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Re: Ukraine
Post by namelessfly   » Sun Mar 02, 2014 12:26 pm

namelessfly

It is amazing how prophetic Clint Eastwood was with his empty chair routine at the RNC convention:

http://www.google.com/search?q=Obama+na ... CA8QpwUoAQ

Obama was probably to busy golfing.

Just FYI, I think President Bush pushed to hard to bring former Warsaw pact countries into NATO. However; Bush Sr persuaded Ukraine to give up it's nukes so this will not go nuclear.
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Re: Ukraine
Post by RandomGraysuit   » Sun Mar 02, 2014 8:24 pm

RandomGraysuit
Captain of the List

Posts: 470
Joined: Thu Nov 10, 2011 5:03 pm

Daryl wrote:Fly's comment " Putin was about the only world leader except Netanyahu (and may be Governor Palin?) " puzzles me. Isn't Palin a retired ex state governor who has no official status? How can she be a "world leader"?


To approximately one third of the United States' population, Sarah Palin is a world leader on par with Obama, Merkel or Putin.

Also, to approximately one third of the United States' population, evolution is a hoax.

There is significant overlap among those two groups.
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Re: Ukraine
Post by ksandgren   » Sun Mar 02, 2014 8:38 pm

ksandgren
Captain (Junior Grade)

Posts: 342
Joined: Tue Jun 14, 2011 6:54 pm
Location: Los Angeles, California

RandomGraysuit wrote:
Daryl wrote:Fly's comment " Putin was about the only world leader except Netanyahu (and may be Governor Palin?) " puzzles me. Isn't Palin a retired ex state governor who has no official status? How can she be a "world leader"?


To approximately one third of the United States' population, Sarah Palin is a world leader on par with Obama, Merkel or Putin.

Also, to approximately one third of the United States' population, evolution is a hoax.

There is significant overlap among those two groups.


+1
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Re: Ukraine
Post by RandomGraysuit   » Sun Mar 02, 2014 8:45 pm

RandomGraysuit
Captain of the List

Posts: 470
Joined: Thu Nov 10, 2011 5:03 pm

namelessfly wrote:It was Turkey and Ted Kennedy who ensured that the insurgency would evolve in Iraq and Obama who snatched defeat from the jaws of Bush's hard-fought victory.


Learn military strategy before you pontificate.

Don't worry though, the United States' leadership showed the world that you're in good company. Paul Bremer's first action after taking over the Coalition Provisional Authority was to formally disband the Iraqi Army and ensure half a million poor young men were unemployed, and ban any Baath party members from government office, ensuring no experienced administrators would be available.

The Army Chief of Staff testified before Congress that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to secure Iraq. Turkey's refusal to allow the 3rd Infantry Division to pass through is a drop in the bucket. Modern counterinsurgency is manpower intensive, requiring approximately a 50:1 ratio of civilians to occupiers/police/soldiers. Three times as many troops as the Americans sent would have been required to prevent the insurgency from forming in 2003.

Since you've put your claim forward, defend it. How did Turkey or Ted Kennedy cause Paul Bremer to provide the insurgency with a ready source of manpower? How did Turkey or Ted Kennedy cause Donald Rumsfield and George Bush to decide to deploy a third of the required forces to Iraq?
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Re: Ukraine
Post by namelessfly   » Mon Mar 03, 2014 5:46 am

namelessfly

RandomGraysuit wrote:
Daryl wrote:Fly's comment " Putin was about the only world leader except Netanyahu (and may be Governor Palin?) " puzzles me. Isn't Palin a retired ex state governor who has no official status? How can she be a "world leader"?


To approximately one third of the United States' population, Sarah Palin is a world leader on par with Obama, Merkel or Putin.

Also, to approximately one third of the United States' population, evolution is a hoax.

There is significant overlap among those two groups.


I used the term "may be Governor Palin" because she is not now an elected official but she was a candidate for Vice President and she continues to command a significant following.

As for equating support of Palin with a disbelief in evolution, her father was the science teacher at Wasilla High School and he is an avid student of natural history and zoology. As Governor, Palin rejected demands to teach creationism in the State's schools insisting that evolution should be taught because it is the predominant theory.

Evolution is obvious a contentious issue. A vociferous subset of competent believers in evolution insist that evolution invalidates religious beliefs, particularly Christianity. Charles Darwin was not one of them. Some Christains react to the attack on their beliefs by rejecting evolution. The fact that the fossil record demonstrates that MAJOR changes in species occur in geologically brief time periods raises legitimate questions about the mechanisms of random mutations and natural selection. The Cambrian explosion is particularly problematic because all the Phylums evolved simultaneously and that the genetically very distinct phyllums share very complex structures (eyeballs are a prime example) that would have to evolve independently. Occams razor suggests that divine intervention occurred.
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Re: Ukraine
Post by namelessfly   » Mon Mar 03, 2014 6:21 am

namelessfly

You need to acquire more knowledge of military history.

