TM:
PenGun /m4646 - You ask what are the other successes we've had as a consequence of Iraq. There's the whole Libya disarmament success.
No. Read the papers again. Qaddafi has been in quiescent mode (QM) for a few years now. Here are some new acronyms for you to get under your belt:
APWNC = Arabs Playing Along with the Neo-conservatives
AHFIME = Americans Hungering for a War in the Middle East
CWDLTPDEHSATW = Christians Who Don't Like the Pope and Dismiss Everything he Says Against this War
PWDCWYT = People Who Don't Care What you Think
SAWTTKAWSU = sysadmins Who Think They Know Anything and Won't Shut Up
LWTTAS = Lawyers Who Think They are Statesmen

TM:
You write:
And we've gotten a lot of the bugs out in the military conduct of this new type of war.
Sir, I've never seen worse. Honestly. "Worse conduct of ... this war." To what to you allude? How did you and your pals get the bugs out? What "bugs"?
And you've "gotten", as you would say, "a lot of bugs out". Well, what were they? May we know? Or is it your idea that Canada and the rest of the world ought to have just agreed with your buggy idea? Because your idea was buggy, right?

Dave /m4653 - There is one, a clear number. Then there is a couple which is usually two or sometimes three. Then comes several which is sometimes three but often four to seven. When Shinseki says several hundred thousand troops and doesn't clarify anything more, it's legitimate to say that the high estimate is the high value of several which is what I'm doing. If Gen. Shinseki meant around 400,000, he should have said so and not used an imprecise range that legitimately can be interpreted that high. Even a 400,000 figure would have been too much to handle alone because rotations get you to 1.2M in troops going through Iraq on a rotating basis.

When I tried to nail down the figures, I got a high end of 500k for those doing estimates and not working from Shinseki's use of the word several (as I did).

Paul Duffy /m4654 - Libya may have been in quiescent mode but you're really going to have to define what that is a bit more vigorously to include taking part in an international effort to create WMD and acting as host for the program in the Libyan desert. We caught them shipping in centrifuges and knew about the program. I think it's likely that Libya's collapse in the face of our evidence wouldn't have happened absent Iraq.

/m4655 - You ask what are some of the bugs we've worked out. There are a lot of back end problems, like the refusal to let the military do more regarding quick and dirty reconstruction projects. Then there was the leadership problems. There are a lot of new faces in the Pentagon (as usually happens during war time). If you've never seen worse screw ups, you've never honestly read a detailed history of the US Civil War. Do you want a more modern example? Try looking at Russia's Grozny campaign. How about limiting things to US foul ups? Desert One, My Lai, Somalia, and the Beirut bombings come to my mind.

The US underwent a struggle between waiting for the perfect force with the perfect opportunity and the never prosecuted attack versus the do the best with what we've got but do it as the two Iraq options. This is McLellan v. Grant all over again. Was Grant without error? Hardly, and people paid for each of his mistakes with their lives.

Be fair.

TM Luyas said:
"The military lawyers and military cops investigating this mess deserve support at least as much as the combat troops who properly execute their jobs. The nature of criminal trials the world over would suggest that Karpinski's would be last, with testimony culled from prior trials used as evidence in hers. Can you give one iota of evidence that would demonstrate that your accusation is more than a base smear against honest CID and Army lawyers prosecuting this mess?"

 I was talking about Sanchez. I doubt Karpinski is to blame.

 Sanchez said: ""I'm tired of this MP mentality; I want them to shoot first and use nonlethal force later."

 This was about prisoners. This is a clear violation of the Geneva accord. A war crime.

  PenGun
 Do What Now ???

Edited by author 05-12-2004 02:35 PM
BruceR
I don't know enough Canadian military history (blush)to insist, but General Dextraze should be near top of list because;
a) last of COS's who learned difference between blank and ball in a junior rank in war,
b) one of few who commanded from sub-unit to battalion during war and then assumed Army strategic directorship
c) a fighting soldier with senior staff positions during stressful period from 1965-->?, when Army had budget cuts, FLQ, Beatle culture and Vietnam stigma to contend with,
d) a Montreal man who apparently briefly had command of Hasty P's (many cultural kms away!)
e) He was in Petawawa when I lived there. He was a well respected veteran by any vets I ever heard mention his name.
f) Almost certainly followed old custom of referring to ribbons as ribbons, and medals as medals.

