Cicerone -- You're so right about odd memories. Seldom the Grand Moments, just the great ones. Just from your brief description, I can almost remember the bacon and eggs myself...
blatham, I suspect there's more than a grain of truth in Mr. Trudeau's interpretation of the phenomenon.
Ahhhh, Pfffft!... those Airforce types got no clue what its like in the field. Hell, The Airforce lives better than The Navy! Buncha wimps, all of 'em, if ya ask a groundpounder.
Hi blatham, Thanks for that doonesbury comic strip. Also signed up for regular mailings.
c.i.
to this day i can't eat ham and cheese omelets, nor anything resembling sos. i'll give the navy one thing, the navy cooks were alot better than the marine cooks.
now back to our regulary scheduled debate.
In the RAAF we tried to live off breakfast, 'cause the rest of the meals were so awful.
And then there were the rat packs.
rat packs = C rations? c.i.
ever have to eat them cold?
No one who's ever had the experience can forget cold C-Rats, lifted from can to mouth on the point of a bayonet, while huddling in a poncho beneath a driving rain on a pitchblack night.
This was the one, when I was leafing back in the archive, that had me really LOL:
timberlandko wrote:No one who's ever had the experience can forget cold C-Rats, lifted from can to mouth on the point of a bayonet, while huddling in a poncho beneath a driving rain on a pitchblack night.
oh lordy, you never forget that. the pork and potato with the unmelted grease stuck in there was the worst for me, with the spaghetti running a close second.
Cereal biscuits, which would break the teeth of a crocodile without soaking in water overnight.
Yeah, I remember what I thought was the good stuff at the time. Beef and Rice LRPs with chopped onion, pepper and hot sauce. Or, one of my favorites (only after dark) the C Ration eggs with jelly.
Went camping one time and bought these at the Army Surplus Store to enjoy the memory. They are expensive and taste like ****. You just can't go back. Guess it is not quite as good without gunpowder and in-comming!
Interesting
war diary from Kim Sengupta, reporter in Bagdad. Selected a few excerpts for ya, a mixed bunch.
Quote:Thursday 20 March
[..] Afterwards, a colleague and I travel independently to an area where the bombs and missiles have landed. Several homes have been hit and the residents' anger is palpable. "What have we done, why should they do this to us?'' an elderly woman in a black chador weeps, beating her hand on her thigh. Her husband leads her away, staring at us accusingly. Four men carrying AK-47 semi-automatic rifles arrive and watch us silently. As we leave I remember that just a week before I had visited this same street. Then, I was greeted with smiles. [..]
Friday 21 March
I first met Khalid and Samira three years ago, when I bought a watercolour painted by Samira. [..] During subsequent visits I had got to know them well. I had bought painting materials for Samira, and we managed to establish that very rare thing in Iraq: a level of trust that allowed them to talk freely to a foreigner.
Now, sitting in their one-bedroom apartment, we discuss the imminent crossing of coalition troops into Iraq. Samira is enthusiastic and optimistic - at one stage she dances around the room holding their beautiful seven-month-old daughter, Jenan. Khalid is more wary. He does not trust the Americans, and fears that something cataclysmic may happen in Baghdad before the troops arrive. One of his cousins, Majid, is stationed with the Iraqi army near Basra, and Khalid's family is very worried. [..]
Saturday 22 March
We are taken on a tour of a hospital, al-Yamoukh, to meet injured children. It is orchestrated by the authorities, but sad none the less. [..] Part of the maternity ward has been damaged, and the hospital shows us babies it claims were born prematurely during the previous night's bombing; one of them is slightly smaller than my A4 notepad.
Dr Hassana Rahim resents my talk of public relations. "Listen to me; these are real human beings, real babies. You may have been brought here for some purpose, but all this is real." Before I can reply, she has turned and walked away through a group of women cleaners chanting, "My blood, my spirit, I shall die for you, O Saddam" to a bank of TV cameras. [..]
Sunday 23 March
[..] This afternoon, a rumour sweeps through the city that two pilots, possibly British, have parachuted into the river Tigris from a stricken aircraft. I go to investigate, and find the banks of the river packed with soldiers and civilians. Bullrushes are set alight in an attempt to flush the airmen out. Soldiers fire into the water. Teenagers strip off their shirts to wade in the shallows with machetes. But the atmosphere is more carnival than lynch mob. We meet a deaf and dumb man, who mimes what he would do if he catches the two pilots.The onlookers cheer. Later he returns by himself and tries to tell us, we think, that he hopes the airmen were swept away, out of the reach of the soldiers.
Tuesday 25 March
[..] I meet up with two young men I have known for some time - "Selim" (not his real name) and his brother. They are from Saddam City, a vast, poor and violent suburban slum half an hour's drive from the centre of Baghdad. It is home to about 2 million Shia Muslims. Despite making up 60 per cent of the population of Iraq, the Shia Muslims have seen the reins of power stay firmly in the hands of the Sunni minority. Three years ago the township exploded when its Grand Ayatollah al-Sadr and his two sons were assassinated - a killing that Shia clerics blamed on Saddam Hussein's regime. How do they feel now, as the Americans and the British draw closer and closer to Baghdad?
