Noted author on the war in Vietnam, Stanley Karnow, who originally dismissed comparisons between the war in Iraq and the war in Vietnam is now saying that the war in the Middle East has become quite similar in many ways. The author of Vietnam: A History, considered one of the better works on the conflict in Southeast Asia, Karnow has won the Pulitzer for his work detailing several factors surrounding the war in Vietnam and at home. " Originally the word 'quagmire' was thrown out about this war too quickly, when it really didn't apply.' said Karnow on an interview on CNN,' Partly because we have been haunted by the spectre of the war in Vietnam, and had always sworn never to get invlved in anything like that again. You saw comparisons thrown out in Somalia, in Kososvo, basically anywhere we have sent in troops, it's been a fear. For the first time, that fear is realistic." " There are some differences, but there are distinct similarities. One of the biggest is the behaviour of the administration. With Vietnam, we had the administration constantly misleading us with regards to the situation...they were always saying things like ' Victory is just around the corner...light at the end of the tunnel'...like that. Now, here, we have Bush and others characterizing every huge setback or mistake as a sign of progress. It's the same kind of deception." Other comparisons were made with the USSR's war in Afghanistan and the war in Korea, which Karnow noted has been forgotten, in terms of how unpopular it was, and the fact that Eisenhower was largely elected on the promise of getting the U.S. out of Korea, which he did. Other similarities have been noted by other experts who have speculated that the U.S. forces are currently so stretched ( consider the recall of Marines, etc.) that it is probable that the administration will have to reinstitute the draft. Karnow says that the war would have remained popular,as did the war in Vietnam, so long as there was a percpetion of progress. While that seemed to be the case in 'Nam, the war was supported. When it became apparent that little or no progress was being made, the population truned against the war, and when it became evident that the administration was trying to stimulate support with misinformation and manipulation of perception, the support vanished. Karnow says that the greatest similarity between the wars is the efforts of the administrations to use various tactics to try and shape public percpetion of the war; limiting access to information, complaints about media bias, avoidance of addressing 'hot' issues before public forums, and revisionist depictions of the course of the war. Whenb discussing whether or not this will beomce an issue which could, like Korea, and Vietnam before it, lead to a political change, Karnow hesitated to be definitive. He said it partly depends on who the Democrats put up as an option, saying that right now there doesn't seem to be anyone who has the stature, but also noted that '' Overnight is forever in politics.'', a political cliche often seen to be true. He also noted that there are still many who are buying what the administration is selling on Iraq, and that to a certain xtent, as with Vietnam, the public is reluctant to discredit the administration's take on events even when it first becomes evident that that take is not genuine.
I will say this, the tactics seem to be similar. After another helicopter was shot down yesterday, with 6 U.S. deaths, and another ambush attack in Fallujah claimes 2 more US soldiers, the U.S. response was to drop two huge bombs "in the area of the ambush", and launch rockets at some buildings 'believed to possibly hold some elements of resistance'...This is extremely similar to the vague counterattacks seeming to be more of a lsshing out than a coordinated measure. Also, to clarify Karnow's take...as an authority...he says that Quagmire, while originally misapplied to Iraq, now certainly apllies 'by any standard.'
His assessments seem right on. But, my impression has always been that we don't want to commit to having enough boots on the ground and if we changed this, we could be doing much better. There still may be time to do this right before everyone in Iraq will lose faith in us. Based on our commitments ( now we sending part of the Old Guard for Arlington National Cemetary overseas... http://www.iht.com/articles/116926.html and the every one will apparently get a couple of tours in Iraq ), it seems logical that we have to reinstitute the draft to have enough people to do security in Iraq right, and actually finish Afghanistan, and have something in *reserve*.
didn't Rumsfeld sign an order to deploy another 80 to 100 thousand troops to Iraq. I didn't read the story but i saw the headline.
