THE DIGNIFIED RANT
NATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS JULY 2004 ARCHIVES
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“Slow March into
The British, the French,
and the African Union are prepared to send troops to cope with the
Like I said, two battalion-sized ground forces—one US and
one European—can back up one
Throw in AU forces that will patrol in
Ultimately, we’ll have to reverse the ethnic/religious
cleansing. I think the world should split up
Lots more on
We shall see whether coping means stopping the genocide or doing nothing until the international community can breathe a sigh of relief that it is too late to do anything.
I happen to think that a humanitarian purpose supports a
national interest purpose in harming a state that has harbored Islamist
terrorists including bin Laden in the past and which is probably still a
playground for Islamist terrorists. The Darfurians
can be grateful that
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“Covering All Their Bases” (Posted
Your Axis of El Vil update.
Chavez’s government thinks he will win the vote next month on his recall:
This confidence is based on some real support (dictators usually have a base of support) and a willingness to use state power to twist the system to its advantage. Chavez will follow the forms of democracy while using thug methods to shape the results. He is also making the election process vulnerable to dispute and disruption:
Venezuela's opposition worries that a recall
referendum on President Hugo Chavez will, in the least, be made more difficult
by new voter lists, an electronic voting system and untested thumbprint ID
devices. At worst, some say, all that technology could be an elaborate attempt
aimed at making the vote fail.
If the people of
[Venezuelan]
Interior Minister Luis Rincon said
radicals were seeking to use plastic explosives stolen from a navy base to
create chaos during the voting.
"There are people here, and they aren't favored in the
polls, who want a scenario of violence," Lucas Rincon said. "They
think it will change the result of the vote."
Authorities have yet to recover some 138 pounds of C-4
plastic explosive and 80 detonators that were reported stolen July 17 from a
navy base in the coastal city of Puerto Cabello, 70
miles west of Caracas.
Rincon said that Chavez opponents, including dissident
military officers who have been discharged, could use the explosives in a
"subversive plan" to create chaos before or during the Aug. 15 recall
referendum.
I have no doubt that explosives will be used to disrupt the elections. I also have no doubt that the bombers will be employees of Chavez. If the vote goes his way, the voters supported him in the face of “US-backed terrorists.” If the vote goes against him, the violence will be all the excuse Chavez needs that the election was not “fair” and so will be nullified. Heck, even without a few bombs, the election could collapse the way Chavez is setting it up. Chavez has put in a self-destruct button on the whole process.
What will Jimmy Carter say? He is monitoring the process.
Will he stand up for
And what do we do? As I’ve said, unless Chavez opens his
country to Islamist terrorists, this is not a military problem given the other
threats we face (
God help them all.
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“Start the Clock” (Posted
Diplomats said this week that Tehran has restarted
equipment used to make uranium hexaflouride, which —
when injected into centrifuges and spun — can be enriched to low levels to be
used as fuel to generate electricity or to levels high enough to make nuclear
weapons.
Kharrazi said
In a sign of progress, the 3 European countries in question
have not just gone along with the fiction that
There will be regime change and with some extra troops in
Afghanistan, we could cut loose a large brigade to go into eastern Iran and
maybe strip a division from Iraq from the west. The Marines might get a brigade
from the sea in the south. Iranian military forces loyal to the regime will
need to mass to oppose our regular forces, making them vulnerable to air power
(and to the brigades themselves). These American conventional units will just
be backups/support to air power and special forces
that will take the lead supporting rebels against the mullahs. Six brigades are
nowhere near enough to invade and conquer
We have little time to stop
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“Peace, War, Whatever” (Posted
A senior Chinese official warned that
The Chinese are trying
to soften their recent rhetoric over taking
This isn’t quite the same as the headline:
Of course, the
Chinese would like to resolve this
peacefully, but the key is they will “resolve” it and that means
When
Were I the supreme ruler of
A sense of urgency is needed on
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"
I've opined repeatedly that
were I the China God, I'd invade
Chinese diplomats have let it be known
that retired generals recommended to Jiang Zemin, the Chairman of the Central Military Commission and
former head of state, that China “settle the issue of Taiwan well ahead of the
2008 Olympics to be held in Beijing.”
And what do a lot of
A few weeks later, one of the deputy
chiefs of staff of the Chinese air force (PLAAF) made an address to army (PLA)
officers in which he chastised them for believing that a war with
Although many analysts
disregard
If the number of active duty amphibious
ships in the Chinese Navy is modest, the
In addition, according to ONI, there are
vast numbers of civil amphibious vessels used for island and river
communication, potentially available for mobilization. One analysis indicates
that formal military amphibious assets can lift 38 heavy (i.e. tank) battalions
plus 58 infantry battalions (of which reserve elements lift 17 heavy battalions
and 32 infantry battalions). In addition, assets serving as civil ferries
(probably understated as not all are listed in international registries) can
lift 7 heavy battalions, 30 medium (i.e. motorized) battalions, and 226
infantry battalions. No less than 95 of the latter can be carried by high speed
surface skimmers, an item of concern to Taiwanese military planners. Actual
maritime lift includes 139 heavy battalions, 362 medium battalions and 175
infantry battalions on merchant ships and a further 30 medium battalions and 23
infantry battalions on naval auxiliary ships. While only a fraction of these
would be available for mobilization, clearly the amount of lift exceeds any
realistic requirement.
I think that
Rush arms to
We can beat
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"American Foreign Legion"
(Posted
Our military is good. Peters has the goods.
Despite the bitching that the press notes loudly, recruiting is going just
fine. And why? Well the low
casualties we endure even in war is one reason.
Patriotism is another. Why would the press understand that complaining is a
God-given right for our soldiers and they exercise it freely? Don't mean nothing, folks. Our guys and gals are reenlisting just fine:
Sensational media accounts make it sound
as though no soldier will ever re-enlist again, as if mutiny's just around the
corner.
In fact, re-enlistment rates in the
active-duty Army and the reserve components have risen dramatically. Re-up
rates are especially high in units that have deployed to
Peters also notes what I like
to note, that our Army National Guard combat units are better than European
active duty combat units (the British excepted I imagine):
A few months ago, an Army
general with service in Iraq as well as extensive NATO experience remarked to
me, "Think of the weakest National Guard unit you saw in your career —
they're light years ahead of the best the [continental] Europeans have
got."
Our reserves are cursed to be
compared to our active duty forces and not our enemies (or allies).
Yet our military is too
small—our Army to be specific. We are adding 30,000 troops to the force in
addition to the mobilized reserves but adding new units can't be done too
quickly. But the military is wary of adding troops to relieve today's stress
when the stress may recede because of success before enough troops to relieve
today's stress can be put in place. Yet what if the stress does not dissipate
as the brass anticipates?
I'd like to suggest we
recruit our own foreign legion—An American Foreign Legion. At first I thought
we should establish a Free French force as the only realistic way to get the
French to help us given their dogged
opposition to any NATO help. That's the only way they helped in World War
II, after all (I don't count the live-fire training exercise that Paris gave
Germany in 1940). Why not try it again? As much as I ridicule the French, I do
actually have hope that some good fraction of the French people does support us
despite the cynical crooks who lead them and the many people who think we are a
greater threat than Islamist whack jobs. But then I thought, there are probably
lots of Europeans and others around the world who
support us despite the hostility, neutrality, or lukewarm support of their
governments. Why not turn a cheap shot at the French into a real policy option?
American officers and NCOs
with bilingual skills would lead lower-ranking enlisted personnel recruited
from foreign countries. Form them into national-based companies in plug and
play light infantry battalions that could be attached to our brigades or used
independently. Base them on US or allied territory overseas from basic training
on. Teach them English to understand commands and citizenship to give them
goals to work for. Teach them riot control and counter-insurgency techniques. Guarantee
that they will face two tours overseas in combat in a 6-year term of
enlistment. Provide them with citizenship upon completion of their terms (or
upon wounding or death in combat) and allow them to transfer at the end of
their service to the regular Army or Marines or become a civilian and move to
And building such a force
would be better than a dedicated constabulary corps in the Army to keep our
Army a single force dedicated to winning wars instead of bifurcating into hard
and soft units. We will avoid the problem of needlessly expanding our military
and then having to pay for it since we can just disband these units at any time
and pull the
We could aim for 15,000 in 30
battalions, bringing in 5 battalions every year as we discharge 5 battalions.
An American
Foreign Legion. I like the idea.
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"Well This is Interesting"
(Posted
Interesting if we have our
eye on
The U.S. head of detainee
operations in Iraq, Major-General Geoffrey Miller, told the People's Mujahideen
Organization (MKO) its members held at a base in eastern Iraq had been
recognized as "protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention."
I've seen them referred to as
MEK (Mujahideen-e Khalq),
but these are the same guys. Are we keeping them to accompany US forces into
The Iranian mullahs aren't
happy at all about this development. And the French don't like the group. Far
be it from me to suggest that what these two countries hate we must
automatically like, but I'm willing to make the leap in this case.
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"I Guess More Troops in
The Army is debating whether constant
patrolling of Iraqi streets by US troops is counter-productive:
Advocates of the new approach say
Yes. I've been lonely out
here arguing that flooding the zone with troops would be counter-productive and
that we need to push Iraqis to fight the war against the Baathists.
