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Annapurna1
liberal pussy
Registered: 05/21/02
Posts: 5,646
Loc: innsmouth..MA
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Gin Rummy
#1417119 - 03/29/03 05:11 PM (21 years, 5 days ago) |
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Report: Rumseld Ignored Pentagon Advice on Iraq
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly rejected advice from Pentagon planners that substantially more troops and armor would be needed to fight a war in Iraq, New Yorker Magazine reported. In an article for its April 7 edition, which goes on sale on Monday, the weekly said Rumsfeld insisted at least six times in the run-up to the conflict that the proposed number of ground troops be sharply reduced and got his way.
"He thought he knew better. He was the decision-maker at every turn," the article quoted an unidentified senior Pentagon planner as saying. "This is the mess Rummy put himself in because he didn't want a heavy footprint on the ground."
It also said Rumsfeld had overruled advice from war commander Gen. Tommy Franks to delay the invasion until troops denied access through Turkey could be brought in by another route and miscalculated the level of Iraqi resistance.
"They've got no resources. He was so focused on proving his point -- that the Iraqis were going to fall apart," the article, by veteran journalist Seymour Hersh, cited an unnamed former high-level intelligence official as saying.
A spokesman at the Pentagon declined to comment on the article.
Rumsfeld is known to have a difficult relationship with the Army's upper echelons while he commands strong loyalty from U.S. special operations forces, a key component in the war.
He has insisted the invasion has made good progress since it was launched 10 days ago, with some ground troops 50 miles from the capital, despite unexpected guerrilla-style attacks on long supply lines from Kuwait.
Hersh, however, quoted the former intelligence official as saying the war was now a stalemate.
Much of the supply of Tomahawk cruise missiles has been expended, aircraft carriers were going to run out of precision guided bombs and there were serious maintenance problems with tanks, armored vehicles and other equipment, the article said.
"The only hope is that they can hold out until reinforcements arrive," the former official said.
The article quoted the senior planner as saying Rumsfeld had wanted to "do the war on the cheap" and believed that precision bombing would bring victory.
Some 125,000 U.S. and British troops are now in Iraq. U.S. officials on Thursday said they planned to bring in another 100,000 U.S. soldiers by the end of April.
-------------------- "anchor blocks counteract the process of pontiprobation..while omalean globes regulize the pressure"...
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friartuck
Man of God
Registered: 03/29/03
Posts: 2,007
Loc: England
Last seen: 20 years, 4 months
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And yesterday the shit weasel wsa trying to pass the buck to General Franks.
-------------------- This post has been brought to you by: www.thedarkunderbelly.com/phpbb Never give up, never surrender. If you're seeing bitterness, perhaps the time has come to clean the shit from your eyes.
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rhizo
herb eater
Registered: 10/31/02
Posts: 599
Loc: Superposition of possible...
Last seen: 5 years, 6 months
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I'm surprised they didn't hang General Wallace for saying that shit about the enemy being different than the one they'd wargamed...that's pretty embarrassing for the pentagon.
-------------------- An optimist is never pleasantly surprised.
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EchoVortex
(hard) member
Registered: 02/06/02
Posts: 859
Last seen: 15 years, 6 months
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What do you expect from a "Defense Secretary" who's never even been in uniform? It's annoying enough when that fuckwit assumes his pompous, contemptuous stance towards journalists, but when he does it towards his own generals the only appropriate reaction is pure disbelief. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice--not a single one has ever seen combat, they're chickenhawks, every one of them. Powell is the only one with military experience and yet, of ALL of them, he has the LEAST imput into the actual military strategy.
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friartuck
Man of God
Registered: 03/29/03
Posts: 2,007
Loc: England
Last seen: 20 years, 4 months
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Chickenhawks....I never heard the word used in that context before but it's great.
>I'm surprised they didn't hang General Wallace for saying that shit about the enemy being different than the one they'd wargamed...that's pretty embarrassing for the pentagon.
I remember reading a while ago that they had a couple simulated wars with Iraq in order to see how it would go and to strategize. In the first simulation, Iraq won in no time. So they took away a bunch of weapons from the Iraqis and did it again.
Remember all the bragging we were doing about training for urban warfare? I wonder if they took civilians into account during that training.
-------------------- This post has been brought to you by: www.thedarkunderbelly.com/phpbb Never give up, never surrender. If you're seeing bitterness, perhaps the time has come to clean the shit from your eyes.
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