Whoever wrote this piece does not understand the capability of the United
States military....
"Möbius Pretzel" <M0bius_N_Pretzel@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1166477498.691333.147280@l12g2000cwl.googlegroups.com...
US Could Face Catastrophic Military Defeat In Iraq - What Baker &
Hamilton Forgot To Tell You
"Amateurs talk strategy; professionals talk logistics." - Gen. Omar
Bradley
Washington, DC, December 16, 2005
The flawed assessment offered by the Baker-Hamilton report neglects a
crucial aspect of the political-military situation of the US and other
foreign armed forces in Iraq: the danger that the US army of occupation
might be cut off, encircled, and annihilated as a fighting force over
the next few months. This flaw in turn makes it easier for
Baker-Hamilton to reject a priori the one rational response to the
current reality, which is the extrication of US forces before it is too
late. We do not need a new way forward in Iraq; we require a speedy way
out of Iraq.
The real argument concerning Iraq has nothing to do with victory; the
issue is now avoiding catastrophic military defeat for the US, in a
form far worse than the Baker-Hamilton group has chosen to imagine. The
looming specter is the worst of military cataclysms a battle of
annihilation on the model of the Romans at Cannae, L. Crassus at
Carrhae, or of von Paulus at Stalingrad.
US forces attempting to defend a zone of occupation deep within
landlocked Iraq now face an extraordinarily critical situation. These
forces are wholly dependent on a supply line based on two roads on
either side of the Euphrates which stretch some 400 miles (about 650
km) from Kuwait north towards Baghdad. It is along these roads that
gasoline, food, ammunition, and all other sinews of war must be
transported by truck convoy. Two roads of 400 miles each add up to 800
miles of highway to defend an impossible proposition in the face of
a sustained people's war by the Shiites of the lower Euphrates. The
Iraqi resistance understood early on that these truck convoys
represented a grave vulnerability for the occupation forces, and this
has been the key to their most effective weapon so far, the improvised
roadside bomb or IED. This vital aorta of supplies could now be cut in
several places at once by the Shiite guerrillas of the Mahdi army or
related groups.
http://www.rense.com/general74/cara.htm
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