Of course, this doesn't mean
cut and run:
Marshall, who has made two trips to Iraq
in the past year, said the issue for
We needed to patrol as long
as we didn't have Iraqis capable of doing the job. As the Iraqis field more and
more capable troops, we need to pull back. Not too fast to create a vacuum but
not too slow to create friction with the local population. Note that this
doesn't mean that our presence is creating insurgents and we would have been
better off staying out of
Can we finally stop the silly
talk of needing several hundred thousand
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"At War Addendum" (Posted
Ledeen came in too
late to add to yesterday's
post. It belongs there:
There are plenty of terrorists out there
who aren't Islamists. (There are even some suicide terrorists who have been
forced into it; Coalition commanders are reporting the discovery of hands
chained to steering wheels in suicide vehicles.) But all the terror masters are
tyrants. Saddam didn't have any religious standing, nor do the Assads, but they
are in the front rank of the terror masters. Ergo: Defeat the tyrants, win the
war.
And then historians can study the failed
ideology.
Machiavelli, Chapter Two: If you are
victorious, people will always judge the means you used to have been
appropriate.
Corollary from Lyndon Baines Johnson:
When you have them by the balls, the hearts and minds generally follow.
Just win. Or as I said once,
just kill the
dots. And the states that support them or cheer them on.
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"Are They Stoned or Just
Progressive?" (Posted
I was just in awe reading Orson Scott
Card's latest. He hits on so many points that I have or would like to rant
on that I can only say read it all. As they say, I'll wait.
I'll nod emphatically in
agreement over only one point to save time since I know you went and read the
piece.
How on Earth can the endless
debate over the Iraq War be over who to blame? Hell, blame me! I'll take the
blame for ending a despot's nightmare reign of human rights abuses, threats to
conquer and intimidate his neighbors to advance his personal glory, support for
terror, pursuit of chemicals, bugs, and nukes. And all in a brilliant campaign
unique for its care for civilians and low friendly casualties. A campaign
successfully executed despite cries that the Moslem and Arab street would rise
up and split the region asunder. So toss in the diplomatic credit, too. Please, blame me. As Card notes:
I'm
fed up with the attempt to blame somebody for a
military campaign that by any rational historical measure was an utter triumph.
An utter triumph. So right. Sadly,
the ability to measure the results and means requires rationality. How
satisfying is that when you can chant "Jobs not war" like it actually
means something?
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"At War" (Posted
We are at war today. Really. We've been under attack for a long time but we first
began to seriously fight the war in the skies over
I'm not that interested in
fighting over who bears more responsibility for 9-11. Our Islamist enemies are
at fault. Bush failed in 8 months to stop the attacks and
I'm not saying Clinton, Berger & Co.
are the Chamberlains of this new war. The point is
even Chamberlain wasn't Chamberlain when he died: Posterity had yet to chisel
him the one-word epitaph "Appeaser." And neither side of the
appeasement debate thought it worth spending the 1940s arguing about the 1930s:
There were other priorities. And, in fairness to Chamberlain, the overwhelming
majority of the British people supported "appeasement," just as, in
fairness to
Even if
And I think our strategy for
fighting our enemies is the only reasonable way to fight the war. From the National Security
Strategy of the United States of America, we are committed to preempting
threats:
We must adapt the concept of imminent
threat to the capabilities and objectives of today’s adversaries. Rogue states
and terrorists do not seek to attack us using conventional means. They know
such attacks would fail. Instead, they rely on acts of terror and, potentially,
the use of weapons of mass destruction—weapons that can be easily concealed,
delivered covertly, and used without warning.
The targets of these attacks are our
military forces and our civilian population, in direct violation of one of the
principal norms of the law of warfare. As was demonstrated by the losses on
September 11, 2001, mass civilian casualties is the specific objective of
terrorists and these losses would be exponentially more severe if terrorists
acquired and used weapons of mass destruction.
The United States has long maintained the
option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national
security. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction— and the
more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves,
even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack. To
forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States
will, if necessary, act preemptively.
The United States will not use force in
all cases to preempt emerging threats, nor should nations use preemption as a
pretext for aggression. Yet in an age where the enemies of civilization openly
and actively seek the world’s most destructive technologies, the United States
cannot remain idle while dangers gather. We will always proceed deliberately,
weighing the consequences of our actions.
To bolster our ability to
preempt and defeat threats, we seek dominance militarily over potential
enemies:
We know from history that deterrence can
fail; and we know from experience that some enemies cannot be deterred. The
United States must and will maintain the capability to defeat any attempt by an
enemy—whether a state or non-state actor—to impose its will on the United
States, our allies, or our friends. We will maintain the forces sufficient to
support our obligations, and to defend freedom. Our forces will be strong
enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in
hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States.
I am personally shocked that
the simple ideas of being stronger than our enemies and willing to do what it
takes to defend ourselves are somehow controversial. We have not reserved the
right to destroy anybody at any time for just looking at us the wrong way. The
policy is clear: different threats require different responses and military
preemption is but one method. And if we can't trust the representatives of the
world's oldest democracy to decide on weighty matters of war and peace over the
judgment of that Star Wars bar of nations we call the UN, these are sad days
indeed.
If during
our election campaign, neither side decides that its effective motto is "Stronger
than
Too much anger may be a
problem for a future after we try again to understand our enemy—only
harder—only to have them strike us harder, but that is not our problem now. Our
failure to crush the resistance in Fallujah when we
had the chance shows us what restraint gets us. Not thanks. Not dialog for
common ground. But
this:
The three-week siege is inspiring "a literature of
resistance and war," said Egyptian novelist Gamal
el-Ghitani. "Fallujah
is a symbol, in one of the worst eras we have witnessed, that it is not
impossible to stand up to
He said it also sends a message to Arab dictators about the
lesson people may draw about resisting oppression.
"I used to laugh, despite the ghastly daily news,
about how a bunch of poor, helpless Iraqis with primitive weapons are forcing
the greatest superpower in the world to negotiate. Honestly, the American army
was ridiculed," he said.
El-Ghitani, like many Arabs,
hadn't even heard of Fallujah until then. Now it is
being likened to
Ibrahim el-Firjani, a Libyan university professor, said Fallujah has "shown
Instead of talking and
exploring reasons we may have given our enemies to hate us and kill us, we must
kill them. No restraint. No mercy. I'm honestly not asking for their surrender.
They'll just get attorneys that we'll end up paying for. Let them stand up to
us. I don't care. But when the do, make sure we cut them down. Don't ever miss
an opportunity to kill them.
For those who would talk to
us, we must of course talk and even help them. Not all Moslems are our enemies.
Not even most. I firmly believe this. Our enemy is just a fraction that a
larger fraction has learned to cheer on.
Kill the fraction that would
kill us and the cheering sections will go home. Because if we
don't kill our enemies, we will be ridiculed by those who survive and the
cheering sections will cheer some more.
These are some
of the guys who are killing our enemies so we can hope to live quietly at
home.
Although American casualties
have gone up in July during official Iraqi rule from June, I think we may see
progress in the war faster than we expect. I wrote this thought a month ago,
and I still think it is possible and maybe even likely. I keep waiting for the
insurgency to dwindle and it hasn't. But I don't want to make the mistake of
thinking that because the insurgency has stumbled along at a low but lethal
level that it will always continue to do so. I've hammered away that the key to
winning is getting Iraqis to fight for their country against the Baathists, and we are succeeding in doing this. If my main
focus is being achieved, I can't ignore the possibility that this will work,
now can I? As Strategypage notes:
The Iraqi government is taking their new
powers seriously, and so are the Iraqi police and security forces. No one
expected that such an administrative event, the declaration of Iraqi
sovereignty, would have such a dramatic impact. But the large number (over
200,000) of trained Iraqi police, troops and security forces, the continued
street crime and kidnappings, and growing public anger over the lack of public
safety, combined to produce an energetic Iraqi crackdown on the source of the
problem. The number of tips about who is attacking Iraqis, and Americans, has
skyrocketed. And most of the information is real, with the subsequent raids are
yielding dramatic results. Criminal, Baath Party and al Qaeda leaders and
key members are being picked up, or killed in shoot outs. Records, cash and
records are being seized. The records are often interesting, for the Baath Party groups, which hire a lot of the men who plant
the roadside bombs or fire mortars or RPGs at
government or American targets, keep records of who got paid how much for each
attack. In some cases, moonlighting Iraqi police are found on the list.
We'll see if the Iraqis can
move rapidly or at least steadily to control the Baathist
thugs.
And in the meantime,
A significant barrier was crossed when President
George W. Bush spoke aloud, Monday, about the possibility of an Iranian role in
the 9/11 attacks on the
Spring 2005, I should think. I
haven't worried about the lack of overt
At some point we'll see the
public rhetoric heat up for regime change in
I can't forget we are at war.
I just want to win. That is my priority. Let history lay blame.
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“What We’re Up Against” (Posted
I watched The Terminator last night.
I shouldn’t watch movies like this I suppose. But it provides more lessons than Titanic.
Listen! And understand! That terminator is out there. It can't be
bargained with! It can't be reasoned with! It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or
fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead!
The 9-11 Commission report (as Instapundit noted) says this about our enemy’s desire to defeat us:
It is not a position with which
Americans can bargain or negotiate. With it there is no common ground—not even
respect for life—on which to begin a dialogue. It can only be destroyed or
utterly isolated.
I still have no problem saying we are in a war on terror rather than a war on Islamists. The reason I feel this way is summarized in the last sentence above. We must destroy or isolate the threat. Can we destroy Islamism? Can we wipe it out? No. We cannot. There will always be nutballs who think it is God’s work to kill us. I think the key is utterly isolating the Islamists. Defang them. Make them impotent in their rage at the modern world and us. Ultimately, if the Islamists are impoverished nutballs sitting in the desert bemoaning their fate and cursing us for their poverty and hopelessness, I don’t care what they think about us. I just care what they can do to us. I just don’t care enough about them to want to save them from themselves. They are welcome to their self-inflicted misery and backwardness as long as they leave us alone.
