← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Sertorius
Thread ID: 20623 | Posts: 7 | Started: 2005-10-12
2005-10-12 13:12 | User Profile
Published on Monday, October 10, 2005 by the Miami Herald Are We on Course or Trapped in a Swamp? by Joseph L. Galloway
A truly horrible summer that seemed unending finally is fading away, and the cold winds of reality are blowing down the collars of a president and the key players in his administration. Those winds could foretell an even more terrible winter ahead.
[B]The word in Washington and in the halls of the Pentagon is that Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is seriously considering handing in his resignation sometime this month.[/B]
The generals who run the war in Iraq -- Central Command boss Gen. John Abizaid and ground commander Gen. George Casey -- came to town last week and let slip the awful truth about our efforts to stand up an Iraqi army and security force.
Although the Americans have spent a small fortune training and equipping more than 200,000 Iraqi soldiers and militia and police, the generals concede that only one battalion of perhaps 700 troops actually is capable of operating against the home-grown insurgents and the foreign jihad terrorists.
After two years only one battalion can stand alone without American guidance, backup, direction and fire support.
This was the only real hope of beginning to hand off responsibility for Iraq's future to Iraqis. And it has blown away on those cold winds blowing through the nation's capital.
The president was quick to slap down any thought of reducing the American presence on the roads and streets of Iraq -- a presence that the generals report is no longer stifling the insurgency but actually feeding it. A presence no longer converting Iraqis to Jeffersonian democracy but creating new converts to terrorism and resistance.
The president, at a news conference, ignored the best advice of his generals and the growing firestorm both in Iraq and America over the future of our occupation of Iraq. He declared: ``We're not leaving Iraq. We will succeed in Iraq.''
The president is still ''staying the course'' as the people following him fall further and further behind. We have written before, and will again: Staying the course only makes sense if you are on the right course. Otherwise you are just walking deeper into the swamp and the quicksand waiting ahead.
[B]If that weren't enough, new life was blown into the prisoner-abuse scandal recently by a young West Point-educated captain, Ian Fishback, who didn't like what he was hearing about the physical abuse of Iraqi detainees by soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division and asked his superiors for guidance on standards of conduct.[/B]
Eventually he went public and wrote to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. John Warner, R-Va., the top-ranking members of the Senate Armed Service Committee. His actions helped ensure that an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act that would flatly outlaw any cruel and unusual treatment of detainees in American custody anywhere worldwide would pass over Bush's veto threat and the Republican Senate leadership's attempt to block a vote. The amendment is sponsored by Sens. McCain, Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., and Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. Some who opposed it went so far as to say that our forces should be given the freedom to use the terrorists' own methods against those we capture.
If we are to become as cruel and inhumane as al Qaeda, then why fight al Qaeda? We will then have become no better than al Qaeda. And we might as well make deals with Osama bin Laden as we once sent people like Rumsfeld to do deals with Saddam Hussein.
Joseph L. Galloway is the senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers.
é Copyright 2005 Miami Herald
[url]http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1010-25.htm[/url]
2005-10-14 04:38 | User Profile
*The generals who run the war in Iraq -- Central Command boss Gen. John Abizaid and ground commander Gen. George Casey -- came to town last week and let slip the awful truth about our efforts to stand up an Iraqi army and security force.
Although the Americans have spent a small fortune training and equipping more than 200,000 Iraqi soldiers and militia and police, the generals concede that only one battalion of perhaps 700 troops actually is capable of operating against the home-grown insurgents and the foreign jihad terrorists.
After two years only one battalion can stand alone without American guidance, backup, direction and fire support.*
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So much for the other 199,300 collaborators, Sert...shades of the South Vietnam "Army".
2005-10-14 04:43 | User Profile
Here's a whole satirical article on those mysterious "Iraqi forces":
[url]http://www.exile.ru/2005-July-28/freaky_iraqis.html[/url] [COLOR="Red"]
[B][SIZE="5"]Freaky Iraqis[/SIZE]
[SIZE="4"]Now U See Them, Now U Don't[/SIZE][/B][/COLOR]
Petr
2005-10-14 04:48 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Petr]Here's a whole satirical article on those mysterious "Iraqi forces":
[url]http://www.exile.ru/2005-July-28/freaky_iraqis.html[/url] [COLOR="Red"]
[B][SIZE="5"]Freaky Iraqis[/SIZE]
[SIZE="4"]Now U See Them, Now U Don't[/SIZE][/B][/COLOR]
Petr[/QUOTE]
They might as well be inflatable, like those phony tanks from WWII. Who recalls our 300,000 allies of the Afghan "Northern Alliance"?
2005-10-15 14:30 | User Profile
This Fishback scenario reminds me of gun control discussions. There are considerable rules on the books, which, had they been followed, would have precluded the Abu Gharib issue, and some others. The Gitmo thing was an effort to exploit a loophole in the law, and of course that attracted attention of many, and all of a sudden, a zero defects standard was imposed . . . by whom?
Back to McCain's initiative. I think his flashback to Hanoi Hilton obscured his judgment. His guards and tormentors were operating under guidance that allowed and explicitly encouraged inflicting serious abuse in order to break Americans for a political end. The purpose of getting a prisoner in GItmo or Iraq to talk, be it by sleep deprivation, rap inundation, what have you, is for a tactical purpose rather than a political end. "Where's Osama, bud?" Of course, the resiliance of a committed man, regardless of nationality, frustrates the interrogator in some cases.
