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As long term readers have no doubt noticed, I follow the DOD press transcripts on a regular basis. Through the wonders of 21st Century technology I can be virtually present at all the DOD press briefings and media appearances.
One of the stories I have been following for the last few months is the arrangement between media and military for coverage of the coming end of Saddam. You may not know it, but there are going to be reporters and even TV crews embedded with virtually every unit from the first wave front line troops to the division headquarters forces.
The DOD has decided the best way to fight back against the expected disinformation campaign Saddam will wage is to have reporters right in the face of the battle and in literally every corner of it. Perhaps not embedded with special forces, but certainly almost everywhere else. We are going to get battles live on TV this time around. I also suspect we are going to see more dead journalists than usual given their location in the thick of it.
The reporting will be more open than in previous wars but with critical restrictions on the release of information which would compromise a mission, or the showing or naming of dead and maimed soldiers before families have been notified. I can’t imagine any decent human being not understanding the latter. As to the former, if a reporter gives away operational information on their unit their own arse is on the line.
It seems like a good plan to me. We’ll get a perspective never before seen outside of the front line. The military gets a lot of protection against what Saddam is going to try to pull off 1. The media get a freer reign than they have had in decades and must only follow rules which would require either stupidity or inhumanity to violate.
There have been many briefings on this topic, but you may find this NPR discussion a good introduction to the pro’s and con’s. While you are reading, note the comments of the New York Times correspondent.
He’s everything you’d expect from them.
1 =There have been recent reports some elite Iraqi troops have been issued uniforms made to look exactly like the american ones and have been ordered to commit atrocities to stir up trouble. The troops in question are the same ones who have been responsible for beheading women in public places and who are seen in TV footage with faces covered in white masks. There are also reports explosives have been purchased, wells mined and that some oil wells have already been blown up. Trenches of fuel oil for smoke barriers have been filled and tested. Saddam might also order the intentional release of millions of gallons of crude per day into the Persian Gulf in an attempt to destroy the water desalinization plants and water tables of Kuwait and other water poor Arab countries.
In news which will surprise no one who has actually been following events and listening to what Tony Blair has been saying consistently for more than a month, it has been reported that 300 British SAS troops are already operating inside Iraq. God speed, Gentlemen.
Now please stop this preposterous charade of pretending to need the imprimatur of that exclusive club for mass murderers, thieves, thugs and tyrants (The United Nations) to justify anything whatsoever. We are already well past the point of no return, so just leave those friends of Saddam Hussain and Ba’athist Socialism who write for and advocate the views of the Guardian newspaper to their delusions of relevance.
The moon in silence goes its way and heeds no yelping cur.
knock, knock…
When I was ten years old, I was informed that:
- The National Health Service is the finest in the World
- The Comprehensive School system was the envy of the World
- The Welfare State was the envy of the World
- The Royal Navy was the finest in the World
- The British Army was the finest in the World
When I was twenty, some British politicians still asserted each of these statements, although none seemed to believe all of them anymore. There seemed to be an equal number of politicians claiming that each of these thing was ‘a National disgrace’, which given this was the public sector, was no doubt true.
The elite forces of the British Army are no doubt excellent. Some bits of British military design are excellent. But this does not mean that the British armed forces are fit for combat. In May 1940 the French Army had as many tanks as the Germans. The French Air Force in aerial battle shot down more German planes than the Germans did of theirs. The French tanks were certainly good enough for use by the Germans in other parts of Europe… but even good equipment can be misused, and the finest army in the world can be run into the ground by bad management.