But we’re a long way from having to decide between utterly isolating them or destroying them. For now we must kill them where we can and imprison them when we must. We must pursue them into their safe havens and destroy those safety zones.
And we have an advantage over the humans fighting the machines—our enemies are not tougher than we are. They do in fact feel fear. And we are the ones with the machines that will kill them for us.
We just need the determination to admit we are at war and the toughness to kill them, pursue them, and kill them again and again until they are driven from power and stripped of their appeal to the hopeless masses who see a glimmer of hope in nihilistic death rituals. Frighteningly enough, there are plenty in our country who see threats all around them but the Islamists are way down on their list.
“Understanding” the rage of the Islamists is futile because they will not be stopped, ever, until we are dead. Or until we kill them or isolate the Islamist terrorists.
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“A New Era Beginning, I Hope” (Posted
Via NRO, the first ABM is
loaded in
Five additional interceptors will be installed at the
700-acre complex by the end of the year, along with another four at Vandenberg
Air Force Base in
Critics in the article lamely argue that we have a defense—attacking enemy missiles before they could even launched:
If
Yeah right. As if we could get away with such a pre-emptive move without the left introducing impeachment articles—unless one of their own ordered it, of course.
Just as importantly, as we debate how to prevent nuclear proliferation, won’t creating a reasonable defense dissuade states from pursuing nukes that won’t do them any good? I think a solid missile defense will be better for anti-proliferation than any number of treaties.
Drive on. I wonder what it will feel like to live in a world where our missile-armed enemies don’t have the automatic option to destroy us?
I think I’ll like it.
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“The Northern Front” (Posted
Much has been made by some that the source of our problems
with the Baathists in the Sunni triangle is that we
didn’t come rampaging south from
First of all, the major source of resistance in Fallujah and to a lesser extent nearby Ramadi, would have been nowhere near the line of advance for such a northern attack.
Second, we would have been forced to kill regular army units that otherwise were frozen in place by the Kurdish threat. These Iraqi units were out of the fight and if we’d gotten near them we’d have had to destroy them for the safety of our own units marching south.
Third, we would have risked casualties amongst Kurds in the north who were our allies, plus extra destruction that we’d have to fix on top of the massive reconstruction job. What if the oil fields had been collateral damage in this offensive?
All in all, I felt a threat of a northern front was far more valuable than an actual northern front. Finally, in an otherwise good article that notes what I’ve noted before that many people support the war only if successful (so win the war against the resistance and stop worrying about bolstering support for the war in other ways! Only victory will persuade the wobblies!) Hanson notes as well that the cakewalk of the war led to urealistic expectations. It did for me, I’ll say, only I didn’t go wobbly when the post-war turned more difficult than it appeared it would be in April 2003. But on the northern front, Hanson says in passing:
It was, of course, a very good thing at the time to have the entire
Sunni trial collapse without Americans descending down into that miasma from
We still should have dealt with Fallujah in April 2003 but that is a separate issue from the northern front. I’d like to see Hanson address the whole issue of the northern front as a separate piece. I think we made no mistake in staying out of that miasma.
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“Foreign Fighters” (Posted
Not to be too flippant, but we’ve identified one of the major sources
of foreign support for the Baathist resistance in
SERGIO Vieira de Mello, the U.N. envoy killed by terrorists in Baghdad
al most a year ago, was no cynic. But he recognized cynicism where he saw it.
Soon before his tragic death, he described attempts at putting the United
Nations at the center of things in
I happen to think we’ve successfully used the UN so far and not let them lead us around by the nose contrary to our interests, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be vigilant.
Keep the UN narrowly and technically focused and keep real power in our hands and our Iraqi friends’ hands.
The UN’s only interest in
We, the Iraqis, and our friends on the ground in
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“
Interesting that the British are looking into intervening in Darfur:
Blair made his comments about military assistance after the
Guardian newspaper reported he had asked officials to draw up plans for
possible military intervention in
The Sudanese are opposed and promise that there will be
resistance. Just who will fight? The starving and oppressed
It’s time for the African Union to abandon the rule that
borders never change. If they won’t, we should. Recognize
Of course, the Chinese and Russians won’t like it. Bad precedent don’t you know.
This isn’t just a humanitarian mission after all.
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“Strike
So can we or the Israelis bomb
"Military action is not the answer," said a
senior international diplomat involved in the investigation of
"It would only push them underground, like in
Convinced that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear
weapons,
Several analysts and diplomats said
"I think it's impossible to take out
Assuming we know where to attack, we could delay the arrival
of a nuclear-armed
I still hold that regime change is the only method to get
We have replenished our stockpiles of JDAMs
and smart bombs by now, I should think. In January 2005 there will be an
elected
Honestly, if this administration isn’t planning on doing something about the remaining Axis of Evil elements and isn’t dedicated to remaining on the offensive to destroy our enemies before we suffer a nuclear 9-11, why vote for them? At least with an administration that abandons the war, when we are hit even worse the French may again claim they are all Americans now. In reality, we’ll all be Europeans, but still, we’ll value the sympathy, right?
Regime change in
Before it’s too late. In light of silly arguments that we should have addressed North Korea or Iran before Iraq since Iraq was the weakest of the Axis, no doubt some will say leave Iran alone until North Korea is solved (but only by giving them money they’ll also mumble), let me repeat Dunn’s Axiom.
As I’ve noted enough times (or not), it is better to stop the nutballs who want to get their first nuke than to stop the nutballs who want their second (or even fourth or tenth).
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“They Can Send Thank You Cards to the
In a surprising development following the complete surrender
by the
Militants took six foreign truck drivers
hostage and threatened Wednesday to behead them unless their company ends its
business in Iraq, and their countries — India, Egypt and Kenya — pull all their
citizens out.
Of course, the militants are picking on insignificant
contributors to
And it isn’t just these countries:
In a separate threat, a previously unknown group calling
itself al-Qaida's European branch posted a message on
an Islamic Web site promising deadly attacks in
The group, calling itself the Tawhid
Islamic Group, said Bulgaria and Poland will "pay the price" just as
the United States and Spain did, referring to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on
New York and Washington and deadly train explosions in Madrid in March of this
year.
During a recent hostage crisis,
Another militant group on Tuesday threatened
More than 60 foreigners have been taken hostage in recent
months in
Hmm. 9-11 and 11-M had the same motivation? I guess
The Poles, Bulgarians, and Japanese are standing firm. All
these states can thank the
On the bright side, Spain
is stepping up in
I don’t see how the kidnapping wave is bad for the war effort (as opposed to the very bad effect on the individuals kidnapped). The Islamists now have to care and feed captives for a while which probably increases their chances of getting caught. Plus, the effort will keep them from carrying out more promising attacks on American and Iraqi targets. While the publicity is surely what they crave in order to frighten the West and other states, the sheer number of crimes will take away the newsworthiness of the kidnappings. The latest celebrity trials will seem more newsworthy under the circumstances.
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“So How Should We Proceed?” (Posted
The North Koreans have rejected
our
Calling the American proposal "nothing but a sham
offer," the communist state reiterated that it would freeze its nuclear
facilities as a first step toward their dismantling, but only if
"It is a daydream for the
They prefer the old “freeze” method that is followed by economic aid.
And why shouldn’t they? It has gotten them so much in the past and they are still in possession of a small number of nuclear devices or at least on the verge of building them. (Whether they have them in a deliverable device I do not know)
So far the administration has admirably refused to panic in the face of lack of progress. Many over here get twitchy without something to sign after a while—no matter what the details. The act of signing is strangely satisfying to them.
We must insist on verifiable nuclear disarmament and the dismantling of the entire North Korean nuclear program. Then some aid. Hopefully not enough to reverse their slide but enough to give them hope that they don’t need to risk it all on a military strike.
And squeeze them. Intercept their drug shipments. Discourage
private investment and certainly don’t insure the risks of companies that
decide to operate in
And send aid that cannot be integrated with other elements of the aid. Make sure they are just pieces that won’t provide synergy joined together. The North Koreans are so primitive that any aid will look helpful.
Of course, prepare for war. Regime change in line with our
official strategy should be the goal should war occur. Make sure that always-insufficient
aid appears to the Pillsbury Nuke Boy to be a better route for survival than
war. I think the signs are there that the regime is crumbling from within. We
outlasted better thugs than them and we have an ally stronger militarily than
the North unlike the situation in NATO where the threat of the Red Army
reaching the
As the North Korean spokesman helpfully noted, we are at war technically.
Nice of them to remind us.
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"WMD Programs" (Posted
I've noted that I firmly
believe that prior to the Iraq War, Saddam had chemical weapons and programs of
unknown status to produce bio and nuclear weapons. He had the clear
determination to have all these WMD and long-range delivery systems in order to
advance his visions of power in the Gulf region and the Arab and Moslem worlds.
I've also asserted that I
don't think that all the intelligence services of the world were wrong in their
assessments and I don't think that all of Saddam's scientists lied to him about
fake programs to keep money coming to them. We will find what happened to these
weapons and programs. I worry that our troops might be hit with something dug
up from the Sunni triangle.
The first reports on finding
nuclear missiles in
When I read the first report,
my thoughts went to how it would make sense if true. That is, if missiles with
nuclear warheads were found, would this even make sense given the apparent lack
of an ongoing nuclear program when we invaded
Yes it would, and it would still
explain some things even with the first report shown to be false. Recall that
when we built the SR-71 Blackbird, we destroyed all the plans after we built
them so that nobody could ever steal the secrets. If we had destroyed the
planes soon after and somebody went looking for the plans to prove we once had
them, no plans would be there to prove it. Without any plans, would the true conclusion
be that we never had them? Of course not. Now, the analogy clearly can't be
pushed too far but the point is that we destroyed our ability to build the
planes after we built the planes. So does absence of program evidence mean that
Saddam was a decade away or that he already succeeded? He did have chemical
weapons. That is not in doubt. And we know that in 1990, Saddam was far closer
to nukes than we suspected.
