The Truth About Iraq

The conventional generals in Iraq have lost the war, just like they did in Vietnam. They are using the same tactics; the tactics of dazed, incompetent politicians who only look like generals and colonels.

They made their first mistake after a US blitzkrieg seized Iraq in 2003. When 20,000 civil servants and 500,000 Iraqi troops were disbanded and told to go home, the generals and colonels weren’t thinking. They did not stop to think that at least 20,000 of those men would become fighters against the US.

The US does not understand how to get intelligence on the enemy, but in Iraq, Michael Ware, a Times Magazine reporter, has friends and contacts within the terrorist armies. Why wasn’t he interrogated and forced to give up all he knew? He knew who the enemy leadership was, and where they were located in 2004, when they were weakest.

Now, in Iraq, 70% of the countryside is controlled by 20,000 terrorists. The 120,000 American troops and about 150,000 Iraqi and coalition troops, who outnumber the enemy at 11 to 1, only control 30% of Iraq, where they are on the defensive. A number of Iraqi cities to include Fallujah, Tal Afar, and many others are now called Mujahadeen cities, where US troops are afraid to show their faces.

“Camp Chaos”, a forward patrol base of the US Army’s 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment is located along the edge of Southern Baghdad. The Americans huddles in the bunker there, and look out over a vast enemy base area, controlled by the terrorist enemy, al-Quaeda and its allies.

Three years after the US destroyed the Iraqi army, dozens of US battalions are hunkered down in defensive positions all over Iraq. About all the scared befuddled American generals and colonels can think of, is to send out periodic platoon-sized probes into enemy controlled areas. The 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, along with the rest of the US military in Iraq, lost the initiative three years ago.

Three years ago, American conventional generals and colonels claimed that the insurgency was small, and would dry up soon. Then they claimed that the insurgency would dry up after Saddam was captured. They were wrong then, and they are wrong now.

In late 2003, Zarqawi arrived to take over al-Qaeda operations around Baghdad. Zarqawi is a Jordanian gangster, who is now Iraq’s big time commander of al-Qaeda killers. The first two things he did to announce his presence was to blow up the Jordanian embassy and the UN building in Baghdad. Then he began a reign of terror, which included many beheadings, suicide bombings, and corpse mutilations. From the beginning, he had control of Fallujah, Baghdad, and the Saudi Arabian-Jordan and Syrian border areas.

Do you remember Fallujah? It is the place where the US Marine Corps, trying to be political, was humiliated and defeated by weak terrorist forces.

In late 2003, the Marines stood by while the Fallujah enemy base area trained and equipped a steadily growing number of terrorist soldiers. In March 2004, the enemy became brazen enough to attack the Marines and coalition security farces, mutilating and burning bodies, and hanging them up as pagan displays of victory. The USMC and a few friendly Iraqi troops tried to invade Fallujah. The Marines were defeated and the Iraqi troops dissolved in panic. After one month, the Marines withdrew from the humiliating defeat. Then the Marine generals and colonels happily participated in something they felt confident about, political negotiations with the terrorists, during which they tried to bribe them and pay them tribute. (If ONLY they would stop being “so mean”.)

Then the Marines put a loose cordon around the now-secure Fallujah terrorist base. Thousands of foreign troops from Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Syria then poured into Fallujah. Soon, they were making 500 attacks a week on the Americans, causing a three-fold increase in casualties. By 2004, the al-Qaeda terrorists controlled Ramadi, Fallujah, Tal Afar, the border areas, and most of the other cities in Iraq, which are now called Mujahadeen cities. Al-Qaeda spokesmen throughout Iraq proclaimed, “We have humiliated the most mighty army in the world”. They are right. They have humiliated the US Military in Iraq. Not because they are better, but because America’s conventional generals are incompetent.

