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Iraq - Ground War Improperly Prosecuted

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Okay, here is what I would have done if I had been in charge of the ground-war in Iraq.

Objective(s):

Long Term:


1 - To completely secure Iraq militarily and eliminate all major resistance within six months.

2 - To begin establishing relations with the Iraqi people, and assist in reconstruction of the infrastructure – as each city, town, etc., is declared a green-zone – within six months.

3 – As each town or city is declared a green-zone, begin to establish humanitarian aid, hospitals, food, water, electricity, etc.

4 - To begin reestablishing Iraqi Police and Army forces, including training and equipping as necessary within 12 months.

5 - To encourage and help establish a viable and representative Iraqi government within eighteen months.

6 – To hold democratic elections representing all factions of society in twenty-four months.

7 - To have Iraqi Police and Armed Forces in place and operational within twenty-four months.

8 – To have a total functioning Iraqi government and Iraqi Constitution in place within thirty months.

(At this time US State Department along with representatives from the Iraqi government together begin to contact Arab nations in region to attempt to negotiate and establish peaceful relations –

NOTE: This is done from a position of “strength” and not from weakness or conciliatory)

9 - To begin returning US Forces within thirty months.

10 - To have all major US Armed Forces units out no later than thirty-six months after start of initial operations.

Short Term: See below

Prior to start of ground war operations – 5 days of intensive aerial bombardment aimed at all Iraqi forces positioned facing south.

For the ground war, start with 550,000 Combined US Army and US Marine Corps soldiers.

Day 1 Ground Assault:

0600 Hrs
US Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles and F-16’s commence bombing and strafing runs outside Ramadi, Falluja, Karbala and Barqubah – if military targets are sighted then they are eliminated. This is meant as a decoy action to confuse elements of the Iraqi Army that are positioned just outside Baghdad and facing south toward Kuwait, where our ground forces have been staging.

Additionally, this is meant to flood whatever lines of Command & Control communications that the Iraqis still have working with so much traffic they will be unable to make any sense out of what is happening. This is to continue until 0700 at which time it ceases.

0615 Hrs:

Utilizing a combination of all US Air Force Transports C-130 HERCULES, C-141 STARLIFTER, C-17 GLOBEMASTER III and C-5 GALAXY transports which have already been in flight, from Diego Garcia begin deploying:

1 complete US Army Infantry Mechanized Division w/ 1 Company of Force Recon Marines between Ar Rujbah and Jordanian border

1 complete US Army Infantry Mechanized Division w/ 1 Company of Force Recon Marines at Al Qaim

1 complete US Army Infantry Mechanized Division w/ 1 Company of Force Recon Marines at Sinjara

This is to cover the Iraqi border from Jordan thru Syria and will overlap the Turkish and Saudi Arabian borders.

The 82nd Airborne Division and 1 Company of Force Recon Marines at Rawanduz

The 101st Airborne Division and 1 Company of Force Recon Marines at Khanaqin

The 10th Mountain Division and 1 Company of Force Recon Marines at Halabjah

This is to cover the Iraqi / Iranian border.

Each military unit will be responsible for establishing their main base of operations, and border patrols, and spreading out toward each other to effectively seal the entire country off from the outside. The mission objectives are – no one in and no one out.

0900 Hrs:

The drive from Kuwait into Iraq commences, with:

1 US Army Mechanized Brigade and1 Company Force Recon Marines moving and taking positions along the Saudi Arabian border

1 US Army Mechanized Brigade and 1 Company Force Recon Marines moving and taking positions along the Iranian border.

2 complete US Army Infantry Divisions Mechanized to follow the route that was employed by CENTCOM.

Military personnel with appropriate armament, etc., are deployed by air and are to secure all Iraqi oil fields using whatever force is necessary.

1200 hrs:

All units that were airlifted and deployed on the Iraqi borders to have established offensive and defensive perimeters along with complete lines of communication with headquarters in Kuwait and each other. The next objective is to seal off the borders so that no one in and no one out.

Once Baghdad is reached:

Declare Martial Law – no civilian vehicles allowed on the streets at any time, or they will be destroyed.

Establish military patrols throughout the city to ensure the above.

Set up military medical stations in various sections guarded by troops – establish communication areas where civilians can report medical emergencies and be transported to the military med stations for treatment using military vehicles only.

Divide the city into sections like a graph, and begin searching section by section confiscating all weapons and bomb making materials – use deadly force to deal with resistance.

Continue this until Baghdad is 100% under military control and is secured.

Use this same procedure with all other major cities.

While the above is going on in Baghdad, initiate offensive operations in all known Baathist and terrorist strongholds, like Tikrit, Falluja, etc., and employ the same methods to clear out each.

See Objective(s) Long Term.