If Saddam succeeded in
building certain WMDs in the 1990s or prior to the
Iraq War in 2003, wouldn't it make sense to hide them (with a very tiny
footprint to conceal), keep the innocent-looking technicians, scientists, and
knowledge base intact for future use, and destroy the numerous physical traces
of the programs in order to get sanctions lifted? Once the international sanctions and scrutiny
were removed from
All I'm saying is don't be
surprised if we do find something deadly buried in the Sunni triangle or
smuggled to another country.
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“Pants of Silence” (Posted
Sandy Berger apparently stuffed some confidential documents down his pants to get them out of the National Archives. The question is whether Berger is trying to hide embarrassing information. He says he took them inadvertently. I know, that seems ridiculous. But I think we’re possibly being too hasty here in condemning Mr. Berger.
Stay with me. Remember, Berger was the national security advisor to President Clinton. Surely he knows how to handle secret documents. As a senior member of CONTROL (Clinton Officials Now Telling Redacted Old Lies), he would know that when handling secrets, one uses the Cone of Silence. If that is broken, the Closet of Silence will do. Being away from headquarters, the Portable Cone of Silence is required. Or perhaps the Umbrella of Silence. But what if my knowledge of CONTROL procedures to thwart CHAOS is obsolete? Perhaps they have been updated for the fight against al Qaeda. I mean, the former administration says they were on top of the threat, right? With no actual evidence of action in the real world apparent, perhaps the activity took place in the intelligence front. I think it is possible that Berger was using the hitherto unknown Pants of Silence to secure secret documents. The Socks of Silence and the Jacket of Silence may also have been employed.
I’m just saying that we should check with the Chief before we assume Berger is hiding something and go off on yet another investigation or committee probe.
And if Berger is hiding something, I’m sure the Media of Silence will go into overdrive to ignore this.
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"Limits of Better Plans for
Post-War
The fact that we have not
been able to tamp down a low-level Baathist
resistance yet is blamed on our failure to have a better plan to win the
post-war.
Yet there is this:
American officials believe that millions
of dollars Saddam Hussein skimmed from the scandal-plagued U.N. oil-for-food
program are now being used to help fund the bloody rebel campaign against
The vast sums
of money that the Baathists have at their disposal is
clearly a major factor in fueling the attacks on us. I under-estimated the
financial resources the Baathists had to replace the
major foreign support I knew they would never get.
Now we know one avenue that
Saddam accumulated the wealth. Yet this problem was caused by the UN's
corruption. One wonders what kind of plan could have stopped this outrage
committed by the international community.
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"Once a Marine, Always a
Marine" (Posted
The Marine who was shown on
television in the pre-murder pose we've seen a lot lately says he was
kidnapped and held against his will:
Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun has been under a cloud of suspicion since failing
to report for duty June 20. Videotaped images later surfaced showing him
apparently kidnapped; he emerged unharmed in
Although there is some
speculation that Corporal Hassoun deserted, that
doesn't seem right. His demeanor suggests he is a Marine through and through:
I would like to tell all the
Marines as well as all those others serving in
If Hassoun
was trying to defect and the sword play was staged, why release him? If he
tried to defect in a moment of weakness and then changed his mind, again, why
would the kidnappers release him?
So I doubt it was a straight
Islamist kidnapping. It seems far more likely that Hassoun
was held for ransom. He has a large clan in
The fact that Hassoun voluntarily went to our embassy bolsters the
held-against-his will theory.
If something fishy is going
on, I bet it could be because Hassoun was lured off
base without permission with an appeal to his religion. But I bet that it was
an appeal to help fellow Moslems rather than an appeal to betray his country
and his Corps. Having been tricked to leave, Hassoun most
assuredly violated regulations and so could be punished for that.
Corporal Hassoun
may also have something to say about the rat-line that stretches from Fallujah all the way to
Sheer speculation, I know,
but the idea of a real kidnapping by Islamists or an attempt by
this Marine to defect do not seem to fit with the events reported.
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"The Big, Hot, Bright Thing"
(Posted
I note this
here in NSA only because it is an issue over which we uniquely are beaten
about the head and shoulders for failing to do what the crisis-mongerers want
us to do:
Global
warming has finally been explained: the Earth is getting hotter because the Sun
is burning more brightly than at any time during the past 1,000 years,
according to new research.
After years of looking for
reasons to blame people for the problem, somebody finally looked up from their
weak correlation calculations and noticed the big, hot, bright thing up in the
sky.
I suggest a giant hose
stretched from Earth to the Sun so we can finally address the roots of this
problem.
Oh, and I note it because it
is very amusing and I get very annoyed by the global warmers who have elevated
belief in every last detail of their global warming spiel into dogma that
cannot be denied or debated.. Dang, I can't remember where I saw this. Many
thanks.
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"Who the Media Believed Really Lied"
(Posted
So the President's sixteen
words in the SOTU have been tarred as a lie for a year.
As Steyn concludes in his
solid (and satisfying) article:
Any
Democrats and media types who are in the early stages of yellowcake fever and
can still think clearly enough not to want dirty nukes going off in Seattle or
Houston -- or even Vancouver or Rotterdam or Amman -- need to consider
seriously the wild ride Yellowcake Joe took them on. An ambassador, in Sir
Henry Wootton's famous dictum, is a good man sent abroad to lie for his
country. This ambassador came home to lie to his. And the Dems and the media
helped him do it.
We've all experienced how the
media helped over the last year. What is really amazing is that the media
continues to help even as
Check out the lead paragraph
in this
AP report:
It was one of the first
signs that the intelligence used to go to war in
"May not have been
totally off-base." Pray tell, what part of the President's claim is even
slightly off-base in the light of revelations? What part of
Safire nicely sums
up the latest developments and the conclusion that one should draw
regarding the administration's apology for including those 16 words in the
SOTU:
That
apology was a mistake; Bush had spoken the plain truth. Did Saddam seek uranium
from
".
. . we conclude that the statement in President Bush's State of the Union
Address of
And as Steyn notes, Saddam
wanted that Uranium because he wanted to use it to kill us.
Lies, indeed.
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"The 'Plan'" (Posted
One of the popular complaints
of both pro- and anti-war sides over the Iraq War is that post-war planning
was poor (via Winds of Change). Is this an indictment or an admission of reality that we could
not have done much about anyway? I mean, we couldn't even openly talk to
humanitarian organizations before the war lest we be accused of pre-judging our
plans for resolving the
And what if we did start
extensive planning? We planned extensively for post-World War II because it
took us nearly four years to win the war—not because we delayed fighting until
we had the plans nicely indexed and bound. And anyway, the plans didn't help us
much in practice since we dumped the plans in the face of post-war realities
and instead improvised our way through years of ugliness before our conquered
foes emerged as allies.
I think some of the elements
of the charge that we failed to plan are just silly. I don't think anybody
claimed the Baathists would welcome us. They weren't going to give up four
centuries of neck stomping easily. Would more post-war planning have led to
even the Sunnis welcoming us? The Shias and Kurds certainly felt liberated even
without the chimera of the perfect plan tucked into Tommy Franks' hands in
March 2003. We've suffered few casualties in the Shia and Kurdish areas so the
argument must be that more planning would have reduced our casualties in the
Sunni areas. This is possible—even likely—but by how much is an open question.
I don't see an argument that a plan would have gotten the Sunnis to love
liberation so their resistance would not have been eliminated with a plan. And
what if the plan called for rounding up every senior Sunni male? Would the plan
have been lauded? A plan for immediately fighting a counter-insurgency might
have reduced our casualties. That I will not dispute.
And if we'd taken the time to
develop the plan to perfection, and if we did in fact go to war with that plan
maybe a year later despite the howls that we shouldn't invade in the primary
campaign season, how would the war have gone? Might not Saddam have finally
concluded that we would invade and then actually defended his country with some
effectiveness? Would we have won with remarkably few friendly and civilian
casualties? Would we have won that war or would the stretching of a more
difficult war into months have given the French and Russians the time—bolstered
by a global anti-war movement with yet another year to agitate and march—to end
the war? Subtracting casualties in the post-war by insisting on the plan before
going to war could have increased casualties in the major combat operations and
could have even undermined chances for victory. And let me add this, if the
plan called for several hundred thousand Americans to patrol
Really, the demand for more
post-war planning by the anti-war side always seemed part of the plan to delay
the war until opposition could derail the war. It was never to make the
post-war situation more successful. Just think back: The UN route. One more
resolution. Time for more inspections. Persuade
No plan survives contact with
the enemy. And no plan, no matter how detailed, guarantees victory. We won the
war and we are improvising to win the post-war. Criticize by all means but keep it in
perspective.
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“Game Plan” (Posted
It sounds like the Chavez opposition is taking the heart Grant’s idea that you don’t waste too much time worrying about what your opponent is doing to you, but instead spend your time thinking about what you can do to them:
The opposition's "Vote Yes!"
campaign has hit the airwaves, billboards and talk shows. But this time around,
campaign leaders are being careful about what they say about Chavez.
There's a list of Do's and Dont's
when criticizing the president, Fernandez said — partly because many
Venezuelans grew tired of vituperative rhetoric during a December 2002-February
2003 general strike that failed to oust Chavez.
Calling Chavez a "dictator" is a no-no because he
has embraced the recall.
Accusing the former paratrooper of graft is frowned upon
because past governments, led by current opposition leaders, were largely
corrupt.
