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Greenhat
LCDR
Joined: 09 May 2004
Posts: 405
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 Posted: Sun May 16, 2004 5:45 pm Post subject: |
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| mikest wrote: | | Greenhat wrote: | | Greenhat wrote: | Mikest,
Are you claiming that Saddam had no terrorist ties? |
Just to remind Mikest. |
Saddams ties to Al Queda were tenuous at best. Bush tried to tie Zarkawi's group to Saddam, but failed to mention the fact that he was in Kurdish territory. Every other tie to Al Queda was disproven or discredited.
Saddam's biggest tie was to the Palistinian suicide bombers, a f*ed up group if there ever was one, but not a large threat to us. Abu Nidal was allowed to die in Iraq, but we let Nazi's come here after WWII and that does not make us supporters of Hitler (except for a few A-holes on both sides).
But to the meat of the article, if people can blame Clinton for not getting OBL, why do they ignore this article? |
You do realize that Al Queda is not the only terrorist organization in the world? And that it does operate in cooperation with many other terrorist organizations?
Saddam actually founded his own terrorist group: The Arab Liberation Front. Saddam actually sponsered the terrorist attack by "The Jackal" against OPEC. In addition, Saddam was a long-time supporter of Hizbollah, and Abu Nidal (a lot more than just letting him die there). More recently, Saddam became a supporter of Hamas. And there is some pretty strong physical evidence (training camps, equipment) that Saddam was providing logistical and training support to terrorist groups including Al Queda.
Tenuous? I'm afraid not. Saddam had been supporting terrorists since 1979.
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mikest
PO2
Joined: 11 May 2004
Posts: 377
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| Posted: Sun May 16, 2004 6:05 pm Post subject: |
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Saddams threat to us was minimul and his support of terrorists pales in comparrison to Saudi and Egypt. This admin implied that if we did not go to war, we would have a mushroom cloud over a major city. Every claim by this admin has been poven inacurate or false. Containment was working.
But I see you did not answer my question so I will ask it again.
| Quote: | | But to the meat of the article, if people can blame Clinton for not getting OBL, why do they ignore this article? |
Thankfully I am going out of town and will be away from a computer for the next 36 hours. Although I would have liked to see the Navy3 responce to my post in another thread. |
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sparky
Former Member
Joined: 06 May 2004
Posts: 546
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| Posted: Sun May 16, 2004 6:47 pm Post subject: |
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Del wrote: | Quote: | | [Kerry] has and labeled them war crimes. Are you suggesting he doesn't know what he is talking about? Are you suggesting because this board has concluded so concludes the world? |
Regarding whether those actions were "war crimes," such things as free-fire zones and the burning of villages make war crimes more likely, but I don't believe them atrocities in and of themselves.
To say what you're saying would condemn the entire war and virtually every GI as a war criminal. Anyone fighting in a combat zone in Vietnam committed those things Kerry referred to.
I believe that Kerry was correct when he later reflected on his statement and concluded that he was wrong. When the fog of war is lifted and an individual matures, a different perspective arises.
So no, Del, specific atrocities may have been commonplace, but not everyone in a combat situation committed them as your assertion presupposes. Simply fighting in a free-fire zone doesn't make anyone a "war criminal" nor does using interdiction fire.
Speaking of the fog of war, I saw a movie last night, the Academy Award winning Fog of War. It's a long interview with Robert McNamara explaining his changing perspective on Vietnam. I recommend everyone watch it. |
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mikest
PO2
Joined: 11 May 2004
Posts: 377
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| Posted: Sun May 16, 2004 7:01 pm Post subject: |
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Gen Zinni's ten mistakes we made in Iraq
| Quote: | | I think the first mistake that was made was misjudging the success of containment. I heard the president say, not too long ago, I believe it was with the interview with Tim Russert that ... I'm not sure ... but at some point I heard him say that "containment did not work." That's not true. |
| Quote: | The second mistake I think history will record is that the strategy was flawed. I couldn't believe what I was hearing about the benefits of this strategic move. That the road to Jerusalem led through Baghdad, when just the opposite is true, the road to Baghdad led through Jerusalem. You solve the Middle East peace process, you'd be surprised what kinds of others things will work out.