Since 1991, the British Army has recruited according to the whims of political correctness. The rifle only works if assembled in a tent and cleaned before and after each use. The boots melt in the Middle East. The troops have not enough sleeping bags, clothes, soap, tents or fuel for their vehicles. Their communications equipment does not work, last time they saw action in Europe they were able to use their mobile phones, this time these are unlikely to work. The new British tank breaks down. The British Army version of the Apache apears to be less reliable than the version used by the US in 1991. There is not enough ammunition for any of the weapons. There is no medical service worth talking about to save money and because of staff shortages: casualties will queue and die on trolleys in the National Health Service if they are unfortunate enough to be flown home. Obviously the best scenario for a British wounded soldier is to be picked up and treated by one of the other allies (except perhaps Turkey). This may sound like the Crimea in 1854-56. On that occasion the Times decribed the British Army as it left as ‘the finest army that has ever left these shores’. Less than ten per cent of the British casualties of the Crimean War came from combat.
It may be that the US is capable of defeating Iraq rapidly and without considerable losses. But the British Army is not properly equipped, the logistics are very poor and the medical facilities inadequate. I would rather air these points now, than wait for a report from a modern Scutari.
I don’t always agree with what SecDef Rumsfeld says and I find his statements on volunteer human shields to be particularly wrong:
“And I want to note, again, it is a violation of the law of armed conflict to use noncombatants as a means of shielding potential military targets — even those people who may volunteer for this purpose. Iraqi actions to do so would not only violate this law but could be a — could be considered a
war crime in any conflict. Therefore, if death or serious injury to a noncombatant resulted from these efforts, the individuals responsible for deploying any innocent civilians as human shields could be guilty of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.”
There is no such thing as a “voluntary human shield”. The words cancel each other out and leave… just another ordinary enemy combatant. Any British, American, Australian or person of whatever nationality who makes a decision, of their own free will, to intentionally place themselves in harms way in defense of a combatant’s facilities should be treated like any other member of that combatant’s forces.
This is an issue of personal liberty. These people may be stupid. They may be fools. It does not matter: they have made their own choice.
We should treat them no differently from any other Iraqi soldier, nor should we treat their chosen superior officers any differently than any other Iraqi officer.
Let’s not muddy the semantic waters. A Human Shield is an involuntary innocent, a person taken forcefully and tied to the front of a tank or staked out beside a power plant. If we start calling volunteers by the same name there is no telling where such logic will lead.
Dr. Johnson-Winegar of the US DOD discussed NBC readiness on 60 Minutes a few days ago. From the transcript, it appears NBC readiness was a total bollocks last summer. From the “subtext” I can imagine Rumsfeld having fits when all of this first came to light. There were Congressional hearings as late as October, faulty suits being hunted down through a Byzantine (ie military) inventory system, training filters shipped with some suits to Kuwait. SNAFU from word go.
It appears they have been getting it sorted, albeit at great cost of time and money. Hundreds of thousands of new suits have been produced in the last few months. Soldiers have received some training. Mostly in Kuwait I’d bet. They are tracking down the problem gear the Army way. Throw manpower at it. When a soldier is doing nothing else on a battlefield they “clean their gun”. I think “inspect your NBC gear” will be the 21st Century’s addition to that old adage.
There are bound to be problems. We have not actually fought on an NBC battlefield since WWI. Whatever we see, it will not be static trench warfare with tightly bunched troops so there are no real tactical lessons to be learned from WWI. Doctrine is based on training exercises, some with live Chemical/Bio agents. Good, but not the same as a real enemy with the same weapons trying to kill you before you kill him. → Continue reading: Weapons? What Weapons II?
Taking my life into my hands the other day, I squeezed around the London Underground and found myself pressed up against an advertisement on the Piccadilly Line for that manufacturer of jobs, I meant ‘first-rate military equipment’ British Aerospace or BAe as it would now prefer to be known.
I discovered that Royal Air Force pilots enjoy the delights of an ‘assertive’ and ‘calm’ woman’s voice, produced by electronic circuitry, telling them ‘Missile locked onto you’, ‘Pull up! Pull up’ and ‘You fool! You’re going to die’… I made that last one up, I hope.