Criticizing Chavez's human rights record should be avoided
because the opposition is trying to reach
"Messages emphasizing hope rather than hate are
best," said Fernandez, an oil executive fired by Chavez during the strike.
"We want to send positive, not negative, messages."
Not that I trust Chavez, but he does have support (as most dictators have), and he is working hard to win within the system, albeit by twisting the system to the breaking point.
If the opposition wins the recall vote, then we will see what Chavez does. I suspect he will not go. He will interpret the results or circumstances of the vote in a manner that he will use to justify staying in power. My only major question is whether former President Carter will validate Chavez’s shenanigans.
Of course, I don’t know what we can do about this situation.
When we are trying to reform the psychoses of the
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“Heavy Armor” (Posted
As readers may know, I
am a fan of heavy armor. People have predicted heavy armor’s doom since at
least the 1973 October War. These critics could be right now, but I need to be
persuaded based on the continuing record of success. Yes, it is true we have
not faced a really high quality enemy army with good anti-tank capability, so I
could be persuaded that the absence of evidence does not mean that it is not a
true assessment. Still, with the evidence showing armor is still crucial, the
burden of proof for the end of heavy armor is on the proponents of light armor.
I will say that the Strykers seem to have performed
well in
But the Army has not succumbed to the siren song of lightness as it seemed to be doing until 2003. I wrote in 2002 about the need to get heavy armor to the fight more rapidly:
It may be
unwise to rely solely on a light FCS if the Army needs a survivable system. If
it can find a way around deploying from CONUS, future heavy systems would not
need to conform to the tradeoffs necessary for the FCS to get to the theater
quickly, and they might exhibit the same dominance as today’s MBTs. Pre-positioned future heavy systems, perhaps afloat,
should not be overlooked. Where pre-positioning is impractical, sealift from
CONUS must be faster. We may even need to explore deploying more forces
overseas to get ground troops closer to potential trouble spots for the initial
rapid response.
According to a
The
We have armor sets on land in places we expect to fight (or
in the case of
Heavy armor lives on. And we are preparing to make sure we will have it early in any war we might have to fight.
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“How Do We Respond?” (Posted
It is approaching three years since al Qaeda
struck us. Whether this is because of good counter-terror operations on our
part; or because al Qaeda didn’t have a follow-up
blow planned (assuming we’d collapse at one big blow) and started from scratch
on a bigger plan, I don’t know. But the buzz is that we are in a time of major
danger with our elections coming up. Al Qaeda wants
to repeat their
I think the answer is fairly simple: Osama
wasn’t that prescient. The
So what do we do if we are struck this summer or fall? Some say (via Winds of Change) that retaliating won’t be too satisfying:
I imagine that after another attack people will still feel, on a gut
level, like we ought to retaliate, but there really won't be anything to be
done. Just as
First of all,
Actually, I’d prefer to preempt the enemy.
Our carriers in Summer Pulse ’04 won’t be
on station all the way until the election and so can only be used to retaliate
if the attacks take place relatively soon. [As an aside, they are in every
theater and not massed near
If we attack, the opposition will of course say Bush is
attacking to distract the public and “wag the dog.” Yet if we don’t attack
through the election, or if we are struck first by terrorists, the opposition
will say we are too distracted to fight al Qaeda because
of the
Did
I thought we should have hit in the Horn of Africa by now to show progress in the war. My basic reasoning still holds true as far as I’m concerned. I’m not as concerned about accusations of politicking as I was in the winter. We are at war and need to fight it without paying attention to the election cycle.
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"The Moors Side with the
F-9/11 has some interesting fans.
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"Containing the EU" (Posted
A unified
With Germany
and India supporting one another for UN Security Council permanent seats
(with the all-important veto as its perk), we should go one better.
[German foreign minister Fischer] said there was an "urgent need for an
effective multilateral system and an efficient UN system that reflects the
realities of the 21st century".
We should agree with this
position. And since a European Union is a reality of the 21st
century too, the EU should have a permanent UNSC seat and veto.
So France will have to weigh
the prestige of a permanent seat that gives them influence above their power;
Germany will have to contemplate having newly recognized great power status
submerged in the EU superstate before they can even
touch it; and Britain will have one more reason to stay out of the EU.
On another issue, I read that
the Euro currency is taking a stab at displacing
the US dollar as the currency of choice for the world. US $100 bills are
widely used the world over for the underground economy as a trusted currency.
The Europeans have introduced their 500 Euro note to challenge the $100 bill in
this role. Worth 5 times as much as our $100 bill, the 500 Euro note is denser
and thus more easily carried about. I say, inflation alone has made the fact
that the $100 bill is the largest bill we've produced in fifty years kind of
obsolete. Why not introduce a $500 bill? I dare say we wouldn't see it too much
at home, but the people using the $100 bill would love the added convenience of
the Euro note size that also keeps the stability of the dollar.
Two measures to contain the
EU and bolster our diplomatic and financial positions in the world.
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"Not Worse Off" (Posted
In the renewed debate over whether we are worse off now than before the War on Terror began, my November 2003 take on the issue.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA15JUL04B
"It
Takes a Village" (Posted
Yes indeed, it (via NRO) takes a village to raise a terrorist. I think we found one of those elusive "root causes."
This stands without need of more
commentary. I would hope, anyway.
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"
The authors of this Times piece think
Trade
numbers help explain the transformation in
Faced with a rising China
that will reduce our influence, the writers decide that the best way to cope is
to essentially undermine our alliances by bringing China and the rest of
Northeast Asia—including North Korea perhaps!—into a regional forum where we can all just get along:
Most important, if structured properly, [the forum]
could allow the
Ah yes, the constant problem
with getting along is that we just don't listen to dictatorships like
And what can we expect with
this strategy? Well, a few more years of leveraging our diminishing influence
before we are overwhelmed:
As
a nation, the
Amazing. Where do they find these people? I know I expected
the panicking to begin after
I mean,
But seriously, assuming that
China does reach the described apex of power, surpassing Germany and then Japan
and finally challenging our economic and military power, why is telling our
allies that we will no longer fight with them a way to maintain our power and
influence in the Western Pacific and East Asia? I'd think that the nuance of retreat
would not be lost on our friends. They'd soon distance themselves and we'd be
out-voted every time in the new forum. I guess when we are on the short end of
the stick, that listening skill will be all important.
If
And with this potential
situation we're supposed to curl up in a fetal position and beg the Chinese to
be nice to us? And assume our allies won't look at us in horror as we bow and
scrape?
What's more, the scenario of
inexorable Chinese advances in science, economic progress and military
advancement is not a given.
TOWARDS the end of last
year Foreign Report suggested that, contrary to popular belief, the economic
miracle in China was not all it had been cracked up to be. We said that unless
the modernisers in the party triumphed over the hardline political dogmatists, the economy was heading
towards an inexorable decline. Such a decline has not yet. happened.
But it is close. China watchers are unconvinced by recent actions of the
Beijing government, which has failed to convince that it
is capable of keeping the economy on course.
So, a powerful
All I'm saying is put away
the white flags for now. I don't think we'll be needing
them.
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“Blog Birthday” (Posted
The Dignified Rant turned 2 years old today. Bring on the terrible twos, I say.
I’m still in the mood to rant. It’s a freaking target-rich environment, after all.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA12JUL04B
“Reason to Kill Us” (Posted
The conventional wisdom—which the electorate of
One Egyptian terrorist was recently arrested and wire taps indicated the following:
"The Madrid attack is my project,"
the Egyptian told the Palestinian, according to a transcript published last
week in the Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera. "The project has cost me a lot of study, it took me 2 1/2 years."
Let’s see, 2-1/2 years would put the start of planning in
September 2001. Well darn it all, I guess
Not the Filipino government apparently, which announced
a withdrawal from
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“Hmm…A Dot Out of Place” (Posted
So we now know that Joe Wilson is full of it, and not only
did Saddam try to get uranium from
So perhaps we should discuss why Saddam wanted uranium. I mean, we’re told that Saddam had no viable programs to build them. The threat was years and years away so we had time to deal with Saddam. Never mind the mass graves, defiance of the international community, and terrorism in this analysis of what is a threat or human rights violation. Let’s just look at this dot of uranium interest and see what it might connect to.
Why try to get the tell-tale uranium when he supposedly was a decade or more from building a bomb? Why not just get the more difficult to hide uranium in year nine?
Since we know that Saddam was once very close to getting a nuclear bomb until we nailed him in 1991, might the Iraqis have had some confidence that they could have beat that decade-away wild ass guess of ours? Might not the scientists, technicians, and dual-use equipment have been in such a state that Saddam thought he could ramp up quickly once the French and Russians pried the sanctions regime loose?
Because otherwise, how does acquiring uranium so early in the process do anything but risk detection should someone more familiar with nuclear weapons than sweet mint teas be sent to investigate?
Or were the Iraqis confident that they could hide it for as
long as it took even if inspectors were driving around
Saddam was either closer than we think to producing some nasty stuff or he knew he could hide stuff as long as he needed to, whether or not UN inspectors ineffectively traveled around.
The question isn’t whether Saddam had chemical weapons and programs to produce bio and nuclear weapons. The question is where are they now? That is what I’d like some Congressional committee to investigate.
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“The Enemy” (Posted
This article notes that our military is estimating the Baathist fighters at a strength of 20,000 full- and part-timers:
The
Although it was noted in the article by one analyst that the previous guess of 5,000 was a “wag” (wild ass guess), he says the estimate shows the past estimate to be ridiculous. This harsh assessment is given despite more in the article that says:
U.S. military analysts disagree over the size of the
insurgency, with estimates running as high as 20,000 fighters when part-timers
are added.
