"Fixing" the War

This is an old tale. Long forgotten. But like all good political bedtime stories, it's well worth telling again.

Once upon a time, there was a retired general named Paul Van Riper. In 1966, as a young Marine officer and American advisor in Vietnam, he was wounded in action; he later became the first president of the Marine Corps University, retired from the Corps as a Lieutenant General, and then took up the task of leading the enemy side in Pentagon war games.

Over the years, Van Riper had developed into a free-wheeling military thinker, given to quoting Von Clausewitz and Sun-tzu, and dubious about the ability of the latest technology to conquer all in its path. If you wanted to wage war, he thought, it might at least be reasonable to study war seriously (if not go to war yourself) rather than just fall in love with military power. It seemed to him that you took a risk any time you dismissed your enemy as without resources (or a prayer) against your awesome power and imagined your campaign to come as a sure-fire "cakewalk." As he pointed out, "Many enemies are not frightened by that overwhelming force. They put their minds to the problem and think through: how can I adapt and avoid that overwhelming force and yet do damage against the United States?"

As a result, Van Riper took the task of simulated enemy commander quite seriously. He also had a few issues with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's much vaunted "military transformation," his desire to create a sleek, high-tech, agile military that would drive everything before it. He thought the Rumsfeld program added up to just so many "shallow," "fundamentally flawed" slogans. ("There's very little intellectual content to what they say… ‘Information dominance,' ‘network-centric warfare,' ‘focused logistics' -- you could fill a book with all of these slogans.")

In July 2002, he got the chance to test that proposition. At the cost of a quarter-billion dollars, the Pentagon launched the most elaborate war games in its history, immodestly entitled "Millennium Challenge 02." These involved all four services in "17 simulation locations and nine live-force training sites." Officially a war against a fictional country in the Persian Gulf region--but obviously Iraq--it was specifically scripted to prove the efficacy of the Rumsfeld-style invasion that the Bush administration had already decided to launch.

Lt. Gen. Van Riper commanded the "Red Team"--the Iraqis of this simulation-–against the "Blue Team," U.S. forces; and, unfortunately for Rumsfeld, he promptly stepped out of the script. Knowing that sometimes the only effective response to high-tech warfare was the lowest tech warfare imaginable, he employed some of the very techniques the Iraqi insurgency would begin to use all-too-successfully a year or two later.

Such simple devices as, according to the Army Times, using "motorcycle messengers to transmit orders, negating Blue's high-tech eavesdropping capabilities," and "issuing attack orders via the morning call to prayer broadcast from the minarets of his country's mosques." In the process, Van Riper trumped the techies.

"At one point in the game," as Fred Kaplan of Slate wrote in March 2003, "when Blue's fleet entered the Persian Gulf, he sank some of the ships with suicide-bombers in speed boats. (At that point, the managers stopped the game, ‘refloated' the Blue fleet, and resumed play.)" After three or four days, with the Blue Team in obvious disarray, the game was halted and the rules rescripted. In a quiet protest, Van Riper stepped down as enemy commander.

Millennium Challenge 02 was subsequently written up as a vindication of Rumsfeld's "military transformation." On that basis--with no one paying more mind to Van Riper (who, this April, called openly for Rumsfeld's resignation) than to Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki when, in February 2003, he pointed out that hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed to occupy Iraq, the "transformational" invasion was launched--with all the predictably catastrophic results now so widely known.

The Millennium Challenge 02 war games were already underway when, late that July, Sir Richard Dearlove, head of MI6 (the British equivalent of the CIA), returned to London from high-level meetings in Washington to report to Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top officials. In a secret meeting, he told them that the decision for war in Iraq had already been made by the Bush administration and that now, in a memorable phrase, "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

On May 1st, 2005, notes from this meeting, dubbed "the Downing Street Memo," were leaked to the London Sunday Times. Thanks to that memo and other documents, it's now commonly accepted that the Bush administration "fixed" the intelligence around their war of choice. But Lt. Gen. Van Riper's forgotten story should remind us that they also "fixed" the war they were planning to fight.

Between then and now, when it came to Iraq, there wasn't much that wasn't "fixed" in a similar manner. Only recently, James A. Baker's Iraq Study Group report described the way levels of violence in Iraq were grossly underreported by U.S. intelligence officials--in one case, only 93 "attacks or significant acts of violence" being officially recorded on a day when the number was well above 1,000. As the report politely summed up this particular fix-it-up methodology, "Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals."

But here's the thing: The Iraq Study Group, too--like every other mainstream gathering of advisors, officials, or pundits--"fixed" the intelligence. Think of the ISG as the clean-up-crew version of the Blue Team of Millennium Challenge 02. Before they even began, Bush family consigliere Baker and cohorts ensured that, while the ISG would be filled with notable movers and shakers from numerous previous administrations, no one on it, nor any expert "team" advising it would represent the one point of view that a majority of Americans have by now come to support--actual withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq on a set timeline.