The advertisement informed me that the pilots affectionately know this disembodied squawking harpy as ‘Nagging Nora’. Far be it from me to even hint that this nickname could be anything other than a cute moniker of endearment. However, the only person I have met in the last five years who worked in the R.A.F. was a woman, although she wasn’t a pilot. And I also know that gays are now allowed into the armed services. So this caused me to wonder… Has a pilot been sued for divorce yet, by a jealous wife, angry at her beloved calling out of ‘Nora, Nora’ in his sleep?
Can a female pilot sue the R.A.F. for refusing to provide her with a ‘Nagging Norman’ voice, perhaps modelled on the authoritarian tones of that former pilot Lord Tebbitt? Can a homosexual pilot demand the same (which would be funny given Lord Tebbitt’s known ‘enthusiasm’ for gay rights)? And if different voices are provided for women and gays, will it be considered ‘pressure’ on lesbians to reveal their sexuality to admit that actually, they rather preferred Nagging Nora’s soft and assertive tones, all along?
As we prepare for war, I hope that these vital issues for the nation’s defence are given the proper attention that they deserve. And never mind that the Tornado is hopelessly outclassed as a fighter by the Iraqi Mig 29s.
Yesterday France, Germany and Belgium announced that they are invoking an unprecedented NATO procedure to prevent the United States lending support to Turkey to defend its border with Iraq. Washington was disconcerted and dismayed by last week’s move. Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, described the Franco-German action as a “breathtaking event” that would “reverberate throughout the alliance”.
Turkey has invoked Article 4, that requires members to consult together when, in the opinion of any of them, their territorial integrity, political independence or security is threatened. It is the first time this has been done in the history of the alliance, thus ensuring an urgent and high level debate over the Franco-German action. The impact of that action is questionable for a number of reasons.
John Keegan has an insightful analysis of the reasons for the rift and the potential fall-out.
- Turkey has bilateral defence agreements with the United States, which allow military aid outside the NATO relationship.
- The Patriot missiles offered to Turkey are under Dutch sovereign control and so not subject to NATO interference.
- America could provide the Awacs early warning aircraft if NATO refuses to send its own.
There is nothing new about the French being obstinate towards the United States in general and NATO in particular. France withdrew from NATO’s military structure in 1966 to pursue an independent foreign and defence policy. Later it attempted to revive the military role of the Western European Union, NATO’s long sidelined precursor, and then tried to invest the European Commission with defence responsibilities.
As long as the United States perceived the drive for European unity to be economic in thrust, the French efforts to create a parallel military structure within the western European NATO area were tolerated. It was the disputes over authority in Bosnia and Kosovo that eventually caused Washington to see the purpose of French policy as intended to weaken NATO. American acquiescence was eroded and led to hostility.
I whole-heartedly subscribe to Keegan’s view that the United States created NATO and has fostered its development and welfare devotedly over 50 years and that the alliance is, without question, the most important, successful and creative foreign policy initiative of the United States since the Second World War.
The French and Germans, not to mention the insignificant Belgians, seem simply, like tiresome neighbours, to be demanding attention. In so doing, they are inflicting damage on the organisation that secured their safety during the Cold War, and affronting the ally that guaranteed it, to a degree that cannot easily be forgotten or forgiven.
Several NATO members are unshakeable in their loyalty. They include this country, Turkey and probably Italy and Spain. Several of the new NATO states, Poland foremost, would be eager to offer basing facilities to troops withdrawn from Germany soil. The Belgians do not count. The Dutch seem solid. Denmark and Norway are, with reservations, good NATO citizens.
A map of NATO with a hole where Germany had been would look odd; but the map has looked odd for 40 years since the French went their separate way. Now that the Soviet threat is no more, Nato does not really need Germany, except for purposes of internal communication. Germany’s armed forces are in disarray, as are those of France.
An Anglo-Saxon NATO, plus Turkey, plus Scandinavia, plus Italy and Spain would still have the bases necessary to command the key strategic positions and the strength to keep the peace in the northern hemisphere.
