Shaffer
04-14-03, 07:06 AM
Several times a day, the US military's second highest ranking officer, Gen. Peter Pace, glances at a 35-year-old photo of a Marine Corps private. Staring back is Guido Farinaro, the first soldier General Pace lost to combat in Vietnam.
"It's a way to remind me," says Pace, whose career in the Marines began with the US military's last big urban fight. In 1968, about 2,500 marines fought for weeks in the Vietnamese city of Hue to dislodge an enemy force four times their strength.
"I know how difficult it can be," Pace said last week in a phone interview from his office in the Pentagon as the US 1st Marine Division raced toward Baghdad. "If I'm able to help craft plans to impact the battlefield from a distance that would make it less likely to have to fight inside a city, then I'd like to do that."
Among the US military's top generals planning the war in Iraq, only Pace has fought through a city.
So far, US troops have cordoned off the Iraqi capital and all but pacified the eastern half of the city. But if a full-scale assualt is still necessary in Baghdad or elsewhere, Pace says, today's marines are well-trained and equipped for street fighting. "I'm very confident in our troops' ability to win in an urban environment," he says.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0410/p16s01-bogn.htm
"It's a way to remind me," says Pace, whose career in the Marines began with the US military's last big urban fight. In 1968, about 2,500 marines fought for weeks in the Vietnamese city of Hue to dislodge an enemy force four times their strength.
"I know how difficult it can be," Pace said last week in a phone interview from his office in the Pentagon as the US 1st Marine Division raced toward Baghdad. "If I'm able to help craft plans to impact the battlefield from a distance that would make it less likely to have to fight inside a city, then I'd like to do that."
Among the US military's top generals planning the war in Iraq, only Pace has fought through a city.
So far, US troops have cordoned off the Iraqi capital and all but pacified the eastern half of the city. But if a full-scale assualt is still necessary in Baghdad or elsewhere, Pace says, today's marines are well-trained and equipped for street fighting. "I'm very confident in our troops' ability to win in an urban environment," he says.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0410/p16s01-bogn.htm