You would not, for instance, find retired Lt. Gen. William E. Odom, the former Director of the National Security Agency, who has openly called for the U.S. to "cut and run" from Iraq, on the panel. Despite the report's harsh descriptions of the last three years of failed policy and some perfectly sane negotiation suggestions, it dismissed the idea of such a withdrawal out of hand--because such a dismissal was simply built into the group's very make up.

It turns out, of course, that when you control both sides of a war game or the range of opinion on a panel, you are assured of the results you're going to get. The problem comes when you only control one side of a situation; and when, as American commanders learned in the early days of the Korean War and again in Vietnam, whether due to racism or imperial blindness, you also discount and disrespect your enemies.

Unfortunately for the Bush administration, it turned out that, while you could fix the war games and the intelligence, you couldn't be assured of fixing reality itself, which has a tendency to remain obdurately, passionately, irascibly unconquerable. Yes, you could ignore reality for a while. (The President, when being told a few hard Iraqi truths in 2004 by Col. Derek Harvey, the Defense Intelligence Agency's senior intelligence officer for Iraq, reportedly turned to his aides and asked, "Is this guy a Democrat?") But you couldn't do it forever, not when the Lt. Gen. Van Ripers of Iraq refused to step aside and you weren't capable of removing them; not when you couldn't even figure out, most of the time, who they were. It was then that the fixers first found themselves in a genuine fix, from which none of Washington's movers and shakers have yet been willing to extract themselves.

For more on why the "withdrawal option" was off the table for the Iraq Study Group, check out Michael Schwartz's "Why Withdrawal Is Unmentionable" at Tomdispatch.com.

Comments (38)

1. One quarter of a billion fucking dollars to stage a complete sham.

   Let that sink in for a while...

   Posted by drhammer at 12/14/2006 @ 09:05am

2. The war is lost...all but CPT, LVLIB and the few 35%ers admit it.

   But the problem is the "point men" the Democrats are putting out, on full and immediate withdrawal, are guys like Kucinich who comes off as some looney left stereotype with his "Department of Peace".

   The leadership will go with ISG, they'll use it as political cover so that if attacked they can say "HEY! This plan was endorsed by James Baker a Republican and friend of Bush Sr....is HE a 'cut & runner'?"

   Meanwhile, Bush will give his NOW "POST-Christmas" speech...put in another 20,000..."only for six months"...and claim that the withdrawal will START by July 2007.

   But given no real opposition by the Dems....he'll get away with it.

   Posted by Mask at 12/14/2006 @ 09:07am

3. You may be right to a certain extent here Mask, that the Democratic leadership will let BushCo have their six months to put in another 20,000 men (if they can scrape them up; even Abizaid, in remarks to The Washington Post, now thinks that's unlikely in any real sense, i.e., that we might be able to do it temporarily by "accelerate and extend" but that it can't be sustained for more than about three months.) That would let them then demand withdrawal in mid 2007 when the whole thing is proven to be a dismal failure (and even you have to admit, Mask, that Pelosi's statements on "vigorous oversight" means that the Democrats will be watching very closely.) And by then there will be political cover enough that the "cut and run" label, or even the "defeat" label (so favored by our own CPT) will be seen even by Republicans as nothing more than face-saving propaganda. I may have misread Pelosi's tactics but not her strategy, which I still contend is withdrawal. She just seems to be trying to give BushCo enough rope to hang itself higher than Haman. I don't think this will be "getting away with it", but we'll have to see how it plays out.

   By the way Hammer, it is a truely ridiculous thing to see the armed forces spending that much on a war game and then rigging the results. Just stupid, and we can thank Van Riper for doing a fine job of showing Rumsfeld for the rank amateur he is.

   Posted by Stwriley at 12/14/2006 @ 11:27am

4. TOM,

   I'm detecting just a liiiiitle conspiracy mentality here

   ct

   Posted by CHIP THORNTON at 12/14/2006 @ 11:52am

5. When you get an utterly inexcusable fiasco like the Iraq war, and the official solution is to get some old gang of pickled brains to analyze what went wrong, as if we didn't already know, and then the president has some media-event meeting every day for two weeks, big speech to follow ...

   ... and not the slightest indication that ANYTHING will change ...

   Yeah, you start get a conspiracy mentality after a while. Any clear thinking person would.

   Posted by MyParadigm at 12/14/2006 @ 12:09pm

6. STWIRLY

   I want you to do me a favor...ask all of your pals...this

   When has the Blue forces...EVER beaten the OPFOR at Ft. Irwin?????

   They will have to go back awhile to think about that one

   Ft Irwin..being the National Training Center...where Lt. Gen Bell had a hand in commanding the Blue forces. Sorry much to your irking Rummy wasnt commanding against Ripper

   Another ommission several NEW technologies and concepts were being used....and like all first time models...there were hiccups...

   And another thing. the problem with simulation war games...they are simulated...no LIVE rounds with actual gunners bearing down on a targets...so when the computer tells you didnt hit what you aimed it, that is suspect. You see many times the simulation equipment is NOT original hardware that comes with the weapon system itself. In other words..gunners usually dont work with it and thus are not familiar with the additional software.