So please, provide more details of his career in your listing, and what a worthwhile endeavour this is! I hope you can provide some literature references to follow up.

 I am going to resubmit this as it is way back.

 I like Guy Simonds for best general.

 Montgomery, On Canadian generals, called Simonds the "only general fit to hold high command in war".

Omar Bradley called him "the best of the Canadian generals"

Sir Miles Dempsey "the best of my Corps Commanders".

  PenGun
 Do What Now ???

TM,

I think your approach would be imminently sensible, and the only viable interpretation, were it not for the first part of Gen Shinseki's quote: "I would say that what's been mobilized to this point -- something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers are probably, you know, a figure that would be required." I assume, given that the peak figure for troops in theatre (ca. 250,000, the vast majority American) appears to have been reached about a month after Gen Shinseki made this statement (according to Global Security's archived ORBATs), that this is probably a lot closer to the specific definition of "several" that he meant than 700,000.

On the larger issue, I agree, if he thought 400,000 was the real figure, he certainly should have up and said it -- that's part and parcel of the job, regardless of what SecDef might think.

PenGun /m4657 - Any officers between those currently on trial and Karpinski would expect to have charges filed between now and whenever they get filed against her. You start with the little fish and work your way up. This is very uncontroversial prosecutorial strategy. I have yet to see any indication that the US is engaged in some sort of whitewash in the prosecutions. The ICC does not claim to prosecute all war criminals. They only act when national justice systems fail.

Dave /m4660 - I think we'd need to have a video clip to settle this definitively. My interpretation of the double hyphen in your transcript is that he started to say one thing, paused, and went in a different direction. Text doesn't have enough bandwidth to sort that out absent other evidence.

I don't particularly see why Wolfowitz would hit the roof as he did on such a small difference in numbers, calling Shinseki's estimate "wildly off the mark". And if there really were a fairly small difference in numbers, why didn't Shinseki clarify his "several hundred thousand" remark? I think he didn't clarify it because Wolfowitz was right that Shinseki was claiming a much higher number than the Pentagon consensus estimates of "closer to a hundred thousand".

TM Lutas said:

They only act when national justice systems fail.

 Think the US will prosecute Sanchez?

 So far we have noncoms. Heads at the top _must_ roll.

There's this too, the smiling girl with the Iraqie on a leash ... posed by "higher officers" ... despicable.

  PenGun
 Do What Now ???

PenGun /m4657 - To start off, I brain froze and thought that Sanchez was under Karpinski. In other reading I figured out I was wrong. Sorry about that. I then tried to find that phrase by Sanchez and couldn't. If Sanchez were to be guilty of war crimes of course I would favor his prosecution. So would most people I know on right or left. The question is a little more complicated. Did he say it? Was it blowing off steam or was it an illegal order if it was said at all? When I didn't find it in Google I started to suspect that it was bogus but get me a reference and we'll discuss further.

/m4662 - Would you just calm the hell down. From my perspective, so far, so good on the prosecution end. If and when we get actual evidence of a coverup, of stonewalling, of some sort of arrangement to protect higher ups, then it's worth discussing a failure of the US justice system.

Just remember, too much pressure to convict results in reversals on appeal and you know that some defendants will try this tactic. Calm down and let's see justice done.

PenGun, she didn't say "higher officers," although that's what she obviously wanted to imply. She said, "higher ranking" in a way that made it difficult to believe it was any officer. My guess, and it is only a guess, she meant her boyfriend or someone at a similar level. Remember, she is a PFC and virtually everyone outranks her. She was very emphatic about her wording. If you see the interview, it is far more apparent than in a transcript.

