
Hey, if worse comes to worse, they know they can seek asylum in
Unfreakingbelievable.
“Reasons
for Carl Vinson to be at Sea in ‘05?” (Posted
A reader points out that
In this light, it seems unlikely that
I think military pressure from
As for
After
The reader argues that
While a crisis may force us to deal with any number of
countries in the near future, for a planned ’05 confrontation,
That Nobel Peace Prize to the Iranian dissident may have been the best decision those guys have made in a long time. It is definitely a kick in the shins to the mullahs.
“Carrier Availability” (Posted
When I recently received the email notice of the change in the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson’s scheduled nuclear overhaul, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. Why put it off one year? Sure, it will last another year, but it was long scheduled, so why the change? Strategypage.com doesn’t have an answer but they too think it significant:
October 11, 2003: The U.S. Navy has decided to delay, for one year, the
refueling and refurbishment of one of its nuclear powered air craft carriers
(the USS Carl Vinson.) The ship will be taken out of service in late 2005,
rather than (as long planned) late 2004. The Carl Vinson's reactors have
sufficient nuclear material left to keep the ship going for another year, and
the ship has no major maintenance problems. Apparently the navy feels it is
really important that this one extra carrier be available for that extra year.
Late 2004 is after the next presidential election of course, which is when I figured we’d be getting ready for another major military operation. Barring an enemy attack sooner, of course. So this carrier will be available through most of 2005.
I believe that we are setting the stage to support a revolt against the mullahs before they get their first nuclear bomb. We’ll want carriers for air support if needed.
Interestingly enough, the Nobel people may have given the mullahs a kick in the shins with their choice of a peace prize winner. A kick that may energize the very people we want to win.
As I’ve said before, I don’t believe this President is about to rest on his laurels with the war unfinished.
Or
I’m betting on
“Japanese Help”
(Posted
Japan is still smarting from what it feels was ingratitude after the
Persian Gulf War in 1991, when it was accused of checkbook diplomacy after
coughing up $13 billion toward the effort, but no troops.
I personally was a little more understanding of the
difficulty
International support seems to be growing despite the
refusal of the UN and France to be a little more constructive in all this.
“Iranian Revolution”
(Posted
The Nobel Peace Prize went to Shirin Ebadi,
an Iranian
dissident. Hopefully, this will jumpstart the opposition and galvanize them
and the world. After last year’s kick in the shins to the
Iran's first Nobel
Peace Prize laureate, whose award has sparked an exchange of fire between
supporters and conservatives, was quoted on Saturday as saying the Islamic
Republic needed radical reform.
Some excitement is in the air there, and I hope one
columnist in
Ali Moazami, a columnist in the
reformist daily Sharq, said the award would give wind
to the sails of the reform movement.
"It is an encouragement for those who want freedom to
raise their voices," he wrote. "Everyone seemed to interpret it as a
sign of cries being heard."
The cries are heard. I hope the administration is working to
bring about a revolt in
“Poor Planning”
(Posted
One amazing charge that the anti-war people throw about now
is the “poor pre-war planning” for the post-war.
First, this requires us to ignore all the bad things that the anti-war side said could happen that didn’t. The many dogs that haven’t barked seem to indicate we
did a pretty good job of planning. Second, if you look at
This also brings up another problem we faced in the pre-war phase that I had forgotten. Even though the anti-war side now complains we did not plan (and that is false as far as I can see), prior to the war they were complaining that we should not do anything to prejudice a peaceful settlement with Saddam by doing anything that assumes we will fight a war. Had we openly planned for the post-war, the anti-war side would have been all over that like ugly on an ape, complaining that the administration wasn’t open to peacefully solving the problem.
"Rite of Passage" (Posted October 10, 2003)
Well, I'm getting an Instalanche from Instapundit on my posts regarding Turkey's decision to deploy and Ralph Peters' vehement opposition to the deployment.
Thanks Instapundit. (Though I wish it wasn't on a post criticizing Peters. I often agree with him.)
On this day, I am truly a blogger."Pakistani Sweeps" (Posted
The Pakistanis are raiding
the tribal areas to crack down on the semi-sanctuary the Taliban/al Qaeda have in the frontier areas. Perhaps we successfully made
our point to the Pakistanis.
"Getting a Clue" (Posted
The International Red Cross
(ICRC) shows
hints that it could conceivably get a clue:
The International Red Cross
condemned the prolonged detention of
"Mental instability and attempted suicides" among the nutjobs we hold there?