   A Guess what...rigging results???? your way off....you know how many times...Generals re-start war games...over and over again and again until the Blue force actually wins? Several times..

   Why??? to the cynical leftists assholes..it is to rig the result...not so...it is in FACT to gain optimun training value.

   If you called it quits after the first excercise...my God what a waste of money in moving all those people all over the country to execute a single war game.

   And one other thing if Ripper was so right on target...answer this for me...Exactly how many of our ships were destroyed in the Gulf?????????????????

   Posted by CPT at 12/14/2006 @ 12:20pm

7. and like all first time models...there were hiccups...

   Posted by CPT 12/14/2006 @ 12:20am

   In a non-"war game", how many dead GIs equal a "hiccup"?

   Posted by Mask at 12/14/2006 @ 12:23pm

8. MASK

   Has it occurred to you...that there are OTHER groups making recommendations for new strategy on Iraq?

   Guess what GEN KEANE former vice-cheif of staff of the Army..the number two...under Shinseki and Schoomaker...is heading one....and guess what he is a STRONG advocate in WINNING....he is without a doubt convinced it can be done..al it requires is the "will to do so"

   Better hope he doesnt listen to a group that is actually advocateing a plan to, and i know its bad language to you,hehe..WIN.

   Posted by CPT at 12/14/2006 @ 12:26pm

9. In a non-"war game", how many dead GIs equal a "hiccup"?

   Posted by MASK 12/14/2006 @ 12:23am | ignore this person

   Ask Gen Omar Bradley about Operation Cobra, or the Battle of the Hedgerows...about that one.

   Posted by CPT at 12/14/2006 @ 12:28pm

10. MASK

    WWII

    Posted by CPT at 12/14/2006 @ 12:29pm

11. Posted by CPT 12/14/2006 @ 12:28am

    Yes, oddly, I know who General Bradley was.

    But he's dead...and I'm asking YOU...

    How many dead GIs do you consider a "hiccup" in real war situation?

    Posted by Mask at 12/14/2006 @ 12:37pm

12. BTW...nice quote from the "GI's General"-

    "I am under no illusion that our present strategy of using means short of total war to achieve our ends and oppose communism is a guarantee that a world war will not be thrust upon us. But a policy of patience and determination without provoking a world war, while we improve our military power, is one which we believe we must continue to follow…."

    "Under present circumstances, we have recommended against enlarging the war from Korea to also include Red China. The course of action often described as a limited war with Red China would increase the risk we are taking by engaging too much of our power in an area that is not the critical strategic prize."

    "Red China is not the powerful nation seeking to dominate the world. Frankly, in the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, this strategy would involve us in the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy."

    ----Testimony before the Senate Committees on Armed Services and Foreign Relations, May 15, 1951.--Military Situation in the Far East, hearings, 82d Congress, 1st session, part 2, p. 732 (1951). On p. 753, Bradley repeats his conviction that it is "a wrong war at the wrong place and against a wrong enemy."

    Wonder what he'd say today....No, wait...CPT can channel him and tell us....right, CPT?

    Posted by Mask at 12/14/2006 @ 12:40pm

13. MASK

    In that case...i will ask in the same spirit that i suspect your question was asked.

    Exactly how many of our ships were destroyed in the Gulf?????????????????

    Posted by CPT at 12/14/2006 @ 12:47pm

14. MASK

    Then you ought to research how is operation cobra plan fraticided several hundred American troops

    Posted by CPT at 12/14/2006 @ 12:49pm

15. Posted by CPT 12/14/2006 @ 12:49am

    You think if Bradley were around today, he could figure out a way for us to "break out from Baghdad" and into the surrounding countryside, the way he did for Normandy, huh?

    "a wrong war at the wrong place and against a wrong enemy."---Gen. Bradley.

    Again, what would he say today? Would he be a "Abizaid" or a "Shinseki"?

    Posted by Mask at 12/14/2006 @ 12:56pm

16. Throughout the centuries, Japanese warriors lived and fought by a strict code of conduct. This code was loosely analogous to the western concept of chivalry, although it was much more comprehensive, and more inextricably woven into the lives of the warrior class.

    One of the tenets of the code equated surrender with dishonor. This belief, combined with the inefficiency of post-WWII communications in the Pacific, made it possible for some Japanese soldiers to be left behind on islands in the Phillipines after the cessation of the hostilities. For decades, they hid out, unaware and/or refusing to believe that the war was over. The code they lived by took the option of surrender completely off the table.

    Ironically, that code was known as "Bushido".

    Posted by drhammer at 12/14/2006 @ 1:03pm

17. Fortunately President Bush agrees with most of his military leadership and the great military's of history that defeat is not an option to consider.

    Posted by LVLIBERTY1 12/14/2006 @ 1:13pm

    LVLIB...do you think President Bush agrees with...

    his incoming Secretary of Defense?

