hope this is not shocking to u......
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Posted on Thu, Mar. 27, 2003
Analysis: Rumsfeld presses Franks to attack
By JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his civilian aides have pressed Army Gen. Tommy Franks, the head of the U.S. Central Command, to attack the Republican Guard divisions defending Baghdad as soon as U.S. Air Force planes and Army attack helicopters have softened them up, according to Pentagon officials.
The officials, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, said the civilian war planners want to clear the way for swift takedown of Saddam Hussein's regime in the Iraqi capital.
So it apparently falls to one heavy Army division, one light Army division and a division-plus force of Marine infantry to destroy at least two and possibly more Republican Guard tank divisions dug in and blocking the approaches to Baghdad. In other words, roughly 100,000 U.S. servicemen could be facing about 30,000 Iraqi troops, not enough for the 4- or 5-to-1 ratio that conventional military doctrine calls for when attacking an entrenched enemy.
The Americans are far better trained and equipped than the Iraqis, and they have a huge technological edge, especially when fighting at night. But military analysts say there may not be enough of them to do the job.
Softening up the Medina, Baghdad and Hammurabi Divisions from the air will be absolutely vital to success. The question is whether the Air Force is willing to take on the job.
One retired general who has followed the unfolding war plan closely told Knight Ridder that the U.S. ground commanders in the Persian Gulf are privately unhappy with the amount of close air support their troops are getting from the Air Force, and likewise are unhappy that "all of the intelligence assets have been diverted to support the Air Force in downtown Baghdad, leaving little or nothing for the ground forces."
He also said the Army's 3rd Infantry Division and V Corps were forced to leave behind most of their long-range Multiple Launch Rocket Systems. Rumsfeld told them that air power would do the job. "But it is not doing the job so far. It is focused elsewhere."
The general, who also asked not to be identified, said the 3rd Infantry was sent to war with only one battalion of MLRS rocket-launched artillery, a powerful long-range system that can reach out 30 miles and obliterate more than a third of a square mile of enemy soldiers or enemy tanks. Usually, it would have brought two brigades of MLRS launchers, about six battalions.
The V Corps likewise was sent into battle with one battalion of MLRS launchers when usually it would have a separate brigade (three battalions) to support its attack helicopters and several more brigades for general operations.
What this means is that the front-line forces, which use the deadly MLRS rockets to reach out and soften up the enemy positions while U.S. forces are still out of range of Iraq's artillery, are now depending on the Air Force to attack the Republican Guard divisions and clear the way for Apache attack helicopters to kill the enemy tanks.
The general said he hoped that Franks could "get the Air Force to step up to the plate" and work on the targets important to the ground commanders and work with the Apaches. "The Air Force really hates having to do this," he said.
A senior Air Force official, William Bodie, said this wasn't true. "Way more than a third of the 600-700 daily sorties have been in support of ground forces. There has been a tremendous amount of progress in our ground support efforts since Afghanistan."
Bodie said most of the damage to 30 Army Apache helicopters that conducted a long-range raid on the Medina Division earlier this week was caused by small-arms fire. "That's guerrilla war stuff, Viet Cong stuff. The Apaches were flying very low over a flat floodplain area and they were very vulnerable. There's nothing we or the MLRS artillery could have done about that."
Pentagon officials said Rumsfeld had been pressing Franks to attack the Republican Guard outside Baghdad without waiting for the 4th Infantry Division (Mechanized) to arrive from Fort Hood, Texas, and the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, its scout unit, to be flown into the battle zone from Fort Carson, Colo. Neither will be ready for battle for at least two weeks.
"I hope (Franks) won't do this," said one retired senior officer. "He should stand on the perimeter and grind them down. He has got to bring the 4th Division in to do this. He can't do it with what he's got."
Urgent orders have gone out to airlift elements of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment from Fort Polk, La., to the war zone - and to divert 2,000 Marines from the Horn of Africa to Iraq. Both those forces will be used to secure the long, vulnerable supply lines east and west of the Euphrates River and the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr.
