Fiasco:Thomas Ricks new book

[blustr18b]

Did anyone catch NPR-Fresh Air with Terry Gross radio broadcast July 25 (on currently Pacific time) 89.3 about Thomas Ricks, senior Pentagon correspondent for the Washington Post, talking about his new book, Fiasco:The American Military Adventure in Iraq. He was talking about the American military invasion and occupation of Iraq. One point was about Paul Bremer and his mess ups. Another was the admiration for the troops, and how some generals really set a fine example for their troops. His ideas for the future of Iraq- he had several options...stated he felt they only have a 5% chance to have a US style democracy, or we could end up staying there 15 to 20 years by keeping the lid on a civil war...or the worst scenario is the war in Iraq spreading thruout the Middle East, or even worst the Iraqis get fed up and get behind an religious extremist who creats a leadership that gets the money to buy a nuke and sets out to attack the west.
It is on live Webcast also...looks like it might be a good read

blustr 18b

[The Reaper]

Sorry.

My doctor and attorney have advised me not to listen to NPR.

TR

[MRF54]

Originally Posted by The Reaper

Sorry.

My doctor and attorney have advised me not to listen to NPR.

TR

LMAO!!

[x SF med]

Originally Posted by The Reaper

Sorry.

My doctor and attorney have advised me not to listen to NPR.

TR

TR-
Bad for the BP, and the whining leftist liberal commie freaks? You'd think they'd both WANT you to listen to NPR, better for their wallets.

[Bill Harsey]

Originally Posted by x_sf_med

... and the whining leftist liberal commie freaks?

I didn't know they'd improved to that level over there.

[vsvo]

Ricks' new book was excerpted in the Post over the weekend.

In Iraq, Military Forgot Lessons of Vietnam

'It Looked Weird and Felt Wrong'

[JGarcia]

I read those articles in the Washington Post.

Is Iraq a war better fought with small groups of Special Forces or a conventional army? My time there was Gulf War, and OIF 1. Things change, so my observations about the past aren't necessarrily relevant.

My unit sort of stumbled onto our techniques. We patrolled, met and spoke with locals, made photographs to fill our intelligence binders, assigned squads their own 'sectors' which they shared with one other squad. We patrolled them day and night, we knew every car, house, and kid in the AO. We lost no one from our Company (+). We were out of Kalsu, an area not known to be nice. Anyhow, we didnt kick in doors, smack people around, etc. It was pretty laid back, then after we left in 04, I hear its been a really nasty place since then. I remember seeing the new units roll into the AO, weapons up and out, unfaded gear, very serious. Sometimes I can't help wonder if units never rotated out the first time, if things would be like the are today.

Now, as I look at the region as a whole, governments and religious groups are always calling to take up arms and fight. I wonder if humanity needs to suffer a cataclysmic event before they are ready to embrace civilization. All modern forms of government are born of strife, and peace from terrible wars is long lasting. These little skirmishes might not spill enough blood, in a short amount of time to win long term peace.

I think they need new doctrine, a new FM for this sort of situation. Simply, a Community Oriented Policing method worked, and its something that Police from the worst neighborhoods in California, NY, PA, and Chicago could help build. I think our little slice of the pie worked nicely when I was there. In the future we should work like this:

A unit enters the country and takes ownership of one geographic spot on the map. Thats your spot for the next year, the unit then divvies that spot up to its sub units, subunits patrol the area day and night. They compile information, assemble it into binders (digital or paper). Interpreters work to translate the info in the 'binders' to arabic. During the interim Iraqi Police are trained, outside of the country, and to a very high degree of training, not OJT. After completion of training they slowly begin to right seat ride, the goal being 100% of the patrols being conducted by 100% IP's, but in the interim, you would have joint US/IP Patrols.

This kind of duty is a different kind of animal than combat arms branches, and is probably best done by MP's, although they don't receive this kind of training either. So to be really good at it, we would have to increase the number of MP units - dramatically, add a month to their MOS, and NCO training, and lengthen their tours. Or, half ass train combat arms units to do this sort of thing, which I think is sort of what we are doing now, and get half ass results.

There is always a 'beat cop' (a squad) working the sector, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You need large numbers of troops to do this, but so what! So long as it works. Give the people some autonomy, establish a neighborhood watch program, don't go randomly kicking in doors and searching people just willy nilly. Now- suspiscious vehicles, persons, activities are always stopped, searched, photographed, recorded, and examined, guys are detained, retina scanned, etc.

Intel is the key to success, we must cast as wide a net as possible, and gather all forms of it. We will then have our net full of all sorts of things we don't need, but there will also be the real gems in there too. Software - Technology, can help us sift through the massive quantities of intelligence. We must sift through it in these situations because -

A. The culture isn't native or familiar to us.

-and-

B. We don't have a native grasp of the language.

Increase the amount of intel gathered and the speed at which it is digested, in order to produce more actionable intelligence. One thing I would have liked to have done differently is to take a small voice recorder with me on my Patrols to have the interpreter listen to later. You can't always have one there, but you would like to know what people mutter sometimes. It takes a long time for a cop to be a good street cop, you can't tell me our Soldiers develop and become good street cops in a year. Not a criticism, I just want us to succeed.

Your thoughts?

[x SF med]

Originally Posted by Bill Harsey

I didn't know they'd improved to that level over there.

Puling, spineless, misguided, honorless, ingrates with nothing better to do than foment dissent, and incite chaos among the quasi intellectual, bourgeois-psuedosocialist, fiscally irresponsible masses of democrat pukes by filling their half closed minds with irresponsible, unvetted news stories designed to fool the aforementioned group into believing they are the only truth?

Is that a better description, Bill? I used an NPR vocabulary for it too, pretty neat, huh?