Fishback's attempt to get a regulation that transcends military procedures for soldiers puts him out of his lane, as the Army saying goes. His lane is making sure his soldiers stay professional and by the book, his book. He appears to need to be told, in writing, what is right and wrong. He seems to want non soldiers to have to follow soldier rules. Typical military tunnel vision in action.
His frustration is understandable. The passing through of the various osmotic inter agency membranes that occurs in nation building, and modern war -- where CIA State HSC Defense NRO NSA -- and others are all working somewhat stovepipe, somewhat together, and their differing ''in the field guidance" and different Rules of Engagement, leaves a Captain like young Fishback in a difficult position: he has to work with these "other agencies" but he is bound by a set of rules that they are not, and in the case of prisoners, he has continual confusion, it seems to me, regarding jurisdiction. Welcome to having to think, Captain.
Apparently, the chain of command, when appealed to, had no easy answer for him. So he writes his Congressman. I smell a barracks lawyer.
Galloway is generally able to see through the BS, and he continues to do so. His slippery slope closing is a bucket of eyewash and hyperbole.
I don't think the attempt to legislate in draconian fashion will fix anything, and it sure won't put Humpty Dumpty back together, which seems to be the real motivation: to whitewash an ugly poster that says "these Americans can get nasty with you if they don't like you." The damage to America's reputation is done, and I think it will take years of rebuilding relationships to undo some of it.
Press on.
If rules were all that effective, the Abu Gharib crap would never have happened. New rules? Not needed. Enforcing the rules already on the books? Yep, that takes
Leadership,
which appears to be in short supply, to include within Captain Fishback's chain of command.
AE
[quote=Sertorius]Published on Monday, October 10, 2005 by the Miami Herald Are We on Course or Trapped in a Swamp? by Joseph L. Galloway If we are to become as cruel and inhumane as al Qaeda, then why fight al Qaeda? We will then have become no better than al Qaeda. And we might as well make deals with Osama bin Laden as we once sent people like Rumsfeld to do deals with Saddam Hussein.
Joseph L. Galloway is the senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers.
é Copyright 2005 Miami Herald
[URL="http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1010-25.htm"]http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1010-25.htm[/URL]
2005-10-15 17:32 | User Profile
AE,
I have a more charitable opinion of this captain than you do. It would be extraordinary for a blue blood like that to toss away a career when it is so easy to "go along to get along". I would like to think in his case that he showing alot of moral courage, something that Patton himself said was in short supply compared to physical courage. They do have rules on the book against this sort of thing. The question is why were they not enforced? I think that is what CPT. Fishback wanted to know. If his charges pan out, then, everyone who had a role in muddying the waters should be relieved and courtmartialed. I find it interesting that Bush is threating to veto the torture legislation that McCain got passed. From other things the Bush Administration has done I can only conclude their intents here are less than honorable.
I have my on theory on why we have this confusion. There are two chain of commands in effect. The normal one and the unofficial one operating out of the office of the Undersecretary for Intelligence, Steven Cambrone, a person I regard as a bald face liar from viewing his testimony during the Abu Ghraib hearings. These guys are using methods that are well known to those who have had the misfortune to by under Israeli occupation. This nonsense that has occurred and probably is still occurring has Mossad and IDF written all over it. [QUOTE]Galloway is generally able to see through the BS, and he continues to do so. His slippery slope closing is a bucket of eyewash and hyperbole. [/QUOTE] Perhaps CPT. Fishback doesn't wish for the US Army to lower itself to the level of the Israelis.
Having noted the above, it doesn't mean I am against trying those Franc-tireurs and shooting them. That is different from the above.
2005-10-15 17:46 | User Profile
Sert
West Point no longer not equals Blue Blood anymore, though I see where you are coming from. I may be wrong, and you may be right, on the Captain's moral courage being along the lines of Mitchell's or Herbert's or Hackworth's or Bucher's when it comes to not letting dirty little crap that is substandard get swept under the rug. Our Soldiers/Marines carry our collective honor on their shoulders in this 24/7 media age.
As to the Veto
shrugs
it forced the issue, which I think in this case was warranted. How serious is the Senate about this? Apparently, pretty darned serious. As I see it, this legislation was not presented for functional reasons, but rather for PR and political reasons, internal political reasons.
I don't forget the Beirut barracks bombing. The continual theme of putting troops in deadly situations and tying their hands pisses me off. I see this move as more of the same, with a PR marshmellow cover filled with altruistic Hot Air, but as het another handcuff for the "dark" Intel Operatives side. I disagree with Galloway's hyperbole on Osama comparisons. I have always felt that part of the MO for "if one was going to do it right War on Terrorists" (note the suffix) has to include some ruthlessness and some quiet knife work away from the spotlights.
Problem on the prisoner issue is, I think, that no one can seem to
a) get the jurisdiction right (having the Army cover for the Dirty Tricks crowd is begging for trouble, as Spec England so clearly demonstrated.) b) use Opsec where it is warranted c) Hammer the chain of command whose lax discipline created the scar on the Army 's honor that is Abu Gharib. "Not getting promoted" is not a punishment for a Col or General who has so grievously failed to run a disciplined unit.
I get worked up just thinking about this, so I will end.
AE