The men of the 4th Infantry, the 101st Airborne Division and the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force can only hope that Rumsfeld and his aides are correct that air power, precision-guided munitions and high technology have made old-fashioned rockets, long-range artillery and tanks unnecessary.
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/5498542.htm -
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28 March 2003 2232 hrs (SST) 1432 hrs (GMT)
White House reiterates war on track, frustrated by doubts
Although the war in Iraq has met with a stiffer-than-expected resistance, the White House dismissed doubts about US military strategy in Iraq as unjustified and frustrating on Friday and insisted the war was on track.
"The war is going well. The war is on track," a senior Bush administration official said after the US ordered 100,000 more troops to Iraq and a top US general warned that unanticipated Iraqi tactics and overstretched supply lines pointed to a longer conflict than forecast.
Officials said US President George W. Bush never put a timetable on war and likened the current naysaying to fears of a "quagmire" one week into the successful US-led military campaign to oust the Taliban in Afghanistan.
"I think it is fair to say that there's some level of frustration with the press corps," the administration official said, adding: "He (Bush) thinks it's silly, not borne out by the facts."
However, the doubts were raised by several US officials, who in recent days sought to play down expectations the conflict would end quickly as US and British ground troops met stiff Iraqi resistance on the ground.
"The enemy we're fighting is different from the one we'd war-gamed against," Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace, commander of the US Army's V Corps, was quoted in Friday's Washington Post.
He said Iraqi irregulars were using guerrilla-style tactics.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said war planners were not caught off guard.
"I don't think anything surprised us," he told ABC's "Good Morning America."
But a British defence source said US-led forces lacked the "overwhelming force" needed to wage warfare in the streets of Baghdad.
Mr Bush, who met with Mr Blair at the Camp David presidential retreat on Thursday, has vowed to fight on "no matter how long it takes" to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the toughest fighting lay ahead with Saddam's battle-hardened Republican Guard entrenched between US-led forces and Baghdad.
"I think what we expected is what we have got, which is that there will be fierce resistance from those people who are very loyal to Saddam, who owe their existence to his regime and who have terrorized the local population for a long period of time. These people are going to fight," Mr Blair said on Friday.
Asked whether the United States and Britain were prepared to accept high casualties in a battle for Baghdad, Mr Blair said: "The fact is, we will do what is necessary to get the job done."
At the White House, President Bush will speak later on Friday to veterans groups.
He is expected to focus on the war effort and US plans for a post-Saddam Iraq, officials said.
Nearby, about 20 protesters dressed as clowns temporarily shut down rush-hour traffic.
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/americas/view/36044/1/.html -
Bush Seizes $1.62B in Iraqi Assets
1 hour, 11 minutes ago
By JEANNINE AVERSA, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has seized $1.62 billion in Iraqi assets already frozen in the United States and will use the money to help rebuild the country once Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) is ousted, a top Treasury Department (news - web sites) official said Thursday.
The department's general counsel, David Aufhauser, provided updated figures that follow up an initiative from President Bush (news - web sites) last week.
Aufhauser said the money has been transferred to an account at the Federal Reserve (news - web sites) Bank of New York. An additional $77 million is expected to be transferred soon, bringing the total to about $1.69 billion.
The assets, which belong to the Iraqi government, have been frozen since 1990 and have been sitting in accounts at U.S. banks, including Citigroup, Bank of America and Wachovia.
Last week, Treasury officials said they expected roughly $1.4 billion to be transferred to the Fed account.
The revised figure is higher because less money from the frozen accounts had to be set aside to cover legal claims by people who said they were victims of the Iraqi government, Treasury officials said.
It is envisioned that the money in the Fed account would be used to help rebuild Iraq (news - web sites), including providing money for humanitarian purposes, according to the department.
The frozen assets were being held in bank accounts under the names of the government of Iraq, the Central Bank of Iraq, Rafidain Bank, Rasheed Bank and the State Organization for Marketing Oil.
