Rumsfield in the firing line

I think taking 2/3 of Iraq in a week is a start.

If that would be the case that would have been a start, yes. As it stands, the rushed deployment of another 100.000 troops into this war doesn't say "everything is going according to plan" to me.

anyone know if Rumsfield has any formal military training and what that is?

Oh really. Just the other day the scorecard for one battle was 150-500 Iraqi's dead to zero American casualties, that's pretty decisive in my book. The only set back in this whole thing was Turkey. They held up the 4th Infantry Division from opening a northern front at the same time the 3ID and 1st Marine Expeditionary Force where advancing from the south. It's a minor set back because the 4ID are already enroute to kuwait and should be in Iraq sometime early next month.

BTW/ the 4ID is the world's most advanced mechanized fighting unit and their delay is seen by some as a major set back. It's not. The Republican Guard have proven to be little match for what the US/UK have on the ground already.

Senior US generals appear to be disagreeing with you. As posted in a seperate thread:

By Rick Atkinson and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, March 30, 2003; Page A01


Ten days into the invasion of Iraq, the political imperative of waging a short and decisive campaign is increasingly at odds with the military necessity of preparing for a protracted, more violent and costly war, according to senior military officials.



Top Army officers in Iraq say they now believe that they effectively need to restart the war. Before launching a major ground attack on Iraq's Republican Guard, they want to secure their supply lines and build up their own combat power. Some timelines for the likely duration of the war now extend well into the summer, they say.



This revised view of the war plan, a major departure from the blitzkrieg approach developed over the past year, threatens to undercut early Bush administration hopes for a quick triumph over the government of President Saddam Hussei

Rumsfield is a tool, and I hope that Tommy Franks kicks the crap out of him during the next press conference. The only reason we have the amount of forces on the ground that we do is because Franks kicked and shouted until he got more units. It was a friggin' blessing that Turkey refused to allow troops to operate from their country, because at least now the 4th I.D. can be used as a reserve in the south, if their ****ing armor ever arrives.

Mr. Rumsfield, AIRPOWER ALONE CANNOT WIN WARS! Yes, the Nintendo pilots do a fine job, but their is a limit to what they can accomplish. It's called air SUPPORT for a reason. Air power supports the grunts on the ground, not the other way around.

You can not send your division in to invade another country unless you have troops to SECURE YOUR SUPPLY ROUTES! It's not a good idea to have your convoys shoot their way all the way to front. That's how your supplies don't get where they are supposed to go, or how a bunch of REMF's end up as POW's on Al Jazzerra (sp?).

YOU NEED A RESERVE FORCE! 3rd/7th fought for 72 hours straight, with no relief. 1st Marines have done the same. Three days of no sleep= falling asleep over the barrel of your rifle. I know this from experience. You need to bring in fresh troops for relief so the guys on the line can get rest, tend their wounds, eat, and resupply. Ammo is your friend, and just like people friends, it some times runs out. That's a bad thing.

Anyway, end of rant. Just had to get that off my chest.

Has anyone else noticed that in the last three days whenever Rumsfeld appears on TV he seems to be trying to pull his head in, like a turtle? I guess he doesn't want anyone taking a swing at it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/internati...,925140,00.html

He has training in evasion. And I don't mean Special Ops.

More examples of his 'toolness'

Report: Rumseld Ignored Pentagon Advice on Iraq
Sat March 29, 2003 06:39 PM ET
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.

It's official, he's a butt head.

What people are forgetting is that Perle was the one who was telling Rumsfeld that only small force was necessary. He also seemed to have the idea that Iraqis would shower the American soldiers with petals when they arrived, and all the Republican Guard would surrender.

Perle has been knocked down, and so should Rumsfeld.

I couldn't agree with you more. There's no sense in fighting a war of attrition when you have superior technology and fire power.

BTW, what�s up with this thread? Did we finally find something we can all agree on?

I was thrown by Rumsfeld's remarks the other day that the plan was General Franks' creation -- he emphasized it a couple of times in speaking with reporters after a meeting with Congressional leaders. I assume he was responding to potential criticism that the force numbers were not what military experts had said were necessary, but it came off sounding more as if he was trying to establish a little space between himself and Franks.

I do concede it's probably a mistake to make too much of one remark from a man who is notoriously impatient with questions from reporters.

Here's an interview with Perle about what he thought would win the war:


Ken Adleman, in this article, said:


So according to Perle the regime would "collapse at the first whiff of gunpowder" and according to Adleman it would be a "cakewalk."

It's hard to tell if they were saying that just to sell the war, or if they really honestly believed it. I don't think you're making too much of it, because he again emphasized this morning that it was Franks' plan.

How many of you critics have seen the battle plan?

How many of you critics have ever been involved in the creation of a battle plan?