The idea that we will walk in and be met with open arms. The idea that we will have people that will glom on to democracy overnight. The idea that strategically we will reform, reshape, and change the Middle East by this action -- we've changed it all right. |
| Quote: | The third mistake, I think was one we repeated from Vietnam, we had to create a false rationale for going in to get public support. The books were cooked, in my mind. The intelligence was not there. I testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee one month before the war, and Senator Lugar asked me: "General Zinni, do you feel the threat from Saddam Hussein is imminent?" I said: "No, not at all. It was not an imminent threat. Not even close. Not grave, gathering, imminent, serious, severe, mildly upsetting, none of those."
I predicted that the fighting would be over, the organized resistance in three weeks. To Tommy Franks' credit, he did it in 19 days. He beat my prediction. He did a magnificent job, as did our troops. But the rationale that we faced an imminent threat, or a serious threat, was ridiculous. Now, wherever history lays that, whether the intelligence was flawed or it was exaggerated, remains to be seen. I have my own opinions.
We failed in number four, to internationalize the effort. To the credit of President Bush 41, he set a standard that held up throughout the post-cold war period up until the Iraq war very well. He went to the United Nations before we undertook the operation to expel Saddam from Kuwait. Tremendous diplomatic effort to get a resolution from the United Nations to authorize the use of force and then a tremendous diplomatic effort on his part to create what I think is one of the most remarkable coalitions, the coalition we had in the Gulf war, where we had Arab countries, Islamic countries, European countries, contributions from the Far East all over the world. That model was extremely successful, and if you think about it, every intervention we had since we used the model, and it worked. We did it in Somalia, in Haiti, in Bosnia, in Kosovo, East Timor, there were variations on it, but it always started with that UN resolution
I think the fifth mistake was that we underestimated the task. And I think those of us that knew that region, former commanders in chief, I guess we can't use that term anymore - part of transformation is to change the lexicon - but former combatant commanders of U.S. Central Command, beginning with Gen. Schwarzkopf, have said you don't understand what you're getting into. You are not going to go through Edelman's "cakewalk;" you are not going to go through Chalabi's dancing in the streets to receive you. You are about to go into a problem that you don't know the dimensions and the depth of, and are going to cause you a great deal of pain, time, expenditure of resources and casualties down the road.
The sixth mistake, and maybe the biggest one, was propping up and trusting the exiles, the infamous "Gucci Guerillas" from London. We bought into their intelligence reports. To the credit of the CIA, they didn't buy into it, so I guess the Defense Department created its own boutique intelligence agency to vet them. And we ended up with a group that fed us bad information. That led us to believe that we would be welcomed with flowers in the streets; that led us to believe that this would be a cakewalk.
I can't understand why there was an underestimation when you look at a country that has never known democracy, that has been in the condition it's been in, that has the natural fault lines that it has, and the issues it has. And to look at the task of reconstructing this country, not only reconstructing it, but the idea of creating Jeffersonian democracy almost overnight, is almost ridiculous, in concept, in the kind of time and effort that was given as an estimate as to what it would take.
The seventh problem has been the lack of planning. I testified again during that period with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, right behind the panel of planners from the State Department and the Department of Defense, and I listened to them describe a "plan." I understood and knew that Gen. Franks and CENTCOM, would do their part. I knew damn right well the security piece would be taken care of, and I knew we had a good plan. I didn't hear anything that told me that they had the scope of planning for the political reconstruction, the economic reconstruction, social reconstruction, the development of building of infrastructure for that country. And I think that lack of planning, that idea that you can do this by the seat of the pants, reconstruct a country, to make decisions on the fly, to beam in on the side that has to that political, economic, social other parts, just a handful of people at the last minute to be able to do it was patently ridiculous.