Also Thursday, Aufhauser said that "hundreds of millions of dollars of previously unknown illegal proceeds have been uncovered abroad in a matter of days, and are now subject to seizure."
Aufhauser would not disclose where the money was found. Aufhauser said there is a "strong suspicion" the money came from illegal oil-smuggling schemes.
A General Accounting Office (news - web sites) report last year said that Iraq generated $6.6 billion in illegal revenue from smuggling oil and other schemes in the last 12 years.
Last week, Treasury Secretary John Snow said the United States was beginning a worldwide hunt for those and other funds that may have been used to bankroll terrorist activities.
The United States in 1990 issued an order blocking any assets belonging to the government of Iraq and related entities. That order was aimed at cutting the Iraqi president and his government from financial assets that could be used to support terrorist activities. Treasury officials say no personal assets belonging to Hussein have been found in the United States.
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On the Net:
Treasury Department: http://www.ustreas.gov/
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=540&ncid=736&e=5&u=/ap/20030328/ap_on_re_mi_ea/war_iraqi_assets -
ere is an article in USA today pointing out that the biggest Hawks in the Bush administration, including Dubya himself, all avoided military service in Vietnam and Korea, while the those that are counseling caution are all in uniform.
Brent Scowcroft, Colin Powell Norman Shwartzkopf (all of whom were Generals who've served in combat) all counsel caution in Iraq, while Bush, who served his country valiantly in the National Guard during Vietnam by defending Texas from the Vietcong, as opposed to Al Gore and the Senate's chief democrat, Tom Dashle both of whom actually went to Vietnam, clamors for war The other chief hawks including Dick Cheney and Paul Wofolwitz never fired a shot in anger. (or got shot at). It always amazes me that men who managed to avoid military service could possibly get so self righteous in sending others to do their fighting for them.
Boldface type is mine.
FROM USA TODAY
By James Bamford
Beware of war hawks who never served in the military.
That, in essence, was the message of retired four-star Marine Corps general Anthony Zinni, a highly decorated veteran of the Vietnam War and the White House point man on the Middle East crisis. Zinni is one of a growing number of uniformed officers, in and out of the Pentagon, urging caution on the issue of a pre-emptive strike against Iraq.
In an address recently in Florida, he warned his audience to watch out for the administration's civilian superhawks, most of whom avoided military service as best they could. ''If you ask me my opinion,'' said Zinni, referring to Iraq, ''Gen. (Brent) Scowcroft, Gen. (Colin) Powell, Gen. (Norman) Schwarzkopf and Gen. Zinni maybe all see this the same way. It might be interesting to wonder why all of the generals see it the same way, and all those (who) never fired a shot in anger (and) are really hellbent to go to war see it a different way.
''That's usually the way it is in history,'' he said.
Another veteran, Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., who served in combat in Vietnam and now sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, was even more blunt. ''It is interesting to me that many of those who want to rush this country into war and think it would be so quick and easy don't know anything about war,'' he said. ''They come at it from an intellectual perspective vs. having sat in jungles or foxholes and watched their friends get their heads blown off.''
The problem is not new. More than 100 years ago, another battle-scarred soldier, Civil War Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, observed: ''It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation.''
Last month, Vice President Cheney emerged briefly to give several two-gun talks before veterans groups in which he spoke of ''regime change'' and a ''liberated Iraq.''
''We must take the battle to the enemy,'' he said of the war on terrorism. Cheney went on to praise the virtue of military service. ''The single most important asset we have,'' he said, ''is the man or woman who steps forward and puts on the uniform of this great nation.''
But during the bloodiest years of the Vietnam War, Cheney decided against wearing that uniform. Instead, he used multiple deferments to avoid military service altogether. ''I had other priorities in the '60s than military service,'' he once said.
Cheney is far from alone. For instance, neither Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy Defense secretary, nor Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board, has served in uniform, yet they are now two of the most bellicose champions of launching a bloody war in the Middle East.