That is, the higher figure is also a wag. We don’t know. Just how many people are expected to carry out X attacks per day? I don’t know. Apparently our military does not, either.
The article also notes that few Islamists are in this total and that Baathists are the main force in the opposition.
Well, yeah. Nice to know my impression is right.
While I’m sure this is going to be spun as a refutation that we are winning since the insurgency has “grown;” and that Islamists are virtually irrelevant, showing the idea that we are fighting terrorism in Iraq to be wrong, both assessments are ridiculous themselves.
The number is just not important. I’ve never focused on it. I’ve noticed in the past that the estimate of 5,000 stayed the same even after any given month that we killed a thousand or so. This is also why body counts are irrelevant to measuring success, as I’ve long argued.
Really, we have the density of troops to win assuming the enemy can’t mass into fairly large-sized forces to carry out sustained attacks on isolated posts; and by the 10:1 rule we could successfully fight 40,000 pure insurgents. As I’ve said in the past, tell me when the Iraqis are massing in platoon and company strength and mounting attacks. Then I’ll worry that the resistance is progressing. A couple times in the past I’ve noted this budding ability and worried about it, only to see it collapse into minor attack patterns again. The big pushes in the Fallujah and Sadr revolts led the enemy to mass and we smashed them up pretty good. Since then, we’ve stopped doing the body count thing, for which I am glad. Perhaps it was felt that while we were getting hit hard, we had to reassure the public that we were giving far better than we were taking. I don’t know. But the bottom line is our casualties and not their casualties are what count. This is because losses can be replaced if the political and economic measures don’t improve to dry the recruiting pool. Just like weakening our home front is the only way to get us out despite nearly 1-1/2 deaths per day on our side, weakening their morale is key. With sufficient motivation, we can both replace losses indefinitely.
Getting the Iraqis (the Shias, Kurds, and even some Sunnis) into the fight fully against the Baathists and Islamists is the key, not some wag about the number of fighters we are currently up against. Use the attacks per day and our casualties to judge progress. As self rule, economic rebuilding, and democracy progress, we will see these numbers drop.
As for the Islamists, as I’ve repeated over and over, the Baathists were always my main worry and not the foreign jihadis. The latter are more easily identified and killed. They tend to alienate all Iraqis against the combined Baathist/Islamist resistance anyway. They appear more significant because of the high profile suicide attacks they pull off.
Of course, downplaying the Islamic nature of the resistance undercuts one of the complaints of the anti-war side that we are creating Islamist enemies. So take the good with the bad, I guess.
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“The ‘International Community’ At Work” (Posted
The UN Security Council is
divided on
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not one who believes we have a
particular responsibility to intervene to halt human rights violations just
because nobody else will. We must look to our own security first and anything
else truly is a war or intervention of choice. That said, shouldn’t the
international community as its supporters idealize it be in the vanguard of
those calling for the ending of outrages such as
Will the international community act? Who knows? Depends on
how many oil contracts
But we could once again act to enforce the standards that the UN purports to stand for:
But as public opinion mounts at the crisis in
My earlier
post on the
I think that a battalion-sized force sent in for a time will
not strain our ground forces. It didn’t in
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“Men of Whose Cloth?” (Posted
Ah, the joys of rendering unto Castro what which is Castro’s:
Members of an American humanitarian aid group
arrived in
The volunteers, who ranged in age from 10 to 91, came in
from the
“Pastors for Peace,” indeed. The failure of people who purport to guide people in good versus
evil in their private lives see evil in
Unbelievable.
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“What Really Worries Me” (Posted
The North Koreans have deployed new missiles that can reach out into the Pacific and reach Guam, a major US base that would be important in fighting North Korea should it come to war:
The missiles themselves and their ability to target US bases around the Korean peninsula are not my major worry.
What I really worry about is what the North Koreans have learned from recent American wars. Kosovo reinforced their burrowing tendencies. We are working on this and the North Koreans have to worry that precision and our technology will give us weapons that can reach into their subterranean bunkers. The lessons of Desert Storm taught the lesson of our land and air offensive power. The Iraq War reinforced the lessons of Kosovo and Desert Storm and added the terrifying speed of execution with relatively few troops that we are capable of producing. What might the North Koreans learn from this recent history?
They might have learned that the only way to defeat us is to
hit us hard with everything they’ve got from H-Hour on. Their army is already
forward deployed near the DMZ in an offensive posture. So we know that they
would attack if they can. But with missiles capable of reaching
I don’t know how we’d deal with that kind of threat. Would
The point is, the theater of war
won’t just be the Korean peninsula and the waters just around it. A narrow
theater plays to our advantage as we project massive firepower into the theater
from areas outside it.
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“The Debate That Never Ends” (Posted
Ok, I’m better now. The treatment of one of our veterans at the hands of anti-war scum (and I’m talking specifically to that parade and not generally) is still horrible and I still worry that much like other fringe anti-war ideas, this trend will go mainstream. But I am not in a funk over it. Just mad. If those esteemed ladies and gentlemen still want to debate the justice and need to overthrow Saddam, I say bring it on. They are perfectly welcome to argue that Saddam should still be in power.
As American forces mass in the Gulf region and Saddam Hussein continues to defy nearly a score of resolutions demanding he come clean on his WMD programs and as he continues to add to mass graves, the American Congress continues its debate on whether to invade:
Following release of the 511-page review Friday, the
panel's top Democrat, West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, said three-quarters
of senators would not have voted to authorize the invasion if they had known
how weak the intelligence was.
Oh wait. You say we eviscerated the Iraqi military? Saddam
has been charged with a host of crimes and will stand trial? The Iraqis are
retaking their place in the world as a
Well I’ll be darned. Yet we continue to debate the decision to go to war. Huh. Very odd.
Except it’s not odd at all. I
stopped debating
For some, debating means arguing until they win. They never give up.
I stand by my reasons for invading
I remain satisfied that we ended Saddam’s threat to his neighbors and to us. I remain satisfied that we ended his terrorism sponsorship. I remain satisfied that we ended his drive to get WMD—including nuclear weapons. I remain satisfied that his reign of terror has been ended.
And I remain convinced that establishing a democratic Iraq will aid us tremendously in creating a Middle East that is not an incubator for crazies who want to kill us.
Could we please argue about what to do about
Oh, and one last thing on the WMD issue:
In the unanimously approved report, senators concluded that
the CIA kept key information from its own and other agencies' analysts; engaged
in "group think" by failing to challenge the assumption that Iraq had
weapons of mass destruction; and allowed President Bush and Secretary of State
Colin Powell to make false statements.
Is it just me or is it amusing that a report accusing the
intelligence services of “group think” was passed unanimously? I do not believe
that every intelligence service in the world was wrong on this issue. Oh, sure,
details will be shown wrong but the big picture was not in error. I do not
believe that all of Saddam’s scientists played the game of “lie to get funding
from the senile dictator” while his bloodthirsty lads roamed
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“Worthless Pieces of Human Garbage” (Posted
From Instapundit, a link to this article that starts:
Think
about the
Why yes, I do think of liberal-minded tolerance. And from long years of experience, that expression doesn’t mean what the liberal minded think it means. They are tolerant of a wide range of political expression ranging from Ted Kennedy on the right to Karl Marx and Fidel Castro on the left. And they’ll even forgive somebody outside that range if they are properly anti-American. Their minds are so closed and they actually believe they are open minded.
One American veteran, Jason Gilson, of the Iraqi War was in the Fourth of July parade there and he was greeted with jeers and calls of “baby killer” and “murderer” from the liberal-minded crowd.
Those F-ing bastards!
Oh yeah, they oppose the war but support the troops. Oh yeah, they love our country and soldiers and just want the best for them.
No. They hate our soldiers. They want more to die in penance for daring to liberate 50 million people in two countries in the last 2-1/2 years. They want the enlisted troops to frag their officers. They want them to refuse orders and desert. Any soldier who won’t fight is a hero and every one of our enemies is a freedom fighter who deserves an attorney and all the protections they’d deny our soldiers. They want our troops subject to the ICC. F-ing bastards!
I’ve seen this attitude and have been waiting for it to gain currency in this war. I wear my ID card on an Army-emblazoned necklace and I was amazed when one co-worker remarked to me that the non-standard necklace was a “political statement.” If you think so, I replied, and ignored the remark. But that amazed me. After all the loud protests that they love our troops too, you’d think a simple “Army” printed on the band would be a neutral statement. ‘Cause, you know, both sides support the troops, right?
But what do we expect with the likes of Michael Moore
gaining hero status in the anti-war movement. Is it 1968 all over again? No. In
It can’t come to this. It can’t. And if the people in leadership positions who look to these thugs to support them in elections won’t shame them into civility, our war against our overseas enemy will turn into a war here, too.
But don’t call them unpatriotic. Oh no. That is wrong. They may defend your right to burn the flag to their dying days but don’t dare call them unpatriotic. Fine. I won’t.
They are just fucking bastards.
I usually don’t use vulgarity on this blog. But it should not be reserved for use only against Senators. The worthless pieces of living garbage that would taunt our soldiers with these insults when they have risked their lives to protect us and to free strangers from tyranny are shameful.
No, on second thought, it isn’t just shameful. It’s liberal-minded. But hey, at least they still have their scenic views.
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"First Line of Defense"
(Posted
Hugo Chavez, Number Two in
the Axis of El Vil, clearly has no intention of
going quietly as he prepares for the monitored recall vote in August. I've
already written that he will likely try to hinder the election and the subsequent
counting to engineer a delay that a compliant court will say puts the election
past the point where a recall triggers a new presidential election. Once past
the August date, the vice president assumes the presidency instead and Chavez
governs in all but name. Or if all else fails, he simply says this is an
American plot and digs in his paramilitaries and loyal military units around
the presidential palace and dares anyone to get rid of him.
