-->gemäss amerikanischen Offizieren: US-Truppen haben viel zu wenig Mannstärke sowie schwere Waffen, irrtümlicherweise wurde zu viel Gewicht auf Luftwaffe sowie leichtbewaffnete Spezialeinheiten gelegt.

Angeblich stecken die"Pentagon-Zivilisten" dahinter, d.h. Rummie wollte nix von hören, wollte"neuartige" Kampfführung..., machten allzu optimistische Vorhersagen über freudige Begrüssung durch Bevölkerung.

Ich frage mich: war das ignorantes arrogantes Wunschdenken?
oder hatten gewisse Kreise ein Interesse daran, dass sich die Dinge so entwickeln (mit u.U. katastrophalem Ausgang für die USA)? Man könnte meinen, dass der wichtigste Verbündete der USA, welcher jedoch nicht auf der Liste der Koalition der"Willigen" erscheint, einiges Interesse daran hätte, den Irak möglichst schnell und effizient zu erledigen?

Oder war es schlicht himmelschreiender Dilettantismus?

Allerdings: wie bereits in einem anderen Beitrag erwähnt, die Konzentration auf eine Besetzung des Südens von Irak könnte für sie eine vermeintliche Lösung darstellen (im Besitz der wichtigsten Ã-lreserven, jedoch weder Rückzug noch totaler Krieg, wobei der ja jetzt schon genug"total" ist)...

WHY MILITARY OFFICERS ARE TALKING

source: NYT, 3/26, Michael R. Gordon, Camp Doha, Qatar]

ALTHOUGH NOT REPORTED ELSEWHERE, THE HEADLINE NEW YORK TIMES
STORY REPORTS THAT THE US HAS CHANGED PLANS, AND WILL FIGHT IN
THE SOUTH BEFORE GOING TO BAGHDAD.

The report from the NYT
reporter in command headquarters at Camp Doha, Qatar, is called
"US shifting focus of land campaign to fight in south," quoting
"senior officers" that the resistance by the militia has forced a
delay of the Baghdad operation.

The resistance"has been so stiff
that commanders have concluded that this Iraqi threat has to be
addressed first," Gordon writes.

They say the delay will be
"days, not weeks." The plan to bypass the southern cities, or for
them to fall easily, has been replaced by a plan which"commits
allied forces to some form of urban warfare in southern Iraq."

WIESBADEN, Mar. 26 (EIRNA)--THE US DEPLOYMENT WILL ONLY LEAD TO
AN ESCALATION. A veteran of the last Gulf War commented that the
current U.S. actions are so incompetent that one can only assume
they are designed to ensure an escalation of the bombing and
justification for bringing in many more reinforcements. He said
that the U.S. is not prepared properly for desert warfare, which
has been the subject of debate within the military for years now.
It is not just the obvious effect of bad sandstorms, but sand in
general which attacks computer systems that are essential for
everything from helicopters to sophisticated weapons systems.

The source was very much struck by the inadequate forces
deployed. So far, the U.S. has deployed no more than three
divisions, none of which are optimal for this type of warfare. He
was not particularly impressed by the 101st Airborne, which is
expected to deploy very soon. If they were serious, they would
have sent the 82nd, which is much more of an elite unit. He fears
a Vietnam-type escalation, where heavy losses to the first
divisions will be used as an excuse to send even more troops.
Moreover, it will lead to more deadly bombing and tremendous
civilian casualties, and this is the real problem. He suspects
that report of hundreds of Iraqi soldiers being killed are in
fact civilians who are being killed on a massive scale.

Another three divisions are in the pipeline for deployment,
but after that, the U.S. army does not have many more deployable
regular forces. It does not have the troops to deploy 250,000
soldiers as it had in the last war without mobilizing National
Guard and reserve divisions. Thus, the logic of the situation
will be to move towards a massive increase of the bombing against
the civilian population. The deployment of nuclear weapons falls
into this logic, according to the source.

March 26 (EIRNS)--THE U.S. COULD ESCALATE TO DRESDEN-TYPE
TOTAL DESTRUCTION THROUGH BOMBING IN IRAQ, because of the likely
inability to take Baghdad, a retired U.S. Army Colonel told EIR
today. He said that there will be big problems in trying to
reinforce troop levels in Iraq, noting that"we've cut out so
many forces, we don't have them."

"We're not automatically superior" to the Iraqi forces, the
retired officer said, blasting the ignorance of the world which
pervades U.S. policy today. In the face of the setbacks now being
experienced, he expects the U.S. to escalate with heavy bombing
and"total destruction" -- something on the scale of Hiroshima
without nuclear weapons, or the firebombing of Dresden.

[source: Knight-Ridder, by Joseph Galloway, March 25]
"THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE CUT OFF THE FLOW OF ARMY UNITS,
SAYING THIS THING WOULD BE OVER IN TWO DAYS," says a retired Army
general, quoted in an article by Knight-Ridder correspondent
Joseph Galloway.

"This is the ground war that wasn't going to happen" in
Rumsfeld's plans, said an unnamed Pentagon official. Because the
DOD didn't commit adequate forces, he says,"we have three
divisions strung out over 300-plus miles and the follow-on
division, our reserve, is probably three weeks away from landing."

Galloway's article reviews the disputes that took place
between Rumsfeld and military commanders such as Tommy Franks, in
which, military officials say, Rumsfeld made clear his disdain
for the Army's heavy divisions; Rumsfeld kept pushing for
smaller, lighter, and more agile units, with a much greater role
for air power and special forces. This went along with the
optimistic assumptions made by the Pentagon civilians that the
Americans would be greeted as liberators, and that Iraqi units
would rapidly surrender. Galloway explains how this came about:
"Intelligence officials say Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul
Wolfowitz and other Pentagon civilians ignored much of the advice
of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence
Agency in favor of reports from the Iraqi opposition and from
Israeli sources that predicted an immediate uprising against
Saddam once the Americans attacked."

[source: NPR"Fresh Air," March 26]

WHY MILITARY OFFICERS ARE TALKING. In an interview aired on
NPR today, Knight-Ridder reporter Joseph Galloway detailed at
length how Defense Secretary Rumsfeld had refused to listen to
the recommendations of military officers who insisted that much
larger ground forces would be needed in Iraq; the only people
Rumsfeld was listening to, were those from the Air Force, and his
civilian advisers.

Galloway said that many officers are talking to him about
this, because they fear that when things turn out badly, Rumsfeld
is going to turn around and blame the military for the disaster
which is in the making.


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