"The British and Americans have been killing a lot of innocent people with their bombing," says Selim. "And they cannot stay here as occupiers. This is Iraq and we are Iraqis. If they want to take our oil, then we shall fight them. And, anyway, we cannot trust them. [..]
Wednesday 26 March
[..] The journalists follow as the injured are taken to Al-Khindi hospital. Here a little boy whose arm has been amputated stares at the television cameras, and asks for some water. One of the hospital officials asks us: "Do you think he will ever forget, or forgive?"
I step outside, into the dark brown rain. The bombing has started again.
nimh
Glad you found that one too. The whole Iraq series has been typically brilliant.
You're right, blatham.
This article, for example, is a clear overview of an attempt to "lift the fog of war".
I pick up - in a partisan selection, perhaps, because the article as a whole is very balanced, two points.
First:
The Independent wrote:The British Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, had to withdraw a claim that protective suits found in a hospital proved the Iraqis intended to use chemical weapons.
Second, JM here wrote:
JamesMorrison wrote:I seriously do not remember any official, political or military, stating a specific time line for the completion of "Operation Iraqi Freedom". If anything the American people were continually cautioned against thinking this might be a cakewalk.
This article reminds us (none too gleefully) that:
The Independent wrote:Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he was aiming for a "short, sharp" conflict that would quickly make it clear to Saddam that defeat was inevitable. On the second day of the war, one of the administration's leading hawks, Richard Perle, boasted: "There are more demonstrators in the streets of San Francisco than there are people prepared to die for Saddam."
What were they thinking? In a now notorious article - the first to use the word "cakewalk" - this is what Ken Adelman [former, but not current, assistant of Rumsfeld - nimh] said. "Let me give simple, responsible reasons," he wrote. "(1) It was a cakewalk last time; (2) they've become much weaker; (3) we've become much stronger; and (4) now we're playing for keeps." Nobody seems to have considered that chasing Iraqis home from Kuwait is a very different proposition from invading their country.
Adelman actually said: "I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk," as
The Guardian remembered in an article that also reminds us of this quote:
The Guardian wrote:'If I was a betting man, and I'm not, hopefully we'll be in Baghdad in the next three or four days'
British Group Captain Al Lockwood last week
Report: Rumseld Ignored Pentagon Advice on Iraq
2 hours, 38 minutes ago Add Politics to My Yahoo!
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly rejected advice from Pentagon (news - web sites) planners that substantially more troops and armor would be needed to fight a war in Iraq (news - web sites), New Yorker Magazine reported.
In an article for its April 7 edition, which goes on sale on Monday, the weekly said Rumsfeld insisted at least six times in the run-up to the conflict that the proposed number of ground troops be sharply reduced and got his way.
"He thought he knew better. He was the decision-maker at every turn," the article quoted an unidentified senior Pentagon planner as saying. "This is the mess Rummy put himself in because he didn't want a heavy footprint on the ground."
It also said Rumsfeld had overruled advice from war commander Gen. Tommy Franks to delay the invasion until troops denied access through Turkey could be brought in by another route and miscalculated the level of Iraqi resistance.
"They've got no resources. He was so focused on proving his point -- that the Iraqis were going to fall apart," the article, by veteran journalist Seymour Hersh, cited an unnamed former high-level intelligence official as saying.
A spokesman at the Pentagon declined to comment on the article.
Rumsfeld is known to have a difficult relationship with the Army's upper echelons while he commands strong loyalty from U.S. special operations forces, a key component in the war.
This operation has been slap dash from the get go. The force has been too small, moved too fast and is over dependent on air power. They are three forths of the way to Baghdad and now they have to stop to sort it all out. Other then the advance on Al Kut by the 1st Marine Regiment, I would not expect any movement until the middle of next week or until the 4th Armoured Division gets there. Which ever comes first.
For consideration, a selection of what might be termed "Official Pronouncements of Position:
"Military conflict could be difficult. An Iraqi regime faced with its own demise may attempt cruel and unusual measures. ... There is no easy or risk-free course of action." President Bush, speech in Cincinnati, Oct. 7.
"I think it will go relatively quickly.... Weeks rather than months." Vice President Richard Cheney, March 16, NBC's "Meet the Press.
"On the brink of war with Iraq, Americans should be prepared for what we hope will be as precise and short a conflict as possible, but there are many unknowns. It could be a matter of some duration, we do not know." White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, March 19.
Nowhere do I see any indication that a quick, easy, bloodless victory over an impotent enemy has been promised by The Real Players. Advisors, commentators, and out-of-the-loop military folks, active duty or retired, voice opinions, make observations, draw conclusions, and express opinions. A war of some weeks, yet less than several months, otherwise indeterminate duration, calling for bravery, sacrifice, and dedication on the part of all concerned is what is mentioned, and there is acknowledgement of risk as well as certainty of total victory. So far, none of that seems, at least to me, to have been other than accurate.
Wars are most complex things. In this instance, I perceive that much of the perception of the success level of the attack on Iraq is driven not by what the actual directors of the attack have said so much as it is being driven by what others say about what was said. Wars and Football Games have "Armchair Quarterbacks" beyond reckoning. In reality, very few of the armchair folks in either case have really seen the playbook, and none of them are on the field, calling the plays.
