They, the Iraqi military, did not put up a fight. Sacking city after city in Iraq was nothing compared to past wars. Were there heavy casualties...you bet. Mostly on their side. The few that did fight were unorganized and massively out gunned. They did not operate in anything resembling an organized military. Most shed their uniforms and ran for the hills. Those that didn't operated in small groups. The insurgency, which was made up of mostly non-Iraqis, was much more organized than any Iraqi unit...and that's not saying a lot. They did not fight "hard" which is evident in the overwhelmingly low number of friendly casualties. Don't get me wrong...there was plenty of "harsh" fighting and the close friends that I lost are proof of that, but don't make it out to be something that it wasn't. BS...after clinton we would have been hard pressed to put up a sustained fight against any conventional army. Clinton single handily set our military back 20 years. Not since the Carter administration had our military been at a lower readiness level. I came in right as clinton was getting started. I saw his entire two terms and was in well into W's first term. In a little over two years after clinton, the difference was like night and day, however a lot of the damage clinton did will hurt us for years to come. Opening up the military to EPA accountability was one of the most damaging clinton stabs at us. Our training areas were closed down so we wouldn't upset woodpeckers and turtles. Our desert training facility was pretty much useless sense we couldn't stray off of the hard packed roads out of fear of running over some damn cactus. Marines were regularly threatened with massive fines if we so much as looked at a prairie dog in a threatening manner or nicked some bark off of a freaking pine tree. Cutting our budget the way he did was just pouring salt into the wounds. Albania, Kosovo, Croatia, and the rest of the crap in the Balkans was a joke...I was there multiple times between 1996 and 2000. If you ask me, or just about anyone else that was there, we were helping the wrong side...and I have already told you why. Clinton did what was politically beneficial to him...the well being of the military man be damned. I doubt if there has ever been a more hated and disrespected Commander in Chief.
Targeted strikes are effective in dealing with this kind of enemy. We're still doing it in Pakistan. The only reason that bin Ladin escaped was because our good "friends" the Pakistanis tipped him off. Uhh . . . you mean the inspectors that supervised the destruction of all of Saddam's WMD's? Tons and tons of nerve gas. Is that your definition of frutitless and empty? I'd say that invading the country to go after imaginary WMD's that were already gone (and our own inspectors told us this) would fit that bill much better. Clinton was out of office before the perpetrators of the Cole bombing were identified. And yes, it has yet to be addressed. You're confusing the 1991 and 2003 wars. The 2003 war was over in 21 days not 6 weeks. The Iraqis did fight, just not very well. Some units surrendered, but others fought and we took hundreds of casualties. You are describing 1991 very well.
It is my "belief" as well as many others, that Clinton, my target for an accused, stood on both sides of the fence when launching strikes on strategic targets. He would pull the trigger but not at the expense of his reputation as a foreign policy guru. I say guru because he demonstrated a foreign policy in my time of service, second to none. I do not believe there was a country visited by the Clinton's that did not throw a parade for their arrival. You would have thought the Beatles were back together and on tour! I centralized my response to post 1991 through the Clinton administration. Of course there was nothing to find so therefore allowing the inspectors back in itself was fruitless. I do not recall but please share what were the gains from any attacks organized by the Clinton administration? I have confused neither. I depicted 91. The 03 invasion was the completion of what 91 refused to do. The results of both were more similar then you think in terms of engagement and how what was left of their Army responded. The comparisons differ where as you remove a month of air strikes and a few less on the surrender scale and you have the same engagement. I did not participate in 03, but I have easily 100 sources which did, 80% which participated in 91. Most stated it was 91 revisited under scale. In the end I believe you and I agree. Iraq had a very over equipped and under qualified Military capable of any long term engagement with the U.S. My personal opinion is that 91 ended correctly and that 03 was huge mistake gone against what even the elder Bush advised. The reasoning as it was presented for 03, if true, should have been dealt with under a multitude of other resources. We later find out the reasoning was not true. It is my belief that it was only a matter of time that we would have to deal with Iraq over terrorism. Had things been different leading to the 03 invasion, I believe today we would be in Iraq dealing with terrorism and Iraq's leadership in its support of terrorism.
