← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · seq
Thread ID: 5840 | Posts: 9 | Started: 2003-03-26
2003-03-26 18:37 | User Profile
March 26 2003 at 06:42PM
Lisbon - The United States does not have the military means to take over Baghdad and will lose the war against Iraq, former United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter said.
"The United States is going to leave Iraq with its tail between its legs, defeated. It is a war we can not win," he told private radio TSF in an interview broadcast here Tuesday evening.
"We do not have the military means to take over Baghdad and for this reason I believe the defeat of the United States in this war is inevitable," he said.
Every time we confront Iraqi troops we may win some tactical battles, as we did for ten years in Vietnam but we will not be able to win this war, which in my opinion is already lost," Ritter added.
'It is a war we can not win'
Stiffening Iraqi resistance as US-led forces close in on Baghdad have prompted questions about the strategy to use precision air power and a smaller, fast moving ground force to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Some military analysts have said there are not enough allied troops in Iraq to take control of Baghdad, where Saddam Hussein's elite troops are said to be concentrated, and that the planning of the war was overly optimistic.
But British Prime Minister Tony Blair told parliament Wednesday the United States and Britain believe they have "sufficient forces" in Iraq and London was not planning to send reinforcements to the country at this stage.
A combination of bad weather and heavy fighting in central Iraq has slowed the advance of coalition troops marching on Baghdad.
Ritter resigned in August 1998 after accusing both Washington and the United Nations of not doing enough to support the weapons inspectors.
Since leaving the UN weapons inspectors team he has become an outspoken critic of US policies towards Iraq. - Sapa-AFP
[url=http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=3&art_id=qw1048692601528B262&set_id=1]http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=3&...28B262&set_id=1[/url]
2003-03-26 19:02 | User Profile
I think that the U.S. can bomb Iraq into submission, as it did to Yugoslavia and Afghanistan. However, take away air superiority, and most of the U.S. military really is a hollow shell. My own military experience is decades in the past, but I know quite a few serving noncoms. In the modern Air Force and Air National Guard, for example, it is common for senior enlisted men to do the work, while the low rankers sit and watch them do it. There is no real physical training and discipline is a joke.
How can the U.S. reasonably expect feminized video game kids to magically turn into soldiers?
2003-03-26 19:08 | User Profile
Some hair-raising predictions there. Sounds logical, but at least for out guys I hope it's not quite so bad as all that. The country is no longer in any shape for a few years of neo-Vietnam Syndrome.
In fact if the Vietnam model were to hold, it would be the worst thing for our side. Even in theory, Johnson and MacNamara (etc) were not called to accounts for that war. Thanks to Reagan and the "second thought" spinmasters, Vietnam became a noble cause, badly executed. No word about Lyndon's reversing JFK's exit strategy, nor his mammoth game of footsy with the military-industrial complex. Poor Eisenhower: He warned us of a mud puddle we fell into only a couple years later.
Buchanan & Company have the better idea: Expose the engineers of this catastrophe now, before the plebes can get all baffled in "second thoughts." However cautiously, there's much more truth about the current conflict in front of the public now than there was five years after Johnson's Gulf of Tonkin resolution.
2003-03-28 18:53 | User Profile
Comparing Iraq to Vietnam is nonsense.
Vietnam was kept well supplied by the Soviets. Iraq receives no signficant supplies to continue a war indefinatly.
Iraq was disarmed before the war. In an effort to avoid the war, Iraq destroyed its best weapons. Viatnam did not destroy its weapons in a futile attempt of appeasement.
The US military technology is far more advanced vs Iraq than the US vs. Vietnam.
Look to Afghanistan for an example of what is likely to happen. Eventually Saddam will vanish and the US will appoint a new leader. The leader will claim to be of Iraq as not to be seen as a foreign occupier. And, small battles will continue indefinitely, similar to a high crime rate.
2003-03-28 19:42 | User Profile
Originally posted by Happy Hacker@Mar 28 2003, 18:53 **The US military technology is far more advanced vs Iraq than the US vs. Vietnam.
Look to Afghanistan for an example of what is likely to happen. Eventually Saddam will vanish and the US will appoint a new leader. The leader will claim to be of Iraq as not to be seen as a foreign occupier. And, small battles will continue indefinitely, similar to a high crime rate.**
I agree from a strict military point of view we're in much better shape across the countryside of Iraq than we were in Iraq. The aftermath seems likely to me to be a combination of Afghanistan and Palestine - not surprisingly, since Israeli thinking seems to animate our war effort.
