I forgot the supply lines thing. The assault basically consisted of two huge lines pointing north, the 3ID and the 1MD, the Brits have one also. Add two to the left and make the one on the far left a huge overstrength unit, laden with armor. That arrow on the far left shoots up and over to the gap where the Republican Guard are dug in. The supply lines are covered by the other extra line to the right which is flanking. More forces means it is easier to leave some units behind to cover your lines also. More forces means the Iraqis have to deal with more at once, meaning they must leave the lines of one alone to attack the lines of another.
As I said, it is basically just a much bigger more expensive plan to win quickly. Which, IMO, is always the best plan. Anyway, the chance to surprise them with a huge tank rush straight to the gates of Baghdad is over.
It’s hard for outsiders to know how the current war plan was formulated. Stories circulate that there has been an ongoing debate on the size of the force required with Rumsfeld being in the small, mobile, “shock and awe” school which seems to have won. That isn’t too surprising since he is the Secretary of Defense.
It does seem as if we are in the process of conducting this campaign by committing forces piecemeal. That has been demonstrated time an again to be a bad idea.
On the other hand, it is difficult to justify a big tax cut in the face of deficit spending and still support a military force of half a million a third of the way around the world.
Or, this is all a big ruse hoping to draw the Iraqis out in the open in a futile attack on our powerful forces. Make it seem like you think you are undermanned. The more we worry and kvetch the more the Dr. Strangeloves rub their hands together and mutter “excellent.”
I think everyone is missing the obvious - this message is being sent on purpose, to show resolve.
The Iraqi military strategy seems to be, “buy time, and wait for world opinion to rise up and force the Americans to withdraw”. In the meantime, the citizens are afraid to revolt, for fear that they will expose their disloyalty to Saddam’s regime - and then the Americans will leave and they’ll be slaughtered. There is precedent for that.
So the coalition is ‘on message’ now - they’re going to stay for as long as it takes, and months are no big deal.
It’s all part of the information war. The other day the message was that the supply lines were dangerously exposed, and the Americans were very vulnerable. So hundreds of Iraqi military units stream out of their protected areas - and get chopped to pieces.
Disinformation is flying fast and furious right now. Keep that in mind whenever you hear reports, either positive or negative.
Great post Sam… that’s so true what you just wrote…
At a strategic level, it seems to me at the moment that the goal on the part of the Coalition is to lull the Iraqi armed military into thinking that it’s “safe to come out”. And every single time, the overwhelming and infinitely variable arsenal which is waiting, just waiting for a clear shot, is gonna cut them to pieces.
Moreover, as the weeks pass by, it’s just more and more a case of Coalition forces shoring up their positions - becoming even MORE invincible. Already, according to BBC News Online, in just 24 hours, 128 return sorties by C-17 Starlifters have landed at the captured airfield in the northern front - dropping off oodles of M1 Tanks and Bradleys and supporting equipment. Within just one week, every single worst fear in Saddam’s imagination will be coming true. He will have not one, but 2 pincer movements attacking him from the north AND the south.
Now… I’ve said this a few times already in other threads - but I honestly don’t believe it truly matters if Baghdad falls - indeed, I’m 100% certain the Coalition doesn’t want to go anywhere NEAR the place. Anytime General Franks wants, he can start transmitting TV on the same frequencies that Iraqi State TV already uses. It’s just radio after all. What counts is that the Coalition intends to demonstrate just what inarguable, compelling overwhelming force truly means - and it simply takes a few weeks to get all that into position.
For now, the strategy is to let Saddam, the man himself, once again believe that he is some sort of military tactician on a par with Rommel or something - and what will happen - time after time - is that he’ll send off a division here, or 3 brigades there, and they’ll never return. They’ll just trundle off into the mists - and there on into silence.
Eventually, if it keeps up, the only fighting units that Saddam will have left will be teams of snipers. And they won’t count if the Coalition forces don’t WANT to let them count.
