"Stay the course"

 

"As they stand up we stand down"

 

"Americas comitiment is not unending"

 

"Return on success"

 

Anyone care to quote some leaders from previous wars or conflicts that sounded so inspiring?

 

"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."

"As you know, you have to go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want," - former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld

"As you know, you have to go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want,"

 

The more I think about this the more I keep coming up with "what a crock!"

 

Let's go back to WWI, did America just join the war and jump in with what they had? Quick answer NO we built up to what we wanted before heading to Europe!

 

Fast foward to WWII, did Japan just jump up and go to war with what they had or did they build up before the war? Quick answer NO they buit an Army they wanted!

 

Did Germany just jump up and start the war in Europe without buiding up to what they wanted? Quick answer NO they also built up to an Army they wanted!

 

America was attacked on December 7, 1941 and was in an "offical state of war" but did we just jump out and "go" to war with what we had or did we build up to what we wanted? Quick answer the first part of the war did not go well until we built up to the Army we wanted before really "going" to war.

I agree. You make a good point.

well, actually no he does not make a good point (unusual for Brisc).

We went to war in the Civil War with what we had, no real time for a build up. Same with the Span/Amer war, the navy being the only real bright spot there. WWI found us nowhere near where we needed to be to go to war and the troops suffered immeasurably, mainly due to Wilson's misguided attempts to not provoke Germany. WWII had us training with telephone poles and broomsticks before we got in, and we fought with what we had for about a year, most of our positions being overrun in the Pacific, and getting our butts kicked in N. Africa in our first encounters with Jerry. Korean war caught us with our pants down and we tried to stop an armored juggernaut with a jerry rigged group of unseasoned troops without any real effective AT weapons.

Sorry, Cheney was right on that one.

I'll have to take exception :-)

 

Civil war, way way too old to consider as moden day war. Spanish/American war, seeing you give the American Navy credit and the war lasted less than six months and was mostly resolved with 2 naval battles (1 in Cuba & 1 in the Phillipines) it just may have been we very well prepared for,  seeing we picked the fight to begin with.

 

As far as WWI goes, when the United States entered (keyword) the war in 1917 our Army was small. In 1918 when we really went into war our Army was 3 or 4 million and we were sending troops across the Alantic in unbelieve numbers for that period of time.

 

As you stated a state of war may have existed on Dec 7, 1941 but it was a while before we really went to war.

 

I've never said you can't be in a war and not be ready which has been proved over and over again. I do say if your going to be the aggressor then you best not step up and say "we went with what we had" after the fact.

To further the point I'll add 1.) Grenada, what we had was more than enough to accomplish the "mission". Heck a couple of Boy Scout troops could have pulled that one off. 2.) Gulf 1, we took what we had at the time and designed a "mission" to rid Kuwait of the occupiers. The "mission" went off as good or better than planned. So much so we crossed the border and were chasing them back to Baghdad. Then the order was given not to follow anymore. The "mission" was accomplised and at least one person (Colin Powell) knew that if your going to go to downtown Baghdad you better be geared up and ready for that. Also after you got there you would be faced with "you break it you fix it" which he knew was something not to get involved with.

 

Seems Rummy (not Cheney) also knew the same things as Powell so I will still stand by original post.

 

:-)

actually, briscoe, you should lie down on this one...have you ever read what Rumsfeld said, or did you just get the snippets and run with them?  here you go, from CNN...

"Q:  Yes, Mr. Secretary.  My question is more logistical.  We’ve had troops in Iraq for coming up on three years and we’ve always staged here out of Kuwait.  Now why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromise ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles and why don’t we have those resources readily available to us?  [Applause]

 

SEC. RUMSFELD:  I missed the first part of your question.  And could you repeat it for me?

 

Q:  Yes, Mr. Secretary.  Our soldiers have been fighting in Iraq for coming up on three years.  A lot of us are getting ready to move north relatively soon.  Our vehicles are not armored.  We’re digging pieces of rusted scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass that’s already been shot up, dropped, busted, picking the best out of this scrap to put on our vehicles to take into combat.  We do not have proper armament vehicles to carry with us north.