But of course, Chavez would
prefer not to go that route. Even Carter might tut tut at that bit of blatant power grab. And Chavez, budding
Castro that he is, does have support amongst the poor. So actually winning the
vote would be a lot more convenient for Chavez. That doesn't
mean Chavez will go by the book:
Outraging
He is violating agreements to
play fair:
But opposition leaders charge that Chavez violated an
agreement in which the government and private media pledged to give equal time
to both sides in the campaign before the Aug. 15 referendum.
And of course, getting friendly
voters on to the electoral rolls is a must for any self-respecting thug
dictator:
More are on the way, of
course.
This doesn't erase the
anti-Chavez votes that will be cast, but it does increase the chance that
Chavez will get one final card to play if his other stratagems fail and he
needs to dig in those supporters around the palace:
Re-elected in 2000 to a six-year term, Chavez can be
recalled if the opposition gets more votes than the 3.7 million votes he won in
2000. Elections would be held within 30 days to serve out his term, which ends
in January 2007.
It isn't clear what would happen if the opposition
surpasses 3.7 million votes — and Chavez surpasses the opposition vote. Courts
have yet to address all possibilities in a presidential recall, which was
included in a new Constitution instituted at Chavez's urging after his first
election in 1998.
I think it is pretty darned
clear what would happen. Chavez would claim a mandate and the constitutional
provisions be damned. Wonder how Carter will react to
this?
Chavez will not go without a
toe tag.
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The amnesty is one part of
suppressing the insurgency. It will aim for the less dedicated. As I suspected,
it is not intended for the most hard core.
The new emergency
law will be used to go after the hard Baathists
and the Islamists.
I suggest Fallujah
would be a good target. Seal it off. Ration food. Go house to house and check
identifications. If anybody has suspicious powder burns or even looks funny at
the Iraqi National Guard and police, take them in for questioning. Seize
weapons. Sift the city for the undesirables and make it stick.
And US forces will remain
nearby—and overhead—just
in case.
The Iraqis seem to have the
will to beat the insurgents. I wonder if this can get better faster than we believe?
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“Stressing the Guard” (Posted
Some say the war in
I think there are three Guard
brigades in
The Guard has 8 divisions
with 24 brigades, 3 separate brigades, and 15 enhanced separate brigades. The
enhanced units are the ones that get extra training and money to be available
faster. We used 15 battalions during the Iraq War in various duties. (This is
all on memory, too) So the total is 42 combat brigades plus combat support
units like artillery, air defense, signal, etc.
Can we really say that 8 out
of 42 brigades—less than 20% of the total—is straining the reserves to the
breaking point? We could mobilize units for 5 years at this rate without
recalling the same unit twice.
If this level of commitment
is stressing the Guard, we need to seriously reorganize the Army National Guard.
Given that the premise of the “big one” in which we mobilize every trooper we
can find is gone (and has been gone since 1991) it is time we look at our reserve/active
balance thoroughly anyway. War makes it even more important.
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"Mistakes" (Posted
Yes, we've made mistakes in
We're taking too long to
turn
I remember when the French
and others were concerned that our initial plan called for drafting a
constitution and then by the end of the second year of occupation we'd hold
elections. This was too long, critics said. We of course see the result of
accelerating the timetable and re-ordering the sequence. Now there are
complaints that we are turning things over to the Iraqis before they are ready.
We disbanded the Iraqi army.
Let's just assume that either
we were able to retain the Iraqi army or quickly recall it to bases not stripped clean. Our
forces and this army would have faced the Baathists
from the Special Republican Guards, the Republican Guards, the various
intelligence services, and of course the Islamists both amateur and
professional. So first of all, keeping these guys employed would not have
eliminated the pool of potential resistance. Remember, the army had largely Shia lower ranks so they presumably weren't going to join
the Baathists anyway. But we'd be keeping Sunni
officers.
And how would this have been
received? Well the cry of betrayal is not too tough to anticipate. The charge
would be that we spoke of democracy yet kept the same killers in charge. How
could the Shias trust us if they see the same
faces—with US-provided guns now—lording in over them? It was just about oil
they'd say and not about freedom from tyranny. And when the Sunnis counter-attacked
in Fallujah and formed units of the old army defected
and fought us, the cries of what kind of idiot would keep the soldiers of the
former regime in power would blast the administration daily as Marines and
soldiers fought a more serious revolt.
De-Baathification
cripples rebuilding.
Let's also assume that we
were able to keep the government buildings intact so that the existing
"technocrats" could all keep their jobs. Oh sure, Shias
and Kurds were excluded over the decades and most weren't even allowed to get
the schooling to apply, but no matter. And forget that many with Baathist credentials have blood on their hands. Stability
would have been enhanced if we had kept them.
And how would the anti-war
side have reacted? Again, the cries of betrayal of the Shias
and Kurds who must weave their way through government bureaucracies staffed
with their long-time oppressors would be raised. Just add all the complaints
about the army but add that our reconstruction would now be pouring money into
the Baathists! Why did we fight this war?
We should have shot looters.
Of course, looting of
government buildings, hospitals, and museums was a setback. Letting it go on
arguably taught the defeated that we were too soft to rule them as occupiers. A couple days of shooting and killing a score or so as a lesson
would have prevented chaos and destruction.
So what if we'd killed a
score or so and the situation remained calm? I'll tell you what would happen.
The Army divisional commander would be testifying before a Congressional
committee and the military would be under fire for not court martialing the offending officers and men. How could we
shoot desperate poor people? Wasn't the rapid collapse of the regime forces a
clear sign that we won and that the people just want to get on with their lives
and not resist us? Good grief, they'd say, is it any wonder we need to ratify
the International Criminal Court? I'm sure the Belgians would have prepared
charges against our troops forthwith.
We failed to impose
martial law in Sunni triangle.
Like the shooting of looters
issue, our failure to move into the Sunni areas bypassed in the war after
If we had done this after the Baathists collapsed so quickly in the major combat operations, would the opposition really have understood that we were preempting resistance? Would they have accepted anything with that argument? If Sunnis were dying and being rounded up before they resisted, Tommy Franks would have been accused of all sorts of crimes. I recall stories speaking with sympathy about how the poor Sunnis were no longer the top dogs and they didn't know what the future would hold. I happen to agree that this was a mistake but let's not pretend that the alternative would have been greeted by the anti-war side with anything but hostility. How would we prove that the Sunnis would resist? Point out that they ruled for 400 years? Please.
We should have patrolled
in light vehicles with soft caps to project strength.
Some argue that the Army
should have emulated the British and Marines who patrolled their Shia areas at ease. Had the Army done this can we guess the
reaction? You failed to protect our soldiers? How could you patrol in Sunni
areas without body armor and armored vehicles? We need a commission!
There are still power
blackouts in
We actually have surpassed
pre-war production but since the reporters are in
We still haven't spent
much of the money Congress appropriated for reconstruction.
Yes, the money is slow. But
we spent captured money and we had access to other funds plus oil revenue as we
got the new money into the pipeline. And if we’d spent the money already, would
people have been happy? Why then we’d have investigations into why proper
bidding wasn’t done and why wasn’t the money allocated according to a plan to
spend it most effectively. Why was there waste?! And God help us all if Brown
and Root made more than a 3 percent profit.
We invaded with too few
troops.
All our problems come from
too few troops in the invasion force. But as I’ve noted ad nauseum we did
invade with the line elements of 7 US and British division equivalents. This is
exactly what our plans for a major theater war have called for since the
Persian Gulf War. What we did not have were the massive amounts of support
troops used in 1991 and we did not need them.
If we’d taken the time to
mass the unneeded troops, might the attack have started months later? Would
Saddam have finally admitted we were going to invade and seriously prepared?
Would we have had the troops to rotate into
The follow-up is that we have
too few troops to occupy
We brought in too few
allied troops for the occupation.
Like we
could have gotten more, first of all.
But if we had, they would have been worthless in a fight. Except for the
British, our allies seem to have very restrictive rules to keep their troops
out of combat. Why after all did we have to retain 1st Armor
Division and 2nd Cavalry Regiment (Light) to fight Sadr’s nutballs when the revolt
was in the Polish-Ukrainian division’s sector? Because they wouldn’t fight,
that’s why. It does us no good to have too many troops that we have to shadow
in case trouble erupts. All those allied troops in 1991 except for the British
and French were mostly worthless and had no impact on the war. God help us if
one of our units got in trouble and we had to hope for allied help to rescue
our troops. Anybody remember Mogadishu and the non-US troops that stood by for
hours while our guys got shot up escaping?
Failing to seal the
borders with
Yes, we’d have been better
off if the borders had been sealed. But this could have been done by instilling
some fear in
Failing to account for and
secure all the arms depots in
Indeed, one author I read
strongly implied that our rapid advance was the cause of this problem. The
implication was that we should have taken the time to secure the depots before
we continued the advance.
But if we had slowly advanced
destroying depots as we went how long would the war have lasted? How many more
would have died. Would the French and Russians have finally gotten us to halt
the war with Saddam in power? And given the large numbers of arms depots, even
destroying or securing 90% probably would not have been enough.
The Congressional inquiries
into the failure to crush the demoralized and ill-equipped Iraqi military in
two weeks would have been lengthy and vicious.
So, mistakes were made. War
is uncertain and we can’t pretend different decisions would have been right
100%.