If Karpinski is prosecuted for anything it will be for her failure as a commander, not for any involvement in the actions of people very far below her. She had no command at all from what I've seen and heard. How she ever got a star I'll never understand.

Edited by author 05-12-2004 08:47 PM
TM Lutas

 Page 2 near the bottom of the Sanchez link.

 There is no way even the cretins in the white house are gonna be able to pin this on the enlisted men.


  PenGun
 Do what Now ???

TM,

In the absence of further evidence, I'm pretty dubious. I went and looked up what Woodward attributed to Shinseki -- he reports that Shinseki was on board (with reservations) [ca. November 2002, at least] with a version of Franks' plan that required a force mobilization of approximately 300,000. Given the broad similarity of that figure to the somewhat stripped down refined plan that went ahead in the event, I think it entirely likely that Shinseki was actually stating that the number of troops mobilized was what would be required. I certainly do think that he was trying to flit between the raindrops in his answer, and that this was driven by politics, but I don't think that the interpretation that requires the 700,000 figure is the right one (i.e. that he was trying to shut down the invasion -- that horse had already escaped, at least on a military).

As to why Wolfowitz was freaking on this issue I think it's a combination of the fact that: a) support for the invasion was somewhat soft in allied countries (it's right around this time that SecDef stepped in it by floating the idea that Great Britain might not participate after all), b) they were trying at exactly that point to get a follow-up to Resolution 1440, and c) they were simultaneously trying to get the Turks to let them run the 4th Armoured in through Turkey, something that they would have been even less inclined to accept if they thought that the Americans were going to stay in Iraq for an extended period of time.

Quite apart from all that, Wolfowitz has, in my opinion, about as sophisticated an understanding of counter-insurgency warfare as I have of particle physics -- it's entirely plausible to me that he actually believed the statement attributed to him and really couldn't understand how it could take more troops to occupy a country than it would take to destroy it's convential military capabilities.

Pengun

I know this is a blog but confusing issues with facts is part of the fun.

Phil Carters’s Slate article on the ICC.

T’aint so simple as you seem to think. And acturlly more so that Phil had room to publish.

Hank

 That's a nice piece by Phil. I was aware the US had withdrawn (refused to sign) from the ICC. It was TM that brought the ICC up.

 My point _is_ simple.

 I am concerned here with General Sanchez's statement as releated by General Karpinski:

"Sanchez said, "I'm tired of this MP mentality; I want them to shoot first and use nonlethal force later."

 This is a violation of the geneva accord. I am not really too concerned who (I would prefer the ICC) prosecutes this case. I would be surprised if he is prosecuted though.

 Pleasently surprised.

  PenGun
 Do What Now ???

PenGun /m4665 /m4668 - Karpinski said, Sanchez said, there's an indpendent witness and it'll come out in a US court. You brought up the ICC in /m4651 but called it the war crimes commission.

Dave /m4656 - If Wolfowitz misinterpreted Shinseki, its not too hard to figure out that a lot of other people would (and have) come up with much higher figures. Shinseki needed to put out some sort of clarification. To my knowledge, he never has. After doing the further research your questions prompted, I'm less sure what the heck Shinseki had in his head but I do know that he left things suitably vague enough to cover virtually any high figure.

Shinseki had a duty to make clear long before George Bush came into office that while we were configured for 2 medium sized wars, we were also configured for less than one medium sized occupation. He never did until the rubber hit the road and that's a failure that richly deserved firing no matter whether he was right or not on the occupation numbers.

The whole planting a liberty tree thing that I've gone into at length on Flit(TM) is something very new in terms of military/foreign policy doctrine. I think that forcing the locals to take responsibility on themselves, in part by not fully staffing the occupation forces to traditional levels, is either brilliant strategy or very fortunate serendipity and will likely become part of doctrine because hand holding to perfection obviously isn't working.

Look at Kosovo, haven for brothels, drugs, and albanian organized crime rings. A well staffed occupation didn't help them much there. We're going to have a year and a couple of months before we hand over sovereignty in Iraq and they're very much more likely to become a free republic quicker than Kosovo is.