The eighth problem was the insufficiency of military forces on the ground. There were a lot more troops in my military plan for operations in Iraq. I know when that plan was presented, the secretary of defense said it was "old and stale." It sounded pretty new and fresh to me, and looking back at it, now because there were a hell of a lot more troops. It was more the (Eric) Shinseki model that I think might have been a hell of a lot more effective to freeze the situation. Those extra divisions we had in there were not to defeat the Republican Guard, they were in there to freeze the security situation because we knew the chaos that would result once we uprooted an authoritarian regime like Saddam's.
The ninth problem has been the ad hoc organization we threw in there. No one can tell me the Coalition Provisional Authority had any planning for its structure. 144 bodies scraped from embassies around the world, people that I know, for fact, walked in and were selected and picked and put in the positions. Never quite fully manned-up until well into the operation. Never the kinds of qualifications or the breadth, and scope and depth it needed to work the problems down to the grassroots level. Changing horses in mid-stream, General Garner, I guess we can't say that he's fired. I found out tonight from Mark Thompson that the Defense Department claims he wasn't fired. But Jay Garner leaves, and in comes Jerry Bremer, third quarter, you're down seven, bring in the back-up quarterback and part of his job is to create the game plan while he's out there.
And that ad hoc organization has failed, leading to the tenth mistake, and that's a series of bad decisions on the ground. De-Baathifying down to a point where you've alienated the Sunnis, where you have stopped having qualified people down in the ranks, people who don't have blood on their hands, but know how to make the trains run on time. Business men who I ran into in the region out there in the region, who wanted to re-start their business, get jobs. They were told by the CPA "You can't do business because you were a Baathist!" They said to me, I had to say I was a Baathist. You don't do business in Iraq under Saddam if you're not a Baathist. Imagine throwing the Communists out of Russia at the end of the war. |
http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm?DocumentID=2208&from_page=../index.cfm |
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sparky
Former Member
Joined: 06 May 2004
Posts: 546
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| Posted: Sun May 16, 2004 7:07 pm Post subject: |
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I hope you enjoy yourself Mikest.
No doubt about it: Bush would bring his poll ratings up to Kerry's level if he could offer any evidence that Saddam and OBL worked together. But he can't and he won't.
The strange thing is the number of people who still believe this, usually people who watch FOX News. When asked about various misperceptions, people responded largely based on their source for news. When people were asked if the U.S. had "clear evidence" that Saddam Hussein was "working closely with al Queda," similar results were found. Only 16% of NPR and PBS listeners/viewers believed that the U.S. has such evidence, while 67% of Fox News viewers were under that mistaken impression.
Overall, 80 percent of those who relied on Fox News as their primary news source believed at least one of the three misperceptions. Viewers/listeners/readers of other news outlets didn't even come close to this total.
In other words, in a poll measuring stupidity and ignorance, conservative news sources win hands down.
Check out PIPA.org, polling from the University of Maryland.http://www.pipa.org/about.html
http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Iraq/Media_10_02_03_Report.pdf |
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Marine4life
Senior Chief Petty Officer
Joined: 14 May 2004
Posts: 591
Location: California
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| Posted: Sun May 16, 2004 7:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Craig wrote: | | Marine4life wrote: | | In his own record and testimony he finished off a wounded, retreating VC that had a chance to kill him and his men but didn't. 40 mm grenade launcher pointed at him but didn't shoot, I think I read that Kerry got the bronze star for that. Under the geneva convention that is a war crime. Not saying that I would do anything different but I sure as heck wouldn't brag about it, or accuse someone else of crimes with that over my head. |
"... had a chance to kill him and his men but didn't. ...."
Could you elaborate on that characterization of yours?
What do you suppose would come of shooting the weapon at something ten feet away?
Could you describe what you would have done instead? |
Craig take off the DNC blinders for a moment and read what I wrote and you will have your answers. Don't interject the DNC spin just simply read what I wrote word for word. From this moment on I will not respond to your illiterate comments, you see I refuse to go to a battle of wits with an unarmed person. For your further education on this subject read the AAR for that incident.
