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| Iraq |
| Soldiers Record Lessons From Iraq |
| 2004-02-08 |
| EFL,much more about the hand off at the link. This lead in is about the Army of Steve. As the insurgency in the Sunni Triangle was heating up last fall, Lt. Col. Steve Russell was dealing with a new wave of attacks in which bombers were using the transmitters from radio-controlled toy cars: They would take the electronic guts of the cars, wrap them in C-4 plastic explosive and attach a blasting cap, then detonate them by remote control. So Russell, who commands an infantry battalion in deposed president Saddam Hussein’s home town of Tikrit, mounted one of the toy-car controllers on the dashboard of his Humvee and taped down the levers. Because all the toy cars operated on the same frequency, this would detonate any similar bomb about 100 yards before his Humvee got to the spot. This "poor man’s anti-explosive device" was "risky perhaps," Russell writes in a 58-page summary of his unit’s time in Iraq but better than leaving the detonation to the bombers. Suspicions confirmed As one of the biggest troop rotations in U.S. history gets underway in Iraq, with almost 250,000 soldiers coming or going, the seasoned units that are leaving are doing their best to pass on such hard-won knowledge to their successors, in e-mails, in essays, in PowerPoint presentations and rambling memoirs posted on Web sites or sent to rear detachments. And in the process, these veterans of Iraq have provided an alternate history of the Army’s experience there over the past nine months -- one that is far more personal than the images offered by the media and often grimmer than the official accounts of steady progress. |
| Posted by:GK |
| #16 Me too Les. Zhang is one of my most respected commenters at Rantburg. And Zhang, Gore is, was, and always will be a stiff. |
| Posted by: Lucky 2004-2-9 1:01:36 AM |
| #15 Prolly too late in the day to ask this, but... ZF - You were a fervent Gore supporter?! What changed your mind? |
| Posted by: Les Nessman 2004-2-8 11:46:17 PM |
| #14 I'm becoming very dissatisfied with George Bush: not that he's having us do the wrong thing, but that he's done a truly horrible job of making clear to the American people exactly why we are doing the right thing in Iraq This ex-fervent Gore supporter (who originally thought GWB stole the election) begs to differ. The unfair charges by the Democrats and the Democratic media aren't sticking, except with the easily impressionable, who can just as easily be swayed by a last-minute barrage of counter-propaganda. (That crowd literally believes the last thing it hears, so it's pointless to say anything except in the last days before the election). My feeling is that it is best to leave any compelling arguments close to the elections, so that the Democrats and the Democratic media have no time to put these arguments through their reality distortion machine.* I happen to think GWB has done an outstanding job in standing his ground and advancing his goals within the limits of the politically feasible. * Recall that in the fall of 2002, Bush was held to be vulnerable and sagging under a hail of Democratic arrows. And then he unleashed his initiatives and buried the Democrats in the Congressional races, winning seats in both Houses of Congress for the first time in living memory. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2004-2-8 8:37:03 PM |
| #13 face an ugly choice: submit to sharia, or incinerate a billion and a half Muslims in a nuclear holocaust. I say we cut to the chase, let's incinerate them now! -AR |
| Posted by: Analog Roam 2004-2-8 6:16:05 PM |
| #12 Come on guys, have you not been watching this political game for the last few years. I remember being at this low point numerous times. The Dem's do not have complete control of the Media anymore. They are able to get traction for awhile on these issues but eventually our side comes out. And if you remember the last few years we have won in the end every time. The mid-terms was the perfect example. The dems were running around yelling from the rooftops that a bad economy hurts the president. Well they said this so much that I believe it became apparent they wanted a bad economy. Their votes against the Tax cut sealed it and for the first time I believe ever the presidents party gained in his first mid-term election. Well they are at it again with the war. How far can they go before it becomes apparent that they are sabatoging U.S. foreign policy for polical gain? They are going to have to come up with a policy, and it cannot be "It won't be Bush". Focusing on the WMD issue will not hold up. Bush never stated that was the only reason and the evidence will support that. Right now the press is focused entirely on this and we just have to wait until they get bored. One only has to ask if there were no WMD's then why was there Sanctions? Many people (like france and germany) were pushing for a lifting of sanctions. One just has to follow out the Dem policy. A) put inspectors in. b) they find no WMD's c) Santions must be lifted (remember how many children were dying in Iraq because of the sanctions) d) we now have to get out of Saudi Arabia e) Iraq starts revives programs with help from Pakistan and North Koria f) Now we have a HUGE problem. This was part of a larger policy and the WMD arguements have been taken out of context. The only REASON we really argued this was to ATTEMPT to get U.N. support. Why not argue review why we have sanctions and that it is time to put up or shut up? It was not up to us to prove he had them but for Saddam to prove to us he did not. I believe 12 years of sanctions showed that he was unable to prove it. We just said enough was enough. I believe the stragety here is to allow the Dems to use up their ammo early. Allow them to go too far down this road (feeling they are getting somewhere) and then pull the rug out from under them. I do not see anyway their position can be sustained for 8 months. |
