"Rummy, you're doing a heckuva job!"

Reply By: COL GenePosted: Wednesday, April 19, 2006ModeratemanI will respond to a request. I will not respond to a demand such as drmiler made.I was not assigned to combat in Vietnam much to my surprise. From 1964-1968 I was regular Army and thought in 1966 I was to be assigned to the 4th Div. As it turned out, my assignment as a nuclear weapons officer and the very sensitive information I obtained prevented my assignment anywhere where I might be captured. I did not learn that until 1986 when I was not selected for promotion to BG. I held most staff positions and had three commands. Two commands were LTC slots and one was a COL position. I was a Field Artillery Officer from 1963-1966. I then became a Finance Officer. I was recalled in 1981 to head the team that redesigned the Military Pay System for the Army Guard and Reserve. I had a total of 6 years on active duty and 24 years in the Active Reserve.

First I thank you for your service, From your time im military, you really should know, we go to war with the army we have.

I was totally against Bush going to Iraq, I thought it was a huge mistake, still do.

Opinions, even from generals are like assholes, everyone has one.

Tommy Franks stated, it was his decision to make a run to Bagdad and not secure towns he passed through, Rumsfeld gave Tommy his head and let general franks make all the decisions about how to conduct the war.

Were mistakes made? hell yes, but name a war that was not a fubar? The truth is even if we sent one million men, it would have been impossible to guard 25 million Iraqis, with the amount of weapons in iraq no one could have stopped the looting and subsequencely all the disapperance of said explosives.

Reply By: Charles.CPosted: Thursday, April 20, 2006Were mistakes made? hell yes, but name a war that was not a fubar? The truth is even if we sent one million men, it would have been impossible to guard 25 million Iraqis, with the amount of weapons in iraq no one could have stopped the looting and subsequencely all the disapperance of said explosives.That is my point exactly, regardless of how many soldiers we could have sent to Iraq, it is impossible to keep every single one of them alive. There is just no way to know who is the terrorist and who is a civilian and where are all the weapons. Chances are this many soldiers would have died anyways. But Col makes it sound as if somehow this would have never happend had Bush not been in charge. Talk about stupidity at it's finest. BTW, keep in mind that some of those 2000+ dead died from accidents such as vehicle malfunctions and friendly fire.

colgene bless his heart has no idea about what war really is, from his own mouth.

War is a collection of missions, some go well, some go bad, the whole Ideas of seven generals coming out at the same time to condemn bush and rummy smacks of colusion. Never has a general trashed the President while at war! Let alone 7 at the same time, somewhere behind the scenes is a liberal democrat pulling the generals strings. I for one am ashamed of them.

Geeze colgene you couldn have at least acknowledged my lengthy reply to you.

You have just proven my point. Bush with NO active military experience disregarded the planning of the most experienced combat veterans and sent 1/3 the number of troops they said was needed to secure Iraq.

Now lets look at the results-- After Bush said Mission Accomplished we had 90% of the deaths and injuries because we were unable to control 25 million people in a country the size of California with 135,000 troops. Just what those generals with untold combat experience said would happen. Most of our dead and injured are because of the way Bush choose to fight this war( a choice he had no experience to make- that was a military decision) and ALL of our dead and injured are because he attacked a country that did not pose ANY danger to this country.

Charles.C
You do not know what you are talking about. The issue of insufficient troops is now the position of MOST of the senior military. The lessons learned by our military are what is used to establish the tactics that we have used successfully. During my career I attended the same training as most of the military leaders of the country whose judgment was disregarded by AWOL George W. Bush. For example we all attended training such as:

Basis Branch Combat Training
Combat Intelligence
Command and General Staff College
War College

The decisions of Bush violated the teachings of ALL those schools.

The insurgents are Iraqi's. They are believed to be mostly former members of the Saddam military.

Our lack of troops made it impossible for our troops to accomplish the following missions:

Secure the cities where the Saddam loyalists have been operating from in their attacks on our troops.

