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Pentagon is lying its way out of an unwinnable war - again

Thread ID: 16892 | Posts: 6 | Started: 2005-02-22

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Sertorius [OP]

2005-02-22 13:25 | User Profile

Feb 20, 2005 Pentagon is lying its way out of an unwinnable war - again

Col. David Hackworth

As with Vietnam, the Iraqi tar pit was oh-so-easy to sink into, but appears to be just as tough to exit.

This should be no big surprise! Most slugfests - from bar brawls to military misadventures like Vietnam and Iraq - take some clever moves to step away from once the swinging starts.

This is why most combat vets pick their fights carefully. They look at their scars, remember the madness and are always mindful of the fallout.

That’s not the case in Washington, where the White House and the Pentagon are run by civilians who have never sweated it out on a battlefield. Never before in our country’s history has an administration charged with defending our nation been so lacking in hands-on combat experience and therefore so ignorant about the art and science of war.

Now the increasingly flummoxed Bush team is stealing the page on Vietnamization from Nixon’s Exit Primer, coupled with the same deceitful tactics he used to get us out of the almost decade-long Vietnam quagmire: telling lies.

The Nixon gang kicked off its con in 1969 via a killer of a PR snow job to pacify an American public whose support for the war was exhausted. The guts of this spin show were: We have clobbered the enemy; the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) is main-event material and ready to take over the fighting; and we can bring our troops home. This propaganda was supported by ARVN combat-readiness reports systematically doctored by our brass to show that the units we were advising were good-to-go.

I was on the ground as an adviser to ARVN when the campaign launched, and I was completely floored. Even the elite outfits - Rangers, Special Forces, paratroopers - were not fully capable of defending their country when put to the test. And these gung-ho troops were ARVN’s finest. Average ARVN grunts down in the ordinary infantry divisions were so ineffective that they couldn’t have fought their way out of a day-care center without massive U.S. air support.

Meanwhile, U.S. units started redeploying. Two years after the last grunt climbed on the last silver “freedom bird” and headed home, ARVN folded like a wet noodle.

All that blood, sacrifice and billions of American taxpayer dollars went for naught because politicians hadn’t worked out the endgame before Round One. And then their solution-without-honor was to lie their way out of a no-win war.

Thirty-five years later, President Bush told the nation that Iraq had nine fully trained combat infantry battalions. Just as he was proclaiming the prowess of the Iraqi army, a major in the Iraqi Training Command told me that the soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, when committed to their first battle, threw down their weapons and ran. “Not sure where the president is getting his info, but we have only one battalion that’s good-to-go,” he said.

Inquiring minds want to know: Is our president still being fed bad skinny comparable to the intel incorrectly linking Saddam to Sept. 11 or claiming that Iraq was chockablock full of weapons of mass destruction?

More recently, Pentagon hype claimed 140,000 trained and equipped Iraqi troops were set to go toe to toe against an estimated 15,000 insurgents. But when congressional pressure from both Republicans and Democrats lit fires around the feet of both Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard Myers, they were quick to admit that only 40,000 Iraqi soldiers were ready to meet the tiger. The rest, according to Myers, “were useful in less-taxing jobs . . . in relatively stable southern Iraq.”

The hard truth is that it takes a good 10 years to build an army from the ground up. And the major emphasis must be placed not on numbers such as how many battalions have been fielded or how ready the recruits are, but rather on good, old-fashioned officer training. Until this happens and the corrupt Iraqi officer leadership - from gold bar to four stars - gets a good scrub, our troops are stuck in the tar.

Bush needs to set up a truth squad directly outside his Oval Office door quicksmart. Then, whenever the Pentagon plays fast and loose with the truth, the liars can be immediately rounded up and punished.

Because lying won’t get our troops out of Iraq without our national security taking a long-term hit that our country simply cannot afford. © 2003, Telegraph Publishing Company, Nashua, New Hampshire

[url]http://nsnlb.us.publicus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Date=20050220&Category=OPINION04&ArtNo=102200015&SectionCat=opinion&Template=printart[/url]

Oklahomaman

2005-02-22 17:11 | User Profile

The Iraqi National Army is paper tiger if there's ever been one. It must be even more disturbing to the Neocons that most soldiers of the INA aren't even marginally loyal to the Iraqi puppet state erected by Democratic Revolution Exporters, Inc. It must be disheartening to have a central pillar of your ideology proven false right before your eyes.

Jack Cassidy

2005-02-23 05:37 | User Profile

Pentagon is lying its way out of an unwinnable war - again

Howard Campbell, Jr.

2005-02-23 06:39 | User Profile

Excellent analysis from the Colonel. Reckon he'll now get exponentially fewer calls from Faux to appear as a military expert...

Are the FReakers smearing him as a "pro-raghead librul" yet...? :D

Phantasm

2005-02-23 07:19 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Jack Cassidy]... [Col. David Hackworth] Never before in our country’s history has an administration charged with defending our nation been so lacking in hands-on combat experience and therefore so ignorant about the art and science of war. ... Inquiring minds want to know: Is our president still being fed bad skinny comparable to the intel incorrectly linking Saddam to Sept. 11 or claiming that Iraq was chockablock full of weapons of mass destruction? ... Bush needs to set up a truth squad directly outside his Oval Office door quicksmart. Then, whenever the Pentagon plays fast and loose with the truth, the liars can be immediately rounded up and punished. ... [/QUOTE] I like the Colonel. He's always been a patriot. Unfortunately... he's seems to be a little too naive about what is really happening in Iraq as far as I'm concerned. Colonel Hackworth is apparently under the notion that Jay Dubya is a concerned American patriot who is just getting “bad skinny” from his advisers. I don't see it that way at all.

I see this current adventure in Iraq as a scenario where all the “big shots” win. Jay Dubya is able to open-up a new market in the Middle East for his friends at Bechtel and United Technologies... while placating the Zionist Hawks who wish to consolidate their power all over the world.

:cowboy: :caiphas: (The Odd Couple)

Jack Cassidy

2005-02-23 07:34 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Howard Campbell, Jr.]Excellent analysis from the Colonel. Reckon he'll now get exponentially fewer calls from Faux to appear as a military expert...

Are the FReakers smearing him as a "pro-raghead librul" yet...? :D[/QUOTE] Well, Hack is the most-decorated living soldier, and in this past Presidential race Faux, FR, et al., saw to it that combat medals don't mean much, or even serving in war vs. an AWOLer who talks tough patriotic talk.