The US military in Iraq is controlled by conventional generals who are politicians in uniform. They didn’t understand, in 2003, that foreign terrorists were pouring across the borders of Iraq. Long columns of enemy troops marched across the desert and into Iraqi cities. The border city of Tal Afar was seized in 2004, and declared a Mujahadeen city. Enemy flags flew on every street. Al-Qaeda wiped out the police force and city leaders. Everywhere beheaded corpses lay rotting. The US generals and colonels knew about that, but they didn’t know what to do. The conventional US colonels and generals in Iraq, and elsewhere, are an unsophisticated lot. They do not understand the concept of total war. There are few military intellectuals among them. In the main, they are mediocre dullards who do not know how to wield military power.

In April 2004, thousands of untrained muslim fanatics crouched in their trenches and fortified areas inside Fallujah. They had been working on those defenses for a long time, without being bothered by the Americans. Most American generals and colonels are afraid of the terrorists, however, the fear is misplaced. Most of the terrorists do not understand the finer points of urban combat. Although the US military trained for years in urban warfare, observers are shocked at their lack of demonstrated expertise.

Twelve thousand American and Iraqi troops attacked 3,000 muslim fanatics in Fallujah in April, 2004. Although little artillery and air support was used, the US used a lot of tanks and armored fighting vehicles. The enemy retreated rapidly, and only 38 Americans were killed. (Fewer men are always lost by attacking, than they are driving back and forth along the roads where they are blown up by IEDs-Improvised Explosive Device.)

The few American casualties shook up the US generals and colonels. The enemy knew that the US military leadership lacked the will and imagination to prevail. So, the terrorists regrouped, and by early 2005, were making 65 attacks a day against US forces, with mortars, rockets, and mines. The enemy brazenly stood in the open, manning their weapons, in the cities they controlled and in the cities the US was supposed to control.

Now, roadside bombs have terrorized US military forces and they are causing two-thirds of US deaths in 2005. The generals don’t know what to do. It’s not in their guidebook for politicians.

Yet, the Navy SEALs, in the 1990s developed methods for detonating enemy radio-controlled bombs, before they can do any damage. The concept is simple enough: radio-controlled bombs are detonated by sending a signal over a specific frequency. If you broadcast over the range of frequencies used by radio-controlled devices, you will periodically hit an active one. Then the detonator will activate and the bomb will go off. Why didn’t the conventional military leaders know about this tactic?

The confused and befuddled American conventional generals and colonels have constantly failed to exploit schisms in the enemy ranks. Perhaps they don’t think they will get a merit badge for winning hearts and minds if they employ the concept of divide and conquer? Neither do they understand that US troops should move into enemy controlled areas, and live there until they have totally wiped out the opposition. The US didn’t even begin using tanks against the terrorists until 2004. They did not begin concentrating their attacks in one urban sector at a time until 2005.

Colonel H.R. McMasters, a politically correct officer who is viewed by the leftist media as a counter-insurgency expert, spends a lot of time politicizing the Iraqi people around him. He thinks he is charming them and “building good relationships”. Just like in Vietnam, his troops are giving candy to children of fanatics, while smiling and shaking hands. They think such obvious stupidity will win friends and influence people among some of the most murderously savage cretins in the world. Such men as Col. McMasters have not yet grasped the fact that America is in a total, protracted war to the death against an insanely savage muslim world, that wants only to kill the infidels.

Col. McMasters has announced that after he has won friends and influenced people, reconstruction of Iraq, at US taxpayer expense will begin. He doesn’t realize that “nation-building”, or reconstructing an enemy area, only makes the enemy stronger. It is a form of tribute paid to the more masculine of two adversaries. In the meantime, the terrorists laugh at the silly Americans giving candy to their children, and fixing their plumbing, while they tell themselves that the “infidels are only temporary.”

It is amazing and outrageous that only 20,000 terrorists control over 70% of Iraq in 2006, and have totally nullified American power. All that came about because the President and his conventional generals did not understand that muslims only respect power. If the ground is fertilized with the corpses of the opposition, then the surviving majority will submit. Such thinking, however, is reserved for generals who are hard men, not the sneered at generals and colonels that think they are consummate politicians.

- Breaker McCoy