| Posted by: Patrick Payne 2004-2-8 4:49:23 PM |
| #11 What gets me is that it seems before the war nobody in the Bush admin prepared for the event that WMD evidence would not be found. Now they're on the defensive and everything they come up with before the election will be seen as a ploy and back-peddling. Somebody screwed up big time. |
| Posted by: Rafael 2004-2-8 2:48:25 PM |
| #10 A2U, I've thought of that, and indeed there is much that simply can't be said aloud because it would alert our enemies. But I can't help but think there's a lot Bush could say, but isn't, to lay out the rationale for what we're doing and solidify support among the American people. And the vacuum of his silence is being filled by dimwitted nonsense from the opposition, such as the "Bush lied about WMD" idiocy. On that issue, as far as I can tell, Bush has made absolutely no claims about Iraq, Saddam, and WMD that hadn't already been made- many times before- by Bill Clinton, Sandy Burger, Madeleine Allbright, and a host of Democratic congressmen, as well as the intelligence apparatus of every country on the planet: Saddam had WMD, no question about it. Yet Bush has allowed the Democrats to put him on the defensive and puts up almost no resistance. What gives? Best of luck to your nephew. I hope all these guys come home safe and whole, with mission accomplished. |
| Posted by: Dave D. 2004-2-8 1:24:08 PM |
| #9 Dave, he can' tell US what we're up against, because that would be telling the world. Do we really want 1 bil muslims angr at us now? This has to be fed in small doses. My nephew's going to Afghanistan, I believe, very soon. |
| Posted by: Anonymous2U 2004-2-8 12:51:07 PM |
| #8 Unfortunetly it is already happening. With the dems pushisg the WMD issue our enemies our taking a cue. |
| Posted by: Dan 2004-2-8 12:27:21 PM |
| #7 Bush will lose this election precisely for the reasons that Dave D. mentioned. |
| Posted by: Rafael 2004-2-8 12:17:42 PM |
| #6 i agree. A hypothetical Bush defeat would also re-teach our political class the idea that when confronted with a crisis, the best thing to do is nothing (or worse yet, bring it to the UN, where you can be assured that nothing will be done.) |
| Posted by: Matt 2004-2-8 11:46:04 AM |
| #5 You're right, but I wasn't talking about recognition or appreciation; I'm concerned that the election could take us back to the policies of appeasement, timidity and fussy legalism that marked our earlier efforts to deal with Islamic extremism, making all that we have accomplished so far a futile exercise. |
| Posted by: Dave D. 2004-2-8 11:24:41 AM |
| #4 "we'll soon be having an election whose outcome could completely nullify- and even mock- all our soldiers' hard work and sacrifices..." Certainly not completely -- there are tens of millions of Americans and Iraqis who are never going to forget what your son and other brave people like him have done and are doing. |
| Posted by: Matt 2004-2-8 10:56:06 AM |
| #3 Articles like this one are tough for me to read: my youngest son's NG unit leaves for Iraq on Tuesday, and yesterday the family gathered to say goodbye. It's a toss-up which troubles me more, the danger my son is going into over there, or the danger that here in America we'll soon be having an election whose outcome could completely nullify- and even mock- all our soldiers' hard work and sacrifices. I'm becoming very dissatisfied with George Bush: not that he's having us do the wrong thing, but that he's done a truly horrible job of making clear to the American people exactly why we are doing the right thing in Iraq, and the connections between our mission there and the WoT, resolution to the Arab/Israeli conflict, and preventing/reversing nuclear proliferation among aggressive and corrupt regimes. These connections are quite obvious to me, but Bush has done little or nothing to explain them to the American people. We need better than this, because if a Democrat is elected this autumn we will end up handing this conflict over to our grandchildren, who will likely face an ugly choice: submit to sharia, or incinerate a billion and a half Muslims in a nuclear holocaust. I don't want my grandchildren to have to make that choice. |
| Posted by: Dave D. 2004-2-8 10:02:52 AM |
| #2 Interesting note on how the Internet is changing the way knowledge and experience is being retained and disseminated. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2004-2-8 5:49:32 AM |
| #1 I hope they have had the idea to make more powerful versions of teh transmitter and then patrol with them. With luck it would trigger the device while the bastard was assembling it or positionning it. :-) |
| Posted by: JFM 2004-2-8 3:44:27 AM |