Of course the US did not invade with enough troops to achieve the 50:1 ratio needed to cope with an insurgency.

The US simply did not have enough troops.

The original plan was to employ the Iraqi army and police forces in the occupation to achieve the 50:1 ratio.

The original plan was to prevent an insurgency from evolving by keeping the Iraqi economy, meaning oil production, intact.

The original battle plan was to bring the 3rd ID in from Turkey simultaneously with the invasion from the South. The Turkish government had agreed to this months prior but reneged when the parliament demanded that the US should have to pay $100 billion + for the privilege. The larger number of troops combined with the geographical position would have enabled the US to compel Iraqi divisions to surrender rather disperse. Keep in mind that the US invasion force in the south included only one Army Division and one Marine Corp division backed up by a British brigade. When Turkey reneged on allowing the third ID to deploy at the last moment (the ships with the heavy equipment were already waiting to dock), the US could either cancel the invasion or proceed while the 3rd ID was in transit to deploy from the South.

Since the third ID was unavailable, Iraqi army units were allowed to disperse rather than being compelled to surrender (really difficult to compel surrender when each US Division was engaging and defeating two Iraqi divisions in multiple, successive engagements. The fact that US attack helicopters had been mission killed or neutralized because US "allies" had provided Night Vision equipment to Iraq did not help). Attempts were made to reconstitute Iraqi units and employ them in the occupation but they were not successful. (imagine the insurgency that might have developed from the US Civil War if General Robert E Lee had not been compelled to surrender at Appomatix.). When Iraqi army units persisted in being worse than useless, Bremmer disbanded them. (I would have kept them on the payroll but confined to barracks for precisely the reasons you cite).

Given this evolving FUBAR resulting from Turkey reneging on a commitment, the fallback position was to stabilize the Iraqi economy and pacify the population by injecting cash. The Iraq reconstruction fund was the mechanism. While any infrastructure built would be nice, the real purpose was to keep young Iraqi men employed so that they would not be willing to be suicide bombers for $500. Ted Kennedy understood this yet he insisted on inserting a provision in the reconstruction fund legislation mandating peace time procurement rules. This ensured that there would be about a one year delay in the funds being employed so the insurgency would have plenty of time to develop. Where the Hell were Sirhan Sirhan and Lee Harvey Oswald when we really needed them?

One other result of the paucity of troops imposed by Turkey was the inability to provide security for critical Iraqi leaders. The most important of these was a very prominent, moderate, Shiit cleric who preached reconciliation. During the early stages of the invasion, he was knifed to
death in his own mosque by a subordinate cleric Muktada Al Sadir who incited the Shiit insurgency.

For someone who lectures about military history, you are profoundly ignorant of the pertinent details.


RandomGraysuit wrote:
namelessfly wrote:It was Turkey and Ted Kennedy who ensured that the insurgency would evolve in Iraq and Obama who snatched defeat from the jaws of Bush's hard-fought victory.


Learn military strategy before you pontificate.

Don't worry though, the United States' leadership showed the world that you're in good company. Paul Bremer's first action after taking over the Coalition Provisional Authority was to formally disband the Iraqi Army and ensure half a million poor young men were unemployed, and ban any Baath party members from government office, ensuring no experienced administrators would be available.

The Army Chief of Staff testified before Congress that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to secure Iraq. Turkey's refusal to allow the 3rd Infantry Division to pass through is a drop in the bucket. Modern counterinsurgency is manpower intensive, requiring approximately a 50:1 ratio of civilians to occupiers/police/soldiers. Three times as many troops as the Americans sent would have been required to prevent the insurgency from forming in 2003.

Since you've put your claim forward, defend it. How did Turkey or Ted Kennedy cause Paul Bremer to provide the insurgency with a ready source of manpower? How did Turkey or Ted Kennedy cause Donald Rumsfield and George Bush to decide to deploy a third of the required forces to Iraq?
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Re: Ukraine
Post by namelessfly   » Mon Mar 03, 2014 7:53 am

namelessfly

Howard T. Map-addict wrote:Nameless, I clicked on that url;
it gave a mostly blank page,
except for "Congressional Record: Thomas" at the top.
Allow me to guess that "Thomas" is a congresscritter
whom you admire.