Actually other than the fact that organized US troops face a guerilla force, the two conflicts are quite dissimilar. Viet Nam was a civil conflict between two factions supported by opposing outside superpowers. There is no super power support for the oppostion forces in Iraq or Afghanastan. While not my opinion but certainly a valid view, both sides of the Viet Nam conflict were legitimate governments. The resistance in Iraq and Afgahnistan seems to be a loose colaboration of Saddam loyalist, Al Qeda terrorist and other radical islamics that oppose the US on religious grounds. Few nations would support their soverignty. The United States was hamstrung in Viet Nam by a political climate that did not allow for the use of maximum force against Hanoi. We could not mount an invasion to capture the capital without the risk of a nuclear confrontation. Therefore there was no way the US could curtail the North's support for the guerillas in the south. In the current conflict we occupy the capital. While we can't completely cut off outside support for the Iraqi resistance, there are no large political/economic entities to organizeand pay for their aid. So I would submit that the North Vietnamese were well positioned to fight a war of attrition, but the Iraqi resistance is not. I wrote some months ago that Iraqi military intelligence had only Viet Nam to look at for hope of victory against the vastly superior US forces. Disolving into the populace, stashing hardware and engaging in a guerilla war to inflict enough casualties on US troops to undermine the will of her people was there only viable tactic. The fundamental differences I pointed out above should provide a different outcome if we stand resolute. It is now pointless to argue whether or not we should have invaded Saddam Husseins dictatorship. The fact is we are there. Should we now choose not to stick it out and rebuild Iraq into a democratic nation as evidence for the Islamic world that Americans are a peace loving people that do not oppose their religion, I believe we would face generations of terrorist attacks that would produce civilian casualties far in excess of what our military is sustaining. There is no good choice here, just the lessor of two evils.
"Karnow says that the greatest similarity between the wars is the efforts of the administrations to use various tactics to try and shape public percpetion of the war; limiting access to information, complaints about media bias, avoidance of addressing 'hot' issues before public forums, and revisionist depictions of the course of the war." Could we have not said this about WWII as well?
I'm not sure the two are that similar. Yes, American forces are committed to a hostile country for the foreseeable future, with no exit strategy (not to mention the dubious reasons we're there). But Iraq hasn't yet reached the Vietnam scale. Hopefully, it never will. But that people are even comparing the two should tell you all you need to know about the progress in Iraq. I like to think Bush will sac up, admit his mistake, hand off to the U.N., and get outta there as soon as possible before it *really* becomes similar to Vietnam. We'll see.
You could measure progress in WW2 as the Allies advanced. In Vietnam and Iraq we were technically in control of the entire country but were being undercut from underneath and we underestimated the Vietnamese and Iraqi and did not dedicate anywhere near the full force of our conventional forces, not a lot of protesting against WW2, either. http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1110/p09s02-coop.html?commentaryNav Defining the resistance in Iraq - it's not foreign and it's well prepared UN weapons inspector saw 'blueprints' for Monday's insurgency By Scott Ritter Defining the resistance in Iraq - it's not foreign and it's well prepared UN weapons inspector saw 'blueprints' for Monday's insurgency By Scott Ritter DELMAR, N.Y. – In the Baghdad suburb of Abu Ghraib is a compound on an abandoned airstrip that once belonged to a state organization known as M-21, or the Special Operations Directorate of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. As a UN weapons inspector, I inspected this facility in June of 1996. We were looking for weapons of mass destruction (WMD). While I found no evidence of WMD, I did find an organization that specialized in the construction and employment of "improvised explosive devices" - the same IEDs that are now killing Americans daily in Iraq. When we entered the compound, three Iraqis tried to escape over a wall with documents, but they were caught and surrendered the papers. Like reams of other documents stacked inside the buildings, these papers dealt with IEDs. I held in my hands a photocopied primer on how to conduct a roadside ambush using IEDs, and others on how to construct IEDs from conventional high explosives and military munitions. The sophisticated plans - albeit with crude drawings - showed how to take out a convoy by disguising an IED and when and where to detonate it for maximum damage. Related stories: 11/06/03 Why anti-US fighting grows in Iraq 11/03/03 A deadly day and a US strategy shift 10/29/03 US options in curbing Iraqi attacks 10/27/03 Relief for US troops stalls after Turkish troop imbroglio 09/24/03 Iraq's restive 'Sunni Triangle' monitortalk Weigh in on issues of the day in our forums. E-mail this story Write a letter to the Editor Printer-friendly version Permission to reprint/republish Because WMD was what we were charged with looking for, we weren't allowed to take notes on this kind of activity. But, when we returned to our cars, we carefully reconstructed everything we saw. What I saw - and passed on to US intelligence agencies - were what might be called the blueprints of the postwar insurgency that the US now faces in Iraq. And they implied two important facts that US authorities must understand: • The tools and tactics killing Americans today in Iraq are those of the former regime, not