March 28, 2003
Notes from the Pentagon
Coyote howls
It's no wonder Marines
at the camp, located 22
miles south of the Iraqi
border along the main
Route 80 that leads to
Baghdad, are beginning to
suspect they've been
targeted.
Our informant says
Marines are beginning to suspect that foreign
nationals who work at the camp provide the
targeting information.
"This was the one place where they let
Kuwaiti nationals and Pakistanis in to do food
service and get the trash out, and pump the
toilets," one person at the camp told us.
There was at least one incident where a
local attempted to smuggle a bomb into the
camp, our informant said.
Luckily, the new Patriot PAC-3 missile
batteries have knocked out all the missiles
aimed at the base.
Marines improvise
Rear-area support forces are finding
themselves confronting company-sized groups
of Iraqi guerrillas.
"The rear areas are definitely not secure,"
one source with the Marines told us.
The Marines' ideal situation is to conduct
amphibious landings or air insertions, set up a
base, then eventually hand over the operation
to larger Army land forces. Not this time. The
Marines are playing a key role in what is
expected to be the battle for Baghdad in the
coming days.
To deal with the stretched supply lines, the
Marines have rented large numbers of flatbed
trucks in Kuwait at an estimated cost of
$18,000 a month to drive their supplies and
equipment up north to the advancing forces.
The Kuwaiti trucks have been breaking
down, causing delays in getting vital supplies
to the troops.
Franks panic
It wasn't the invasion that surprised the
four-star general, since he had ordered it.
What upset Gen. Franks, defense officials
said, was the live television coverage of the
tank operation. The best footage was provided
by ABC's Ted Koppel, who set up a generator
and beamed back high-quality live video
images. He gave viewers an extraordinary live
shot of the 3rd's tank columns. Other networks
followed with the jumpy and hard-to-see
video-telephone footage.
Gen. Franks feared the live coverage of the
tanks was enough for Iraqi artillery or missile
batteries in southern Iraq to target U.S. troops.
Still, he did not order the news reports shut
down. Instead, he ordered a blackout of all
news coverage on Navy ships, including
cruise missile strikes and aircraft sorties. The
blackout was lifted after several hours.
Desert storms
Under "lessons learned" from that war,
maintenance crews know they have to inspect
engines, helicopter blades, sensors and the
lenses on missiles to make sure they aren't
damaged by desert grit.
An Air Force policy-maker, who asked not
to be named, said the service found during the
buildup to the 1991 Gulf war that desert dust
was damaging the clear domes on sensors:
systems such as forward-looking infrared on
the underbelly of a fighter jet or the lens on a
hand-steered Maverick missile.
"It was not an overwhelming problem, but
it did present a challenge to our sensors,
high-quality lenses and their covers," the
official said.
The Air Force responded by quickly
shipping to Saudi Arabia repair kits that could
remove any scrapes or nicks.
Now-retired Army Gen. Ronald Griffith,
who commanded the 1st Armored Division
during Desert Storm, said his unit advanced
through a shamal to attack Iraq's 26th Infantry
Division.
"It is about the most irritating experience
you can have in your life," Gen. Griffith said.
"The sand gets into every crevice. It gets into
every piece of equipment. It takes a lot of
maintenance to keep from damaging
equipment. It's a horrible experience."
Still, the retired four-star general says, the
Army's night-vision equipment on M1A1 tanks
and Bradley Fighting Vehicles allowed his
men to attack through the blinding sandstorm
and defeat the 26th.
"This sandstorm stuff is overrated," says
retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Buster Glosson,
who designed the 1991 air campaign. "With
GPS [global positioning system] and with
Army technology permitting them to see the
battlefield, even though it's obscured, I don't
believe it will delay or influence" when a
battle starts.
The retired general said blowing sand can
throw laser-guided bombs off the mark, but
has no effect on satellite-steered munitions
now in vogue.
Vietnam syndrome
Times editor Howell Raines explained his
paper's slant well before the war started,
saying on PBS his pages are full of anti-war
stories because he does not want another
Vietnam.
Question: "The accusation is that you're
more than following it, that you're campaigning
against military intervention."
Raines: "As I say, the people who make
those kinds of accusations, usually for
ideological reasons, are the best witness on
why they say that. In this kind of reporting, one
of the lessons of Vietnam is that it's important
to ask the questions at the front end of the war,
not afterwards."
During the 2001 Afghanistan campaign, the
New York Times declared on the front page
that the war was a "quagmire" — in month
one.
"A Military Quagmire Remembered:
Afghanistan as Vietnam," the Oct. 31 headline
said on day 24. (Kabul and Kandahar fell by
December 7.)
The Post already has decided that, in week
one, Operation Iraqi Freedom is another
Vietnam — at least according to a
Style-section story.
Back to the current war. Let the record note
that on the ground war's fourth day, the first
"Vietnam" question came at the alliance's daily
briefing in Doha, Qatar.
A reporter for Abu Dhabi television asked
briefer Lt. Gen. John Abizaid, "We have been
seeing reports of U.S. soldiers killed, missing
and captured, and the state of resistance of
Iraqi in many cities which you claimed before
taken full control, such as An Nasiriyah and
Umm Qasr. Are you facing a new Vietnam in
Iraq, or are you victims of
over-self-confidence?"
At the Pentagon, planners have a different
view.
"We've been doing great," said an Air
Force official. "In regards to casualties and
POWs, we are doing well. Killed in only low
double-digits. It could be a lot worse, not that
I don't feel for any people we've lost. I do."
What does please senior policy-makers is
the TV coverage. They believe the networks
and cable news are providing a much more
balanced picture of the battlefield.
Their chief problem with cable news is the
cadre of retired military officers who make
pretty good educated guesses about where
allied troops are headed.
In fact, the pundits' analysis of the war plan
was so accurate that Gen. Richard B. Myers,
Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, held a
conference call on the day the war started to
tell them to "tone it down a little," a source
said.
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