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Recent
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April
1, 2003
William
S. Lind
The Pitfalls of War Planning
Jorge
Mariscal
Latinos on the Frontlines, Again
Paul
de Rooij
Arrogant Propaganda
Jo
Wilding
From Baghdad: "I Am His Mother"
Tarif
Abboushi
Operation Embedded Folly
Lee
Sustar
Labor's War at Home
Akiva Eldar
Israeli Dreams of Iraqi Oil
Bernard
Weiner
The Vietnam Connection
Robert
Fisk
The Graveyard at Baghdad's North
Gate
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/01
March
31, 2003
David
Lindorff
Liberating Iraqis from Their Homes
Neve Gordon
A Different Kind of Despair
John
Chuckman
Absurdities and Contradictions
Ron Jacobs
Bernie Sanders Voting Maybe on
War
Wayne
Madsen
The Siege of Washington
Mark Franchetti
Slaughter at the Bridge of Death
Robert
Fisk
Blood and Bandages of the Innocent
Robin Cook
Send Our Soldiers Home
Anthony
Gancarski
Investigate Perle
Uri Avnery
The Devil's Dictionary
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 03/31
March
29, 2003
Kathy and
Bill Christison
"Like Being Autistic with
Power": an Interview with Jeff Halper
Ben
Tripp
"My Empire for a Map!": Geography
American Style
Ann Harrison
The War on Protesters: San Francisco's
Berserk Cops
Kurt
Nimmo
Dead People: Don't Go There
Chris Floyd
Blood on the Tracks: Cheney the
War Profiteer
Ann
Pettifer
Israelis: Victims No Longer?
Jo Wilding
Dispatch from Baghdad: Nowhere
is Safe
Ramzy
Baroud
Horror Chamber: Inside the Al-Amiriya
Shelter
David Krieger
Perle is Gone, But the Looting
Continues
John
Gershman
Dreams of Empire; Eulogies for International
Law
Robert
Fisk
Bombing the Phone System
Brice Abel
War, Bush and the Jesus Torilla
Tom
Stephens
The Chickenhawk Circle of Hell
Alexander
Cockburn
"War Not Going According
to Plan"
March 28,
2003
Robert
Fisk
Bitter Truths About Basra
Daniel
Wolff
A Road Trip in Wartime
Chris
Clarke
We Never Spit on Any Baby Killers
David Lindorff
Saddam, a Hero Made in Washington
Pierre
Tristam
Icarus on Crack: American Hubris
and Iraq
Jason Leopold
Richard Perle: the Enterprising
Hawk
Saul
Landau
Technological Massacre
Carol Norris
The Mother of All Bombs
Riad
Abdelkarim, MD
Iraq War Lingo 101
Adam Engel
Schlock and Awe
Steve
Perry
War Web Log
March 27,
2003
Anthony
Gancarski
Somebody Blew Up Baghdad
Rahul
Mahajan
The New Humanitarianism: Basra as
Military Target
Simon Jones
A Letter from Uzbekistan
William
S. Lind
No Exit
Diane Christian
A Day of Reckoning
The
Black Commentator
Onward
Embedded Soldiers: the Press and the War
Mickey
Z.
Remembering the Real Moynihan:
Genocide in East Timor
Richard
Thieme
The Problem of Empathy
Jason Leopold
Energy Scams: Bilking California
Out of Billions
Tariq
Ali
A Naked Display of Imperial Power
Alexander
Cockburn
Up the Creek
March 26,
2003
Bruce Jackson
A Battlefield from Hell
Pablo
Mukherjee
Watch
Their Lips
David Krieger
Shock But Not Awe
Linda
Heard
Winning
Hearts and Minds Bush-Style
Imad Jadaa
The Beautiful Face of America
Adam
Engel
Buckets
of Blood
Patrick
Cockburn
Kurds Unimpressed
David
Lindorff
POWs,
Torture and Hypocrisy
Robert
Fisk
The Coup That Didn't Happen
April
Hurley, MD
A
Doctor's Outrage in Baghdad
Gloria
Bergen
Chretien's Shame
Reema
Abu Hamdieh
The
Smell of Death Surrounds Me
March 25,
2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Life During Wartime
Gary
Leupp
What
Democracy Looks Like: the Streets of Cairo
Bill and
Kathleen Christison
An Interview with Hanan Ashrawi
Bruce
Jackson
Why
Protest? Why Write?