Secure the over 200 Ammo Dumps that were the source of the explosives that have resulted in MOST of our dead and injured.

We could not seal the borders of Iraq and there are some terrorists operating in the country.

We were unable to protect the oil, water and power systems.

We have not been able to provide the security needed to allow anything like a normal life to return to the most populated areas in Iraq.

You and Bush do not what you are talking about. The proof is 3 years AFTER Mission Accomplished the death toll last month was near an all time high. When will it end? Bush is directly responsible for 2,400 dead Troops and over 17,500 combat injuries!!!!

Harsh and unwarranted. The standard expression is dying in a combat zone. Murder is not applicable in war; otherwise, 200,000 deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have been genocide.

OK bad choice of words. I admit it. Thanx for the correction.

But you do get my point? Right?

Charles.C

You had better read the books that Generals Trainor and Zinni wrote. They are FULLY documented with all the sources. Better read what the two CIA section chiefs said about how Bush IGNORED the Intlligence that said Saddam was NO THREAT to this country in late 2002 and early 2003.

Stevendedale

You know more then almost ALL the 4 star generals. What an ass you are. THE reason the insergency was able to grow and KILL and INJURE our troops is because we were unable to control them in Iraq after Saddam Fell. You stupid people on this Bloig site set your self up as knowing more then the military professiuonals that have spent their lives protecting this country. How so many stupid and totally uninformed people got on one web site is amasing. Beloe is a E-Mail I receved from General Zinni's assistant. You are a sad group of people:

Gene:
Your blog is dead on. Just a few weeks before the war started, Zinni testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. He said, "This is the wrong war, at the wrong time." We can take out Sadaam easily, any time we want. But, he said that if the president decided to do this anyway, then, for the sake of the troops, it must be done correctly, i.e., as outlined in the CENTCOM OPLAN, revised and updated over a decade, as you mentioned. That plan called for between 400,000 and 500,000 troops, the vast majority of which were NOT true combatants (grunts), but rather security for logistics and for the Iraqi infrustrure, civil affairs and political specialist, humanitarian and medical units, etc. One of the many stupid things done was disbanding the military, and the bureaucracy (de-Baathitization); another was the C

Again col you miss the point entirely! 7 Generals do NOT equal most of the generals. And the rest do NOT agree with your 7.

Stevendedale You know more then almost ALL the 4 star generals. What an ass you are. THE reason the insergency was able to grow and KILL and INJURE our troops is because we were unable to control them in Iraq after Saddam Fell. You stupid people on this Bloig site set your self up as knowing more then the military professiuonals that have spent their lives protecting this country. How so many stupid and totally uninformed people got on one web site is amasing. Beloe is a E-Mail I receved from General Zinni's assistant. You are a sad group of people:

"If" we're so stupid why do you keep coming back? Seems more like "you're" the stupid one.

Give Zinni his due for being consistent - he still has the opinion he had before the war.

I hate to point out the obvious, but no military leader has ever had all that he thought he needed. Hindsight has proven some of Zinni's pre-war assessment to be correct, but I don't think putting half a million troops into Iraq was feasible. Furthermore, had we done so we would have been hearing far louder squealing about "occupation" than we have (which was loud enough, thank you) and turned Iraq into what the insurgent terrorists would consider a "target-rich environment."

Some of the considerations were political, and rightly so. Some right, some wrong. Deal with it.

Daiwa

That is just what we did in the first Gulf War. We sent 495,000 troops. That was to deal with a much smaller country without the internal disputes that we knew existed in Iraq. Bush 41 listened to his military experts. Bush 43 did not. Look at the difference in the results!

Charles.C

It is not just me but most Americans (about 75%) believe we were wrong. Most of the senior generals also believe the way the war was conducted was a mistake. Soon just the people on JoeUser and the White House will still cling to the belief we acted correctly. Does your favorite book have a BIG White Rabbit with a gold pocket watch as one of the characters?