In the North and South, I think the Afghanistan model will probably predominate. That is to say, we can appoint a weak leader who suppoprts us and have some chance of success. In central Iraq however it strikes me that it could easily turn out to be more like Palestine, where we find that the only lasting solution is either to continue to live with a government we find unsatisfactory or get rid of every man, woman and child in the whole country.
It seems obvious (I'd say remarkable but it really is hardly surprising given who are advisors are) how much our strategy against Iraq is influenced by Israeli thinking. Like Israel, our main efort has been to drive our tanks across the country, and send bombs and helicoptors against the leader of the country, bombing all their government installations.
Also like Israel, it seems we haven't spent too much time, actually surprisingly little, trying to win friends and cultivate friends on the other side. I don't think that's an accident really. I think Israel recognizes that any stable, independent government that can be established there will still be too hostile for its tastes, and thus has managed through its neocon hawks here to tie us down in a war that will last as long as possible and keep us there for us long as it can.
One thing that is really brilliant is the Iraq's strategy of using paramilitary's in civilian clothes. Everybody in Iraq seems to have weapons. The mind really boggles at how we're going govern a country where everyone has a gun, and a great deal of them are basically hostile (as a result of our Israel policy) and thus fertile ground for fedeyeen recruitment, and we have done surprisingly little to contact Iraqi opposition forces ( I think for reasons above).
In some ways the Vietnam model is bad because it is too pessimistic, but in other ways it seems too optimistic. Our exit sttrategy in Vietam seemed fairly simple, as shown by the Nixon strategy of Vietnamization. I think actually it could have worked.
By contrast, I can't see any exit strategy implemented in Iraq at all. Even the war hawks in fact say we're going to have to stay there for a long time. Most of thecritics I've read point this out.
2003-03-28 20:26 | User Profile
Originally posted by Happy Hacker@Mar 28 2003, 11:53 ** Comparing Iraq to Vietnam is nonsense.
Vietnam was kept well supplied by the Soviets. Iraq receives no signficant supplies to continue a war indefinatly.
Iraq was disarmed before the war. In an effort to avoid the war, Iraq destroyed its best weapons. Viatnam did not destroy its weapons in a futile attempt of appeasement.
The US military technology is far more advanced vs Iraq than the US vs. Vietnam.
Look to Afghanistan for an example of what is likely to happen. Eventually Saddam will vanish and the US will appoint a new leader. The leader will claim to be of Iraq as not to be seen as a foreign occupier. And, small battles will continue indefinitely, similar to a high crime rate. **
In Afghanistan the US simply installed the rival tribal regime of the Northern Allieance, that had been battling the Taliban for many years before. There is no real American control, beyond what the new rulers agree with. The situation in Iraq is different in that respect and there is no established and powerful opposition to Saddam ready to take over from him.
I suspect that some limited objective will be accomplished, the whole business will be called a victory and most troops withdrawn. But after Yugoslavia, this could be the final nail into the coffin of the "the freest and justiest country in the world" image and signal a new shock wave slapping the rest of the world to realizing the danger emanating from the America being captured by Jews.
2003-03-28 21:37 | User Profile
Iraq will resist to the point where our Bushwacker will convince congress that we need to Nuke Baghdad in order to win the peace and liberate the enslaved.....that my friends is the mindset of our deranged leaders.
2003-03-29 02:37 | User Profile
The US military will not be too bad off as long as they leave right after they take out Saddam; but that is not what Bushie's Neocon's have in mind.
The US death toll to remove Saddamwill be no less than 1000(and could be many times that).
It is what will happen if the US government stays, that could be very bad.
2003-03-29 05:19 | User Profile
Bet your last dollar the "job" will not be finished without our holding that oil "in trust for" the Iraqi people for a few decades. That particular Good Deed will be priority # 1, no matter how many of the "trust-funders" have to be killed first.
Me, I'm realistic. I know American soldiers will die both pre- and post- Iraqi liberation. For this reason, I'd just as soon - once the capture-the-flag part is over - relieve white personnel with black and brown soldiers exclusively. Let Jamaal and Indio enforce the provisional Iraqi government. For one thing, they've got a lot more experience with sudden, mindless street violence than the white boys do, given that they create so much of it here. Secondly, pardon me for wanting the savage hordes thinned out By Any Means Necessary (thanks, X, I owe ya). Ya can't bein Wichita and Basra at the same time.
And, last but by no means least....a Negro/mestizo occupying force is the very best way to acclimatize the Iraqis to American-style "freedom". Might as well let em know what they're in for - Hymie's Gorgeous Mosaic™, complete with melting pot & accessories - right from the get-go.