imported from abroad. • The anti-US resistance in Iraq today is Iraqi in nature, and more broadly based and deeply rooted than acknowledged. * * * IEDs are a terrifying phenomenon to the American soldiers patrolling Iraq. The IED has transformed combat into an anonymous ambush, a nerve-racking game of highway roulette that has every American who enters a vehicle in Iraq today (whether it be the venerable, and increasingly vulnerable, Humvee, or an armored behemoth like the M-1 Abrams tank) wondering if this ride will be their last. Far from representing the tactics of desperate foreign terrorists, IED attacks in Iraq can be traced to the very organizations most loyal to Saddam Hussein. M-21 wasn't the only unit trained in IEDs. During an inspection of the Iraqi Intelligence Service's training academy in Baghdad in April 1997, I saw classrooms for training all Iraqi covert agents in the black art of making and using IEDs. My notes recall tables piled with mockups of mines and grenades disguised in dolls, stuffed animals, and food containers - and classrooms for training in making car bombs and recruiting proxy agents for using explosives. That same month, I inspected another facility, located near the wealthy Al Mansur district of Baghdad, that housed a combined unit of Hussein's personal security force and the Iraqi Intelligence Service. The mission of this unit was to track the movement and activities of every Iraqi residing in that neighborhood straddling the highway that links the presidential palace with Saddam International Airport. A chilling realization overcame us when we entered a gymnasium-sized room and saw that the floors were painted in a giant map of the neighborhood. The streets were lined with stacked metallic "in-box" trays - each stack represented a house or apartment building. A three-story building, for example, contained three levels of trays; each tray contained dossiers on each citizen living on that floor. Similar units existed in other neighborhoods, including those deemed "anti-regime." Hussein's government was - and its remnants are - intimately familiar with every square inch of Baghdad: who was loyal, where they live, and who they associated with. (The same can be said about all of Iraq, for that matter, even the Kurdish and Shiite regions.) This information allows officials from the remnants of Hussein's intelligence and security services to hide undetected among a sympathetic population. Indeed, a standard quotient among counterinsurgency experts is that for every 100 active insurgents fielded, there must be 1,000 to 10,000 active supporters in the local population. Though the Bush administration consistently characterizes the nature of the enemy in Iraq as "terrorist," and identifies the leading culprits as "foreign fighters," the notion of Al Qaeda or Al Ansar al Islam using Baghdad (or any urban area in Iraq) as an independent base of operations is far-fetched. To the extent that foreigners appear at all in Baghdad, it is likely only under the careful control of the pro-Hussein resistance, and even then, only to be used as an expendable weapon in the same way one would use a rocket-propelled grenade or IED. The growing number, sophistication, and diversity of attacks on US forces suggests that the resistance is growing and becoming more organized - clear evidence that the US may be losing the struggle for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. To properly assess the nature of the anti-American resistance in Iraq today, one must remember that the majority of pro-regime forces, especially those military units most loyal to Hussein, as well as the entirety of the Iraqi intelligence and security forces, never surrendered. They simply melted away. Despite upbeat statements from the Bush administration to the contrary, the reality is that the Hussein regime was not defeated in the traditional sense, and today shows signs of reforming to continue the struggle against the US-led occupiers in a way that plays to its own strengths, and exploits US weakness. For political reasons, the Bush administration and the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) haven't honestly confronted this reality for fear of admitting that they totally bungled their prewar assessments about what conditions they would face in postwar occupied Iraq. The failure to realistically assess the anti-American resistance in Iraq means that "solutions" the US and CPA develop have minimal chance of success because they're derived from an inaccurate identification of the problem. The firestorm of anti-US resistance in Iraq continues to expand - and risks growing out of control - because of the void of viable solutions. Unless measures are taken that recognize that the tattered Hussein regime remains a viable force, and unless actions are formulated accordingly, the conflict in Iraq risks consuming the US in a struggle in which there may be no prospect of a clear-cut victory and an increasing possibility of defeat. • Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq (1991-1998), is author of 'Frontier Justice: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwhacking of America.' The casualties are mounting like Vietnam. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...d9nov09,1,963909.story?coll=la-home-headlines Hospital Front With the number of amputees and burn victims from Iraq, the military's medical system is waging its own war. By Esther Schrader, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON — The physical therapists on the fifth floor of Walter Reed Army Medical Center have a bulletin board they call their Wall of Heroes. It is crammed with photos of young soldiers in their care — soldiers wounded in the war in Iraq. The images of the amputees and burn victims stand out, a tragic irony of an important advance in military protective gear. The new armored vests that soldiers are wearing in this war protect the human torso and have saved countless lives, but often at a terrible price. One day last week, all but 20 of the 250 beds at the center were taken up with casualties of the war. Fifty of them have lost limbs, often more than one. Dozens more suffer burns and shrapnel wounds that begin where their armored vests ended. On average, they are 23 years old. Many would have died except for their Kevlar vests, which stopped rounds from a Kalashnikov rifle, a 9-millimeter handgun or fragments from a grenade. There have been more wounded — and over a longer period — than the hospital expected. "We didn't start [the bulletin board] when the war began because we didn't have any idea," said Maj. Mary Hannah, a physical therapist. "Even the most experienced people here — it is beyond their imagining. These are our babies. And they just keep coming, coming, coming." As the U.S.-led coalition forces battle an increasingly fierce insurgency in Iraq, the military's medical system is waging its own war — and Walter Reed, its premier medical center, is in the thick of it. The world-renowned teaching and research hospital, which opened in 1909, has treated presidents and senators. Since World War I, Walter Reed has been a critical, and often a long-term, stop for the most seriously wounded in war. This week, more than a dozen survivors of the Chinook helicopter shot down by insurgents in Iraq last Sunday were carried in on stretchers. They entered a hospital transformed over the last seven months by the first big wave of combat casualties since the Vietnam War. Since April, when the first casualties began arriving, more than 1,875 have been treated at Walter Reed, an average of about 10 a day, 300 a month. On any given day during that time, the hospital has had about 50 inpatients and another 180 outpatients from the war. The number of amputees and burn patients is still small compared with that during height of the Vietnam War, in which far more soldiers fought for far longer. But in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, just 10 amputees were treated at Walter Reed compared with the 50 in this war. "The number is big to me now, bigger than anything I've seen since Vietnam," said Jim Mayer, 57, who lost both legs in that war and now volunteers at the hospital several days a week helping amputees. "When we see each other here, me and the other volunteers, our line to each other is, 'They just keep coming and coming.' " In Ward 57, orthopedic surgeons work day and night. In the physical therapy rooms, young men missing limbs lie side by side and head to toe on mats, lifting weights. Hospital staffers come in on their days off, bringing pizza to the wounded soldiers, taking those who are well enough out to the movies. One physical therapist took a recovering "green card" soldier to the Immigration and Naturalization Service to pick up his U.S. citizenship papers. A half hour away, at Andrews Air Force Base, the tennis court and gymnasium of the fitness center have become a medical staging facility for those evacuated from the war zone. More than 7,500 have come through since April. In addition to the nearly 1,900 who have gone on to Walter Reed, another 1,500 have been sent to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., which treats the injured from the Navy and Marines. Several thousand less seriously wounded soldiers have been sent directly to some of the military's dozens of smaller hospitals and clinics around the country. After reports surfaced last month that the level of care being given at one of those smaller facilities was substandard, the Army took steps to improve services there and began an evaluation of the care at other regional hospitals. The grounds at Walter Reed are crammed with recuperating soldiers and their families. There are so many spouses, parents and children that the more than 600 rooms in guest houses on the hospital grounds are not enough to hold them. Some are doubling up in single rooms. Hundreds are staying, at Pentagon expense, in hotels nearby. Hospital officials plan to lease space at a military housing complex four miles away to handle the overflow. At least one mother has finagled a bed down the hall from her son's hospital room. "I have to," says Joyce Gray, mother of Roy, an Army corporal whose leg was torn open by a mortar round as he was climbing into his truck. "My son has nightmares." The hospital's other clients — mostly military retirees who live in the Washington area — are increasingly being asked to seek treatment elsewhere. And the hospital is restricting referrals to Army patients rather than accepting any from other branches of the military. The ranks of nurses and physical and occupational therapists have been bolstered with reservists and private contractors from around the country, while doctors and nurses from the pediatrics and psychiatric departments have been pulled into the busiest wards. "I don't think this is going to go away," said Army Major Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, an obstetrician and gynecologist by training who is commander of the hospital. "Our people are pedaling as hard and fast as they can. We can do this for a long time. But at some point, if there's no letup, the casualty demand will have to start affecting what Walter Reed is." Even so, the 113-acre Walter Reed complex has a deep reservoir of medical professionals and resources — 600 doctors on staff and 200 more in training. Of the $90 million spent to date at military hospitals on the Eastern seaboard in support of the war in Iraq, $50 million has been spent at Walter Reed. Pfc. Jessica Lynch was treated at Walter Reed after her unit, the 507th Maintenance Company, took a wrong turn in southern Iraq and was ambushed. She left months ago. But a fellow soldier from the 507th, Staff Sgt. Tarik Jackson, 28, is still there. The mechanic was shot four times — in his thigh, finger, hip and upper arm — and may be in treatment until well into next year. In 2002, after