What frightens many is the arrogance, naïveté and cavalier attitude toward war. ''The Army guys don't know anything,'' Perle told The Nation's David Corn earlier this year. With ''40,000 troops,'' he said, the United States could easily take over Iraq. ''We don't need anyone else.'' But by most other estimates, a minimum of 200,000 to 250,000 troops would be needed, plus the support of many allies.
Even among Republicans, the warfare between the veterans and non-vets can be intense. ''Maybe Mr. Perle would like to be in the first wave of those who go into Baghdad,'' Hagel, who came home from Vietnam with two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star, told The New York Times.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Vietnam combat veteran and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has often expressed anger about the class gap between those who fought in Vietnam and those who did not.
''I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well-placed managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units,'' he wrote in his 1995 autobiography, My American Journey. ''Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country.''
Non-combatants, however, litter the top ranks of the Republican hierarchy. President Bush served peacefully in the Texas National Guard. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spent his time in a Princeton classroom as others in his age group were fighting and dying on Korean battlefields (he later joined the peacetime Navy). Another major player in the administration's war strategy, Douglas Feith, the Defense undersecretary for policy, has no experience in the military. Nor does Cheney's influential chief of staff, Lewis Libby.
The top congressional Republican leaders -- Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, House Majority Leader Dick Armey and House Majority Whip Tom Delay -- never saw military service, either; only one, Armey, has shown hesitation about invading Iraq. In contrast, House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, R-Ill., a World War II combat veteran, has expressed skepticism about hasty U.S. action, as have some prominent Democrats -- House Minority Whip David Bonior, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and former vice president Al Gore -- who were in the military during the Vietnam War.
No administration's senior ranks, of course, have to be packed with military veterans in order to make good military decisions. But what is remarkable about this administration is that so many of those who are now shouting the loudest and pushing the hardest for this generation's war are the same people who avoided combat, or often even a uniform, in Vietnam, their generation's war.
Military veterans from any era tend to have more appreciation for the greater difficulty of getting out of a military action than getting in -- a topic administration war hawks haven't said much about when it comes to Iraq.
Indeed, the Bush administration's non-veteran hawks should review the origins of the Vietnam quagmire. Along the way, they might come across a quote from still another general, this one William Westmoreland, who once directed the war in Vietnam.
''The military don't start wars,'' he said ruefully. ''Politicians start wars.''
this was written sometime ago -
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i like the last sentance
''The military don't start wars,'' he said ruefully. ''Politicians start wars.'' -
yikes just when rumsfeld announce to the media that the public must be ready for a siege of bagdad this other media source says he is asking for an all out assault. who to trust......honestly i am sick of the bloody media coverage of this war.
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agree...Originally posted by duotiga83:i like the last sentance -
Bush, who served his country valiantly in the National Guard during Vietnam by defending Texas from the Vietcong
i prefer this quote -
11:41 2003-03-29
American Administration WonÂ’t Let UN Control Iraq After War Ends
The Iraqi army started the counteroffensive
CNN reported with reference to the information of the American intelligence that a large column of elite troops of the Iraqi Republican Guard headed to the south of Baghdad. There are about one thousand pieces of ordnance in the column. The Republican Guard is moving towards the town of an-Najaf, where a lot of American troops are concentrated.
An official military spokesman for Iraq said that divisions of the Iraqi Republican Guard had its first battle on Wednesday not far from an-Najaf. According to the information from Iraqi authorities, a lot of coalition soldiers were killed as a result of the battle, and six tanks were destroyed.
The Pentagon rejected the information pertaining to the counteroffensive of the Iraqi forces. However, American military officials do not exclude that a small part of the Iraqi defense technology performed a certain maneuver. A spokesman for the British command acknowledged that several dozens of tanks and armored vehicles of the Iraqi army broke through the encirclement around Basra. As an official said, a column of the Iraqi defense technology was attacked by the air force of the anti-Iraqi coalition.
