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re Risks of Iraqi war emerging Some officials warnof a mismatch between strategy and force size.
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 13:27:35 -0500
------ Forwarded Message From: "Joseph C. Pistritto" <jcp () jcphome com> Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 09:44:56 -0800 To: dave () farber net Cc: the terminal of Geoff Goodfellow <geoff () iconia com>, jvp () jcphome com, jdow <jdow () earthlink net> Subject: Re: [IP] Risks of Iraqi war emerging Some officials warnof a mismatch between strategy and force size. I think a lot of the yo-you we're seeing the press is due to the impact of the "embedding" program for journalists in this war. It's giving press (and viewers) live acess as never before to combat. I've watched several fights on CNN/MSNBC/FOX now, and I think the people in the press are being whipsawed by what they're seeing (not from the correspondents themselves, who are doing an impressively professional job of remaining calm and not getting in the way in a difficult situation). First by pictures of endless desert cruising which could be a drive on a nice day in Nevada in your Land Cruiser producing overconfidence then being "stunned" by seeing people actually resisting and setting up fights with our troops and panicking. Not that embedding is bad - I think we're getting a *much* more realistic view of whats actually happening out there than we would have under the Gulf War press rules, for instance, which had very limited access to the forces in action. However the press system isn't used to this much access I think and everyone needs to adjust their panic triggers a bit. If the guys in Atlanta, New York and LA would just calm down, we'd get through this with a lot less hysterics. A good example of this is the Apache crashlanding that resulted in 2 pilots being captured. This was reported as a big disaster, but in reality there were 30-40 helos in the air, they took a lot of ground fire, and one didnt make it back to base (for some reason we're not sure yet). Another was knocked out of action by ground fire, but returned. This is a fairly normal incident when flying helos over hostile areas. Helicopters crash land pretty frequently even when no one's shooting at them.. Remember, the enemy doesn't *know* he can't win. They never do. He's going to keep shooting at you till he figures that out. Which may not happen until he's dead. People shouldn't be panicking becuase it might just take more than 7 days to take over a country with a real army. Its hard to imagine that World War II ever actually got fought (for 5 *years*), given the way the press is reacting to this stuff. Too many video games, I think. Best regards, -jcp- ------ End of Forwarded Message ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- re Risks of Iraqi war emerging Some officials warnof a mismatch between strategy and force size. Dave Farber (Mar 25)