[lit-ideas] Re: The beginning of the end in Iraq
- From: Eric Yost <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 00:46:35 -0400
>>He's saying, basically, that we regressed ourselves to
WWII style options.
He's saying that we would have to kill anything that moves
by our use of "brute force." It's a limitation but not a
regression.
"Brute force" would probably include but not be limited to:
*overbombing of tactical targets,
*massive strategic bombing instead of precision bombing,
*frequent rolling barrages, where bombers saturate areas in
front of their advancing forces with BLUs, daisy-cutters,
and napalm,
*small unit "tip and run" raids on targets of opportunity,
*spoof raids coordinated with missile attacks or vice versa,
*area bombing raids with more use of incendiaries,
*high-angle and wide-area strafing by AC-130s and other
platforms,
*massed and small-unit glide bombing missions in rough terrain,
*continuous naval and land artillery bombardment, and
*massed armor invasion,
*other stuff that kills a whole lot of people whose only
fault is bring in the wrong place.
It's not a regression to World War II style, since our
explosives and delivery systems are more accurate than
anything dreamed of in World War II, and our ability to
project force is beyond the wildest dreams of World War II
planners. But not having smart weapons is a limitation ...
we'd have to kill a lot more innocents to repulse a North
Korean attack.
_____
"We currently have just over 200,000 of our 2.4 million
service members engaged in operations in the Gulf," Pace
said, "which means just under 2 million are available to
handle whatever other problem might come our way. That
should not be lost on anybody. ... We have enormous capacity
remaining, especially in our air and naval forces, to handle
any potential problem."
But the general noted that dealing with North Korea while
the US was still fighting in Iraq would not "be as clean as
we would like." Various intelligence-collection systems are
now devoted to Iraq. "So you wouldn't have the precision in
combat going to a second theater of war.... You will end up
dropping more bombs, potentially, to get the job done and it
will be more brute force in a second [engagement]. But you
can certainly get the job done anywhere on the planet with
the forces we have available to us right now."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1014/p00s01-usmb.html
_____
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