A friend sent me this article by email just now...

[whistle]

<snip>

Friday, January 21, 2005 5:11 AM
The Patriot-News
Harrisburg, Pa.

By: DAVID HACKWORTH

WE STILL CAN WIN IN IRAQ, BUT ONLY IF ...

The invasion of Iraq was sledgehammer-simple:
Slug in some "shock and awe" and kiss Saddam
Hussein goodbye.
But while our troops and generals deserve a big
"bravo" for their brilliance and bravery during the
initial war-fighting phase, the occupation - which
went wrong right from the get-go and has bled
along for almost two more terrible years - is going
down as one of the biggest snafus in U.S. military
history.
If the generals had any kind of plan to stabilize
Iraq, it had to have been drawn up and approved
by serving officers seriously stoned on LSD. But
as there's zip evidence of any high-level pre-invasion
planning effort, I suspect that Gen. Tommy Franks
bought into all the Pentagon hype about how once
the statue of Saddam fell it would be wine, roses
and ecstatic dancing in the streets - and then the
majority of our soldiers would leave 40,000
peacekeepers behind to assist the appropriately
grateful Iraqis in building a booming, oil-rich democracy
and return home to confetti and victory parades.
Our troops were truly magnificent in the early days
of the fumbled occupation. Their skill, sacrifice and
flexibility gave new meaning to "take charge and
move out, field expediency and staying loose," and
prevented even worse disasters in the chaos that
ensued after our forces took down Saddam.
There is no doubt both that our warriors won the
battle and that our generals blew the occupation
and have been playing catch-up - badly - ever since.
And nearly two years later, too many of our senior
military geniuses still don't understand that we're
fighting insurgents and that they need to get the
necessary additional combat power on the ground
quicksmart.
Again, the three mistakes that have continued
to haunt our forces in Iraq since April '03 are:
(1) No initial occupation plan; (2) no acknowledgment
at the top that we're fighting an insurgency war;
and (3) not enough combat troops to put down the
insurgents, who daily become smarter, stronger and
better-organized.
Our grunts have been letting me know since the early
days of the invasion that there has never been enough
people power on deck to do the job. "We're stretched
too thin" has been a constant complaint. "Battalions
are doing the work of brigades and brigades divisions,"
snorts an infantry skipper now in the Mosul area of
operations.
So far, not one general has had the guts to stand tall
and demand more troops from either Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers - who was
selected for the job because he's a technical whiz,
not a warfighter - or his boss, SecDef Donald Rumsfeld.
And late last year, when a reporter tore into Rummy
on CNN about how our forces were knee-deep in an
insurgency war that wasn't going well, Rummy remained
in undaunted denial, defending the one-note, high-tech
21st-century force he keeps pushing - in spite of the
overwhelming evidence that this war is now all about
insurgency.
Meanwhile, our brass hats appear to be suffering from
the Shinseki disease they caught bearing witness to
then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki's being
treated as a leper for standing up to Rummy over the
number of troops needed for the occupation. The lesson
learned from this telling example: Don't cross Rummy.
So even though Shinseki was dead-right, the brass went
along - to get along - with a shamefully inadequate
troop strength.
In my judgment, the war in Iraq against the insurgents
is still winnable: if Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran are told
to stop supporting the insurgents or else; if we get
enough boots on the ground ASAP to saturate and
dominate the badlands; and if the brass allow the small-
unit leaders to do their thing without the obsessive
micromanagement that infects our Army.
The troops should be left alone to build up a solid network
of Iraqis who want the war to end. Then together they
can put down the spoilers and spread the good life that
the majority of the people in Iraq are now starting to enjoy.
Fighting insurgents is relatively simple. You don't need to
be the top guy in the class to win the game. But you do
need common sense and commanders who aren't afraid
to stand up to bum-kissing top brass and dumb policy.

--Eilhys England contributed to this column.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Col. David H. Hackworth (USA Ret.) is SFTT.org co-founder
and Senior Military Columnist for DefenseWatch magazine.
For information on his many books, go to his home page at
<http://www.hackworth.com where you can sign in for his
free weekly Defending America. Send mail to P.O. Box 11179,
Greenwich, CT 06831.

<sorry no link, I hope the above reference will suffice>

[DulceDecorum]

1. Why bother?

In my judgment, the war in Iraq against the insurgents
is still winnable: if Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran are told
to stop supporting the insurgents or else; if we get
enough boots on the ground ASAP to saturate and
dominate the badlands; and if the brass allow the small-
unit leaders to do their thing without the obsessive
micromanagement that infects our Army.
-- Hackworth.

So,
about that Depleted Uranium dust all over the place ....

Since DU darkened the land Iraq has seen birth defects which would break a heart of stone: babies with terribly foreshortened limbs, with their intestines outside their bodies, with huge bulging tumours where their eyes should be, or with a single eye – like Cyclops, or without eyes, or without limbs, and even without heads. Significantly, some of the defects are almost unknown outside textbooks showing the babies born near A-bomb test sites in the Pacific. Doctors report that many women no longer say ‘Is it a girl or a boy?’ but simply, ‘Is it normal, doctor?’ Moreover this terrible legacy will not end. The genes of their parents may have been damaged for ever, and the damaging DU dust is ever-present.
<snip>

Over 200,000 US troops who returned from the 1991 war are now invalided out with ailments officially attributed to service in Iraq – that’s 1 in 3. In contrast, the British government’s failure to fully assess the health of returning troops, or to monitor their health, means no one even knows how many have died or become gravely ill since their return. However, Gulf veterans’ associations say that, of 40,000 or so fighting fit men and women who saw active service, at least 572 have died prematurely since coming home and 5000 may be ill. An alarming number are thought to have taken their own lives, unable to bear the torment of the innumerable ailments which have combined to take away their career, their sexuality, their ability to have normal children, and even their ability to breathe or walk normally. As one veteran puts it, they are ‘on DU death row, waiting to die’.

Whatever other factors there may be, some of their illnesses are strikingly similar to those of Iraqis exposed to DU dust. For example, soldiers have also fathered children without eyes. And, in a group of eight servicemen whose babies lack eyes seven are known to have been directly exposed to DU dust. They too have fathered children with stunted arms, and rare abnormalities classically associated with radiation damage. They too seem prone to cancer and leukaemia. Tellingly, so are EU soldiers who served as peacekeepers in the Balkans, where DU was also used. Indeed their leukaemia rate has been so high that several EU governments have protested at the use of DU.
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=2715


WARNING
VERY GRAPHIC BABY PICS AT BOTTOM OF THE PAGE
http://www.web-light.nl/VISIE/extremedeformities.html

Hackworth,
you were saying...