I just hope the United States does not budge and ensures that the French and German leaders get exactly what they deserve for their unprincipled and self-interested behaviour. To me that would be France and Germany finally occupying positions on the international scene that are commensurate with their true significance rather than based on some historically misplaced delusions of grandeur.
Most of the British armoured vehicles being sent to the Gulf in preparation for war with Iraq’a Ba’athist Socialist regime will arrive not painted in the correct desert warfare camouflage, but rather in the European colours. Not enough money for paint? Did the fact the Army was going to go to Iraq somehow take the Ministry of Defense by surprise?
This shoddy state of affairs is a measure of the true attitude of the Labour Party towards the military they are about to order into action. Yet somehow they find money for welfare payment to asylum seekers and legal aid to burglars who want to sue householders who use force to defend their property.
We have lately been hearing the question “Why Iraq when we know North Korea has the bomb?” The official answers we have been given so far have not been truly satisfactory. I will posit this is due to an (perhaps justified) unwillingness on the part of US officials to state the threat equation in its’ purest Machiavellian form.
North Korea is no where near the threat Iraq is. Even with nuclear weapons they are not in the same league. This may seem strange to the reader. They have nukes, they have missiles, they have half a million artillery pieces facing across the border, they have troops enough to flood across the border like a mile wide horde of cockroaches against a single can of Raid.
That is true. Next question. After they take over South Korea, what next? They are on a peninsula. Their neighbors are China, Russia and Japan. Japan is far across the water. So in the worst case, what do we lose? South Korea. That’s it.
What happens after they finish the rape, pillage and burn? After they’ve wrecked the South Korean infrastructure in pitched battles against the large and well equiped South Korean military? Is a nation that can’t feed itself going to rebuild the South Korean economy when it couldn’t build it’s own in the first place? What are they going to do with a large enemy population which has just been brutally awakened to the fact they can’t go out and shop in the trendy stores any more? That there is going to be no choice in the next election? That their future is the image of a boot heel stamping on their faces, forever?
Is North Korean going to go North and take on the Chinese Peoples Army? Are they going to build massive numbers of ships and attempt to cross the straits into the the teeth of a “Made in America” Divine Wind?? Will the three Korean soldiers who survive to wash up on the northern shores of Japan proceed to conquer it?
Not bloody likely.
You say, but they have nukes! They have missiles. This is true. But the missiles cannot yet reach the caribou herds in Alaska, and it is unlikely North Korea would retain the infrastructure for building them immediately following a very difficult victory. The entire Korean peninsula would be in ashes. By the time they rebuild with the help of fresh slave labour battalions from the South, America will have shipboard missile defense systems just outside their territorial waters ready to stop short range missiles aimed at Japan – and permanent facilities in the Aleutians to defend North America.
North Korea would find itself in a situation similar to where it started, only worse. It would take decades to fully digest the liberal South Korean society and bury the bones of it.
This is a “best case scenario” for North Korea. It is also highly unlikely and that is as apparent to the North Koreans as it is to me. A more likely result of such a miscalculation is a replay of the first Korean War… but without hordes of Chinese troops and experienced WWII Russian pilots storming across the Yalu to push back the American counter offensive.
Now compare the situation to Iraq. It is a large and strategically located asian nation. It is surrounded by far weaker neighbors. Only Iran seems capable of standing up to them. So he’d leave them for desert.
Look at a map with the jaundiced eye of an experienced Risk player. Jordan and Kuwait are obvious snacks. The Saudi’s are a pushover. The Emirates are nice people but are very small; Yemen wouldn’t last very long either. If left to his own Xerxian dreams, Saddam would very quickly reinstate most of the ancient Assyrian empire. He’d own the middle East from the Turkish border to the Indian Ocean.
Then he’d take on the nuclear powers. He’s got enough people and desert to take whatever Israel or Pakistan could mete out. He might leave Iran for Oday’s generation. Future conquests require going through Egypt, and once that is managed what is going to stop him in Northern Africa?