Isn't that pretty
much a summary of why we hold them?
The ICRC concern
is truly baffling. Thugs who would never obey the laws of war are to be
accorded full status as lawful combatants? Good grief. And what of this IRC
official:
"As the
internees spend more time in
Once again, the serious impact
is the point. The point is to break their spirit so they will cooperate and
give us information that will prevent future unstable suicidal maniacs from
carrying out more 9-11s.
I know it is safer for the ICRC
to look into our so-called abuses instead of the widespread brutality that the
rest of the planet engages in without even thinking about the Geneva
Convention, but can even the ICRC feel no shame at their campaign against us?
"The Opposition is Unhinged" (Posted
Our success in the war thus
far has been so staggering that the attempts by the anti-war side to tell a
tale of defeat and quagmire are truly astounding.
Hanson has an excellent
piece on the major myths of the anti-war side. His conclusion:
Critics
of the near-flawless military campaign of three weeks were stymied when none of
their bleak scenarios came to pass: thousands killed; millions of refugees;
governments toppled; terrorist attacks in the
Quite a good piece, actually.
As usual.
"No Turks to
Ralph Peters thinks it is an absolute
betrayal by Bush (he calls it "craven" in fact) to send Turkish
soldiers to
JUDAS drove a hard bargain compared to
President Bush. At least the great betrayer got 30 pieces of silver. All Bush
is going to get for delivering the Kurds unto their enemies will be 10,000
Turkish troops - who will act solely in
Wow.
I like Peters' stuff but I
have to disagree with him here. I think that Peters is letting his clear
hostility to
Yet Peters believes even
Iranian troops in
Certainly, we should be
careful where we place Turkish soldiers to keep from offending our friends in
I still think stationing Turks on the
Syrian border in Al Anbar province is a good idea
for them. It is a Sunni stronghold far away from
And none of this means we
have to screw over the long-suffering Kurds.
"Turks to
The Turkish parliament has
voted to send troops to
Say 10,000
troops that some say will go to the Sunni triangle area. It is good that the Turks will go to Sunni areas.
After being ruled by Turks for centuries, why annoy the Shias
and Kurds with their presence? But the Sunnis, who still shield Saddam's thugs,
deserve a little fear of Allah.
Still, I don't assume all
Sunnis in the triangle are hostile to us. Some surely are happy Saddam is gone
and some are apathetic. I worry that Turks might move those people toward the
hostile end of the spectrum. Is the Sunni triangle the best place for them? At
some level, punishing the Sunnis by stationing the Turkish soldiers in Tikrit, Fallujah, and Ramadi seems just. But that is right in the Iraqi heartland
where reporters will note every friction point.
I say send the Turks to the
Syrian border. That is a Sunni area and the idea of Turks shooting infiltrators
coming from
And what is going
on over at the Syrian border?
The raid in Al-Qaim, near the Syrian border, "yielded 112 detainees,
including a major general in the former Iraqi army air defense branch," it
said.
Troops from the
3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment (3ACR), responsible for the western Al-Anbar province, a hotbed of anti-US activities,
"cordoned off sections of the city and searched more than 29 houses to
find subversive elements including 12 out of 13 they targeted for
capture."
I say Al-Anbar
province has earned the presence of Turks to keep the peace.
"More Agreements?" (Posted
This writer,
from the incomparable Carnegie group, thinks we can agree with
With the evidence we have of
the value of paper agreements when
Now don't get me wrong, when
we can't stop a nutso regime from getting nukes, I'll
settle for stalling in the short run. But I worry that we will get a signed
agreement and some yahoo will figuratively wave the paper on the tarmac and
assert we have achieved nonproliferation in our time—crisis over. Until we lose
Regime change is the only way
to cut the Gordian Knot on this issue. Plenty of
Iranians want regime change too. I hope we are doing something to bring this
about.
"Reasons for War" (Posted
Secretary Powell has an excellent
piece today on WMD and the Iraq War. I still like Powell and don't buy into
the hostility that some have for him. I don't blame him for "stopping" Desert
Storm short of regime change. There were valid reasons to do so and I can't
project the course of history from that point had we marched on
Nor do I make too much of the
so-called feud between Defense and State. It is State's job to be calming
and—dare I say it—diplomatic. Defense is more forceful shall we say. That's why
we have State and Defense. How does
it hurt to have other countries know they can either deal with Powell or, if
they don't want to be reasonable, Rumsfeld? I do, however, have some sympathy for the
worry that the lower level guys at State could use an American Desk to make
sure they are advancing our interests.
