From: Sonny Heath (sonny@defuniak.com)
Date: Tue Oct 19 2004 - 21:40:02 PDT
Good post Ryan, I agree with your take on this.
Sonny
----- Original Message -----
From: Ryan Gill <rmgill@mindspring.com>
To: Military Vehicles Mailing List <mil-veh@mil-veh.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 2004 11:11 PM
Subject: Re: [MV] mil veh war story
At 10:57 PM -0400 10/19/04, Steve Grammont wrote:
>
>If that is the case then perhaps Bush should have either waited for the
>Turkish gov't to change its mind or had the 4th ID redeployed. His
>father had the whole Coalition sit in the desert for weeks and weeks in
>order to get the conditions right conditions. What was the big rush? A
>few weeks certainly wouldn't have mattered.
Actually, I think they were worried about the
weather getting to rough if they waited too long.
The 4th ID did redeploy, but by the time they got
everything organized again, they were so far back
that they just road marched north and helped out
with the mopup.
>So, if you go to a car dealer and ask how much a car is, and you don't
>have enough money, do you pay him what you happen to have because that's
>all you have and expect to drive the car away without complications?
Come on Steve, you know it doesn't work that way
in the military. The US is pretty good about
having enough for the task. Look at the German
campaign in 1940 against the French. The germans
were seriously out numbered but they still swept
the French units from the field. There was one
scarey moment for the Germans with the British
armor counter attacked at I think Arras. The
Germans were reeling from that attack and it was
something like a battalion of matilda I and IIs.
>No, and that is exactly why the Bush Admin ignored the Army and retired
>its head when he gave the bad news that the war could not be done "on the
>cheap".
Shinseki was not retired as a vindictive reaction.
http://www.factcheck.org/article275.html
>I'm trying to keep this strictly military as well. The Army was correct
>that more troops were needed. Even those who say the war isn't going
>terrible right now (as many claim) would be hard pressed to say things
>wouldn't be a lot better now if we had more troops early on. No
>substitute for boots on the ground.
No argument there. I try to look at our modern
battles through the lens of history and not the
lens of journalist that don't have a clue about
military operations. Bad battles for the US (ie
disasters) are fights like the retreat to
Bastogne or the battle of the Hurtgenwald, Or
Arnham. That's everything going into the crapper
type battles.
>Unfortunately the Army's troop request was not practical because it was
>already stretched too thin with commitments all over the globe. They
>said this in plain English and were ignored because it was not the
>"correct" answer ("bzzzzt. I'm sorry, the answer we were looking for was
>130,000, not 300,000 to 500,000. That's the end of the game for you.
>Here's your retirement papers. Thanks for playing").
Again, not quite true. If I had a buck for every
doctrinal argument that takes place at the
pentagon regarding just what can be accomplished
with how much...boy, I'd have a heated warehouse
to store my large collection of wheeled armored
cars in. I could probably buy you a few pieces of
armor while I was at it.
>Many have been saying since the early 1990s that US commitments needed to
>be scaled back so that we could respond to a sizable threat on our own
>without waiting (as we had to do in Gulf War One). But that was not the
>case in 2002. In Gulf War One the troop shortage was overcome by making
>a much larger coalition where what the US lacked were made up for by
>other nations. The ground war was even put on hold in order to retrain
Unfortunately we were not going to get local
support for throwing over one of their own no
matter how dangerous he was. The French had other
ideas too you know. Germany doesn't send troops
out of it's own borders and Russia...we'd end up
paying for their shipping, food and everything
else because they can barely rub two coins
together to keep the space program going. What's
left? Not much. Fancy retraining a Swedish Tank
Brigade in desert warfare?
I also seem to recall that we drew down a bit
after Gulf War I and moved a lot of assets into
the reserves or Guard as a cost saving measure.
>several US National Guard and allied formations which were deemed not
>ready for combat operations. Some tough negotiations and decisions were
>made, including the one to not finish off Saddam. I think Bush Sr. (whom
>I voted for) did it the right way. I just wish the apple fell much
>closer to the tree.
In some cases, you have to look at what was
accomplished with the forces that were deployed.
Our Boys (and the Brits) swept north over several
hundred miles through desert in a matter of days
and repeated the utter defeat that the Iraqi's
showed the 13 years earlier. The sense of despair
from the Arabic media was almost hilarious. They
expected the Iraqi army to at least bloody our
nose. They more or less scraped our boy's
knuckles in the few battles they showed any
backbone in.
Overall, I think the operation was well handled.
Lots of things that could have been done better,
but I still think we have soldiers that are doing
a bang up job and deserve as much support from
the politicians as possible with the least amount
of demagoguery as possible. Especially when it
affects them and their jobs.
--
--
Ryan Gill rmgill@SPAMmindspring.com
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