    (ref: Gates' statements to the Senate Committee on whether we are winning or losing?)

    Posted by Mask at 12/14/2006 @ 1:41pm

18. Posted by LVLIBERTY1 12/14/2006 @ 3:32pm

    Well, here's the confusing part, LL.

    Bush CHOSE Robert Gates. Now...did he do it...blindly?

    By that I mean, did he not ASK Gates his opinion of whether we were winning or losing in Iraq (Gates said "losing" of course)?

    and if not...why not? Why choose a man for #2 at our national defense, who believes something contradictory to yourself (or as you said "wrong")?

    Sounds like poor leadership, doesn't it?

    "Bush wants differing views"?...to what end, if he won't accept their advice?

    Posted by Mask at 12/14/2006 @ 3:48pm

19. BTW...glad to see even David Corn and I can agree on something!

    comment | posted December 14, 2006 (January 1, 2007 issue) The Waiting Game David Corn

    Posted by Mask at 12/14/2006 @ 3:54pm

20. MASK

    Actually i have heard it expressed by many..that the definition of leadership is making tough decisions, despite the "good" advice of others.

    Lincoln got alot of "good" advice about what to do about the rebellious southern states..many advocated a let him go policy.

    Posted by CPT at 12/14/2006 @ 5:17pm

21. I want you to do me a favor...ask all of your pals...this

    When has the Blue forces...EVER beaten the OPFOR at Ft. Irwin?????

    Weel, they usually lose, of course, since i the normal course of things they're a regular unit training against the OPFOR, usually the best that the Army can field. The point is that they do usually win, CPT, it's how the Blue forces learn what they're doing wrong and what tactics can be used against them in as near a real-life situation as possible.

    By the way, the Mllennium Challenge '02 (the war game in question) wasn't just conducted at Ft. Irwin, nor was it the kind of training exercise usually conducted there. It was supposed to be an entirely "free play" war game to test the concepts developed at Rumsfeld's direction (the whole "lean and mean" concept of Force Transformation and its attendant dependence on technology.)

    They will have to go back awhile to think about that one

    Ft Irwin..being the National Training Center...where Lt. Gen Bell had a hand in commanding the Blue forces. Sorry much to your irking Rummy wasnt commanding against Ripper

    Another ommission several NEW technologies and concepts were being used....and like all first time models...there were hiccups...

    And another thing. the problem with simulation war games...they are simulated...no LIVE rounds with actual gunners bearing down on a targets...so when the computer tells you didnt hit what you aimed it, that is suspect. You see many times the simulation equipment is NOT original hardware that comes with the weapon system itself. In other words..gunners usually dont work with it and thus are not familiar with the additional software.

    A Guess what...rigging results???? your way off....you know how many times...Generals re-start war games...over and over again and again until the Blue force actually wins? Several times..

    Why??? to the cynical leftists assholes..it is to rig the result...not so...it is in FACT to gain optimun training value.

    If you called it quits after the first excercise...my God what a waste of money in moving all those people all over the country to execute a single war game.

    And one other thing if Ripper was so right on target...answer this for me...Exactly how many of our ships were destroyed in the Gulf?????????????????

    As usual, you miss the point made in the article and in the linked Army Times story from 2002. The point was not that things went wrong, of course they did. That is the nature of all war games. The point the Van Riper was making and the reason he quit as OPFOR commander before Millennium Challenge '02 was over (remember that "resign if your objections aren't listened to" comment of yours?) was that he saw the entire set of results begin rigged to make it look as if things that weren't working were working. I give you Van Riper's own words from an email quoted by Army Times that he sent to other officers (one of whom apparently leaked it to the publication):

    "Unfortunately, in my opinion, neither the construct nor the conduct of the exercise allowed for the concepts of rapid decisive operations, effects-based operations, or operational net assessment to be properly assessed," he wrote. "… [I]t was in actuality an exercise that was almost entirely scripted to ensure a Blue ‘win.'"

    This is not about whether they restarted the war games, once or multiple times. Of course that's commonly done as a training aid when the point is to get the Blue force to learn. This was to test concepts, not for its training value, as all the planners involved have made abundantly clear. Van Riper is not saying that they should have run the exercise once and gone home, but that they should have actually tested the concepts involved without rigging the situations again and again to ensure that they succeeded no matter what the OPFOR did. His whole point is that it really was a colossal waste of money and expertise for what amounted to an exercise in self-congradulation rather than in actual testing. He wasn't alone in this opinion either, as the Army Times article goes on to point out:

    A retired colonel familiar with the JFCOM concepts said Van Riper's concerns were well-founded. "I don't have a problem with the ideas," said the colonel, who declined to be identified. "I do have a problem with the fact that we're trying to suggest somehow that we've validated them, and now it's time to pay for them. We're going to buy them -- that's bullshit."