In short, I think Powell is
doing his job. He advocates his solutions as he should but also carries out the
instructions of the administration. His advocacy of the administration's
position in the long debate over the first and second UNSC resolutions
regarding
In today's article, Powell
again supports the administration admirably:
The interim findings of David Kay and
the Iraq Survey Group make two things abundantly clear: Saddam Hussein's Iraq
was in material breach of its United Nations obligations before the Security
Council passed Resolution 1441 last November, and Iraq went further into breach
after the resolution was passed.
Kay's
interim findings offer detailed evidence of Hussein's efforts to defy the
international community to the last. The report describes a host of activities
related to weapons of mass destruction that "should have been declared to
the U.N." It reaffirms that
What
the world knew last November about
Although
Kay and his team have not yet discovered stocks of the weapons themselves, they
will press on in the months ahead with their important and painstaking work.
All indications are that they will uncover still more evidence of Hussein's
dangerous designs.
Sounds
pretty solid in his support for the Iraq War despite the repeated attacks on
Powell by the right. For the left,
which lionized Powell as the only adult in the administration, you'd think this
level of confidence would give them pause to think. So let's think about his
conclusion:
President Bush was right: This was an
evil regime, lethal to its own people, in deepening material breach of its
Security Council obligations, and a threat to international peace and security.
Hussein would have stopped at nothing until something stopped him. It's a good
thing that we did.
Good thing, indeed.
"
And Hugo
Chavez has decided that in our modern world, it makes sense for him to lead
One thing that's clear is that
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is fast becoming
Sometimes I just don't
understand people. On the other hand, after seeing what happened to Chavez's
last good friend, Saddam, maybe Castro shouldn't be very happy.
Seriously though, it is not
good to have these two whackjob leaders cooperating
when we need our military to deploy worldwide against the Islamist threat and
to watch
Makes me wish the coup
against Chavez had succeeded. Makes me wish we had supported the coup. Failure
to support the overthrow of Chavez was not supportive of democracy in
"Syrians Angry" (Posted
Syrians are
angry that
You know, I'm just a little
angry that the Syrian government has worked to support Saddam and is still
funneling zealots into
Why the Syrians are working
so hard to earn the now-empty third slot on the Axis of Evil is beyond me. They
could have joined us as they did in 1990-1991 and similarly benefited from our
friendship. They should count themselves lucky that they have faced only a
solitary air raid for their hostility. They are a minority Alawite
government ruling over a Sunni majority. Regime change has always been a
gunshot away in that country and their decision to oppose us will only help
impoverish
We've proven that we are both
a good friend and a dangerous enemy. I can't believe we are supposed to be
worried that they are angry at us.
"Bad News" (Posted
I'm not going to pretend
otherwise, but there is bad news about the Iraq War. Not the facts of real
progress on the actual battlefield or reconstruction, but matters that are
disappointing and which threaten our resolve to win the peace in
First, some
more on the poll of Iraqis.
Some of the numbers aren't as good as the earlier headlines. Not that those
reported numbers are wrong—they just aren't the only numbers. Just thought it fair to mention this.
Second, press reports
note the Kay interim report has failed to find any actual WMD. This is highly
disappointing. It would have made it so easy to justify our exertions and
sacrifice since it would have required no explanation. I really wanted the
smoking gun easy for all to see and impossible for most to deny. (As a side
note, a report I read some time ago that Saddam firmly believed we were
bluffing may account for the decision to not prepare chemical weapons for the
war. As a purely military matter, I believed Saddam would gas us early and
often. Even if he had, in 2002, kept only a surge production capacity, he could
have built the shells and warheads during our build-up in
Third, in a clearly related
story, a
poll of Americans finds most think the Iraq War a mistake. The low-level
fighting that appears to be tapering off and the cost of occupying
What are we to make of this?
Was the war a mistake?
Heavens no, I'm sure you are
not surprised to hear me say.
First of all, it absolutely
enrages me that anti-war commentators continue to insist that the President had
called
I always said it was the
regime, stupid, and the administration clearly agreed; and Kay's interim report
makes it clear that Saddam would have built WMD once the international
community grew too tired to support us in "keeping Saddam in a box."
