CNN "Broken Government" with Jack Cafferty... airs video clips of Cheney and Rusmfeld PROMISING THE WAR WOULD END QUICKLY... Dems AWOL...
Our headline link is to the CNN transcript of their video report, "SNIPER TEAMS STALK US TROOPS in Iraq" as the Jack Cafferty "Broken Government" segment has not been posted yet. And in today's (October 20, 2006) CNN.com homepage, the on-line video of the "Iraqi snipers stalk US troops" segment is available. (NOTE TO CNN: your on-line videos are not even 1/2 as good as those that even amateurs can upload to YouTube.com; and it is impossible to post a link to the otherwise informative video.)
From what we could see of the small, jerky TV screen on our computer screen, the Iraqi sniper team was following somewhat the pattern of the infamous Washington, DC sniper of a few years ago: a team of two, one person a "spotter" using a video camera with telephoto lens, and the other the shooter, both operating from a car, and shooting at American soldiers from a range of over 200 yards. Easy shooting for a good sniper..... difficult for soldiers standing day-long posts at guard stations to observe a car pull up at over 200 yards, and a small gun barrel probably not even sticking out past the windows of the car.
WHAT IS IMPORTANT is that SNIPERS and IMPROVISED EXPLOSIVES - "IEDs" - were both CONSTANT FEATURES of the VIETNAM war. We here at C-dems.blgspt.com have been reading Vietnam infantry combat books, specials forces stories, and Soldier of Fortune magazine for over two decades, and what most of these "gung-ho", macho recounts fail to understand is that in almost all wars THE ENEMY can develop snipers every bit as good as America's best and most well trained. Now it is true that Marine sniper "Gunny" Hathaway in Vietnam had an unbelievable kill count, well over 200 Vietnamese guerrillas and NVA shot down, but there is a HUGE difference between US snipers operating in Vietnam, and today US sniper teams operating in Iraq: In Vietnam the US snipers could take advantage of the cover provided by the jungle to stake out firing positions deep in enemy territory. In Iraq, Americans stick out like neon lights in Iraqi pedestrian traffic, and it would be extremely difficult for a US sniper team to remain hidden in urban Iraqi city life. A singel child or teenage spotting a US team, and its cover is blown, and future hazardous. Also, as German soldiers and officers discovered to their dismay after invading Russia, the "subhuman conscripts" of the Red Army may have been godless and soulless, but many of them were native hunters and marksmen... and made IDEAL SNIPERS. Someone able to shoot a fox or wolf on the run at 300 yards will have no problem hitting a stationary human at closer range. AND ALL CULTURES of the world, including the Arabs (and pro-American Kurds) of Iraq, have a fair share of competent marksmen, hunters, and trainable snipers.
TO MAKE A LONG STORY SHORT, IED's and SNIPER FIRE were constant, routine elements of the Vietnam war, and it has been nothing short of myopia at best, criminal negligence at worst, that America's highest, civilian command DID NOT ANTICIPATE the high attrition that could follow a US occupation of Iraq. CERTAINLY Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and President George H.W. Bush (Sr.) allowed for this risky possibility when they DECIDED TO STEER CLEAR of Baghdad in 1991. (Peter Galbraith's book, "The End of Iraq," has Cheney's quote on the necessity of avoid in chapter 1 or 2.)
What makes all this relevent to THIS blog, about Democrats, is that CNN had NO PROBLEM stiching together A VIDEO of DICK CHENEY and DON RUMSFELD **PROMISING** American viewers that Iraqis would greet America's invading army as liberators, with open arms and flowers, and Don Rumsfeld telling a reporter that he didn't expect the insurgency to last much beyond "SIX days, SIX weeks, I DOUBT PAST SIX MONTHS."
WHY CAN'T THE DAMN DC DEMORATS PUT THIS DAMN VIDEO TOGETHER (or just steal it from CNN), and AIR IT EVERY DAY, pounding away at the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld team's MYOPIC wartime 'leadership"????
(note: for a single excellent source on both the Vietnam war infantry combat, AND military counter-insurgency/counter-terror ops outside of Vietnam, Richard Marcinko's "Rogue Warrior" is a must read. Marcinko went from "blue water Navy" to SEAL team special forces, to combat command in Vietnam and Cambodia (Marcinko put his men on alert in anticipation of the Tet offensive of 1968, his local 'intel' sources more attuned and accurate than those run by MACV high-command in Saigon); and after the Vietnam war Marcinko actually put together the Navy's "SEAL TEAM 6" counter-terror unit. Not only does Marcinko write in an entertaining and amusing style (his tales of eating cobra venom and other exotic delicacies with Cambodian generals is not to be missed), but his tale of how the resentful Navy high command "railroaded" him into a felony prison conviction (for allegedly bilking Seal-team 6's equipment funds) is not to be missed, either. But those are asides: Marcinko's reliance on LOCAL INTEL, given willingly by TRUSTED allies, gave him the info he needed to PREDICT the Tet offensive, bomb attacks on the US embassy and Marine corps barracks in Lebanon, and other such similar famous historical incidents.)
(note 2: But even Marcinko is more than a bit of a macho hot-head out of the "Soldier of Fortune" school (today the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Bush anti-Powell-doctrine school). Sometimes the best way to 'win' Asian land wars is to JUST STAY OUT OF THEM. There is a school of international relations observers who believe that President Reagan's RETREAT from Lebanon, after the US Marine barracks was bombed there, ALLOWED Mikhail Gorbachov to go to his Soviet generals and tell them, "See, the US is really NOT bent on COLONIAL DOMINATION in the Mideast and elsewhere." Not to oversimplify the topic, but it is quite possible that if Reagan and Bush Sr. had maintained aggressive postures in the Mideast, Central America, and Asia, that the Politburo and Soviet generals would NOT have allowed "glasnost, peristroika" and the eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union to proceed as smoothly as they did.)
