Rumsfeld: leaving Iraq like giving Nazis Germany
The admistration has lost the debate, as well as the hearts and minds of the American voter. What we are witnessing now is desperate flailing, saying anything to justify remaining in the middle of the Iraq Civil War.
It won’t work.
He’s such a goddam Nazi.
Yes! I’m in first! Ha! Oh, that’s made my day. Sigh, yes I am bored.
100 X 300 = 30,000.
We were over 150,000 last year.
What hapeened to them, were they all killed?
“no one could have anticipated the American public to remember numbers we’ve given before.”
This post captures so much, with so little. Bravo.
<clarification>
Well, y’know…when dick – um, I mean Dick – said last throes, he was speaking on a geologic time scale, bless his heart…
</clarification>
Far out. Not only are we helping the terroritst, we are helping the Nazis. What utter bullshit. To hell with Rummy.
I thought battalions were more like 600-800 troops.
That would be closer to a regiment. A battalion is normally defined as being three companies. 300-400 people is closer to the truth.
In the US Army, maybe. The battalions I’m familiar with (which, I believe, are based on the British model) have four combat companies + HQ, and regiments don’t exist at all - the next level up is the brigade. 500-700 men at full stregth is perfectly believable, depending on the size of the individual companies.
Its been a long time but I remember my company had 4 squads of 12 men each plus a platoon leader and a platoon sargeant. Thats 50 per platoon. Times 3 regular platoons is 150. Plus a 30 man weapons platoon (M-60 and 60 mm mortars) brings it up to 180. Plus headquarters weenies made it about 190. So 3 companies is 570 swinging dicks. Then you add in a support company another 100 men. Plus all the G sections and attachments for Battalion HQ brings a full strength Battallion to about 800 men and pogues. Don’t forget to include Scouts and other special units and you can round a battallion to about a thousand.
[QUOTE=Squink]
100 X 300 = 30,000.
We were over 150,000 last year.
What hapeened to them, were they all killed?[/ a pretty good ratioQUOTE]This is one problem with merely giving total numbers of troops. Out of a total army of 150,000 a total of 50,000 actual combat troops would be a little on the skimpy side for support strength. The committment of 30,000 of the combat forces to a single battle would be a maximum effort because you have to hold back some for contingencies.
Combat units need to be supported by Engineers, Signal Corps, Transportation, Supply, Quartermaster, Medical, Ordnace, and on and on. A ratio of 50,000 combat out of 150,000 total would be bad news for our Reserve and National Guard units who are the logistical support for our army in Iraq. If the Iraq army has insufficient numbers of support forces guess who will make up the deficiency. And it isn’t good news for our combat troops either. Does anyone think that we will leave large numbers of support forces is Iraq with their only protection being the Iraqi army?
Empahsis added.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled Bush bashing.
A battalion is whatever is necessary to accomplish the mission. When I was in the military, the official Seabee battalion size was listed as 762 personnel. We rarely would be that flush except in wartime. Of course, our battalions were made up of construction people, so perhaps we were larger than a combat battalion.
I think we need to step back a bit and remember that the whole “no Nazi comparisons” thing is an internet geek prohibition not shared by the public at large.
Comparing anything to Nazis is always fraught, since they are the nadir of recent evil, but in this case I can see where Rummy is coming from, even though I disagree with him, and even though the rest of his speech as reported appears to be full of shit.
From the bottom of the same article:
I’d interpret “several hundred” as 300-400, but that may be incorrect. I don’t think there’s enough information to know exactly where the discrepancy can be found…
Former Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi says Iraq is already engaged in Civil War; he is obviously misinformed.
We have to be patient; we’re winning the war on terror.
We’ve turned the corner in Iraq.
The insurgents are on their last legs.
The terrorists are viewing the conflict in Iraq with fear.
And other lies too numerous to mention.
Er, that would be Rummy bashing. Bush’ll get his later.
I can cite one Iraqi battalion with between 700 and 800 troops:
As a substitute for a number, ‘several’ is, IME, an extremely vague term, with usage varying widely from one person to the next. Dictionary.com says:
IOW, I wouldn’t make estimates based on someone’s use of the word ‘several’ unless I knew what they meant by it.