Uri Avnery
Bitter Rice: Thoughts and Warnings
on the War
Jason
Leopold
Blood
Indicator: Casualties and the Stock Market
Ralph Nader
A Pre-emptive War on a Defenseless
Country
March 24,
2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Ominous Signs
David
Lindorff
Peacekeepers
at Ground Zero
Diane Christian
Blood Sacrifice
Kathy
Kelly
The
Morning After Shock and Awe
John Stanton
US Bombs Iran
Wayne
Madsen
How
to Live with a Rogue Superpower
Anthony
Gancarski
Iraq and the Death of the West
David
Vest
Earth vs. Bush
Ahmad Faruqui
The Liberation of Iraq in Perspective
Robert
Fisk
We
Bomb, They Suffer
March 22 / 23, 2003
Edward Said
The Other
America
Saul Landau
The Threats of Empire
Kathleen and Bill Christison
On the Road in the West Bank
Joanne Mariner
Suing Seymour Hersh
Ann Harrison
The Battle of San Francisco
Robert Fisk
A Cauldron of Fire
Hani Shukrallah
The Gates of Hell
Chris Floyd
Memory Lane
Kathy Kelly
Imagine Chicago Under This Kind of Attack
Ramzi Kysia
Bombing Away a Chance for Joy
Linda Heard
Baghdad Burns While Bush Does Lunch
Bradley Burston
Could the US be at War for Years?
Salvador Peralta
Mass Murder as Liberation?
Tom Gorman
Now That's a Coalition!
Jorge Mariscal
Johnny Mack, When Are You Coming Back?
Cindy Milstein
The Grassroots Go Global
Josh Frank
Blocking Portland's Bridges
Elaine Cassel
The Case of Elizabeth Smart: Kidnapping and Insanity
Gordon Solberg
Drowning in Niceness: the Lessons of Elizabeth Smart
Tom Crumpacker
Getting to Know the Real Havana
Poets' Basement
Dobie, Guthrie, Alam, Wechsler
March 21, 2003
Ben Tripp
Blood
for Oil: the Exchange Rate
Cathy Breens
Report from Baghdad: Mothers, Kids and Crash Kits
Scott Handleman
Fourth
Generation Protesting: Shutting Down San Francisco
Vanessa Jones
Paint
Them Red
Brian J. Foley
Patriotic
Protest for Professors
Zoltan Grossman
After Saddam, a War on Iraqi Rebels?
Philip S. Golub
Inventing Demons
Richard Lichtman
On the Current Experience of Terror
Milan Rai
Blitz-Coup
Pepe Escobar
A Cheap Family Farce
Floyd Rudmin
The Nightmare at the Back Door: Nuclear Plant's as Terror Targets
Chris Floyd
See Rome (poem)
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
March 20, 2003
Jo Wilding
From
Waiting to War: a Day and a Night in Baghdad
Stephen Banko
I Was
a Soldier Once
Kevin Alexander Gray
How Did
We Become an Outlaw Nation?
Shane Claiborne
Nomadic
Solidarity: Glimpses of Life in Baghdad on the Eve of War
Kathy Kelly
Waiting on the Baghdad Skies to Crack
Anthony Gancarski
Michelle
Makin's "Liberty Shields"
Rahul Mahajan and Robert
Jensen
Myths
and Facts About the War on Iraq
Jason Leopold
Cheney's
Lies About Halliburton and Iraq
Ron Jacobs
If War is Business as Usual, There Should be No Business as Usual
Chuck O'Connell
Predictions About the Iraq War
Douglas Herman
US Air Force Veteran on the Coming Air Campaign
Ralph Nader
Come
On Democrats, Stand Up for Peace
William Hughes
War is Theft
Sima Saeedi
Dispatch
from Iran
Hammond Guthrie
John Philip Sousa
Website of the Day
Iraq
Body Count
Hot Stories
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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March 31,
2003
"Get Me
Rewrite"
Rumsfeld vs. the Generals
By JASON LEOPOLD
Last October, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
ordered the military's regional commanders to rewrite all of
their war plans to capitalize on precision weapons, better intelligence
and speedier deployment in the event the United States decided
to invade Iraq. That plan, which Rumsfeld helped shape, has now
failed and has led to deep divisions between military commanders
and the defense, according to recent news reports.
Despite Rumsfeld's recent denials that
he did not override requests by military brass to deploy more
ground troops in Iraq last year, the cornerstone of his war plan
against Iraq was in fact designed to use fewer ground troops,
according to a copy of the plan; a move that angered some in
the military who said concern for the troops would require overwhelming
superiority on the ground to assure victory.
These officers said they view Rumsfeld's
approach as injecting too much risk into war planning and have
said it could result in U.S. casualties that might be prevented
by amassing larger forces.
But Rumsfeld refused to listen to his
military commanders, Pentagon officials told the Washington Post
Saturday.
Rumsfeld was quoted in news reports last
year as saying that his plan would allow "the military to
begin combat operations on less notice and with far fewer troops
than thought possible -- or thought wise -- before the Sept.
11, 2001, terrorist attacks."
"Looking at what was overwhelming
force a decade or two decades ago, today you can have overwhelming
force, conceivably, with lesser numbers because the lethality
is equal to or greater than before" Rumsfeld said.
The speedier use of smaller and more
agile forces also could provide the president with time to order
an offensive against Iraq that could be carried out this winter,
the optimal season for combat in the desert, which is exactly
what President Bush did.