The above operations and various missions properly initiated would have achieved significant goals that could have been reported to the American people by the embedded reporters in a timely manner.

They would have been swift and efficient offensive operations that would have denied the terrorists and loyal Baathists time, etc., to group and attempt to confront our forces, and would have completely eliminated any and all methods of obtaining weapons and necessary supplies, and reinforcements from outside Iraq.

Our military casualties would have been significantly reduced to under 500, and collateral damage to less than accepted numbers for this type of operations.

We'd almost be totally out of there by now.


Now - what say you ?????
 
Wow you have really thought about this. Are you in the military?

Thank you - yes I did give it serious consideration.

I was 1958 thru 1965. Wanted to make it a career, but PTSD got in the way 2-1/2 years after I came back from Nam.

If the United States is going to deploy her Armed Forces into a combat zone, you go in to win - and nothing short of victory should be considered.

"The unfailing formula for production of morale is patriotism, self-respect, discipline, and self-confidence within a military unit, joined with fair treatment and merited appreciation from without. It cannot be produced by pampering or coddling an army, and is not necessarily destroyed by hardship, danger, or even calamity . . . It will quickly wither and die if soldiers come to believe themselves the victims of indifference or injustice on the part of their government, or of ignorance, personal ambition, or ineptitude on the part of their leaders."

"[In war], there is no alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end. War's very object is victory, not prolonged indecision. In war there is no substitute for victory."
5-Star General of the Army - Douglas MacArthur

"There is only one tactical principle which is not subject to change. It is to use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of wounds, death, and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of time."
Lt. General George S. Patton

“We're going to bomb them back into the Stone Age.”
General of the Air Force, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Curtis E. LeMay

"I believe that forgiving them is God's function. Our job is simply to arrange the meeting."
General H. Norman Schwarzkopf
 
Thank you - yes I did give it serious consideration.

I was 1958 thru 1965. Wanted to make it a career, but PTSD got in the way 2-1/2 years after I came back from Nam.

If the United States is going to deploy her Armed Forces into a combat zone, you go in to win - and nothing short of victory should be considered.


5-Star General of the Army - Douglas MacArthur


Lt. General George S. Patton


General of the Air Force, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Curtis E. LeMay


General H. Norman Schwarzkopf

The only problem with your plan are these guys.

George_Bush_Biography.jpg

dick_cheney.jpg

nancy_pelosi_GI.jpg


The monkey boy and freaky Botox lady aren't the problem. It's that penguin in the middle. I heard he's shot people who don't eat babies in the face.
 
The only problem with your plan are these guys.

George_Bush_Biography.jpg

dick_cheney.jpg

nancy_pelosi_GI.jpg


The monkey boy and freaky Botox lady aren't the problem. It's that penguin in the middle. I heard he's shot people who don't eat babies in the face.

Is he wearing rouge in that photo?
What's with those pink spots on his cheeks?
 
Hatuey:
The only problem with your plan are these guys.

The monkey boy and freaky Botox lady aren't the problem. It's that penguin in the middle. I heard he's shot people who don't eat babies in the face.

Please explain yourself :roll:
 
Hatuey:


Please explain yourself :roll:

Come on buddy don't play coy. We all know Bush doesn't really run much. He just smiles, creates study groups and apologizes every time somebody in his administration makes a retarded assumption. Everybody knows the people running this war are Cheney, Rove and well Rummy when he was around. The president just waits and does what he's told.
 
Is he wearing rouge in that photo?
What's with those pink spots on his cheeks?

That my dear is the power of a Nikon D80. At 10.1 Mega pixels it'll even catch the lies these ****ers tell as they escape their mouths.
 
If the United States is going to deploy her Armed Forces into a combat zone, you go in to win - and nothing short of victory should be considered.

Although I was against the war I'd go along with that assessment.

Although to be fair the ground war itself was a great success with a 'victory' achieved in little time at all.

The aftermath of the 'victory' is what was never planned for and thats where all the problems arose.

If you have insufficient troop numbers (as the administration had already been told) to maintain law and order you CANNOT sack the entire police and army forces.

This created a security vacuum and let in the militias, which still operate to this day.

Other issues such as :-

1) Making no provision what-so-ever to close the borders made it too easy for foreign fighters to enter the country.

2) De-Baathification of the political/military/police powers resulted in no law and order/no civil servants and no authority. Further issues also occured because we went from a majority Sunni power to a complete Shia power - you do not rectify an oppression of one group by instigating the oppression of another.

3) Unemployment/Poverty turned the population against us

4) No reconstruction planned for immediately.

5) Too much hope pinned on the acceptance of a US favored politician to lead Iraq when it was clear 'outsiders' and 'western influenced persons' would not be desirable to the mainstream.

To be short we had a plan to defeat Saddam - that plan worked - we had no plan and no idea what would happen afterwards and the chaos that has ensued can be traced back to a lack of intelligent planning.
 
Okay, here is what I would have done if I had been in charge of the ground-war in Iraq.

Objective(s):

Long Term:


...

Now - what say you ?????

Your strategy and tactics for the military defeat of the Iraqi army may be sound, but that was not the problem in Iraq.

The problem is how you achieve your long term objectives when the population you mean to govern (or at least significant portions of it) rightly believe the attack and invasion was unjustified, pretextual, and a fabrication for the goal of conquest and control.

You propose absolute martial law and national house arrest while American troops go on a search and destroy mission looking for guns. How is the nation going to function for 4 weeks or 4 years under house arrest while you are trying to find the perceived enemy? How are people going to eat, be schooled, run the country? If someone runs out of water and goes out to the well to get something to keep from dying of thirst, you "destroy" them? Hungry little boy runs out to get a piece of bread -- destroy him?

I don't know how many men are in the units you proposed deploying. But your proposal would require months of martial law lock down while people starve in their homes while you try to root out the perceived enemy. And you still can't identify them because you don't know who they are or where they are.

Your strategy and tactics would only serve to enrage the people against the unjustified invaders even more.

Sounds nice and tidy on paper. Totally unrealistic in practice, IMO.
 
5-Star General of the Army - Douglas MacArthur


Quote:
"There is only one tactical principle which is not subject to change. It is to use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of wounds, death, and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of time."

Lt. General George S. Patton


Quote:
“We're going to bomb them back into the Stone Age.”

General of the Air Force, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Curtis E. LeMay


Quote:
"I believe that forgiving them is God's function. Our job is simply to arrange the meeting."

General H. Norman Schwarzkopf

:rofl nice way to spread democracy and other western values ;)
 
I agree with the idea that the goal of war should be to win in the shortest time possible.

Remember, the US is there without cause. Bush is more of a threat to American freedom than Saddam ever was.

IMO, they knew exactly what they were going to do there, including the painful dragging out of this war. The people running this war make mega $$$ each day it goes on, the more stuff gets blown up, the more ammunition, fuel, jets, tanks, etc, used...

They (Bush, CFR, etc) could care less about the soldiers, or 100's of Iraqi's dying each day. Instability = profits...

"Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy." - Henry Kissinger, CFR
"You know, one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror." - George Bush
 
Iriemon:
Your strategy and tactics for the military defeat of the Iraqi army may be sound, but that was not the problem in Iraq.

The problem is how you achieve your long term objectives when the population you mean to govern (or at least significant portions of it) rightly believe the attack and invasion was unjustified, pretextual, and a fabrication for the goal of conquest and control.

You propose absolute martial law and national house arrest while American troops go on a search and destroy mission looking for guns. How is the nation going to function for 4 weeks or 4 years under house arrest while you are trying to find the perceived enemy? How are people going to eat, be schooled, run the country? If someone runs out of water and goes out to the well to get something to keep from dying of thirst, you "destroy" them? Hungry little boy runs out to get a piece of bread -- destroy him?

I don't know how many men are in the units you proposed deploying. But your proposal would require months of martial law lock down while people starve in their homes while you try to root out the perceived enemy. And you still can't identify them because you don't know who they are or where they are.

Your strategy and tactics would only serve to enrage the people against the unjustified invaders even more.

Sounds nice and tidy on paper. Totally unrealistic in practice, IMO.

Please reread the entire plan and you will observe that the major concerns you mention are addressed in an orderly and controllable sequence that is in the best interests of our military as well as the Iraqi people who want their own sovereign nation.

Additionally, I mentioned that we should have started the ground war with 550,000 troops.
 
bub:
nice way to spread democracy and other western values

Cute. Now is there anything of consequence you wish to contribute ?????

"Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us that they have a utopian solution of peace without victory. They call their policy 'accommodation.' And they say if we only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he will forget his evil ways and learn to love us. All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers. They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer—not an easy one, but a simple one—if you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based upon what we know in our hearts is morally right... [E]very lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face."
—Ronald Reagan

Only strength can cooperate. Weakness can only beg.
5-Star General of the Army, Supreme Commander Allied Forces Europe and President Dwight D. Eisenhower
 
Pull My Finger:
I agree with the idea that the goal of war should be to win in the shortest time possible.

That is always the objective.

"There is only one tactical principle which is not subject to change. It is to use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of wounds, death, and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of time."
General George Smith Patton

Remember, the US is there without cause. Bush is more of a threat to American freedom than Saddam ever was.

Would you please provide proof of the first part of your statement

IMO, they knew exactly what they were going to do there, including the painful dragging out of this war. The people running this war make mega $$$ each day it goes on, the more stuff gets blown up, the more ammunition, fuel, jets, tanks, etc, used...

They (Bush, CFR, etc) could care less about the soldiers, or 100's of Iraqi's dying each day. Instability = profits...

I would have to respectfully disagree with your comment, especially considering the “political climate” of the past 3 years.

Additionally, if you have been paying attention to the news reports of the past year and a half at least, you would “know” that the sectarian violence and terrorists have been killing non-combatant civilians indiscriminately all in the name of Allah.
 
Fiercely,
I'm not sure I agree with Patton's idea of inflicting the most death wounds and destruction. I like Sun Tzu's theories a little better...
Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting. Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Would you please provide proof of the first part of your statement

No WMD's, No Osama ties, No relation to War on Terror.
There are more terrorists in Iraq now because the US is there. This has even been discussed in the mainstream media. Why you guys haven't had Bush impeached, and tried for treason is a mystery to me...
"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, Jan. 28, 2003, making a claim that administration officials knew at the time to be false
After WMD's were NOT found...
"...identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction related program activities." - George Bush
WTF is that? I'd smack my kid (if I had one) upside the head for Worst Excuse Ever if they tried to pull that...

I would have to respectfully disagree with your comment, especially considering the “political climate” of the past 3 years.
You're entitled.
Additionally, if you have been paying attention to the news reports of the past year and a half at least, you would “know” that the sectarian violence and terrorists have been killing non-combatant civilians indiscriminately all in the name of Allah
While I do watch/read the news, I don't pay it much attention. Secterian violence is a fancy term for civil war.
Suni's and Shea's are killing each other by the hundreds every day...

Additionally, the CIA created Islamic Extremeism before/during the Afghan/Soviet war in the 80's.
They provided the Mujahideen with money, weapons, and training to create 'freedom fighters'. Osama was one of them.

I don't think anyone condones killing innocent people. Again, this is happening because the States is there unjustly.

Peace
 
I can agree with some of your points like more troops should have been deployed and fighting to totally destroy your enemy at whatever the costs. But why in god name would you conduct one of the largest drops since the Korean War at sunrise in unknown hostel territory?
 
I can agree with some of your points like more troops should have been deployed and fighting to totally destroy your enemy at whatever the costs. But why in god name would you conduct one of the largest drops since the Korean War at sunrise in unknown hostel territory?

Shock & Awe and complete military control.

The plan states to seal off the borders - no one in and no one out. In order to choke the supply lines and prevent additional supplies and other terrorists from entering into Iraq, the borders must be air-tight.

The forces not needed after the borders are closed, and the offensive / defensive positions and patrols are established simply move into the country to reinforce the other troops and while moving in secure the outlying towns and villages.
 
If we had prosecuted the ground war properly from day one:

1 - we'd have 500 or less casualties
2 - we'd be home now
3 - we'd only have 1500 to 2000 troops still there as trainers
4 - the DemLibSocs would not have won the 2006 elections
5 - the DemLibSocs would be crying in their beer
 
If we had prosecuted the ground war properly from day one:

1 - we'd have 500 or less casualties
2 - we'd be home now
3 - we'd only have 1500 to 2000 troops still there as trainers
4 - the DemLibSocs would not have won the 2006 elections
5 - the DemLibSocs would be crying in their beer

Baseless speculation. Sunnies would never have accepted their forceable removal from power by the infidels.

What is not speculation is that if we had not started an unjustified nad unnecessary war in the first place we'd have none of the above.
 
We should have simply secured and occupied Afghanistan, using it as a beacon of democratic hope (slang for base of operations). Once established in the region....everything else can be dealt with from a position of power, rather than a piecemeal and failing attempt from a "Greenzone".
 
The war in Iraq was improperly executed at the planning stage. Every concrete rule in the book was trumped by NeoCon fantasies and the military started out in react mode because of it. From the trip to Baghdad to government contracting, nothiing we had learned in the past was employed. We were stuck with a man who had absolutely no military experience who thought that he could change the nature of warfare and he was determined to use Iraq to validate his rediculous visions.
 
General Tommy Franks acquised to Rumsfeld's 'snowflakes' about force size and composition. Inexplicably, Phase IV (occupation) was never a realistic consideration in Rumsfeld's calculus.

"How could it possibly take more troops to occupy a country than to conquer it?" - Douglas Feith

The epitome of arrogance and stupidity. It was then obvious to me that Rumsfeld, Feith, Pearle, et. al. had never spent any serious time in the violent Middle East.
 
What is not speculation is that if we had not started an unjustified nad unnecessary war in the first place we'd have none of the above.

At least, not yet.
 
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