For now, as distressing as it might be to “us” sitting here on this side of the fence, but every single time the Iraqi Interior Minister gets up on his podium, drunk with the intoxication of world fame, and pronounces the Coalition commanders as “stupid” and tries to demonstrate why they are “stupid”, that’s just ANOTHER example of the Coalition giving the Saddam Regime more rope with which to hang themselves. It merely inspires yet another 5,000 Republican Guards into believing that they’re more potent than they truly are and off they’ll go - they’ll mobilise and they’ll move into the open - and they’ll die. Simple as that.
The Coalition is happy to let Saddam use TV for now to send the wrong commands - it’s actually working to the Coalition’s advantage.
Remember the Highway of Death extending north out of Kuwait at the end of Gulf War One? Already, you can bet your house mortgage that at least 3 of those have taken place. And it wasn’t OUR side who was on the losing side either.
Ambushing Coalition supply lines is militarily equivalent to mosquitoe bites. The endless parade of Starlifters into and out of north Iraq is ample testament to the fact that the Coalition can get men and equipment into Iraq any old way they want. And this misguided belief by Saddam that if they just hold tight for long enough that they’ll inflict enough mosquito bites to make it unbreable is truly the “stupid” part. This is the “consolidation” phase - and claims by the Iraqis that they are scoring some sort of “Battle of the Bulge” kinda fightback is the stuff of fiction.
Let’s not forget that we (civilians) truly don’t know what’s going on in this war. The administration’s been dropping hints that there’s a mole in Saddam’s operation, and we didn’t start this operation out the way we initially planned it. Instead of going for the big bang right out of the gate, we did a focused attack on where we thought Saddam was. (I notice we haven’t done any more of those.) All of that could be true, and all of it could be BS. As Sam and Boo Boo Foo posted, this is as much an information war as it is a shooting war. I would say that anything the US government says regarding planned tactics should be taken with a very large grain of salt.
It really looks like the initial plan has failed.
The British are still in the far South and the 3rd ID is only making slow headway. There is ,as yet, no Northern front. Those meagerly 1000 airborne can hardly be considered an offensive force. They are mainly there to do something. And pictures of those lads jumping out sure looks good. Never mind that there was a perfectly good runway a few hundred metres off. The best they can do is, together with the Kurds, to bind Iraqi troops to the North of Baghdad and prevent them from supporting or relieving forces now engaged.
The 1stMD can’t take Baghdad on it’s own so it must wait in its forward position with long and insecure supply lines.
But the war is not lost, of course, and hell will freeze over before Goeb…err…Rumsfeld will admit he was wrong. There will be no cease-fire, let alone a retreat. Although the 1stMD is in an exposed position, the inability of the Iraqi’s to manouevre will probably prevent them from actually being cut off. They will just stay put. Bringing in all those reinforcements will take a loooong time, so there is quite some hardship ahead for these men.
The 4th ID will likely be deployed to secure the supply lines then its just waiting for enough troops to be brought in to prepare for the actual conquest of Baghdad. Meanwhile the 3rd will creep forward, the Brits will take Basra and move North, as planned but it will all take a lot longer.
Basically that’s true according to Newsweek International.
Rumsfeld et al want the Pentagon to be able to fight more quickly and cheaply by relying on speed and technology rather than massive build up overkill so that the US can fight more wars against “terrorist” states. Fighting 21st century wars rather than 20th century ones is the popular phrase.
There has been and is and ongoing clash between the civilian advisors and the Pentagon, or at least some of it.
The news today that the 1st Armoured and 1st Cavalry Divisions have been mobilised, along with the 2nd and 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiments and a request for additional UK troops, would seem to indicate that the “cheap, fast” plan has been abandoned. By my reckoning, those formations would more than double the firepower available on the ground.
The military doesn’t agree. They admit that the resistance has been greater than anticipated, mainly because the Fedayeen are even more ruthless than they thought they would be.
But other than that, everything’s on track. It’s beyond me how any can look at the first week of the war, and see the 3rd Infantry 50 miles from Baghdad, and control of Iraq’s warm water port, and complete control of the southern third of the country, and control of the west of Iraq, with less than 50 casualties, and call the plan a ‘failure’. A better description would be, “The plan has had to be modified because of unforseen circumstances. Like pretty much every other military plan in history.”
