BoatBanter.com - View Single Post - Once again, the military establishment proves...

nom=de=plume[_2_]

"Jim" wrote in message
...
wrote:
On Tue, 13 Jul 2010 10:20:42 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:

wrote in message
...
On Mon, 12 Jul 2010 22:19:56 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:

I think we'd both be surprised by how quickly the military can deploy
in
great numbers.
We sure have not seen them do it, ever in my life, unless you count
Granada.
It took 6 months to get into Kuwait and the "surges" take about that
long
They did rush into Somalia without proper support and got their ass
kicked by a street gang. The mountains of Afghanistan is infinitely
harder that Iraq, Kuwait or Somalia. Just keeping 5000 men in food and
ammo takes a significant effort in a place with no airports and not
much flat ground to create drop zone.

We had plenty of time in Afg. There was a fairly long run up to that
war. We started bombing in October.

We did not have any time. Where are you getting that?

It's all over the place. BL didn't leave until mid-December.

They didn't
start until October and that was not in the area around Tora Bora. We
started in the areas where we had local support and we did pretty well
there with our covert forces. We lost OBL in Tora Bora about 2 months
later and that is only 6 miles from Pakistan.

6 miles by air.
Maybe 30-40 via slow, arduous, snow-covered mountain paths.
And he was only squeezed into Pakistan by the incompetence of
Franks/Rumsfeld.

There was no way we
could bring in the number of troops to secure that area from half way
around the world before he could run 6 miiles.

Pure bull****. See cite below. Plenty analysis of Tora Bora everywhere.

We dod bounce the rubble
for a couple weeks and hoped we would get lucky. They may have been
able to get the air strikes in faster but that was about all we could
do.

Apologist tripe.
Don't try to change written history.
Tora Bora had undergone air bombardment for a month before Bin Laden
escaped on December 16th.
Bin Laden was there and could have been killed/captured.
Tommy Franks screwed the pooch.
For what reason isn't known. I suspect he was just gun shy.
At that time I think the only American casualty was that CIA agent
killed in the prison breakout.
Franks didn't want our troops killed, and we would have suffered
substantial casualties, no telling how many.
Lousy General. Paying criminals to do his job while he sat in Tampa.
And he denied those 4,000 Marines the honor of killing Bin Laden.
Any one of them had more courage than Franks, and knew what was expected
of them. Franks was unsuitable for command.
If Bush says we'll get Bin Laden dead or alive, he god damned better
make sure his general gets the job done.
Rumsfeld and his entire crew was weak compared to Gates and his.
But there's no changing history. 4000 Marines were there, plenty to get
the job done, but not put to use.
And with the slightest foresight a general should possess, there should
have been many more troops at the ready, and Bin Laden surrounded by
American troops before being chased to Pakistan by ineffective aerial
bombing and the criminal Afghani thugs hired by Franks.
The primary mission in Afghanistan was to kill Bin Laden.
The CIA located Bin Laden, then Centcom screwed everything up from there.
Rumsfeld was probably pulling Frank's strings.
One of the worse Secretarys of Defense. Kicked out far too late.
Utter command failure.
Both Rumsfeld and Franks went out with a whimper, and neither is missed
by anybody as far as I know.
Like GWB. Disgraced.
Not killing Bin Laden at Tora Bora was a huge mistake, and is still
costing us big time. By not sacrificing as needed at Tora Bora, AQ
leadership and morale lived on.
Wonder how many GI's died in Iraq because of that.
Many more than would have been lost at Tora Bora I'd wager.
You and GWB might forget who was behind 9/11 but a lot of us don't.
Bin Laden is just one more GWB mess for Obama to clean up.
Your excuses are bull**** revisionism.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/11/ma...gewanted=print
"One of them was Brig. Gen. James N. Mattis, the commander of some 4,000
marines who had arrived in the Afghan theater by now. Mattis, along with
another officer with whom I spoke, was convinced that with these numbers
he could have surrounded and sealed off bin Laden's lair, as well as
deployed troops to the most sensitive portions of the largely
unpatrolled border with Pakistan. He argued strongly that he should be
permitted to proceed to the Tora Bora caves. The general was turned
down. An American intelligence official told me that the Bush
administration later concluded that the refusal of Centcom to dispatch
the marines - along with their failure to commit U.S. ground forces to
Afghanistan generally - was the gravest error of the war."

Jim - Anti-revisionist.

Thank you.