All the while, he’s got an economy far more effective than North Korea. There are shopping malls and consumer goods in Baghdad that would dazzle the eyes of a North Korean. He’s an old style conqueror, not an ideologue. He doesn’t have to control everything. He’ll use terror and random killings to keep the population sufficiently cowed, but beyond that they may work and create wealth.
This is why Iraq must be dealt with and North Korea may be left to moulder.
Note: Thanks to Mark G for pointing out a blooper on my part. I’ve corrected ‘Abyssinian’ to ‘Assyrian’.
I was just catching up on some of my technical reading. There’s a lot of exciting and original work going on at DARPA. There always has been but the stuff coming down the pike now is just off in the realms of Science Fiction, as you can see from these words of the current DARPA Director, Tony Tether:
“Now that is terrific, but that is not the chilling part. We took the joystick away from the monkey at Duke. The light came on. Who knows what the monkey really thought, but it knew what it had to do. But it had no joystick. However, the mechanical arm at MIT moved the joystick just like it did before. It was thought at first that the motor signal was being transmitted to MIT, but it turned out that the probes had tapped into the monkey’s thoughts for moving the joystick. In other words, the monkey thought about moving the joystick, and the joystick at MIT moved. “
Fascinating in and of itself. But it leads to ever wilder things in the future, as he says in a later paragraph:
“Imagine 25 years from now where old guys like me put on a pair of glasses or a helmet and open our eyes. Somewhere there will be a robot that will open its eyes and we will be able to see what the robot sees. We will be able to remotely look down on a cave and think to ourselves, “Let’s go down there and kick some butt.” And the robots will respond, controlled by our thoughts. It’s coming. Imagine a warrior–with the intellect of a human and the immortality of a machine–controlled by our thoughts. “
I’ll go one further. Imagine a whole bunch of these as semi-autonomous robots slaved to master robots “inhabited” by Marines. Let them shift their viewpoint and control moment by moment from one to another of the uninhabited warbots as needed… If you ever played the old PC game, “Hulk” you’ll know he origins of the idea and how it works.
I don’t really think you are going to go into battle with just Remotely Piloted Soldiers, but I can see the idea as an absolutely huge force multiplier for the troops on the spot.
It’s getting really spooky out here near the singularity.
Glenn Reynolds put me on the trail of this one: EMP weapons.
I personally don’t know what all the fuss is about. New Scientist published an article a year or three ago which shows how to build one of these in your garage. Perhaps getting things right for targeting from a moving cruise missile and accurately controlling the output energy are the special part… but the main concept is dead easy.
If you are interested, go dig it up yourself. I’m not going to tell you how.
Once WWIII is over with… perhaps.
America is to award the Congressional Medal of Honour, the equivalent of the Victoria Cross, to a British Special Boat Service (formerly Special Boat Squadron) commando who led the rescue of a CIA officer from an Afghan prison revolt.
It will be the first time the medal has been awarded to a living foreigner. The Queen will have to give permission for the SBS soldier to wear it.
The SBS senior NCO led a patrol of half-a-dozen SBS commandos who rescued a member of the CIA’s special activities section from the fort at Qala-i-Jangi near Mazar-i-Sharif, last November. The fort was holding 500 al-Qa’eda and Taliban prisoners, many of whom had not been searched and were still armed.
An exchange of fire developed into a full-scale revolt and two CIA officers who had been interrogating the prisoners were caught in the battle in which one was killed. The uprising went on for three days and the SBS commandos remained throughout, bringing down aerial fire to quell the revolt.
The battle was one of the most contentious episodes in the war last year with human rights groups raising concerns over air strikes against prisoners, some of them unarmed.
The eagerness of the Americans to recognise the courage of the NCO contrasts with suspicion within the regiment that two SAS soldiers being considered for VCs for an attack on the al-Qaeda cave complex will not get them.
Not by strength, by guile
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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