And that’s why no one called them that. Those 1000 troops are a defensive force. Their job was to secure the area, install navigation aids, and prep the runway so the real heavy stuff could come in. And that’s what’s been happening. There’s a hell of a lot more than 1000 guys there now.
Your definition of ‘perfectly good’ must be different than mine. I consider things like not having a C-17 destroyed while landing because of a mine on the runway or an RPG being fired from behind a hill.
You seem to think the parachute drop was just for show or something. You clearly don’t understand the job these guys do. They are specialists in securing preparing, or even building runways in hostile territory, so the heavy lifters can land and drop off tanks with security. It’s a damned tough job, and very necessary.
Only an idiot would have flown a C-17 down onto one of those runways without clearing the area first.
Well, that might be the best 1000 lightly armed troops could have done. Good thing that’s not what’s there any more. There has been a steady stream of heavy airlift moving in and out of that strip all day. There is now, or soon will be, an entire armored brigade coming out of there. Complete with heavy tanks.
Methinks those lines are just a little more secure than the Americans are letting on. They’ve been attacked multiple times, and have suffered a total of what, 10 casualties? Twice now, armored columns have attacked those ‘insecure’ supply lines, and both times they were totally destroyed with zero U.S. casualties.
You don’t get away with that. Comparing Rumsfeld to Goebbels is offensive, and ignorant. The United States is not Nazi Germany, and even the loosest of comparisons are so grotesquely ridiculous as to immediately discredit the person who would try to make them.
That’s why they get paid the big bucks. The marines are good at this. If they have to stay put for two weeks and regroup, well, there are worse things.
This may be exactly what happens. I don’t see this as a military disaster. Oh my, the soldiers have to wait for a couple of weeks before completely overrunning another country’s military forces. I think the Republic will stand.
To be sure, there are still a lot of bad things that could happen. Anyone who states categorically that there will be low casualties in any war is an idiot. But on the other hand, those who are claiming failure seven days into a war are just silly. Hell, it took the U.S. ten days to control Grenada. It took the Brits 30 days to retake the Falkland Islands.
By the standards of any military conflict in history, this war is going phenomenally well so far.
The 3ID has been 80 miles from Baghdad for days, not making progress. Basra is still in Iraqi hands. Umm Qsar is still not firmly controlled. The coalition supply line is being harassed by Iraqi forces. The number of troops required has been severely underestimated.
Most importantly, the original plan was going straight for Baghdad. Now they have to change it to “secure Southern Iraq” first.
No it is NOT. A ‘failed plan’ would be something like, 'Soldiers push to Baghdad. Thin supply lines are totally overrun. Soldiers at the front are encircled, cut off, and everntually run out of fuel and ammo. Enemy then overruns their position and kills all of them. Coalition forces are humiliated and withdraw into Kuwait to regroup and cconsider a new plan.
Instead we have, “We’re going to drive straight to Baghdad and take it over” changed to, “We’re going to drive to within 50 miles of Baghdad, then pause for a few days and strengthen our forces and consolidate our gains.” That’s not failure. That’s adaptation.
Let me ask you: Was D-Day a ‘failed plan’? The Allies met resistance much stiffer than expected on some of the beaches. Bad air drops scattered paratroopers all over the place, and they couldn’t suppress the artillery dropping on the front lines. Casualties were very high.
But at the end of the day, the beaches were secured, the landing boats were streaming men and materials through, and the front was now in mainland Europe.
Is that a ‘failed plan’?
This is war. Shit happens. You adapt. No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. Before one soldier stepped foot in Iraq, the commanders KNEW their plan would have to be improvised along the way. That’s the nature of warfare.
If by “failure” you mean the “coalition” loses, no, that remains a very remote possibility indeed. If by failure you mean we are reduced to the perfectly ghastly necessity of fighting house to house through Baghdad in the summer heat, wearing chem/bio suits to boot…the word for that is “disaster”.