I have no idea what you are trying to say here. My argument was that Clinton did use military force when it was justified, the force was appropriate to the action, American lives and treasure were not wasted needlessly. He took strong action against terrorism. The perpetrators of the first WTC bombing were captured, convicted and are in prison. The Millennium bombings were completely thwarted and perpetrators imprisoned. Our airpower was used to good effect in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Sudan, and Iraq. He pulled the trigger whenever it was necessary which was why his foreign policy was good. When do you think he failed to use it for policy reasons? The inspectors oversaw the destruction of tons of WMD's. The reason they weren't there in 2003 was because the UNSCOM inspectors destroyed them all. Deterrence. There must always be a tat for every tit. The Israelis have shown us this. Fugg with the bull and you get the horn. Demonstrate that there is no place they can hide. That's the problem. The subject was whether Clinton was responsible for lessening the power of our military in the 2003 war. Obviously he could have nothing whatsoever to do with the 1991 war. He wasn't elected until 1992. Equally obvious is the fact that we were militarily capable of winning the fight. What has Iraq ever done in support of terrorism? Iraq does not support Hezbollah and Hamas--Iran does. Iraq never got along with bin Ladin and Al Qaida and they certainly never received any support. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Afghanistan and Pakistan were the supporters of the Taliban and Al Qaida, not Iraq. Iraq had been an overt military threat to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia but after 1991 and 10 years of sanctions, air strikes, and inability to fly over their own airspace, Iraq was no threat to anybody . . . except Iran, which should have been all right with us.
I submit that the 2003 war was a sustained fight against a conventional army. Not a good army, obviously, but equipped with tanks and artillery, organized into 12 divisions, and experienced in the 10-year Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War. A conventional army. Whoa. A Republican Congress set the military budgets under Clinton. I repeat, the post-Cold War downsizing of the military was a bipartisan effort of Congress that started before Clinton and lasted after Clinton. This is a documented fact. We needed a very different military without a Superpower to fight in a European land war--smaller, but more destructive and more mobile with amazing logistical capability. Some very high technology military systems were implemented under Clinton and used to great effect in Afghanistan and Iraq. And has the Republican Executive and Congress reversed any of this? This is one of those balance things that I have mixed feelings about. We must have room to train on our bases and in the ocean but we do not need to destroy the environment while doing it. Compromises can be had here and have been reached in many cases. I have participated in environmental impact studies of training areas and I can say that some areas have been moved and others opened or changed in character. It wasn't all about closure and restrictions. For instance, turning a training area into a wasteland does not give as realistic an environment for training. Real deserts have vegetation that enemies can use for concealment and animals that can trip reconnaissance probes. Remove these elements and they can't be a part of the training anymore. Tankers need to learn that a clump of cactus can hide a rag with a RPG. A prairie dog troop can fool sensors and operators need to learn to distinguish between animals and soldiers on remote sensing devices. Another instance. You should see the aerial and satellite photos of the vast Fort Polk training area in the 80's when it was a tank base. The heavy pine forest was trashed by the mechanized vehicles and you could see it from space. The soil was stripped and began to erode away and some forest was being turned into badlands, the streams choked with silt. It was losing its asset of being a forest training area as acres and acres of pines became muddy weed thickets. So what happened? The damage was documented and instead of closing the base, they moved the 5th Mechanized Division to Fort Hood and moved the Joint Readiness Training Center to Fort Polk. Now light infantry and special forces use the base for training . The forest is recovering and the environment is suitable for training infantry to fight in the forest, where they can be more effective than heavy mechanized units anyway. It was a win-win-win-win situation. The army got a better JRTC training area than they ever had before, Fort Polk survived the base closures despite losing the 5th Division, The 5th Division got a more appropriate training base, and the Louisiana environment has been protected anyway. We were there because we needed to support our NATO allies who couldn't get it done by themselves. NATO is an important alliance to the US. The Yugoslav perpetrators of the Bosnia-Croatia-Kosovo troubles are long-time communists guilty of genocide and war crimes. Our NATO allies may be a bunch of pussies, but we were definitely on the right side of this one.