    As to your challenge on how many ships we lost, that is not the point and never was. Just because the Iraqis chose to only use some of the tactics that Van Riper did (like couriers for order distribution) does not mean that they could not have done so, which was Van Riper's point back in 2002 and a perfectly valid argument. You're trying to argue that just because it didn't happen that validates rigging the game? That is one of the more ridiculous ideas that you've come up with, and you've come up with some doozies recently. I am probably a far more experience war gamer than you can imagine, since it is a critical part of military history and is one of the tools we use to understand the history we study. I'd never think that the situation Van Riper and the other c ritics describe would be a valid test of any tactical or operational concept.

    Posted by Stwriley at 12/14/2006 @ 7:03pm

22. Posted by CPT 12/14/2006 @ 5:17pm

    Actually i have heard it expressed by many..that the definition of leadership is making tough decisions, despite the "good" advice of others.

    Lincoln got alot of "good" advice about what to do about the rebellious southern states..many advocated a let him go policy.

    But most of his advisors did not. They advocated a pursuit of the war more vigorous than Lincoln himself, at times. Once again, a study in CPT's counter-factual version of history.

    Posted by Stwriley at 12/14/2006 @ 7:05pm

23. What Englehardt of course does not state is that none of General Van Riper's tactics were actually used against us during the US invasion. The attack and overthrow of the Saddam regime took place quickly, and with few casualties.

    Well, that's not entirely correct. Some of Van Riper's tactics were used, others were not. When it all comes down to it, no one really thought that U.S. forces couldn't invade successfully, and that's not what Engelhardt is arguing. His point is about all the other things that have not "gone as scripted" according to the original neo-con/BushCo fantasy, and he is dead right about that.

    One comprehensive study that appears fairly balanced (it provides ammo to both sides of the debate) acknowledges that those critics who called for 300-400,000 troops in the aftermath of the war exaggerate the availability of those troop levels making the point moot.

    Hendrickson and Tucker's point is a bit more subtle than the "moot" designator would imply. They don't say that the forces would have been entirely unavailable, but that deploying them would have required a very large Guard and Reserve activation and would have impaired the longer term ability to keep force levels at what we have now (a perfectly valid point, by the way.) They are essentially saying that both the Neo-con plan and the OPLAN 1003-98 were based on optimistic assessments of the post-war situation that would not have been bourn out. Here I don't entirely agree with them, though they do make good points. I think, given the same data they cite, that the situation would have been more controllable and taken a less destructive path with the OPLAN 1003-98 concepts used, but that's never going to be a testable idea. Still, their idea that some things were inevitable is certainly correct, and their assessment of the overall lessons of the mission is spot on:

    Operation IRAQI FREEDOM was in basic respects a test of the theory that civilians must intervene in the military planning process and force their perspectives down the chain of command. Though the record of Iraq war planning does nothing to advance the case for civilian activism, critics also have neglected the larger lesson that there are certain limits to what military power can accomplish. For certain purposes, like the creation of a liberal democratic society that will be a model for others, military power is a blunt instrument, destined by its very nature to give rise to unintended and unwelcome consequences. Rather than "do it better next time," a better lesson is "don't do it at all."

    Critics from both the left and the right (and I include myself on this) agree that:

    1. Bremer's dissolving the Iraqi Army was a critical error in preventing the rise of the insurgents to the degree we have witnessed in the occupation.

    2. The absolutist dismissal of all Baathists without even conducting a vetting process was another critical error.

    Without these two critical errors in judgment, we might well have witnessed a much smoother transition in Iraq and greater cooperation from the Europeans and the UN.

    Unfortunately, though you are correct about the foolishness of the two points you cite, I have to side with Hendrickson and Tucker on the idea that in the end it would not have been sufficient to stem the problems that now grip Iraq (though I agree, as I noted above, that these might have made things slightly less bad, which is certainly not an idea we should discount.)

    This takes me back to the foundational argument put forward by Engelhardt and his use of General Van Riper to suggest that the Iraq war was not winnable and that cut and run is the only policy to pursue

    This is the standard argument of leftists going back to the Vietnam War. Their philosophy is that the US should admit defeat and retreat like cowards. Fortunately President Bush agrees with most of his military leadership and the great military's of history that defeat is not an option to consider. We fight wars to win, not to retreat like cowards as the left dreams of.

    But most of us who hold that view say what Hendrickson and Tucker say, that we should never have done it in the first place for exactly the reason that the goal (well, the eventually admitted goal anyway) of establishing a democracy and spreading it elsewhere in the Middle East was inherently an unwinnable goal. Our point was and always has been that we cannot acheive what we set out to do and the only solution is to stop trying now before we do even more damage than we already have, both to ourselves and to the Iraqis. This has nothing to do with "retreat" or "cowardice" or any of those other terms that war supporters love to throw around, it has to do with realistically assessing what we have done and what we can do to minimize harm and achieve the best possible outcome both for our own national interests and for those we have dragged into them.

    Posted by Stwriley at 12/14/2006 @ 7:45pm

24. Actually i have heard it expressed by many..that the definition of leadership is making tough decisions, despite the "good" advice of others.