Has it ever crossed your mind the plan they decided on *is* flexible enough to taken into account *both* a quick victory and a rolling start. That it just might be flexible enough to deal with 100,000 Iraqi POWs or 5,000 Iraqi POWs. That it is flexible enough to move the 4ID from a northern front through Turkey to a southern front through Kuwait 3 weeks after the operation started. That the plan is flexible enough to either have troops fight with Iraqi opposition forces or without Iraqi opposition forces.

No, most of you, including me, and the media haven't. So, the easiest thing to do is quickly point out something a Gen. says and blow it out of context. The media is hungry for bad news on the American side of this war and this story, among others, is like throwing a steak into a pit of half starved lions.

Yeah, and now I see that on CNN, and read in the Washington Post of various unnamed military sources arguing about it. I guess I also shouldn't have said "potential" criticism, either, given that.

One possible reason to associate the plan with Franks is that he's not the lightning rod for criticism that Rumsfeld is, and to say, hey, a regular Army guy said this was a good plan -- it's not just suits like me and Perle and Wolfowitz. Also, Franks is one of Bush's favorites. Rumsfeld is a pretty experienced political infighter himself.

It is well known that Rumsfeld and Franks have different opinions on war. Franks likes to build up and then use crushing force, Rumsfeld likes a small, mobile, quick striking force.

From what I have read, the build up in the Gulf was a balance between the two. Its too soon in the war to know which option would have been better. Even though we've seemed to stalled now as we clean up, its too soon to know if we should have sent more troops in,

Politicians have always been far more optimistic than the people from the Pentagon.

It's easier to sell the war to the people that way (like a commercial).

The military always wants to grossly outnumber the opposition. If Franks could have 2 million troops fighting in Iraq, he'd take it.

Rumsfeld, since day one of his tenure, has challenged the military to transform itself into a smaller, faster, more mobile force. He has also ordered the Pentagon to revise it's stock of battle plans to address the changing nature of enemy warfare.

The results in Iraq remain to be seen, but so far things seem to be going well. There may be supply-line delays here and there, but in no way are the US (and coalition) forces facing defeat.

I give Rummy the thumbs-up for having the balls to address the changing nature of warfare. Military leaders may not be comfortable with this, but in time, the US military will be better prepared to deal with the 'non-traditional' tactics that are present on the battlefields of today and in the future.

The first mistake made by Rumsfeld and Co has been to ignored the reports by secret sevices that the shiite south would not rise up against Saddam.

The second mistake has been to take Iraquis for fools. It looks like everybody thought that the Iraqui army would fight again using the old soviet doctrine, a war of positions with classical and massive confrontations, a doctrine that had lead them to a quick crash in 1991. They rather opt for a dispersion of their forces, harassment operations and urban querilla.

I have been surprised by the amount of resistance. I think I, along with many other, thought we'd roll right over Iraq until we got to Baghdad. I sure thought the Shiite would rise up as well.

Rumsfeld could have sent too many, not enough or exactly the right number and it would make no difference -- the Leftist media (and Mastrap and others) would still step up to crucify him. They'd find an argument either way. If he left it to Tommy Franks, he didn't take it seriously enough. If he directed the warplan development himself, he would be portrayed as having no faith in his subordinates, or he'd be lambasted for playing "squad leader in the sky" from Washington.

This is what the war is all about for some -- politics.

I think we all did to some extent. I never thought the Iraqis would welcome the invaders, but the amount of resistance and determination is stunning.
Bush should have listened to the rest of the world.

Just like Roosevelt and/or Truman.

Pinheads.

I'm sorry, but how is it "well known" that Rumsfield and Franks have different opinons on war? Is this from the publications that quote unamed and annonymous government sources? How is there any credibility to these reports?

I personally don't believe much of the news from either side of the press whether it be from the right or the left. I feel that 95% of anything we hear is PURE speculation and most would be wise to bear this in mind. The only people who "know" what's happening are exactly those who do know and are in the theatre of operations.

Tell that to the dead troops.

i don't care what anyone says. Rummy is awesome..

the media just loves to make short term predictions on the war and when things go different, people think the war is not going as planned and that it's not going so well.. please.... things are going extremely well. we ought to be thankful Rummy is in there.

Hello?

From the Washington Post, as mentioned above:

Top Army officers in Iraq say they now believe that they effectively need to restart the war. Before launching a major ground attack on Iraq's Republican Guard, they want to secure their supply lines and build up their own combat power. Some timelines for the likely duration of the war now extend well into the summer, they say.

You're off to paranoia land again. The sources I quoted were the BBC and the Washington Post, quoting senior military personnel. None of which are your typical left wing publication I believe.

For our local MacNN neonazi, anything to the left of Heinrich Himmler is "left-wing".