the U.S. went to war in Afghanistan, Congress allocated $13 million to Walter Reed to establish what the hospital calls the Amputee Center of Excellence. The unit was up and running just in time. These days, its prosthetics lab is busy scanning stumps of limbs using digital laser technology, then using computerized machines to fashion sockets to fit over them. Outside the lab on a recent day, three soldiers missing legs waited their turn to be fitted for prostheses. Inside, Pfc. Tristan Wyatt, 21, tried on his titanium and graphite leg for the first time. A rocket had severed his limb and those of the two soldiers standing next to him in Fallouja on Aug. 25. They have also been treated at Walter Reed. "The rocket went through my leg like a knife through butter," Wyatt said. "It was a terrible scene with the three of us. There was just blood and muscle everywhere." But Wyatt said the sheer numbers of patients like him at Walter Reed, many of them already learning to walk proficiently on their new prostheses, is heartening. "It's hard to see your comrades hurt, but there are a lot of people here farther down the line with the same injuries," Wyatt said. "It definitely gives you hope." Wyatt was wearing the new body armor when he was hit. Shrapnel hit his legs and arms but not his torso. The Kevlar armor, composed of a multiple-layer mesh of woven fabrics that "catches" projectiles, is stronger than the kind worn by police officers. Attachments protect the neck and groin. Two plates slip into the vest to cover vital organs. It weighs 16 pounds, a third lighter than the previous, 20-year-old design that offered protection against shrapnel but couldn't stop bullets. The military began developing the new vests after the battle in Somalia, when some U.S. soldiers were wounded or died after removing part of their too-heavy armor. The new gear got its first major battlefield tryout during Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan in 2001. "We've seen a number of patients that, in our minds, in 'Nam they would not have lived," Mayer, the veteran who volunteers at Walter Reed, said. "One comes to my mind. You see how his wounds stop like a sunburn line right where the body armor started. As soon as you see him, you know that it was the body armor that saved his life." But while advances such as the body armor — combined with faster, more efficient battlefield medical care and even better bandages — are saving lives and getting high marks within the military and the medical profession, they cannot keep soldiers from being injured or killed. The seriously wounded are generally treated first at medical facilities set up in Iraq. Last spring, 200 doctors from Walter Reed alone were assigned to such facilities. About half of them are still there. Patients are then flown to a U.S. military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, and, when they are able to be moved, to Walter Reed or a few other top military trauma centers. Burn victims, for example, are often sent to Brook Army Medical Center in San Antonio, known for its advanced burn unit. As of late October, a total of 605 soldiers from the war had been treated at Brook, dozens with life-threatening burns. Today, five soldiers are still being treated there for burns; another 40 are outpatients. "We are constantly checking how many burn beds we have, checking on supplies," hospital spokeswoman Nelia Schrum said. "They are complicated injuries that require lengthy therapy and treatment." As soon as possible, the Army tries to move patients to smaller hospitals close to their home bases and families. It was at one of those facilities, at Ft. Stewart in Hinesville, Ga., that the quality of treatment was deemed to be substandard. Reserve and National Guard soldiers recuperating from wounds or illnesses contracted in Iraq were housed in barracks without air conditioning or private bathrooms and often forced to endure long waits for surgery and other treatment, said Brig. Gen. Richard L. Ursone, assistant Army surgeon general for force protection. Ursone evaluated problems there this month after news reports of the poor conditions. Hospital officials, anticipating the surge of patients, had added rooms and surgery facilities but had not yet hired staff, Ursone said. Late last month, Acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee traveled to Ft. Stewart to see the problems for himself. Days later, sick reservists living in the substandard barracks were moved to better accommodations, some at other military bases. New case managers were dispatched to Ft. Stewart's Winn Army Community Hospital to help move reservists through the health system. Meanwhile, Army officials are reviewing care at the 28 other Army hospitals around the country to ensure that patients are receiving adequate medical attention. The staff at Walter Reed, with responsibility for the majority of the seriously wounded, has tried to address potential problems before they arise. When the hospital staff had trouble getting accurate and timely information from their counterparts in Germany on the number and type of casualties being flown to Walter Reed, it sent over its own nurse to help evaluate the condition of patients and report back while the patients were in flight. Meanwhile, doctors have been known to schedule the multiple surgeries of patients who have become friends on staggered schedules so the patient in better shape on a given day can console the other. "The whole hospital is on a war footing and emotionally involved," said Kiley, the commanding officer. "The broader challenge is how do you keep the battle tempo up for a long period of time." As casualties continue to mount in Iraq, the bulletin board at Walter Reed's physical therapy unit long ago ran out of room. "This is like 1%" of the Iraq casualties who passed through the hospital, said Hannah, one of the physical therapists. "If we had a picture of everyone, it would take up a whole wall."
