New Pentagon Plan at Odds with Iraq Study Group's (all troops stay and 'embed')

[Barrett808]

New Pentagon Plan at Odds with Iraq Study Group's
Top Military Advisers -- in Iraq and at the Pentagon -- Present Their Own Plan to President Bush
By JONATHAN KARL

The recommendations are not complete yet, but sources familiar with the reviews conducted by Joint Chiefs Chairman Peter Pace and National Security Adviser Steven Hadley, tell ABC News that military leaders will advise the president that he change the primary mission from fighting insurgents to training and supporting Iraqi troops.

The plan for U.S. forces seems to mirror the one suggested by the Iraq Study Group. But there's one big difference.

Under the Iraq Study Group plan, released earlier this week, combat troops — about half of all the forces in Iraq — would return home by the first quarter of 2008.

But under the Pentagon's plan, those combat troops would remain in Iraq — with a new mission. Entire companies of U.S. combat forces (units of about 150 troops) could be embedded in Iraqi army and police battalions.

Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the top operational commander in Iraq told Pentagon reporters this morning, "We believe now that what we need to do is to embed those trainers, to make that organic, as part of the Iraqi army and the Iraqi police."

(more)

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=2712135&page=1&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

[Newsjock]

1. So, in other words ...

... they no longer seem to have a problem with U.S. forces serving under a foreign flag. Watch 'dem freeper heads explode.

[tanyev]

2. Sounds a lot more dangerous, too.

[VegasWolf]

3. Exactly, the Iraqi Army will control the logistics. They will tell the American

advisors where to stand, where to sit, and where to shit. The FReaks will be chewing their wrists and spurting blood over this one. When Americans keep dying while under Iraqi control, this war will lose even the few freakish supporters that it has left.

[IndianaGreen]

7. We become the new Iraqi army, with the native troops in tow

kinda the way the British ran their empire, but less efficiently.

[VegasWolf]

8. It will depend on who is in charge. I wonder if the days of blowing up children

and old women (i.e., terrorists) by US forces is over?

[Barrett808]

4. Brilliant! With maybe one Arabic-speaking soldier per company...

...this should work swimmingly.

Thank you, Hadley!

[Jackpine Radical]

5. Well, there are lots of Arabs who speak English.

Just like Vietnam, they'll post native interpreters with the US forces. I can see it now: Interpreter: "General says you should all stand over there, away from the Iraqi forces." Native interpreter for artillery Forward Observer calls in 105 howitzer barrage. Kaboom.

[Barrett808]

6. Of course! I forgot how it works when we put US forces under foreign command

...in a country we're occupying.

[w4rma]

9. Oh yeah. Rumsfeld's sycophants that he installed. I had forgotten all about them. (nt)

[annabanana]

10. This is insane.

How could we possibly put the troops in a more dangerous position than this? I cannot think of a worse way to deploy. How many of our kids would be in a unit with how many of them?

We don't even have a way to be sure that the Iraqi army isn't just the daytime job of any one of dozens of private militias.

[rodeodance]

11. this change in course is NOT troop withdrawal!!

[daleo]

12. It sounds like they want 150,000 American military advisors

As if that would work.

[OneBlueSky]

13. they've built permanent bases and the world's largest embassy . . .

don't think either of those things would have happened if they had any intention of leaving . . . ever . . .

the BushCo objective in Iraq is (and always has been) twofold . . . 1) controlling the oil (and other resources), and 2) establishing a permanent presence and base of operations in the region . . . neither of which can be accomplished if we leave . . .

[radfringe]

14. translation

Stay the course to achieve the objectives by completing the mission through finishing the job.

Questions not being asked:

What's the course?
What's the objective?
What's the mission?
What's the job?

[pokercat999]

15. There seems to be only one answer for the new Democratic

Congress......cut off funds for the war. Hell cut all funds for the war and the rest of the Pentagon budget in half lets see if they can murder without money.

[neverforget]

16. All these plans are to give cover for Bush so the next President can

deal with the shitsandwich called Iraq. It's just kicking the can down the road for someone else to take the blame for when we leave Iraq in defeat.