    Posted by CPT 12/14/2006 @ 5:17pm

    So by that definition...HITLER was a "good leader", because he ignored the advice of his generals when it came to Russia, etc.?

    Posted by Mask at 12/14/2006 @ 7:55pm

25. Posted by LVLIBERTY1 12/14/2006 @ 9:52pm

    But the President isn't an "ordinary executive", LL.

    Look at just one thing...the Presidential Line of Succession.

    Say on January 15, at the State of the Union, an airliner hits the Capital....kills Bush, Cheney, Pelosi, the President pro tempore of the Senate, Condoleezza Rice, and Paulson of the Treasury....

    the next President becomes Robert Gates, Sec of Defense.

    So...Bush has now put a man who thinks we are LOSING in Iraq....in charge of what to do about Iraq!

    Posted by Mask at 12/14/2006 @ 10:20pm

26. That he did suggests to me that his position is not as cast in stone as you and others including the MSM maintain.

    Posted by LVLIBERTY1 12/14/2006 @ 10:55pm

    Well, that's somewhat true. After all, Gates DID say we weren't winning in Iraq, but we weren't losing either. So that "stone" is pretty quishy.

    But it does make one curious that Bush nominated a guy for second guy in the civilian chain of command....thinks we are both losing and winning in Iraq.

    Plus, it doesn't really matter because...despite CPT's attempts to spin the "good news"...the majority of the "bad news" is...you and he are part of a VERY small 35% minority who still support this debacle.

    LL....so when Gates answered "Yes, Senator, I think we're losing

    Posted by Mask at 12/15/2006 @ 09:01am

27. LL....so when Gates answered "Yes, Senator, I think we're losing

    Posted by MASK 12/15/2006 @ 09:01am | ignore this person

    Early line, I missed editing....sorry.

    Posted by Mask at 12/15/2006 @ 09:02am

28. STWIRLY

    "As usual, you miss the point made in the article"

    Excuse me, the point of Englehart's article was not to support Ripers assertions. It was in fact, as the title of the article suggests...to support the FALSE notion for "Fixing the War," in particular that the war games and models were fixed. The example he uses is this particular war game.

    Ripper's story is merely used to support that larger contention.

    Posted by CPT at 12/15/2006 @ 11:04am

29. MASK

    "you and he are part of a VERY small 35% minority who still support this debacle."

    But we are part of a sizable majority who still believe we can win 60%.

    And part of an even larger majority that believes in the importance of that victory. 81%.

    That is not spin...just simple FACT.

    Posted by CPT at 12/15/2006 @ 11:07am

30. Posted by CPT 12/15/2006 @ 11:07am

    They "believe we can win"....but "don't support the war" and "thought it wasn't worth it"?!?!?!?!!??

    Posted by Mask at 12/15/2006 @ 11:56am

31. Posted by LVLIBERTY1 12/14/2006 @ 9:47pm

    You know, for a moment I thought we had a new, more reasonable and fact-based Lvliberty on our hands; I should have known better. Instead he has revived his obsession with the discredited concept of global jihad. Well, on to the probably fruitless task of showing him (for the umpteenth time) why this is a ridiculous notion and why Iraq has nothing to do with the vast Islamic conspiracy that inhabits his darkest nightmares (though certainly no portion of the real world.) but only with the problems that now exist within the borders of what is shortly to recognized as a failed state (and one we created.)

    Though you give a thorough analysis in support of the view of the defeatists, in the end despite your denials, that is exactly what you and those with similar views are proposing.

    It seems that, like CPT, you have no other rubrick in which to analyze strategy or operations other than that of victory or defeat. Strategic withdrawal is not defeat, it is the recognition by a military power that they have made a mistake with a strategy or a particular operation and that they need, for their own purposes to correct that mistake by changing the strategy or ending the operation. That is exactly what we are talking about here. Defeat in such a situation is continuing the failed effort and continuing to cause harm to your own interests. This is not a difficult concept, even if it doesn't fit well into your Rambo-esque version of reality.

    The predominant view of the field commanders is 180 from this cut and run view. Fortunately, they share the view of the president.

    Well, no actually. Many in the military have long contemplated ideas that would, while not necessarily agreeing with my views 100%, hardly be the opposite of them either. Abizaid, for instance, opposes the "double down" idea that is currently being kickes around at the Joint Chiefs level (and that BushCo seems to have latched onto since Wednesday's meeting with them; see a good story on that here [latimes.com].) Casey has long been contemplating a withdrawal from Iraqi cities as the only logical choice for U.S. forces, and even the officers that have advocated form the "double down" admit that it is at best a long shot for controlling the situation (I wouldn't even give it that much, but hope springs eternal in the military breast when they are faced with failure.)

    No one ever defeated an enemy by surrendering. This is as the president declared in his address to the nation from Congress in 2001, a war that will be fought for decades. And it is just as legitimate a view and that Iraq is one of the fronts in that war, as the opposing view that you and others hold.