But don't expect all those
critics piously claiming that they just want the administration to admit
mistakes so we can correct them to admit to these uncertainties. They opposed
the war and still do notwithstanding their claims to the contrary. They only
want to hammer the administration over the mistakes of the war. And they'd
hammer the administration whatever was decided. Yes, we made mistakes. So has
our enemy. Yet we won the war. And we are winning the stabilization phase, too.
We'll make a lot more
mistakes as we push forward to victory. I guarantee it.
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“Amnesty?” (Posted
Amnesty for Iraqis who have fought us is under consideration by the Iraqi government.
At first blush this sticks in the craw. It seems outrageous.
Indeed, one commentator I saw said we should immediately withdraw our troops
from
We don’t need to grant amnesties since I think that as Iraqi forces get stronger we will be able to pull back and have the Iraqis shoulder the burden of suppressing the Sunni/Islamist terror campaign. But the Iraqis probably would like to end the decades of killing at last. In some forms, this could be ok.
Consider that many critics of the war complain that we disbanded the Iraqi army (again, this is false—disbanding the disintegrated army was a mere formality) when we should have used it and also complain about de-Baathification since it deprives Iraq of technocrats to help rebuild (no, it gets rid of criminals if done at the right level, but my point is it is a claimed “mistake”). If dealing with our enemies is out, why did so many who oppose the entire war latch on to these complaints? Why were they eager to have people who killed us and Iraqis put into the military and government to work by our side?
Remember our objective. It is to turn over an
Would we be willing to lose another 100 or 500 soldiers and Marines to keep killing those who have killed us in the past? Remember that combating insurgencies ultimately depends on political measures to turn off the flow of replacements. Killing insurgents in the field is necessary in the short run but few enemies are required to keep an insurgency going. And when they lose too much they can pull back into their homes and we are hard pressed to identify them and arrest or kill them. They can regroup and come back when ready. Killing for vengeance over what we’ve lost thus far will just lead to more of our deaths.
Remember the objective!
As long as this isn’t some faux deal like Fallujah, an amnesty deal that gets enemy fighters to go home, cooperate with the new government, and get on with their lives is acceptable.
And this still leaves the foreign jihadis for us to hunt down and kill. They won’t accept.
And I imagine the hard core Baathists resisters won’t accept either. Nor will the idiot Sadr. The target audience is the larger less-motivated group that takes money to attack us and which may not have done too much harm anyway.
Nor does it mean we have to deal with any bad guys in an
official capacity. Amnesty does not have to mean high rank in a new
This amnesty sounds bad. It feels bad. But it is not bad if done right. Remember our objective.
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“Unclear” (Posted
This from the British Foreign Secretary:
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said he was
unsure whether to believe
In related matters, Straw reported that he is also “unsure” about whether the Pope is indeed Catholic. He opined that he is “unclear” about whether he may already be a winner in the Publisher’s House sweepstakes. Further, he “does not know” if it is safe to drink milk one day past its expiry date.
With US-prodded pressure on the nuclear issue and
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“Fighting the Enemy” (Posted
I wrote in my First Gulf War (1980-1988) summary (I have a torn-apart manuscript on the war that I doubt I’ll have time to put together in the near future. I almost sold it in an earlier version. I tried to sell this summary with footnotes but failed—eventually I did get an account of the initial invasion sold in “The First Gulf War and the Army’s Future” in 1997) back in the mid-1990s:
Finally, the war is a sobering reminder that wars do not usually go
according to plan. Whether one looks at Iraq's assumptions about a quick war in
1980 or Iran's belief from 1982 onward that Iraq would crumble if pushed hard
enough, it is easy to see that war has a life of its own and can spiral out of
our comprehension when we decide that war will advance our interests. Our
precise assumptions about the minimum force we will need to win in the future
must be questioned since the type of enemy we may face cannot be chosen ahead
of time. Even if we know what our enemy will look like on day one of a war, we
could be wrong. Or it could change as months or years pass. While not an
argument for a 1945-size American Army capable of beating anybody (and simultaneously
crushing our economy) the
The Iraq War has only reinforced this belief. This basic
mindset is why I have not panicked in the face of a Sunni and foreign jihadi-supported resistance over a year after
Certainly, as I’ve called for in the past, we need a larger Army. Uncertainty over the future and the need to have a margin of error is something I’ve been focused on and why I’ve been worried that Rumsfeld wanted to kill two Army divisions (I haven’t seen this brought up in the last year, so this may have died) I’d settle for 40,000 more troops as a start to see what that does for us. We can’t force too many troops through our training establishment anyway. For years I’ve thought this should mean two more divisions. Now, I think we should add separate UA-brigades and battalions that can be plugged into our new-style divisions.
Enemies adapt and evolve. I’m sure our adaptations and
evolution are even more discouraging to our enemies. As long as we keep
adapting and evolving while we stand up the Iraqi government and its security
forces, we will emerge with an allied
And just a thought: the anti-war types who are usually for
intervening in humanitarian crises where there is little national security
reason to go in should not be hammering on the fight in
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“
We are seeing threats
to US citizens in
Increased threat of terrorist attack has led Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to approve the temporary relocation of eligible
family members and non-emergency Defense Department personnel from
So who is trying to penetrate this Shia-majority state (not Shia-run, mind you)? (the Shias are 70%, Sunnis 30%)
And then I read:
Bahrain's king said Saturday that his tiny
Gulf kingdom is ready to send a naval force to help safeguard Iraqi territorial
waters, if asked by the new Iraqi government, the official Bahrain News Agency
reported.
Anybody attacking by sea seems likely to be coming from
Is an undeclared war going on between
Very curious.
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“I Was Wrong” (Posted
I was skeptical of reports that US soldiers had forced Iraqis to jump in a lake and one drowned. The accounts painted pictures of US troops without any light discipline and other problems. Well, US soldiers have been charged in the incident.
Of course, it is still possible that the eyewitnesses were lying about the details to increase the chance they would be believed. You know, make it sound worse. The killing is the bad part however, and the embellishments did not (and still do not) ring true.
Nonetheless, I was wrong. The guilty should be punished. That is a given.
Given the readiness of the press—even our own—to jump on any claim that our troops have done something wrong, it is difficult to assess these charges from a distance. As a rule, I assume nothing until proven guilty. And I assume we have the integrity to investigate allegations and find the truth. Most turn out to be nothing. Some are true and we act. So far my assumptions are holding up.
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"The West's War" (Posted
This is not just
"To the European people ... you only have a few more
days to accept bin Laden's truce or you will only
have yourselves to blame," read the purported statement by the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, referring
to bin Laden's three-month "truce offer" --
effectively an ultimatum -- which ends in mid-July.
"The race now is between you, time and European
governments which have refused to stop their attacks against Muslims.
"So do not blame us for what will happen and we
apologize to you in advance if you are among those killed."
I will say that it is so nice
to see that politeness is not forgotten even amongst homicidal, delusional
maniacs. In that spirit, I'd like to apologize to the terrorists in advance for
the death of every last damn one of them. Whether by JDAM or rifle fire, we
will seek you out and kill you. And win.
Tough luck chaps, and sorry
and all. But you will all die in the end.
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"
Since Saddam's statue fell,
I've been eager to get the Iraqis fighting the former Baathists
and cleaning up the country. I wanted the Iraqis to try the Baathists
for war crimes. I wanted Iraqis to take the lead in security on the front
lines. We must support these efforts, of course, since the new
And we see the benefits
of Iraqi National Guard (the former Iraqi Civil Defense Corps) units getting
out front:
The eagerness to see Iraqis back in
charge of the streets of
And the benefits of
trying the Baathists:
Coming just three days after an Iraqi
government assumed limited political power from the U.S.-led occupation
authority, the view of Hussein in a defendant's dock also appeared to encourage
many Iraqis to imagine a country more in their hands than ever.
In the end, it is
We are winning this fight.
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"The Real Crime" (Posted
Saddam Hussein and some of
his top thugs were
formally charged for his numerous crimes.
But Saddam lashed
out, reflecting what is sure a common view amongst
Michael Moore fans:
The deposed dictator fixed
the judge with a penetrating stare and declared: "This is all a theater by
Bush, the criminal."
Ah yes. Saddam of course, was
charged with but a fraction of his crimes:
Accused
of killing religious figures in 1974, gassing Kurds in Halabja
in 1988, killing the Kurdish Barzani clan in 1983,
killing members of political parties over the last 30 years, carrying out the
1986-88 "Anfal" campaign of displacing
Kurds, the suppression of the 1991 uprisings by Kurds and Shiites, the 1990
invasion of
I know, invading
No, the real
crime is deposing such a murderous monster and his underlings without the full
set of twenty UN Security Council resolutions and the blessings of Chirac. Now
we're talking real wrath-inspiring outrage. The hundreds of
thousands who died as the result of his crimes and sick ambition are mere
statistics. But that one additional UN resolution that we did not get—that's a
significant number. That warrants spittle-flecked rage at our country. That inspires
hope that we lose the war (via Instapundit).
That is mind boggling.
The trial will be
amazing. Already we see some wondering whether Saddam can get a fair trial. But
Saddam is guilty. Shooting him as we dragged him out of the hole he hid in
would not have been injustice under the circumstances. Yet just wait for the
complaints by some that Saddam is not getting a fair trial. They are the ones
who think "fair" means a 50-50 chance of
not-guilty verdict. There are some who think that the proof
of guilt is not a "slam dunk." How is it even possible to think this way? They are wrong. One
former victim of Saddam put
it well:
"We must do this to show we are a
legal society," said the 35-year-old engineer, sitting in a friend's home
in
Try Saddam and execute him. In that order, of course. Wouldn't want to
ignore the legal niceties. But by all means execute him. Anything less
belittles his crimes over the last three decades.
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