[Clarkie1]

17. I predict troop levels in Jan. 2009 will be roughly what they are today. nt

[sakabatou]

18. How many more backdoor drafts will we have?

[rodeodance]

19. For me the election said to get out, -----so they talk of staying.

Go figure.

This disconnect is spinning my head.

[teryang]

20. formal v. informal political structure

Ed Meese on CNN says Congress "betrayed" South Vietnam. Vernon Jordan says nothing in response to this.

Frankly, I've forgotten more about military operations overseas than James Baker, Ed Meese, or Vernon Jordan ever knew.

They call this leadership? We are doomed.

The fundamental political conflict is between the goals of the US financial globalists (I call them Rhodesians) and the Iraqi people. We are trying to save a colonial administration in Iraq that Bremer called into being, that is anything but substantial or sovereign.

Embedding US personnel in Iraqi units shows that these morons don't even have a clue what the problem is. Evidently the problem is the inability of US elites to recognize defeat when they see it.

The Brigadier "expert" says it takes a long time to withdraw. That's funny it only took a few weeks to "mission accomplished." He also repeats another Vietnam myth, "we're winning every fight."

Some one with a really perverse sense of humor must write these CNN scripts. I take a few days off of the current events scene, and the crescendo of insanity in this country is more apparent than ever. TV off.

I always think I can learn something from television news. Whatever they tell you is 180 degrees off. Assume the exact opposite and make your decisions accordingly.

... ... ... Pinochet should have been hanged.

[Toots]

22. I agree with Ed Meese on this one

Only it wasn't Congress it was the Nixon Administration. Vietnam was an entirely different situation than Iraq. We did not invade Vietnam. We were invited in to aide them in their struggle against a foreign country, North Vietnam. We gave those people our word we would not abandon them and Nixon did just that. Iraq on the other hand did not ask for nor does it want the USA to be in their country. The USA is creating much of the violence just by it's presence there.

[teryang]

24. Coulda, woulda, shoulda...

You think S.Vietnam was a legitimate government?

It was the vestige of a colonial administration propped up by unwelcome foreignors. The Vietnamese people wanted us out and they succeeded.

The colonial regime was corrupt, its army didn't fight and was riddled with communist sympthasizers.

More ordnance was dropped on Vietnam than was dropped during all of WWII.

You believe the military industrial poppycock about we coulda won, if we did this or that?

[Toots]

25. The South Vietnamese government had been legitimate for as many years then

as the South Korean government has now. Would you say the same about the South Korean government now? As for as what the people wanted, I was there for several years and spent a great deal of time among the people. I never once ever heard anyone say they wanted Americans out of there. As far as whether we could have won there i don't think so. Just as we could not win in Korea. IMO though there are far more South Koreans that dislike Americans than there ever were South Vietnamese. In fact even today after we abandoned them and broke our word to them they still like the USA....go figure..

[teryang]

26. Your comparison to ROK raises some interesting points

First of all, the original ROK government was set up by the US and was a dictatorship until No Teh Oo was overthrown. It really didn't have any legitimacy till then. Originally, the US avoided a national plebiscite because they knew the South governed by remnants of the Japanese collaborationist regime was extremely unpopular.

I haven't been in Vietnam but I have lived in Korea for three years during the end period from the decades long dictatorship. I still have strong cultural ties to the korean community. The government there was not considered legitimate by the nations top civilian political leadership even as late as after the Chun Du Won overthrow. I know because they told me. Their civilian professional class felt the same way. I know this from my personal social and political contacts with high ranking government officials in two separate ministries. I even met Kim Young Sam, S.Korea's first legitimate president, while he was campaigning for office at one point. All Koreans except the military class, resented the US supported Ministry of Defense dictatorships that had been ruling for four decades.

I agree that we lost both wars. However the loss in Vietnam was even more complete. We were driven out altogether. We were able to retain our colony in S.Korea because great power relations had accepted the principle of bifurcation of the peninsula since the late 19th Century. Attempts to control the entire peninsula were considered destabilizing threats to world peace by all concerned because of its pivotal position. There is no question that we remain in S.Korea today because of MOD and Korean business elites desire to have that insurance policy in case of a land war (and to offset potential Japanese aggression). The cause of popular distrust and antipathy toward American policy has two principal causes, although there are many others.