According to the unofficial information that was received from American military men, occupation forces lost 45 soldiers by Wednesday, including 25 Americans and 20 British servicemen. Eighteen soldiers were killed in direct clashes with Iraqi troops. American media outlets report that at least 25 American marines were wounded in street battles in the town of an-Nasiriya. Fifteen Iraqi men were wounded in the skirmish, although it was not specified, if they were servicemen or civilians. Various sources say that about 80 Iraqi civilians were killed in Basra during three days of the current week.
Iraqi authorities reported that a British chopper was downed not far from the city of Basra. As Baghdad said, coalition forces lost eleven tanks and two armored vehicles yesterday. However, the Pentagon increases its military power in Iraq. As US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, allied troops would grow until the war is over.
About one thousand servicemen of the 173 airborne brigade landed in the northern Kurds-controlled part of Iraq. The commander of American land troops in Iraq addressed to the Pentagon with a request to deploy about 700 American servicemen to Iraq. That was the first time during this war, when the American command asked a reinforcement from the Pentagon.
The majority of countries of the world still stand against the war. The UN Security Council has recently held a session, at which UN Secretary General Kofi Annan stressed out that a lot of world leaders called the legitimacy of American administrationÂ’s actions into question.
The chairman of the UN General Assembly, former Foreign Minister of the Czech republic Jan Kavan announced that the UN is not supposed to let the American and British administrations dictate their will at the restoration of Iraq. However, Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, said that there would be no point of either a cease-fire or a break after the beginning of the military operation in Iraq. Powell also stressed out that the US administration was not going to let the UN have the control over Iraq after the war ends. Colin Powell stated that Washington was going to keep the dominating control over the development of the situation in Iraq after the war ends. It was stated that the USA would not allow anyone to gain the control, even if it was ruled so by the United Nations.
PRAVDA.Ru
Translated by Dmitry Sudakov
http://english.pravda.ru/war/2003/03/29/45273.html -
Report: Rumseld Ignored Pentagon Advice on Iraq
Sat Mar 29, 6:39 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly rejected advice from Pentagon (news - web sites) planners that substantially more troops and armor would be needed to fight a war in Iraq (news - web sites), New Yorker Magazine reported.
In an article for its April 7 edition, which goes on sale on Monday, the weekly said Rumsfeld insisted at least six times in the run-up to the conflict that the proposed number of ground troops be sharply reduced and got his way.
"He thought he knew better. He was the decision-maker at every turn," the article quoted an unidentified senior Pentagon planner as saying. "This is the mess Rummy put himself in because he didn't want a heavy footprint on the ground."
It also said Rumsfeld had overruled advice from war commander Gen. Tommy Franks to delay the invasion until troops denied access through Turkey could be brought in by another route and miscalculated the level of Iraqi resistance.
"They've got no resources. He was so focused on proving his point -- that the Iraqis were going to fall apart," the article, by veteran journalist Seymour Hersh, cited an unnamed former high-level intelligence official as saying.
A spokesman at the Pentagon declined to comment on the article.
Rumsfeld is known to have a difficult relationship with the Army's upper echelons while he commands strong loyalty from U.S. special operations forces, a key component in the war.
He has insisted the invasion has made good progress since it was launched 10 days ago, with some ground troops 50 miles from the capital, despite unexpected guerrilla-style attacks on long supply lines from Kuwait.
Hersh, however, quoted the former intelligence official as saying the war was now a stalemate.
Much of the supply of Tomahawk cruise missiles has been expended, aircraft carriers were going to run out of precision guided bombs and there were serious maintenance problems with tanks, armored vehicles and other equipment, the article said.
"The only hope is that they can hold out until reinforcements arrive," the former official said.
The article quoted the senior planner as saying Rumsfeld had wanted to "do the war on the cheap" and believed that precision bombing would bring victory.
Some 125,000 U.S. and British troops are now in Iraq. U.S. officials on Thursday said they planned to bring in another 100,000 U.S. soldiers by the end of April.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=615&e=3&u=/nm/20030329/pl_nm/iraq_usa_report_dc_3