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Helicopter Marine Attack Squadron 169 which is now HMLA-169. They added Huey's to compliment the Cobra effectiveness. When I served we just had Snakes. |
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Greenhat
LCDR
Joined: 09 May 2004
Posts: 405
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| Posted: Sun May 16, 2004 11:43 pm Post subject: |
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| mikest wrote: | | Saddams threat to us was minimul and his support of terrorists pales in comparrison to Saudi and Egypt. This admin implied that if we did not go to war, we would have a mushroom cloud over a major city. Every claim by this admin has been poven inacurate or false. Containment was working. |
So, how do you suggest dealing with Saudi or Egypt without first dealing with Iraq?
Specific plans with logistical, strategic and basing considerations identified please.
Btw, I've seen General Zinni's criticisms before. And I agree with him on maybe one point.
Containment was working? Saddam Hussein was able to build palaces, kill thousands of his own people, support terrorism at will. Containment was not working.
His choice of second mistake? Maybe General Zinni hadn't noticed, but lots of people have tried to find a solution to that problem, dating back as far as Truman, and including John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. No solution to date. It's easy to claim it needs to be fixed. Harder to actually fix it.
The third I agree with, although his claim that the intelligence was not there is just political hindsight. The Clinton administration thought the intelligence was there. John Kerry thought the intelligence was there. The reason I agree, is I simply think we should have gone in based on the broken cease-fire and Hussein's support for terrorism. No one could have second guessed us.
As for number four, General Zinni seems to have failed to remember the efforts that were made to internationalize the effort, or the fact that more countries are aiding in Iraq than ever aided in East Timor.
Underestimating the task? The President has stated on multiple times that this will be a long and difficult path. Where did this underestimation come from? It doesn't seem that we underestimated the Iraqi military. They folded in record time.
And if we didn't underestimate the task, then his entire reason for attacking the exiles falls.
As for the so-called "lack of planning", it sounds to me that General Zinni is more concerned with not being briefed on the plan than on there not being a plan.
I really disagree with him (and just about every other conventional General) on number eight. I (along with most Special Operations folks) think we have too many troops on the ground. We need to reduce the conventional numbers there, and increase the number of Special Forces and Civil Affairs people working with the Iraqis.
Number 9 I find the most bizarre. He claims that the people were selected and picked from around the world and then complains about qualifications, breadth, scope and depth. Maybe he just isn't very clear.
Number 10 I agree with to some extent, although I disagree with him regarding disbanding of the Army. The Army had an image that needed to be eliminated, and culturally, disbanding Saddam's Army sent a strong message.
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mikest
PO2
Joined: 11 May 2004
Posts: 377
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| Posted: Tue May 18, 2004 4:26 am Post subject: |
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heh
How did I know you would say Zinni doesn't know waht he's talking about.
Zinni's point about Baghdad to Israel is that it was absurd to think that this war would solve the I/P problem. I have no idea how we do fix that problem, but invading Iraq was not the answer.
3 is a little tricky. The intel was sketchy, but I had a hard time explaining where the WMD's went since we knew he had them at one point. Personally I think that he should have just gone with the human rights/ atrocities angle. I supported Kosovo and woud have supported Rwanda. He wouldn't have had to try and change the rational to "liberation" either.
4 I'm trying to remember how hard they tried to internationalise it. Maybe calling allies "old europe" was one of them, but it was pretty inefective. It could have been sliming Blix, but that was fairly inefective as well.
5 Remember the cakewalk flower throwing that was supposed to happen.
I'll agree with the civil affairs people, but at least for some period we needed a police force there. Obviously our soldiers don't make the best cops, that is not what we train them for. (not a slam on them in the least, if we want them to be cops, we need to train them to be. And using the same guys that just fought a war with them is not the best idea.)
I'm not clear on 9. But I do know there are far too many political people in the CPA. It's clear that there are people more interested in spinning things into a good face than there are people that know what they are doing.
I'm not sure if I agree with you or not on the message of disbanding the army. In one sense I agree, but the problem of creating a massive number of unemployed people who are trained as soldiers is becoming clearer. I don't know if it would have been possible, but maybe we could have used them for rebuilding infrastructure and such. I'll have to hink on that some more. |
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