    This is not a debate that will be resolved anywhere except at the ballot box in 2008. If the president's view and those who agree with his conclusions doesn't prevail in 2008, you will still have the same problem. We just will have to redeploy to Iraq and elsewhere as the jihadists continue their goals to unite first the nations of the Middle East and then beyond under the rule of the Caliphate (or the 12th Imam if the Shia prevail).

    The powder keg that has been simmering for decades by the Sunni jihadists to eliminate the Shia as a heretical sect is now rising to a level that could well bring at least a broad scale regional war if not a global one. On the other side, Iran's mullahs have been busy building their base expansion with Sadr, Hezbollah, and Hamas.

    Our retreating in shame from Iraq as you and others would have us do will do nothing to halt this from exploding. I pray that the defeatists do not prevail.

    And here we get to the crux of the problem. Lvliberty has signed on to the idea that we are engaged in this fight against a vast global network that is bent on establishing the Caliphate of the 21st century. The problem is, it is an argument that just doesn't hold water. Just because there are a limited number of extremists that espouse this view does not make it prevelent in Islam or in the Middle East (or anywhere esle for that matter.) It is like saying the because there are still Sendero Luminoso rebels running around the Andes that there is a vast Communist conspiracy to take over the work by fomenting worker's rebellions against all world governments. It is taking the words of a few extremists and equating them with the views of vast numbers of people who do not, in fact, hold such views. So no, Lvliberty, it is not a legitimate view by any stretch of the imagination. It is based on a fantasy that has no relation to the actual power or reach of limited organizations like al Qaeda. They are certainly specific threats, and should be hunted down like the international criminals that they are, but they do not and cannot have the power to do what their rhetoric says they want to do in the normal course of events. The only way that such a situation will come about is if we lend it legitimacy and behave in such a way as to convince the vast majority of muslims that we are the real threat and that their only hope to resist an imperialistic conquest (as they will see it in such a situation) is to turn to these same radicals. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

    That is the situation we have created in Iraq, in a limited way. The very reason that people there are turning to radicals like Sadr and to the reliance on their own militias (whether national like Sadr's or the vast number of more localized groups) is that we have made the situation so unstable by our very presence as to give them no viable alternative. While we certainly have given a battle ground to the Sunni-Shi'ite conflict, that is in many ways a symptom rather than a cause and is concerned with Iraq, not the wider Middle East. The situation is ruled far more by local that by sectarian concerns wherever you go. The Kurds, for instance, are firm backers of Shi'ite power in Iraq even though they are Sunnis (a fact often overlooked.) Hamas and Hezbollah are firm allies against Israel despite the sectarian differences (Hezbollah is Shi'ite almost exclusively while Hamas, being a Palestinian organization, is specifically Sunni.) You mistake the concerns of states like Saudi Arabia when they speak of backing the Iraqi Sunnis; they are concerned with Iranian influence in Iraq and the subsequent threat to their controlling position in the world oil markets (a cooperating Iran and Iraq could seriously undermine Saudi efforts to control oil pricing and pruduction.) This all ignores the basic interests of other players (Syria, for instance) who will not look to see Iran prevail but who also have an interest (as Iran itself does) in preventing a completely destabilized Iraq, which would create a completely failed state and a haven for regime opponents on their borders. Your analysis and belief is far to simplistic to take into account the vast complexities of this situation and the nature of Middle Eastern politics. Our presence in the region only exacerbates problems that we do not want exacerbated, whereas if we withdraw there will be room to apply ourselves to solving problems with the result that we would make the Middle East more stable and less prone to the rhetoric and policies of radicals of every stripe. That is not defeatist, rather that is the essence of recognizing our own national interests and acting upon them in a rational and useful manner rather than sticking to a cowboy mentality of the world where we have to show up at high noon and face down the black hats or we'll be called cowards. Your argument is just a more complex version of the "embolden our enemies" nonsense that CPT spouts, but it is no better at advancing our national interests and, indeed, is demonstrably counter-productive in pursuing them.

    Posted by Stwriley at 12/15/2006 @ 12:07pm

32. STW, if I may....this line from LL-

    "The predominant view of the field commanders is 180 from this cut and run view. Fortunately, they share the view of the president."

    Are active-duty field commanders ALLOWED to have another view than their Commander-in-Chief and express it to the public and press?!?!?!

    Posted by Mask at 12/15/2006 @ 12:29pm

33. Excuse me, the point of Englehart's article was not to support Ripers assertions. It was in fact, as the title of the article suggests...to support the FALSE notion for "Fixing the War," in particular that the war games and models were fixed. The example he uses is this particular war game.

    Ripper's story is merely used to support that larger contention.

