Army Says Troop Rotation Into Iraq Poses Increased Danger

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/26/international/middleeast/26TROO.html?ex=1070427600&en=a41d661a47a3d8a2&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

WASHINGTON, Nov. 25 — Senior Army officers have told Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that the rotation of more than 100,000 soldiers into Iraq early next year will present a great risk for American forces, with officials saying they must prepare for a surge in attacks on troops who may be more vulnerable during the transition. The worry, according to Pentagon and military officials, is based on a number of factors, including a temporary increase in the number of troops present in Iraq during the rotation and the prospect that they will be traveling across unfamiliar territory before reaching more secure bases.

"There will be a lot of movement, a lot of forces in transit," one Army officer said. "This raises serious force protection issues for us."

While recognizing these risks, American commanders in Iraq say proper planning could result in significant advantages that could help offset the dangers.

According to Pentagon and military officials, commanders are planning to take advantage of the overlap of arriving and departing soldiers, which offers a natural, if temporary, increase in troop strength without the politically contentious process of requesting additional forces.
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[Timbuk3]

1. The New ARVN

That's short for the Army of the Republic of Vietnam -- the pathetic excuse for a military force fielded by the pathetic excuse for a government of South Vietnam. The butt of any number of nasty jokes during the Vietnam War. If you saw Full Metal Jacket, you may remember one of them:

"Wanna buy an ARVN rifle? Never been fired and only dropped once."

To be sure, there was a certain amount of racist exaggeration to the jokes. ARVN soldiers actually fought and died in considerable numbers -- nearly 28,000 were killed in 1968, the peak year of the war, which is almost half of the total American dead for the entire war.

But, however brave individual soldiers may have been, ARVN as a whole was irredeemably rotten -- an army of poorly paid mercenaries, "led," if that's the right word, by a gang of cruel and incompetent thieves, and barely held together by American money, American weapons and American air power.

And, of course, after the Americans left, it collapsed -- just as soon as the battle-hardened regulars of the North Vietnamese Army got around to giving it a good shove. Few armies in history have lived such a feeble existence, or died such an ignominious death.

But now ARVN has a half-brother -- another bastard child fathered by a delusional American foreign policy (Above text blatantly ripped off from http://billmon.org/ ):

Iraqi Security Forces Torn Between Loyalties

BAIJI, Iraq -- At the sprawling Baiji train station, long ago looted of everything but rail cars, the men of the city's Iraqi Civil Defense Corps lamented their first two months as a pillar of the U.S.-trained security forces that will inherit responsibility for keeping order in Iraq.

In a Sunni Muslim town suspicious of U.S. forces and often the scene of armed opposition, villagers have derided the men of the 3rd Patrol as traitors, pelting them with rocks as their trucks pass. Some were stopped in the market by men in checkered head scarves and warned that their commander faced death. Last month, U.S. Special Forces mistook them for guerrillas or thieves -- that point remains in dispute -- and opened fire on them. Worse, they feared, was what lay ahead if U.S. forces withdrew from this northern town.

"I swear to God, we'll be killed," said Hamid Yusuf, holding a secondhand Kalashnikov rifle.

"We all have the same opinion," insisted one of his commanders, Qassim Khalaf.

"One hundred percent," answered Jamal Awad, another patrol member.

"My family's already made a reservation on a plot of land to bury me," said Yusuf, 29, breaking into a grin as the men traded barbs tinged with gallows humor. "As soon as they leave, I'm taking off my hat," he said, tipping his red baseball cap emblazoned with the corps' emblem, "and putting on a yashmak," the head scarf sometimes worn by resistance fighters.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11809-2003Nov24.html

[Sagan]

2. Well duh... plus..

Those Guard and Reserve troops they're going to deploy to Iraqinam are going to be green green green. They won't know any of the lessons that the regular army troops over there have learned.

But who cares, right? Every dead soldier is just another "appreciated sacrifice" for Bushco.

[grytpype]

3. And the insurgents have been practicing shooting SAMs.

They nearly shot down a DHL plane (and DHL has suspended service to Bagdhad, the plane's wing was set on fire). They also took a shot a C-130. It's a huge plane they use to transport the troops, it would be a nightmare if one was shot down. It's a very, very serious problem.