IfIRC, Turkey's announced reason for not allowing 3rdID.
to deploy from its territory, was that Turkey deemed the
attack on Saddam to be a Bad Idea, of dubious morality.
(Perhaps they also expected Shrub's administration
to screw it up, but I don't recall them saying so.)

Was that John Adams, or John Quincy?
I recall another quote from JQA, which accords with it:
"We must not wander the world,
searching for monsters to slay."
I note that both quotes can be used against intervention
in Ukraine, which I also oppose, and also could have
been used against our attack on Saddam.

Finally, No, my reason for supporting Obama, and all
Democrats, against all Republicans, is that I believe
that Republican policies, such as screwing up the
overthrow of Saddam, and screwing up the deposition of
the Taliban in Afghanistan,
are what really weaken the USA.
And yes, as a Pointy-Headed Liberal,
I really believe that.

HTM, PHL

PS I note that Russia now seems to be occupying Crimea,
in "support" of a six/tenth majority Russian population.
I say USA ought *not* to intervene with force.
Say "naughty naughty" and other nasty things,
and remember it for later & better chances.

Note: Crimea had never been part of Ukraine till 1956,
when Nikita Kruschev (sic), himself a Ukrainian,
gave it to them.
One source I read called it an "Autonomous Region" so
it has the same "right to choose its destiny" as South
Ossetia or Chechnia do. How's that for irony?
Note 2: Russia supports S O & opposes C. :D

HTM, PHL


Howard T. Map-addict wrote:Now please explain to us how "withdrawing from NATO"
would affect sending warships into the Black Sea.

HTM


[/quote]

You should be more cognizant of the issues in the region and Turkey's conflict of interest. Iran, Iraq, and Turkey have Kurdish minorities that all three countries have viciously oppressed. Given the Armenian genocide, Turkey was less outraged than it might have been by Saddam's use of chemical weapons and other attrocities against the Kurds. While Turkey's avowed reason for opposing the Iraq invasion was the opinion that it was a bad idea, their true motivation was the fear that the overthrow of Saddam might lead to an autonomous or even independent Kurdistan that would enable their own Kurds to rebel.

Also, Turkey was secretly buying Iraqi oil at a big discount which could betrucked across the border and was also enabling oil shipments to other "sensible" European countries who were corrupting the "Oil For Food" program to undermine sanctions.

I might have some respect for your opinions if they were informed by more than just a cursory knowledge of the regional issues and history rather than merely motivated by partisan domestic
Politics and anti-Christain bigotry.
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Re: Ukraine
Post by Howard T. Map-addict   » Mon Mar 03, 2014 3:16 pm

Howard T. Map-addict
Rear Admiral

Posts: 1392
Joined: Tue Aug 11, 2009 11:47 am
Location: Philadelphia, PA

I have decided not to care whether you respect
my opinions, or not.
BTWay, I presume that "Christain" was a typo,
not ignorance on your part or a different kind of mistake.

HTM, PHL

[quote="namelessfly"]
[snip - htm]
I might have some respect for your opinions
if they were informed by more than just a cursory
knowledge of the regional issues and history
rather than merely motivated by partisan domestic
Politics and anti-Christain bigotry.
[/quote="namelessfly"]
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Re: Ukraine
Post by RandomGraysuit   » Mon Mar 03, 2014 4:47 pm

RandomGraysuit
Captain of the List

Posts: 470
Joined: Thu Nov 10, 2011 5:03 pm

I was there in 2003-2004. Reconstruction projects started as soon as we had semi-permanent bases. The biggest obstacle was the tribal Arabic mindset of doing business, not money. It was all well and good to say you'd pay a million dollars in cold, hard American cash to build a water treatment facility or $10k for a school; if there weren't any locals capable of completing the project, or accepting the project without trying to embezzle 80% of the money, it wasn't going to get done.

What we needed was more than a battalion of troops to deal with an entire city. We needed to keep everybody in the initial push, plus everybody who followed them in summer/fall, PLUS everybody who reinforced in early 2004. We didn't need one more division in-country, we needed five or ten more.

If the United States didn't have enough troops (again, not one more division) to invade and secure the country in March of 2003, then either it shouldn't have invaded in March 2003, or it should have been scrambling to get more troops in 2001-2002, while the material build-up was going on in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and our civilian leadership knew it wanted to invade. Either one points to a dramatic failure of strategic leadership at a policy-making (civilian) level.

When the military leader of your army says "We don't have the troops to pull this off," you don't ignore him and go ahead anyway. You assume the guy with 40 years experience has a little bit of a clue what he's doing, and you figure out what you need to do. Maybe that's putting everything you've got except the 18th Airborne Corps into Iraq for the next five years with WW II style deployments instead of trying for one year Vietnam style rotations. Maybe that's going in front of the nation and saying, "Because of Bill Clinton's drawdown, we need more soldiers to pull this off. Congress, you need to authorize 150,000 more soldiers *right now* because we swear that Saddam Hussein has WMDs and can hit Washington DC with them this instant, cross our hearts."