Saddam was a grave and
gathering danger. He was a threat through conventional aggression, through his
military to his neighbors and through support of terrorism; he was a threat
because of his drive for WMD, proven by his past possession, use, and
development of such weapons and his concealment of his programs whenever
possible; and finally, his monstrous regime was worthy of destruction even on
humanitarian grounds alone. My full case for war can be found
here, from my archives.
Still, as Andrew Sullivan
notes, the actual
presentation by Kay is far more damning of the Iraqi regime than the
stories are saying:
Iraq's WMD programs spanned
more than two decades, involved thousands of people, billions of dollars, and
were elaborately shielded by security and deception operations that continued
even beyond the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The very scale of this program
when coupled with the conditions in Iraq that have prevailed since the end of
Operation Iraqi Freedom dictate the speed at which we can move to a
comprehensive understanding of Iraq's WMD activities.
We need to recall that in
the 1991-2003 period the intelligence community and the UN/IAEA inspectors had
to draw conclusions as to the status of Iraq's WMD program in the face of
incomplete, and often false, data supplied by Iraq or data collected either by
UN/IAEA inspectors operating within the severe constraints that Iraqi security
and deception actions imposed or by national intelligence collection systems
with their own inherent limitations. The result was that our understanding of
the status of
We have not yet found stocks
of weapons, but we are not yet at the point where we can say definitively
either that such weapon stocks do not exist or that they existed before the war
and our only task is to find where they have gone. We are actively engaged in
searching for such weapons based on information being supplied to us by Iraqis.
Why are we having such
difficulty in finding weapons or in reaching a confident conclusion that they
do not exist or that they once existed but have been removed? Our search
efforts are being hindered by six principal factors:
1.
From birth all of
2.
Deliberate dispersal and destruction of
material and documentation related to weapons programs began pre-conflict and
ran trans-to-post conflict;
3.
Post-OIF looting destroyed or dispersed
important and easily collectable material and forensic evidence concerning
4.
Some WMD personnel crossed borders in the
pre/trans conflict period and may have taken evidence and even weapons-related
materials with them;
5.
Any actual WMD weapons or material is
likely to be small in relation to the total conventional armaments footprint
and difficult to near impossible to identify with normal search procedures. It is
important to keep in mind that even the bulkiest materials we are searching
for, in the quantities we would expect to find, can be concealed in spaces not
much larger than a two car garage;
6.
The environment in
And every month we inspected,
more Iraqis would have died, been imprisoned, been raped, or lost their tongues
or ears to the monstrous regime. Given what we have failed to find, inspectors
would have concluded—misleadingly—that Saddam was "clean." Then, with
the scientists, technicians, and dual-use equipment he purchased, he would have
had his bugs and nerve gas. In time, he would have had his nukes, too. The
eventual war that would have resulted would have been far more deadly than our
short and decisive war. Our worst case would be that Saddam would slip his WMD
to terrorists he shielded and aided.
Luckily, our President won't
back down over victory in
Hanson has a good piece
on the nature of our current struggle:
So
here we have the stakes in this last, big hand of
In
contrast, Mr. Bush's hunch is that the tragedy of September changed us all, and
his own resoluteness will prove the better hand. In other words, as polls drop
and sunshine supporters fold, he senses that
If we do not break, we will
win the peace in
Still, I will be much happier
if Kay's investigation turns up a smoking gun that proves to have been the tip
of the iceberg and the proof that Saddam would have used WMD again at a time of
his own choosing.
And I do want to know why our
vast intelligence apparatus, like the intel
people in other countries, believed
"Symptom of the Victory Disease?" (Posted
All the talk of how we were
unprepared for the post-war in
I believe strongly that it is
a terrible mistake to treat victory like a given and assume we can afford to
train our troops for post-war stability operations prior to the war. Sure, some
of that training is fine, but focus on winning the war for God's sake. I'd
rather improvise the post-war than face defeat on the battlefield. Would it
really be better to face a
Victory is not our God-given
right, people.
Maybe if the NGOs and
contractors were closer on our heels we could do the post-war better without
compromising our fighting force.
"Pakistani Sweep" (Posted
The Pakistanis killed some foreign
al Qaeda types in a battle. Is this a sign of
things to come after that joint meeting between ourselves and the Pakistanis
about security issues and repeated Afghani complaints about the border areas?