That's one of the most damning articles I've read about the Bush Administration's run-up and prosecution of this war. Ritter has been brought up again and again as a person with credibility on the UN inspection team... someone who spoke out about it's problems with getting proper access in it's searches for WMD's. I find his column very believable. And he passed on what he discovered to US intelligence. What in the hell happened here?? We had every indication that we could face this sort of resistance. I can't believe that other assets we had on the ground in Iraq couldn't have discovered much the same thing Ritter did, if not more. What happened to that information? Did the people higher up choose to believe what fit their plans and the devil with the details? This has to rank as one of the worst failures of an administration, it's Cabinet and it's national security team in the modern era. In my opinion. Incredible.
Oh, and thanks for posting that, Woofer. I wish I could say, "good find", but it's too damned depressing. The article about Walter Reed breaks your heart. These brave men and women deserved better from their leaders than what they got... incompetence.
No, you don't understand -- this is actually GOOD news! Bush said that violence indicates that "terrorists" are getting desperate. So the more Americans who come home in boxes, the more successful we are over there. We're winning!
One other siginificant difference between Iraq and Viet Nam is the fact the the US forces in Iraq are 100% volunteers and a large per centage of the Viet Nam force were conscriptees. I think this is siginificant because volunteers choose their fate with the full knowledge of the possible consequences and draftees had to choose between possible death and dismemberment and prison time. I for one can't fault GWB for his service in the reserves during this period. It was by mere fluke that I did not have to move to Canada myself because at the time I would not have allowed myself to be drafted for service in Viet Nam. I would have worn pink panties to my physical if I would have had to but as fate would have it I accidentally showed up a week late to report for my physical. After swearing I didn't do it on purpose (I didn't). it took them almost 6 months to get me reprocessed and then congress eneded the draft.
I don't fault Bush for his service in the reserves. I do fault Bush for going into the reserves, but not showing up for a year of that service, while other kids, who didn't have the same chance were getting killed.
I'm thoroughly amazed that people continue to bring up Scott Ritter's name as a justifiable resource. He has done a 180 degree turn in his position from the time he resigned to the present. Here is a transcript of an appearance that Ritter made on Jim Lehrer's show in August 1998. Initially he blamed the UN Security Council as the reason that the inspections failed - Now he is turning the blame squarely on Clinton, proposing that the US wanted the inspectors out so Iraq could be bombed in 1998. He also had this to say about Iraq's weapons capability - Now, suddenly Ritter believes that Iraq has no weapons capabality and has not had any since the original inspections were halted in 1998. Why the sudden change? Some believe that it is because his recently-released documentary was financed by an Iraqi-American Saddam sympethizer. For whatever reason, he has changed his story entirely between then and now. Here is a good article discussing Ritter's opinion swing.
1) we gotta take a page out of israeli and south african army tactics. i believe these two militaries have had the most experience dealing with modern guerilla tactics. esp. south africa. i remember reading how nearly all their combat vehicles are designed to protect against IED attacks. 2) we gotta get that govt up and running asap and get our boys home. i'd rather have turks and our other arab allies patrolling iraq than have our own men at risk. i think the iraqis would be less willing to hit fellow muslims too.
The US forces in Iraq WERE volunteers before they knew they were going into Iraq. Some volunteered, thinking they'd just do some "light" military duty in exchange for college tuition. Lately , I heard it is pretty hard to find enough volunteers to sign up. Either way, volunteers or conscipts does not make Iraq a quagmire or not.