When the American leadership attempted to reconstitute the Iraqi Army (which didn't start until around November of 2003), the assumption was that soldiers were soldiers anywhere you go. American soldiers, Iraqi soldiers, same thing, and they're capable of the same tasks. Anyone who paid attention to various Israeli/Arabic conflicts should be aware that's not true. Either the American strategic leadership was unaware, ignoring those lessons, or inept. I don't know which is the case. Culturally, Arabic armies are similar to a late feudal European army, which is one reason they're so ineffective by comparison. If you tell an Arabic army to do something difficult, dangerous and/or uncomfortable, you're going to see losses every time you don't keep a guard to watch the inside of the camp.

The Iraqi Army was disbanded by Paul Bremer in May 2003, well before these reconstitution attempts. Bremer stated it was to reinforce the idea that the old regime was gone and not coming back. You're correct that Iraqi military units were useless in April 2003. The same was true in 2004, 2005, all the way up to 2014. Outside of portions of the Republican Guard, the concept of a professional military never truly existed in Iraq. Why the units that were underfed, undersupplied and unable to even care for themselves in January 1991 and March 2003 would suddenly become effective because Americans were giving orders is a mystery.

This was his second order, the first being the forcible disbanding of the Baathist administration and forbidding anyone with Baath affiliation from holding office. The British were still trying to bring the remnants of the Republican Guard they'd fought in Basra into the fold when Bremer cut their legs out from under them. The idea that those two orders support the concept of using existing Iraqi organizational structures is ludicrous. Being a Baathist in Iraq is like being a Communist in China, or a Democrat/Republican in the United States. If you want to have any decent civil service job, you join up. Paul Bremer wanted to rebuild everything from the ground up, without using anyone in the old regime. The problem is, you can't run a government without having a single person with civil service experience in it.

By the time the Americans had reached Baghdad in April, the only opposition to taking the airport came from Fedayeen fanatics in pickup trucks trying to charge tanks. One armored brigade with infantry support tried to hunker down in the city itself and destroy the Americans from hull-down positions and was wiped out for their troubles.

The vast majority of the Iraqi Army wasn't coming out to fight, risk death against a vastly superior enemy, and be taken prisoner if they were very lucky. Telling them to report to their barracks, sit their butts down and get fed on a regular basis would still have been possible in April/May, but the humanitarian supplies to do that didn't exist. Until well over a year later, even sufficient translation resources didn't exist.

The supposed flex capacity in Iraqi oil production that would pay for the war didn't exist either. I walked through a pumping station that was allegedly going to push over a hundred thousand barrels a day of crude. It hadn't worked for 20 years and the pipeline itself was rusted through in places.

Your comment on Al Sadr is a complete red herring. Even if there had been a million U.S. soldiers in Iraq at that time, it would have changed nothing. American military forces weren't allowed into holy sites like mosques without express clearance from senior leadership, unless they were being shot at from inside at that very moment. It took about a week for the Iraqis to figure that one out.

The American civilian leadership made the decision to conduct a short, victorious war on the cheap. The Americans would be welcomed as liberators, so there was no need to worry about controlling the country. The Iraqi oil infrastructure would pay for it. The Iraqis would spontaneously create a new government in cooperation with the CPA. We'd be gone in six months. Blaming Ted Kennedy or Turkey is like blaming Admiral Filareta for losing the second Battle of Manticore.

namelessfly wrote:You need to acquire more knowledge of military history.

Of course the US did not invade with enough troops to achieve the 50:1 ratio needed to cope with an insurgency.

The US simply did not have enough troops.

The original plan was to employ the Iraqi army and police forces in the occupation to achieve the 50:1 ratio.

The original plan was to prevent an insurgency from evolving by keeping the Iraqi economy, meaning oil production, intact.

The original battle plan was to bring the 3rd ID in from Turkey simultaneously with the invasion from the South. The Turkish government had agreed to this months prior but reneged when the parliament demanded that the US should have to pay $100 billion + for the privilege. The larger number of troops combined with the geographical position would have enabled the US to compel Iraqi divisions to surrender rather disperse. Keep in mind that the US invasion force in the south included only one Army Division and one Marine Corp division backed up by a British brigade. When Turkey reneged on allowing the third ID to deploy at the last moment (the ships with the heavy equipment were already waiting to dock), the US could either cancel the invasion or proceed while the 3rd ID was in transit to deploy from the South.