From what we could see of the small, jerky TV screen on our computer screen, the Iraqi sniper team was following somewhat the pattern of the infamous Washington, DC sniper of a few years ago: a team of two, one person a "spotter" using a video camera with telephoto lens, and the other the shooter, both operating from a car, and shooting at American soldiers from a range of over 200 yards. Easy shooting for a good sniper..... difficult for soldiers standing day-long posts at guard stations to observe a car pull up at over 200 yards, and a small gun barrel probably not even sticking out past the windows of the car.
WHAT IS IMPORTANT is that SNIPERS and IMPROVISED EXPLOSIVES - "IEDs" - were both CONSTANT FEATURES of the VIETNAM war. We here at C-dems.blgspt.com have been reading Vietnam infantry combat books, specials forces stories, and Soldier of Fortune magazine for over two decades, and what most of these "gung-ho", macho recounts fail to understand is that in almost all wars THE ENEMY can develop snipers every bit as good as America's best and most well trained. Now it is true that Marine sniper "Gunny" Hathaway in Vietnam had an unbelievable kill count, well over 200 Vietnamese guerrillas and NVA shot down, but there is a HUGE difference between US snipers operating in Vietnam, and today US sniper teams operating in Iraq: In Vietnam the US snipers could take advantage of the cover provided by the jungle to stake out firing positions deep in enemy territory. In Iraq, Americans stick out like neon lights in Iraqi pedestrian traffic, and it would be extremely difficult for a US sniper team to remain hidden in urban Iraqi city life. A singel child or teenage spotting a US team, and its cover is blown, and future hazardous. Also, as German soldiers and officers discovered to their dismay after invading Russia, the "subhuman conscripts" of the Red Army may have been godless and soulless, but many of them were native hunters and marksmen... and made IDEAL SNIPERS. Someone able to shoot a fox or wolf on the run at 300 yards will have no problem hitting a stationary human at closer range. AND ALL CULTURES of the world, including the Arabs (and pro-American Kurds) of Iraq, have a fair share of competent marksmen, hunters, and trainable snipers.
TO MAKE A LONG STORY SHORT, IED's and SNIPER FIRE were constant, routine elements of the Vietnam war, and it has been nothing short of myopia at best, criminal negligence at worst, that America's highest, civilian command DID NOT ANTICIPATE the high attrition that could follow a US occupation of Iraq. CERTAINLY Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and President George H.W. Bush (Sr.) allowed for this risky possibility when they DECIDED TO STEER CLEAR of Baghdad in 1991. (Peter Galbraith's book, "The End of Iraq," has Cheney's quote on the necessity of avoid in chapter 1 or 2.)
What makes all this relevent to THIS blog, about Democrats, is that CNN had NO PROBLEM stiching together A VIDEO of DICK CHENEY and DON RUMSFELD **PROMISING** American viewers that Iraqis would greet America's invading army as liberators, with open arms and flowers, and Don Rumsfeld telling a reporter that he didn't expect the insurgency to last much beyond "SIX days, SIX weeks, I DOUBT PAST SIX MONTHS."
WHY CAN'T THE DAMN DC DEMORATS PUT THIS DAMN VIDEO TOGETHER (or just steal it from CNN), and AIR IT EVERY DAY, pounding away at the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld team's MYOPIC wartime 'leadership"????
(note: for a single excellent source on both the Vietnam war infantry combat, AND military counter-insurgency/counter-terror ops outside of Vietnam, Richard Marcinko's "Rogue Warrior" is a must read. Marcinko went from "blue water Navy" to SEAL team special forces, to combat command in Vietnam and Cambodia (Marcinko put his men on alert in anticipation of the Tet offensive of 1968, his local 'intel' sources more attuned and accurate than those run by MACV high-command in Saigon); and after the Vietnam war Marcinko actually put together the Navy's "SEAL TEAM 6" counter-terror unit. Not only does Marcinko write in an entertaining and amusing style (his tales of eating cobra venom and other exotic delicacies with Cambodian generals is not to be missed), but his tale of how the resentful Navy high command "railroaded" him into a felony prison conviction (for allegedly bilking Seal-team 6's equipment funds) is not to be missed, either. But those are asides: Marcinko's reliance on LOCAL INTEL, given willingly by TRUSTED allies, gave him the info he needed to PREDICT the Tet offensive, bomb attacks on the US embassy and Marine corps barracks in Lebanon, and other such similar famous historical incidents.)
(note 2: But even Marcinko is more than a bit of a macho hot-head out of the "Soldier of Fortune" school (today the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Bush anti-Powell-doctrine school). Sometimes the best way to 'win' Asian land wars is to JUST STAY OUT OF THEM. There is a school of international relations observers who believe that President Reagan's RETREAT from Lebanon, after the US Marine barracks was bombed there, ALLOWED Mikhail Gorbachov to go to his Soviet generals and tell them, "See, the US is really NOT bent on COLONIAL DOMINATION in the Mideast and elsewhere." Not to oversimplify the topic, but it is quite possible that if Reagan and Bush Sr. had maintained aggressive postures in the Mideast, Central America, and Asia, that the Politburo and Soviet generals would NOT have allowed "glasnost, peristroika" and the eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union to proceed as smoothly as they did.)
posted by verifi at 10:48 PM
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