What is to be "new" quote?

"Mission Accomplished, major combat is over," has died a slow death. "Hunt em down, smoke em out, and bring em to justice", did get a few # 2s. Now, "Stay the course," has been declared persona non grata, or just non grata, maybe. It seems our plan was to walk upon rose petals as we entered Baghdad after the bombing, did not happen. We had no other acting plan, just daily reaction. All of the violence now all over Iraq and Afghanistan, would be here in America by now if we had not replaced Saddam. Maybe so, I don't know for sure, but the facts are that we went in with the wrong plan and didn't change it soon enough. We are an embarrassment and I don't like that at all. Can't we do something except what we did in Viet Nam, cut and run? Is our imagination gone, are our generals weak, or, do we just keep the deaths under 100 per month and the casulties under 500 per month, for us, and not really worry about how many the natives suffer, for years more? Mistakes need to be admitted or forced admitting needs to be accomplished.

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Winning
ArmyMAJretired's picture
Submitted by ArmyMAJretired on Tue, 10/24/2006 - 10:41am.

``Winning means helping the Iraqis achieve stability and security and doing it as quickly and effectively as possible in order to bring our troops home,''

We did not go in with "the wrong plan" the problem is that the enemy never reads the plan, tends to react in ways not anticipated and has the luxury of using the media and the "loyal opposition"

I'm with you, I don't care what we call it we cannot allow the terrorists to win.

This is not a simple enemy, throw in the three religious sects, Ba'athists, Iranians, Syria, Al-Queda and clans and it is extremely hard to get cooperation on a good day.


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Major: the plan
Submitted by dollaradayandfound on Tue, 10/24/2006 - 12:40pm.

I don't follow you! One day after 9/11, we started preparing for this war, over five years ago. Are you saying that any plan we come up with is good, whether or not it succeeds in five years? Man, call a mistake, a mistake. Doomed, otherwise.

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Take the politics out of it
ArmyMAJretired's picture
Submitted by ArmyMAJretired on Tue, 10/24/2006 - 2:01pm.

Athough I am not a School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS)graduate, I do know something about Military planning.

The military has OPLANS or operational plans for almost any contingency. Planning staffs at Central Command, Pacific Command, Southern Command (maybe even one about Venezuela) etc have binders full of plans.

The Clinton administartion came up with the policy of Regime change in Iraq and I'm sure the Plan started as soon as Desert Storm ended.

The Military planners (NOT THE PRESIDENT) had a phase concerning post hostilities, reconstruction, whatever they named it. Plans come with assumption and no one assumed the resistance (including our wonderful intelligence agencies) again, NOT THE PRESIDENT.

The plan has changed to meet changes on the ground. Troops, tactics and equipment, but the enemy changes too.

The one constant in all of this has been the Media and some partisan hacks concerned more with regaining power then winning a war.

It is like trying to dog fight with flaps and landing gear down! It makes a hard fight harder.

So concentrate on bashing the president and pointing fingers and blame. The people to blame wear civilian clothes, violate the law of land warfare and are killing their fellow muslims, that's who to blame dollarshortanddaylate.


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Armymajor; greetings
AF A-10's picture
Submitted by AF A-10 on Tue, 10/24/2006 - 10:46pm.

I'm back out of the anger management clinic. Foley's doing well by the way (joking, joking). The poster with the incredibly long name has a valid point. We all know that various plans exist, but what credible plan showed an epidemic of democracy breaking out? Flowers and chocolates? Streets named after our president. The exhasperation of our citizens has to do with a lack of accountability. We have blamed the main stream media and president bashers before, but they are not responsible for the quagmire that is undeniable at the present time. We flow out of towns and sectarian violence flows in. We give Afghanistan to NATO and the commander's first report is, "we need help or we are going to lose ground here." People want to feel like there is true accountability amongst those who put our military in untenable situations, and time has shown democratization by bombing to be untenable.

Cheers, and get oldschool back on these boards!

Hack


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Major: Plans
Submitted by dollaradayandfound on Tue, 10/24/2006 - 2:33pm.

Being a veteran myself, who handled a lot of paperwork, I'm familiar with the fact that tens of thousands of uniforms prepare more plans than others can read. That has nothing much to do with my point. The decisions made about the democratizing of Iraq were not made at the Pentagon. The "administration" calls the shots as to what to emphasize and the generals can either say: "yes sir," express an opinion that it is faulty, or resign. Now if it is not the Presidents fault, and it is not the military's fault for the failure, and it is a failure at this point, then whose fault is it?
I know, it is the Iraqis fault, isn't it, for changing their plans on us? By the way, today we set a timetable to leave, and we will.

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