 

SEC. RUMSFELD:  I talked to the General coming out here about the pace at which the vehicles are being armored.  They have been brought from all over the world, wherever they’re not needed, to a place here where they are needed.  I’m told that they are being – the Army is – I think it’s something like 400 a month are being done.  And it’s essentially a matter of physics.  It isn’t a matter of money.  It isn’t a matter on the part of the Army of desire.  It’s a matter of production and capability of doing it.

 

As you know, you go to war with the Army you have.  They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.  Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce the armor necessary at a rate that they believe – it’s a greatly expanded rate from what existed previously, but a rate that they believe is the rate that is all that can be accomplished at this moment.

 

I can assure you that General Schoomaker and the leadership in the Army and certainly General Whitcomb are sensitive to the fact that not every vehicle has the degree of armor that would be desirable for it to have, but that they’re working at it at a good clip.  It’s interesting, I’ve talked a great deal about this with a team of people who’ve been working on it hard at the Pentagon.  And if you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up.  And you can have an up-armored humvee and it can be blown up.  And you can go down and, the vehicle, the goal we have is to have as many of those vehicles as is humanly possible with the appropriate level of armor available for the troops.  And that is what the Army has been working on.

 

And General Whitcomb, is there anything you’d want to add to that?

 

GEN. WHITCOMB:  Nothing. [Laughter] Mr. Secretary, I’d be happy to.  That is a focus on what we do here in Kuwait and what is done up in the theater, both in Iraq and also in Afghanistan.  As the secretary has said, it’s not a matter of money or desire; it is a matter of the logistics of being able to produce it.  The 699^th, the team that we’ve got here in Kuwait has done [Cheers] a tremendous effort to take that steel that they have and cut it, prefab it and put it on vehicles.  But there is nobody from the president on down that is not aware that this is a challenge for us and this is a desire for us to accomplish."

 

From a historical perspective, you are so absolutely wrong with your meandering interpretation of history.  I won't elaborate about how Japan had been at war for a number of years(which is why we created an embargo on their oil supply...surprise...bet you didn't know that...they were in a resource war with China and Korea...) and how Germany turned their economy around with their own massive military build-up.  And if you feel we were ready at all for WW1...well...I would hate to rely on facts in an argument with you...now that you have read what Rumsfeld really said, perhaps you won't use it so quickly as a lib, anti-war talking point.

You stand corrected once again because the Bush administration made plans for a war in Iraq for "regime change" even before 9/11 occurred.  It thought that it would have been a "cakewalk", but it had no clues that it would lead to a bloody insurgency guerrilla warfare as a result of an occupation. If that was the case in its little plan for Iraq, It should have prepared for proper equipment in order to protect US Armed Personnel, but didn't. We can see what has come out of this entire fiasco besides the fact that death toll is still mounting, and a growing number of soldiers are coming back home crippled and maimed.

 

 

" actually, briscoe, you should lie down on this one...have you ever read what Rumsfeld said, or did you just get the snippets and run with them?  here you go, from CNN... "

 

I gotta give Rumsfeld credit, if you want a conventinal war with death and destruction you can't do any better than him. Hitler may have invented the Blitzkrieg but Rumsfled turned it into an artform that would make Hitler jealous.

 

At least say you remember after the fall of Baghdad, Rumsfeld was on the tube showing us maps of Baghdad each day that had more and more green areas showing how the power was being turned back on.

 

If you want a really Kodak inspiring moment look at what our Presdient said about his letting a terrorist talk in our country outside of the UN much less keeping him out all together. What happened to the day's of "evil doers", "your with us or your with the terrorists", "bring em on", "axis of evil"?

 

People want to say "if Hitler had been killed in 39", heck Hitler would never get a pass from FDR to come here in the first place and even he knew better than to come ot America to start with.

 

:-(

 

 

sorry brisc, I have to go with what release said.

As for the civil war, it was probably the first modern war in the world in many ways.

Spanish AMerican war was also fought on the ground using ill-equipped troops. The navy fought against a pretty derelict spanish armada and was pretty lucky.

As for WWI and II, well, we were not prepared at all and it showed. Details are at hand I am sure, so no need to note them here.

Korea was the same.

Viet nam a different story.

Gulf war only one we were ready for, but only after a long delay.

Still stand by what I said, respectfully....