This needs to be a regular
event and not just a political statement to keep us at bay and our weapons
flowing to
Still, the question remains,
are the Taliban making a comeback?
To the extent that the
Taliban were stunned and rocked back on their heels after we swept them out of
power, yes they are making a comeback. The survivors picked themselves up and
are making trouble again. It is a real problem when they mass troops sufficient
to overrun police posts. But as was noted:
"Whenever they (the
Taliban) manifest themselves in
We have managed to nail them
when they have massed recently. Until we can control the border areas in
This does not mean that the
Taliban are poised to retake
"Still There and Still Nuts" (Posted
I guess the Dear Nutjob is worried that we aren't begging him to let us send
aid for a worthless promise to end their nuclear programs. (and
just what
happens to the food aid? A thriving black market to earn money for the
North Korean security forces)
The North Koreans are pressing
ahead with their nuclear program even as some in the West pretend we can
negotiate a deal to end their program. Now
North Korea has
claimed before that it has completed reprocessing its pool of 8,000 spent rods,
but Thursday's statement clarified for the first time that it was using
plutonium yielded from the rods to make nuclear weapons.
This development strikes me
as pushing our allies and the Chinese and Russians to do something constructive
about
Build our missile defenses.
Move 2nd ID off the firing line. And isolate North Korea until it
collapses.
"Victory Disease" (Posted
I remain worried that people
believe we destroyed Saddam's regime with only a few troops. It is common to
say we won with 2 Army divisions and 1 Marine division. As I've noted before,
we had the line equivalent of seven divisions of good troops (3+ Army, nearly 3
Marine, and 1 British) to smash
My fear is that people will
mistakenly believe that we really can win with few combat units and that we can
safely reduce and lighten our Army and just send in a small force of wheeled super
troopers and air power to mop up the hapless wogs who decide to take the field
against us.
Read this from Military
Review on the victory disease.
We can lose on the battlefield. Lightening up the Army in favor of an
aerial focus that paves the way for light armor as some think the Iraq War
demonstrated will lead to defeat. Heavy armor is not obsolete and may never be
if it evolves. Remember the cries from the 1970s that tanks were obsolete in
the face of wire-guided anti-tank missiles. And then recall the performance of
our evolved dinosaurs in the drive on—and into—
Maneuver, as practiced by our
heavy armor, is still
the key to victory. (from Parameters)
Treat our future enemies with
the respect they deserve.
"Who Should Be Frog Marched?" (Posted
Ok, I'm not keen on going
into what seems like a domestic political battle over the purported Wilson/Plame L'Affaire. If the name of a
CIA analyst was leaked, the person leaking should be fired and prosecuted. I'm
glad that people who rejoiced during the Cold War when CIA agents were named (and
then killed) are upset now over such a practice.
Still, this
article raises a number of questions about
Amateur
hour, indeed.
"The Central Front" (Posted
An article detailing why
"The UN is Still Trying
to Prop Up the Baathists!" (Posted
The UN wants to quickly
create a provisional government and wants
Baathists included. What jerks.
The U.N. chief's proposal, which is
modeled loosely on the Afghan transitional government established after the
U.S. overthrow of the Taliban, would require an intensive diplomatic effort to
set up a broader provisional government that would include former members of
deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's Baath Party
and Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, an influential
Shiite cleric.
I can't believe the UN—strike
that, yes I do—wants Baathists back in the
government. Sunnis should be welcome and of course included, but what Jessica
Mathews-level Carnegie idiocy is required to think that justice and stability are
served by putting Baathists back in power?
"The
Iraqis deserve at least what you have given the Afghans; that is, a provisional
sovereign government," said Ghassan Salame, a scholar and former Lebanese minister of culture
who is acting as a senior adviser to Annan, in an
interview.
Salame said the
"You
need to bring them back into the political process, you need to tell them that
at some time in the future they can compete like any others in the political
process," he said. "The secretary general . . . wants more people in
the government." If they are unwilling to participate, he added, "let them refuse to join."
I think the Iraqis deserve to
know that the killers, torturers, and exploiters who looted and killed their
way to prosperity will not be in positions of power in the new government. If
the people of
Make it clear to one and all
that the SOBs who terrorized Iraqis for a generation
are never coming back. I'm horrified that we should need to remind the UN of
this. Kofi Annan should be
ashamed of his proposal.