Red, I believe we are relatively going in two different directions over similar points. I have understated myself, having been privy to certain situations and you are deriving and this is beginning to turn into a revolving mess without achieving a point, only debate. I believe there are many areas where Clinton was ineffective with strategic targeting, some of which you have mentioned. We will disagree endlessly over this. The only destruction of WMD's the inspector oversaw is from what the Military brought forth through intel and reconnaissance. It was a joint operation which without the other, would have never completely been successfully. I was part of all that and it was constructed over a tireless effort. Neither agency will ever say we got it all. My point; Inspectors on their own were certain to come up empty. Their being allowed to return to a search was guided by Iraq. There was a huge levels of frustration over just that. Hussein committed genocide against his own. He hated us more then bin ladin and the trickle over into the northern highlands is a given. Your point is made that there is no proof but remember the words "You are either with us or against us in terrorism". Tell me, which side do you think Hussein would have taken? My belief, and without facts to show you we just might have to disagree. As for the subject of Clinton lessoning the power of the Military, I never mentioned that or took a position. My opinion on that is the process was in place for force reduction through daddy Bush and that there were discussions on the issue with thinkers road mapping the possibility before Bush ever took office. With that, it is possible we may agree.
Not again! Everybody is now a double-naught spy on double secret probation . . . So has Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Congo, and Rwanda in the last 8 years. What makes it our problem? To most Americans, it is a black and white issue, to be sure. But to most of the rest of the world there is a lot of gray area. Many countries are our enemies anyway and have nothing to do with Al Qaeda--Russia, China, and Iraq for example. Others are our allies but can't help us against other arabs--Saudi Arabia or Egypt, etc. Some like Pakistan are with us AND against us! Still other countries consider themselves various flavors of neutral and neither help us or hurt us. No country has ever accepted "you're either with us or against us". And there is nothing we can do about it, except be smarter in the future. Take Iran. When we attacked Taliban Afghanistan in 2001, we need certain covert help from the Iranians--overflights, right of passage, communication coordination, etc. and the Iranians (who despised the Taliban) gave us that help. So what happened? the next year Bush declared them to be the "Axis of Evil". A stupid, stupid foreign policy that has begotten us the current open hostility from the Iranian government, their interference in Iraq, and escalated into a nuclear arms rhetoric confrontation that we can lose because of overreaching. We don't live in a black and white world and one of the major failures of the Bush administration was the notion that we can operate unilaterally without asking or caring what any other country thought--including our closest allies. Many have simply chosen to be against us and terrorism, which is a failing on our part. We are a sole Superpower and that scares most of the rest of the world if we don't act responsibly and judiciously. Invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 damaged our credibility considerably. Many empires have fallen when all of its lesser enemies banded together against it.
Don't go there red, I only demonstrated we share a difference of opinion on a couple of issues. I have yet to accuse you of being a communist or a socialist. You and I share more in agreement then you know so please save the Jethro talk for those that accuse. Half of those countries we sent in troops, the rest got support, to little or no prevail on either account. Even so, that would go against my point. EDIT: Just noticed the last 8 years. My point was Hussein was an equal opportunity hater/ dictator and what ever suited his best interest he would support. We had NOTHING that suited his best interest other then a slow miserable death. Valid points however we did not invade a country over 9/11. No one country is responsible for that act, we invaded a country for housing said criminals and my point has been that my belief is Iraq would sooner or later have done just the same, willingly or not. Again, that is just my belief. :thumb:
