U.S. Army Report: Military Lost Dominance In Iraq After Invasion

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.texaspanhandleplains.com/newspaper/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=856&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

WASHINGTON - The U.S. military lost its dominance in Iraq shortly after its invasion in 2003, a study concluded.

A report by the U.S. Army official historian said the military was hampered by the failure to occupy and stabilize Iraq in 2003. As a result, the military lost its dominance by July 2003 and has yet to regain that position.

"In the two to three months of ambiguous transition, U.S. forces slowly lost the momentum and the initiative gained over an off-balanced enemy," the report said. "The United States, its Army and its coalition of the willing have been playing catch-up ever since."

The report was authored by Maj. Isaiah Wilson, the official historian of the U.S. Army for the Iraq war. Wilson also served as a war planner for the army's 101st Airborne Division until March 2004, Middle East Newsline reported. His report, not yet endorsed as official army history, has been presented to several academic conferences. snip

In contrast, Wilson said army planners failed to understand or accept the prospect that Iraqis would resist the U.S. forces after the fall of the Saddam regime. He deemed the military performance in Iraq mediocre and said the army could lose the war.

more

[Jacobin]

1. I'm Thunderstruck, I tell ya, thunderstruck!!!

Imagine that?

Who coulda guessed it?

[LynnTheDem]

25. Oh stop!

You are not thunderstruck...you're gobsmacked.

Admit it.

:D

[saigon68]

34. SHIT LIKE THIS HAD A LOT TO DO WITH IT.

[lebkuchen]

36. Didn't' take long after "Mission Accomplished" and "Bring 'em on"

The fisherman had just decided to take up arms, and he shook with fear as the American convoy approached his hiding place. As he later told it, he fired a rocket-propelled grenade into a Humvee and ran away as fast as he could.

Nobody gave chase, he said, and in the time that has passed since that April attack, his band of seven guerrillas has slipped into an easy rhythm of attacking American convoys every few days.

“I catch fish in the morning and Americans at night,” he said. “Catching Americans is easier than catching fish.”

<cut>

He insisted he wasn’t motivated by any loyalty to Saddam Hussein or principled Islamic opposition to the U.S. presence. He said he was driven by what he sees as the Americans’ heavy-handed treatment of ordinary Iraqis during anti-guerrilla operations.


http://armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-2169332.php

[NMDemDist2]

2. kicked and nominated n/t

[Wright Patman]

3. Isaiah will wind up

like the Underwriters Laboratories analyst who questioned whether the World Trade Center could have melted and imploded because of a jet fuel fire.
***
Area man stirs debate on WTC collapse
South Bend firm's lab director fired after questioning federal probe
South Bend Tribune-November 22 (2004)
By JOHN DOBBERSTEIN
Tribune Staff Writer
SOUTH BEND -- The laboratory director from a South Bend firm has been fired for attempting to cast doubt on the federal investigation into what caused the World Trade Center's twin towers to collapse on Sept. 11, 2001.
Kevin R. Ryan was terminated Tuesday from his job at Environmental Health Laboratories Inc., a subsidiary of Underwriters Laboratories Inc., the consumer-product safety testing giant.
On Nov. 11, Ryan wrote a letter to the National Institute of Standards and Technology -- the agency probing the collapse -- challenging the common theory that burning jet fuel weakened the steel supports holding up the 110-story skyscrapers.
Underwriters Laboratories Inc., according to Ryan, "was the company that certified the steel components used in the construction of the WTC buildings."...
***
Down the memory hole for both of these guys.

"Everyone" knows we achieved a great victory and things have only been getting better every day since then. But you don't hear much about it because of the 'lib'rul' media.

[AllegroRondo]

33. Carl Sagan - "Demon Haunted World"

I'm re-reading it again, and your post fits so well with what he describes in the struggle between science and fundamentalism.

Science welcomes skepticism. Any explaination or new idea is going to be challenged repeatedly and tested to the limits, like the lab director described above.

Fundamentalism abhors skepticism. Any counter-explaination is thrown out, ignored, or riduculed.

[CottonBear]

4. Really? Imagine that. n/t

[IndianaGreen]

5. This war will be analyzed to death by the War College

and I am sure that the one inescapable conclusion will be that our failure to follow the Powell Doctrine was the key to our defeat in Iraq. I am also certain that a new generation of military officers will recoil at any military adventures that lack support from our allies.

[Jacobin]

9. Too bad they didn't investigate their memories and think about

Vietnam.


Same shit, different day.

[BrotherBuzz]

19. I believe the War College already had the debate...

and the results weren't pretty. Future debates will, indeed, include discussions on the Powell Doctrine and this misadministration's willingness to ignore it.

Published on Monday, January 12, 2004 by the Los Angeles Times

War College Study Calls Iraq a 'Detour'

Institute's report warns anti-terror campaign may launch 'open-ended and gratuitous conflict.'

by Chuck Neubauer and Ken Silverstein

WASHINGTON — A report published by the Army War College criticizes the Bush administration's global war on terrorism as "unfocused" and contends that the war in Iraq is"unnecessary" and a "detour" that has diverted attention and resources from the threat posed by Al Qaeda.

The report warns that the administration's global war on terrorism may have set the United States "on a course of open-ended and gratuitous conflict with states and non-state entities that pose no serious threat to the United States."

The report by Jeffrey Record, a visiting research professor at the Strategic Studies Institute of the Army War College, calls for downsizing the war on terrorism and focusing instead on the threat from Al Qaeda, the terror network responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as well as other sites around the world.

"The global war on terrorism as presently defined and conducted is strategically unfocused, promises much more than it can deliver, and threatens to dissipate U.S. military and other resources in an endless and hopeless search for absolute security," Record wrote, concluding his 56-page monograph. "The United States may be able to defeat, even destroy, Al Qaeda, but it cannot rid the world of terrorism, much less evil."

<more>

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0112-01.htm

[LynnTheDem]

38. "endless and hopeless search for absolute security," Nah. 2 words....

North. Korea.

Safest nation on the planet from terrorist acts.

North Korea; #1 in the world for HOMELAND SECURITY.

[Career Prole]

6. "The report was authored by Maj. Isaiah Wilson"

Major Wilson?

YOU'RE FIRED!!!

That is all...dismissed! :hi:

[Robeson]

11. Yep.

[kodi]

23. no general's star in the future for Maj. Isaiah Wilson

he might as well retire now.

[Sapphire Blue]

24. And discredited, smeared, ridiculed, etc.

[bemildred]

7. "Lost Dominance"?

This guy really needs to read up on guerilla conflicts.
He makes it sound like a couple roosters arguing over a hen.

[NNN0LHI]

8. This is what General Shinseki said would happen before Bush invaded

Right before Bush fired him.

Don

[Cocoa]

10. Wilson is demoralizing the troops!

why does he hate America!

[Robeson]

12. This report is supporting the ter-ists. It is also supporting the....

...insurgents, aka, the Iraqi citizens who don't won't us occupying their country.

[Jacobin]

14. Why does Wilson Hate Our Freedoms(tm)?

I don't understand

:shrug:

[Cocoa]

16. the insurgents are "anti-Iraqi Forces"

AIF's.

That's the military's (and thus Fox News's) terminology.

[daleo]

18. We must refuse to even say the word "Wilson" anymore

That word is now an abomination. From here on in it will be:

- President Woodrow Freedom (WWI era).
- Prime Minister Harold Freedom (honorary U.K. poodle division).
- Mr. Freedom of Dennis the Menace notoriety.

And so on.

[Cocoa]

20. don't forget

Tom Hanks's volleyball.

[daleo]

22. History's most famous Wilson...I mean "Freedom"! n/t

[Javaman]

31. Freedom Tennis balls

[Massacure]

13. The military is finally acknowledging they messed up?

HELL HAS FROZEN OVER!!!

:eyes:

[madmark]

15. You think the Admin would like to revisit the whole fire the Iraqi

Army thing?

[Massacure]

17. The Bush Administration? No. The Army? Probably.

[Malva Zebrina]

21. George Bush will go down in history as a tyrant

a Commander in Chief who went AWOL himself , for I believe that fact will come out after he leaves office, when Rove cannot control it.

This is a significant piece of information here. It shows that the military may very well be opposed to and resist Bush and the PNAC doctrine of pre-emptive attack based on the lies of a man who is at best somewhere below the IQ of one hundred and is by all means, insane.

I sincerely hope he will be revealed as such by historians although I may not live to see it, but I hope I will live to see some of it, because it is important to the next generation coming up to be aware of the dangers of a man like Bush and any of his family and what killing and murders they can get away with by using their power to lord it over their own people.

He is doomed as far as history goes and of that he may not even care as he is set for life but his father and his despicable mother may now realize they have spawned an insane man bent upon destroying his own country and cannot be proud of what he has done.

Maybe.

[AngryAmish]

26. I am at least glad somebody is being honest

One of the things that makes the US armed forces so deadly to fight is our willingness to learn. After Vietnam the war was debated for years, and the Army has been trying to avoid another Vietnam ever since. Until now, because of our current junta.

[applegrove]

27. Because they went to war with the troops Rumsfield demanded

and not with what the generals said they needed. ***hole. How many have died because
1)they invaded and blah blah blah that was bad & a little late
2)IT WASN'T DONE PROPERLY

Why is Rumsfield still in office?

[Strelnikov_]

28. " . . . The Army Could Lose The War"

Now just wait a gosh-darned minute.

I thought the war was over when we cleaned out that den of terraists in Fa-lu-ja and pulled down all of the Saddam statues and collected tons of flowers from the natives.

Our Leader and the fair and balanced media sez that Eye-Rack is a sovereign nation that Our Leader reigned freedom on. And they just had blue-fingered elections that turned out even better than ours that re-elected Our Leader. They elected who they wanted even without voting machines!!!

Could lose the war!! Jeeze, talk about lib-rul Hate America^TM Blame The Troops^TM crap.

[Laurab]

29. This man obviously is "divorced from reality"

I don't know how * is going to work with him. I don't think it will be pretty, though. What was he thinking, telling the truth like this? We're building skools and stuff, I saw it on Faux news, and "Mission Accomplished", and everything. He must still think we live in a democracy or something.

[rocktivity]

30. Candidate for this month's "You Call This NEWS?" award

This just in: with their lack of manpower and armor (which President Mightymouse was warned of in no uncertain terms), they weren't exactly dominant before the invasion, either.

:headbang:
rocknation

[Igel]

32. "the failure to occupy and stabilize Iraq in 2003"

People have commented on the "stabilize" part ... but the claim that the "occupy" part is also fairly significant has some merit. Less than some assume, no doubt, but some merit.

[underpants]

35. I think someone might just be getting themselves a medal for this

[LynnTheDem]

37. That US Major is a SADDAM-LOYALIST! America-Hater!!! Dead-ender!!!

TRAITOR!!!

He just says "the army could lose the war" because he WANTS them to!

He WANTS America to fail!!!

He's PROVIDING COMFORT to the enemy!!!

Heh! It's fun to play freeper-dressup now & then! :D :D :D

[oasis]

39. And how will the Chimperor's minions explain this for the history books?

"It was Rumsfeld's fault". :eyes:

[llmart]

40. "Lose the war?????"

How could he possibly say that? All the mainstream press are wetting themselves over the wonderful success of Bush's Iraq adventure. I'm really confused now. I was ready to go downtown New York and kiss some sailors and have it on the front page of Life and Look.

Man, I thought having that yellow magnet on my SUV was gonna help us win.

I can turn the sarcasm off now.

[bklyncowgirl]

41. Diogenes put away your lantern--we just found your honest man.

Let's hear it for major Wilson. Of course it is not yet endorsed as official army history. The guy who gets the rewrite job after Wilson gets transfered to his now post the sanitation engineering officer at a remote base in the Aleutian Islands will of course have to try and find a way to blame it on Clinton.