    And once again the point of both my reply and the articles escapes you completely. Engelhardt does spend the bulk of the article defending Van Riper's contention that the Millennium Challenge '02 war games were fixed to return the answers that higher-ups wanted to receive, which was the point you challenged me on with a non-sequiter about the nature of training related war games and that I replied to. He uses the first 2/3 of the article that is taken up with that point to then support a larger but definately related contention (with much additional evidence) that other aspects of the lead in to and conduct of the Iraq War were also "fixed" in a similar manner as the Millennium Challenge '02 results. He specifically cites the MI6 conclusions of fixing intelligence and the ISG's revelation on the under-reporting of violence in Iraq. The whole point is that what Van Riper reported in that specific instance is indicative of a wider problem with BushCo, that they don't want to hear and will "fix" anything that contradicts with their predisposed viewpoint. Once again, you have failed miserably at analysis despite the fact that the point made was in specific answer to your own contention that the Millennium Challenge '02 was not fixed and that point was what I (and Engelhardt and the Army Times before me) did seek to answer. I notice that you don't even try to counter that point, but instead try to come back with a misconstrual of my argument as though I had tried to contend that Engelhardt's article was only about Millennium Challenge '02, which was clearly never my point at all. The larger point at the end of Engelhardt's article was never part of your original post and I left it aside, though you are just as wrong there as you were about the more finite point that I did answer. Really, CPT, these are childish debating tactics and far to easily countered. You really need to either grow up and leave these behind for real debate or be prepared to be shown a fool every time you attempt such silly tactics.

    Posted by Stwriley at 12/15/2006 @ 12:44pm

34. Posted by MASK 12/15/2006 @ 12:29am

    STW, if I may....this line from LL-

    "The predominant view of the field commanders is 180 from this cut and run view. Fortunately, they share the view of the president."

    Are active-duty field commanders ALLOWED to have another view than their Commander-in-Chief and express it to the public and press?!?!?!

    Of course they are and they do, especially on points of tactics, operations or strategy that can be construed as pursuing the overall policy goal set by the C-in-C, or even on policy in the absence of clear direction from the top. There is also institutional etiquette involved that holds these same officers back from outright criticism of policy (or strategic, operational, etc.) decisions that they may not agree with. It's why we see the burden of speaking out on implemented policy being bourn by retired officers rather than active duty ones. It is in the nature of U.S. military culture (and the same is true elsewhere in the west) that direct criticism of the C-in-C is regarded as off-limits. None of that prevents the diversity of opinions that we have seen being aired recently, espcially in the wake of BushCo's own stress on "reassessing the situation" which pretty much leaves the door open for most dissention.

    Posted by Stwriley at 12/15/2006 @ 2:36pm

35. Posted by STWRILEY 12/15/2006 @ 2:36pm

    I meant that part about "holding back from outright criticism of the policy".

    LL, but CPT to a greater extent, seems to think that it's the military officers who are saying we are winning in Iraq and that our strategy is a great success and Bush is merely AGREEING with them.

    While I think the truth is, Bush says we are winning and the strategy is a success...and the officers following that "etiquette" don't contradict it.

    Posted by Mask at 12/15/2006 @ 2:50pm

36. Posted by MASK 12/15/2006 @ 2:50pm

    While I think the truth is, Bush says we are winning and the strategy is a success...and the officers following that "etiquette" don't contradict it.

    All too true, I fear. Their loyalty to the service keeps them from openly bucking the C-in-C and their own institutional instinct (which we see in CPT's own behavior) is to "work the mission" and try to get the job done. The natural military mindset really is to keep going no matter what and it's with some difficulty that the higher level officers overcome this to think about larger questions of strategy and policy that don't fit so simply into the "can-do" box. They learn that not everything can be (or should be) done, but they also have to contend with the (quite correct) attitude that is drummed into them from the outset that the civilians are in control and that their job is to carry out the mission the civilians give them whether they think it's a good idea or not.

    Posted by Stwriley at 12/15/2006 @ 4:13pm

37. Posted by STWRILEY 12/15/2006 @ 4:13pm

    It's approaching a "tenet of faith" at this point.

    CPT tried to glean some "good news" from recent Gallup polling that showed that Americans "want to win in Iraq"...yet totally ignored the parts that showed that they ALSO want out in a year or less, didn't support it, and thought it was a mistake to go in.

    His only counter is Bush, and general officers who've either laid their reputations on the line that they can "win it", or are restricted by their own code of honor from saying Gates was right when he said we weren't losing, but we weren't winning either. (Such a crack in that armor of denial would swamp Bush and his "I listen to the commanders" line).

    And of course CPT's embracing the McCain-Lieberman idea of 20,000 MORE troops "only for six months til the Iraqi Army can take over".

    Posted by Mask at 12/15/2006 @ 4:32pm

38. War is war, it is not matter where it is. The main reason for the warms is power or to become much power. But unfortunately, US lost the iraq warm, they could not or did not take the promises to get democracy on the Iraq. Every day Iraq war becomes a big boggy. Some useful links are below to fix the war results for Middle East area.

    Linked text [takeinfo.net] Linked text [takeinfo.net] Linke d text [search2info.net] Linke d text [findtolinks.com] Linked text [takeinfo.net]

    Posted by stopy at 12/17/2006 @ 2:12pm