thedrifter
08-15-05, 03:00 PM
Posted on Mon, Aug. 15, 2005
MIDDLE EAST
Heading into Iraq quicksand
BY JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY
jgalloway@krwashington.com
The dog days of summer are upon us, and the signals for the future in our war in Iraq are deeply mixed, deeply confused and confusing, depending on who you listen to and what you read.
Gen. George Casey, the ground commander in Iraq, says we will begin drawing down American forces in Iraq as soon as the dawn of the New Year 2006.
Surely it is no coincidence that 2006 will bring us midterm elections for a new Congress, while the polls show the American people beginning to turn against President Bush's war and his management of same. Only 38 percent of those surveyed in an AP-IPSOS poll now say they support the way the president is managing the war.
So we have a president who continues at every opportunity to say that he -- and we -- will ''stay the course'' in Iraq, while his political advisors look at the polling numbers and break out in a cold sweat. What to do?
Send out the general to suggest the draw-down is imminent, even as the Pentagon is announcing that between now and the end of the year we will actually increase the number of American troops on the ground in Iraq to secure the ratification of Iraq's new constitution and election of its new parliament.
Two days of horror
Some divisions nearing the end of their latest 12 months in Hell will find that they are being extended for another month or two or three. Some divisions preparing to rotate back into Iraq for the second or even third time may find their departures moved up correspondingly. The overlap is the buildup.
It amounts to a stealth increase of forces in Iraq, done on the cheap, while simultaneously sending a signal to American voters that a reduction in U.S. forces -- especially all those National Guard and Reserve troops who have borne a heavy and deadly burden in this war and whose families back home are voters -- is just around the corner.
The old saw has it that truth is the first casualty of war. In this war the truth was murdered in cold blood well before the war ever began, and it continues to die the death of a thousand cuts every day.
In two days of horror a Marine Reserve unit from Ohio lost 20 men, a few killed in a shootout in the open with the insurgents, but most in an IED attack that took out the vehicle the Marines were riding in -- an amphibious tractor. Essentially it's an unarmored antiquated relic of the Vietnam War that was never intended to operate more than a few hundred yards off a landing beach.
It can be fairly stated that many of America's 1,800 dead and 14,000 wounded were killed because they were riding in unarmored or lightly armored vehicles that are totally inappropriate to the nature of the war and enemy we are fighting.
This while the heaviest and deadliest divisions in the world's best Army were being ordered to leave most of their best equipment -- the M1A2 Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles -- parked at their home bases in orderly ranks.
This while the highly trained crews of those vehicles were ordered to dismount and become infantry to patrol the most dangerous streets and roads in the world in unarmored Humvees.
Wrong course
We are spending $5 billion a month on this war -- much of it siphoned away and sucked up by private contractors -- but somehow we can't send our soldiers and Marines to war with the best equipment in the world -- the equipment we already own and know how to use to great effect.
Don't tell me we are going to stay the course. We are on the wrong course, and it leads only deeper into the quicksand. Tell me how we are going to change course. Tell me how we are going to do everything we can, spend whatever it takes, to give our sons and daughters what they need to fight and survive and prevail even in a war that makes no sense.
Tell me we can at least do that. Tell me that you made some serious mistakes, Mr. President and Mr. Vice President and Mr. Secretary of Defense, and that you are willing to do everything to correct those mistakes.
Tell me this is not Wonderland, Alice.
Joseph L. Galloway is the senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers.
Ellie
MIDDLE EAST
Heading into Iraq quicksand
BY JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY
jgalloway@krwashington.com
The dog days of summer are upon us, and the signals for the future in our war in Iraq are deeply mixed, deeply confused and confusing, depending on who you listen to and what you read.
Gen. George Casey, the ground commander in Iraq, says we will begin drawing down American forces in Iraq as soon as the dawn of the New Year 2006.
Surely it is no coincidence that 2006 will bring us midterm elections for a new Congress, while the polls show the American people beginning to turn against President Bush's war and his management of same. Only 38 percent of those surveyed in an AP-IPSOS poll now say they support the way the president is managing the war.
So we have a president who continues at every opportunity to say that he -- and we -- will ''stay the course'' in Iraq, while his political advisors look at the polling numbers and break out in a cold sweat. What to do?
Send out the general to suggest the draw-down is imminent, even as the Pentagon is announcing that between now and the end of the year we will actually increase the number of American troops on the ground in Iraq to secure the ratification of Iraq's new constitution and election of its new parliament.
Two days of horror
Some divisions nearing the end of their latest 12 months in Hell will find that they are being extended for another month or two or three. Some divisions preparing to rotate back into Iraq for the second or even third time may find their departures moved up correspondingly. The overlap is the buildup.
It amounts to a stealth increase of forces in Iraq, done on the cheap, while simultaneously sending a signal to American voters that a reduction in U.S. forces -- especially all those National Guard and Reserve troops who have borne a heavy and deadly burden in this war and whose families back home are voters -- is just around the corner.
The old saw has it that truth is the first casualty of war. In this war the truth was murdered in cold blood well before the war ever began, and it continues to die the death of a thousand cuts every day.
In two days of horror a Marine Reserve unit from Ohio lost 20 men, a few killed in a shootout in the open with the insurgents, but most in an IED attack that took out the vehicle the Marines were riding in -- an amphibious tractor. Essentially it's an unarmored antiquated relic of the Vietnam War that was never intended to operate more than a few hundred yards off a landing beach.
It can be fairly stated that many of America's 1,800 dead and 14,000 wounded were killed because they were riding in unarmored or lightly armored vehicles that are totally inappropriate to the nature of the war and enemy we are fighting.
This while the heaviest and deadliest divisions in the world's best Army were being ordered to leave most of their best equipment -- the M1A2 Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles -- parked at their home bases in orderly ranks.
This while the highly trained crews of those vehicles were ordered to dismount and become infantry to patrol the most dangerous streets and roads in the world in unarmored Humvees.
Wrong course
We are spending $5 billion a month on this war -- much of it siphoned away and sucked up by private contractors -- but somehow we can't send our soldiers and Marines to war with the best equipment in the world -- the equipment we already own and know how to use to great effect.
Don't tell me we are going to stay the course. We are on the wrong course, and it leads only deeper into the quicksand. Tell me how we are going to change course. Tell me how we are going to do everything we can, spend whatever it takes, to give our sons and daughters what they need to fight and survive and prevail even in a war that makes no sense.
Tell me we can at least do that. Tell me that you made some serious mistakes, Mr. President and Mr. Vice President and Mr. Secretary of Defense, and that you are willing to do everything to correct those mistakes.
Tell me this is not Wonderland, Alice.
Joseph L. Galloway is the senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers.
Ellie