The new approach for how the U.S. might
go to war, Rumsfeld said last year, reflects an assessment of
the need after Sept. 11 to refresh war plans continuously and
to respond faster to threats from terrorists and nations possessing
biological, chemical or nuclear weapons.
Rumsfeld first laid the groundwork for
a U.S. led invasion of Iraq shortly after the Sept. 11. Like
his well-known, "Rumsfeld's
rules,"--a collection of wisdom he has compiled over
three decades on how to succeed in Washington, Rumsfeld's checklist
used the same methodical approach to determining when U.S. military
force should be used in the event of war against Iraq.
Rumsfeld kept the checklist tucked away
in his desk drawer at the Pentagon. Since last March, when it
became clear that the Bush administration was leaning toward
using military force to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime, Rumsfeld
added what he said were important elements to the checklist to
ensure the U.S. would be prepared for a full-scale war. But Rumsfeld
and the Bush administration never lived up to the promises laid
out in the checklist when the U.S. military bombed Baghdad. For
example:
Casualties. Rumsfeld says the public
"should not be allowed to believe an engagement could be
executed . . . with few casualties." Yet the president and
Rumsfeld didn't prepare Americans for major casualties. Bush
warned in an Oct. 7 speech in Cincinnati that "military
action could be difficult" and that there is no "easy
or risk-free course of action."
* Risks. Rumsfeld warns that the risks
of taking action "must be carefully considered" along
with the dangers of doing nothing. The administration has repeatedly
made the case against inaction -- the possibility that Saddam
will acquire nuclear weapons and strike the U.S. But it has not
been equally candid about the dangers of action.
* Honesty. Rumsfeld urges U.S. leadership
to be "brutally honest with itself, Congress, the public
and coalition partners." Yet the administration has not
produced compelling evidence to support its claims that Saddam
is linked to al-Qaeda terrorists, is on the verge of acquiring
nuclear weapons or intends to strike the U.S. To the contrary,
the CIA has played down Iraq's ties to al-Qaeda and a possible
first strike.
Rumsfeld said too many of the military
plans on the shelves of the regional war-fighting commanders
contained outdated assumptions and military requirements, which
have since changed with the advent of new weapons and doctrines.
It has been a mistake, he said, to measure
the quantity of forces required for a mission and "fail
to look at lethality, where you end up with precision-guided
munitions, which can give you 10 times the lethality that a dumb
weapon might, as an example," Rumsfeld said, according to
an Oct 14, 2002 report in the New York Times.
Through a combination of pre-deployments,
faster cargo ships and a larger fleet of transport aircraft,
the military would be able to deliver "fewer troops but
in a faster time that would allow you to have concentrated power
that would have the same effect as waiting longer with what a
bigger force might have" Rumsfeld said.
Critics in the military said last year
there were several reasons to deploy a force of overwhelming
numbers before starting any offensive with Iraq. Large numbers
illustrate U.S. resolve and can intimidate Iraqi forces into
laying down their arms or even turning against Hussein's government.
Large numbers in the region also would
be needed should the initial offensive go poorly.. Also, once
victory is near, it might require an even larger force to pacify
Iraq and search for weapons of mass destruction than it took
to topple Hussein.
According to Defense Department sources,
Rumsfeld at first insisted that vast air superiority and a degraded
Iraqi military would enable 75,000 U.S. troops to win the war.
Gen. Tommy Franks, the theater commander-in-chief, convinced
Rumsfeld to send 250,000 (augmented by 45,000 British). However,
the Army would have preferred a much deeper force, leading to
anxiety inside the Pentagon in the first week of war, conservative
columnist Bob Novak reported last week.
While Army officers would have preferred
a larger commitment, even what was finally approved for Operation
Iraqi Freedom was reduced when the 4th Infantry Division was
denied Turkey as a base to invade northern Iraq. The Defense
and State departments point fingers. Secretary of State Colin
Powell is criticized for not flying to Ankara to convince the
Turkish government. The Pentagon is criticized for not immediately
dispatching the division via the Red Sea, Novak reported.
To the critics who said last year that
Rumsfeld is accepting too much risk in U.S. war planning, Rumsfeld
said he had ordered rigorous reviews and was satisfied. "We
are prepared for the worst case," he told the Times.
Jason Leopold
can be reached at: jasonleopold@hotmail.com
Today's
Features
William
S. Lind
The Pitfalls of War Planning
Jorge
Mariscal
Latinos on the Frontlines, Again
Paul
de Rooij
Arrogant Propaganda
Jo
Wilding
From Baghdad: "I Am His Mother"
Tarif
Abboushi
Operation Embedded Folly
Lee
Sustar
Labor's War at Home
Akiva Eldar
Israeli Dreams of Iraqi Oil
Bernard
Weiner
The Vietnam Connection
Robert
Fisk
The Graveyard at Baghdad's North
Gate
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/01
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