Since the third ID was unavailable, Iraqi army units were allowed to disperse rather than being compelled to surrender (really difficult to compel surrender when each US Division was engaging and defeating two Iraqi divisions in multiple, successive engagements. The fact that US attack helicopters had been mission killed or neutralized because US "allies" had provided Night Vision equipment to Iraq did not help). Attempts were made to reconstitute Iraqi units and employ them in the occupation but they were not successful. (imagine the insurgency that might have developed from the US Civil War if General Robert E Lee had not been compelled to surrender at Appomatix.). When Iraqi army units persisted in being worse than useless, Bremmer disbanded them. (I would have kept them on the payroll but confined to barracks for precisely the reasons you cite).

Given this evolving FUBAR resulting from Turkey reneging on a commitment, the fallback position was to stabilize the Iraqi economy and pacify the population by injecting cash. The Iraq reconstruction fund was the mechanism. While any infrastructure built would be nice, the real purpose was to keep young Iraqi men employed so that they would not be willing to be suicide bombers for $500. Ted Kennedy understood this yet he insisted on inserting a provision in the reconstruction fund legislation mandating peace time procurement rules. This ensured that there would be about a one year delay in the funds being employed so the insurgency would have plenty of time to develop. Where the Hell were Sirhan Sirhan and Lee Harvey Oswald when we really needed them?

One other result of the paucity of troops imposed by Turkey was the inability to provide security for critical Iraqi leaders. The most important of these was a very prominent, moderate, Shiit cleric who preached reconciliation. During the early stages of the invasion, he was knifed to
death in his own mosque by a subordinate cleric Muktada Al Sadir who incited the Shiit insurgency.

For someone who lectures about military history, you are profoundly ignorant of the pertinent details.
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Re: Ukraine
Post by Michael Riddell   » Mon Mar 03, 2014 8:32 pm

Michael Riddell
Captain (Junior Grade)

Posts: 352
Joined: Sat Nov 03, 2012 3:10 pm
Location: Aberdeen, Scotland, UK.

RandomGraysuit wrote:The British were still trying to bring the remnants of the Republican Guard they'd fought in Basra into the fold when Bremer cut their legs out from under them.


I don't think that would be have been enough to do anything positive in the south.

My country made an arse of it. Pure and simple. That's not to degenerate the average British Squaddie, but there were major failures of both leadership and political will.

The British public didn't want to be involved, especially after it was proved that Blair lied. The conduct of the "Prince of Darkness" fatally undermined any prospect for public support for the mission. This unpopularity meant that No.10 and Whitehall were deathly afraid of excessive casualties, hamstringing the field commanders from actually being able to do their jobs properly. Couple this with extreme financial parsimony and you have a recipe for disaster.

It's the same in Afghanistan.

I haven't read this book (I don't want to depress myself), but it might give some insight into how the UK feels about it's involvement in both countries:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Losing-Small-Wars-Military-Afghanistan/dp/0300182740/ref=pd_sim_b_1/277-6023052-8782129?ie=UTF8&refRID=0X16GZQSGPNFT9R5ABH4

"Partly on the strength of their apparent success in insurgencies such as Malaya and Northern Ireland, the British armed forces have long been perceived as world class, if not world-beating. However, their recent performance in Iraq and Afghanistan is widely seen as - at best - disappointing; under British control, Basra degenerated into a lawless city riven with internecine violence, while tactical mistakes and strategic incompetence in Helmand province resulted in heavy civilian and military casualties and a climate of violence and insecurity. In both cases the British were eventually and humiliatingly bailed out by the US army. In this thoughtful and compellingly readable book, Frank Ledwidge examines the British involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, asking how and why it went so wrong. With the aid of copious research, interviews with senior officers and his own personal experiences, he looks in detail at the failures of strategic thinking and culture that led to defeat in Britain's latest 'small wars'. This is an eye-opening analysis of the causes of military failure, and its enormous costs."

These are in the same vein:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ministry-Defeat-British-Iraq-2003-2009/dp/1441169970/ref=pd_sim_b_6?ie=UTF8&refRID=1KYVKXXQTSQ46PDHT5FD

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Investment-Blood-True-Britains-Afghan/dp/030019062X/ref=pd_sim_b_10?ie=UTF8&refRID=12MY18PFHEJ54DZPDRHN

The result? Look at what happened on the Syria vote. There's no desire in my country to get involved in military adventures. Especially in the Middle East. Nor Eastern Europe. We're tired of war.

Mike.
---------------------
Gonnae no DAE that!

Why?

Just gonnae NO!
---------------------
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