The first is American support of brutal military suppression of democracy movements by MOD during the dictatorial period. The second and more recent is American sabotage of the unification movement, the sunshine policy, and the 1994 agreed framework. W's sabotage of the agreed framework and his snub of President Kim Dae Jung in 2001 will never be forgotten. The US as honest broker isn't so honest.

There is a saying in Korea, "Ten thousand years is not too long a time to avenge a grudge." However, Koreans are a highly pragmatic people. "Son et son gap go, byawk ul nam aw saw." The South Koreans saw the collapse of the iron curtain years before American analysts.

I was trained as a historian during the Vietnam war and joined the military as an officer during its final breakdown. Because of my military position, i was fortunate to have access to classified sources to complement my own open source research. I worked with hundreds of military officers and a few POWs who were in Vietnam for years. I also had two close friends who worked at the embassy during the early and middle stages of the American involvement, respectively. I believe that my characterization of the conflict there is more objective than your own. For example, I recently saw the history channel program that tried to portray the air war over Vietnam as a success, this is a misrepresentation of the facts. I know this from my access to classified government analyses of statisical and technical data kept during the air war and also from talking to many of the pilots who fought there. I am not saying however that my point of view represents their opinion. For example, John McCain was there and he learned the completely wrong lesson from Vietnam, the same one that Ed Meese expressed. This is analagous to the stormtrooper feelings in Germany after WWI, that they would have won WWI except for the democrats, socialists, communists, and other effete intellectuals and politicians who "betrayed" them and the war effort while they were fighting in the field. While these feelings are understandable, they are completely wrong. It is not just coincidence that such sentiment leads to the deconstruction of democratic government at home.

One of my close friends was a high ranking intel officer who did two combat tours in Vietnam as a grunt before he became a high ranking intel officer during desert storm. He agrees with your perspective. He calls his authority for his view, "been there, done that, got the tee shirt." In the navy the statement is the same, except it ends, "got the belt buckle." We had a running virtually daily dialogue going during the wars in the former Yugoslavia. This very high ranking intel officer (30 years plus) was wrong on virtually every point he made. He even admitted it to me, but not in writing.

Being a primary source doesn't make one's analysis correct.

edited for usage and grammar as usual.

[DrDan]

21. isn't this similar to the Saudi strategy

embed our AF with the Saudis in F15 and AWACs missions?

[tabasco]

23. Rummy had all the good generals retired. Like Eric Shinseki.

All we have left at the top are a bunch of gutless, incompetent yes-men.

I hope there are some good Colonels who love their country ready to step up and help get us out of this quagmire.

Of course, when the Commander In Chief is a corporate puppet, nothing will change soon.

[Peter Dow]

27. My plan too is at odds with the Iraq Study Group Report

Well the U.S. Iraq Study Group Report is WRONG about recommending that the U.S. meet with Moqtada al-Sadr.



Why is the I.S.G.R. wrong?
Recall the recent Hadley memo, leaked to the New York Times.
BBC: US memo raises Iraq leader doubts





Stephen Hadley, close to Condi, and maybe acting here as an unofficial voice for Condi to float new ideas? Certainly, the two of them with Bolton made a good team for the President, for America and for the free world. So why on earth did the Congress force Bolton to resign?



... but because Maliki won't break with Moqtada al-Sadr ...





... that makes Maliki THE WRONG GUY for Iraq but try telling the President that.



President Bush needs another person in Iraqi politics to back as the new "right guy for Iraq".

So how about promoting the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh as an obvious stand-in replacement for Maliki? Saleh does seem to be clearer about the difference between moderates and extremists. Not only that but he speaks English so we can figure out where he is coming from more easily.

So let's support Saleh to oust Maliki a.s.a.p.



We need to deal with the sectarian problem at source.



---------------------------------------------------



Peter Dow,
Owner, Rice for President Yahoo Group

[sweetheart]

28. That sounds great, embedd the republicans.

Embedding troops with the army will protect south viet nam and reinforce the morale
to prevent the spread of communism to the south. It will work very will, Mr. President,
SecDef MacNamara has given it the nod.

What year is this?