🚀 go-pugleaf

"Dharmananda" <Nil@neph.net> wrote in message
news:1820436.zUTYVc0WRB@news.verizon.net...
> DeadMeat wrote:
>
> >
> > "Dharmananda" <Nil@neph.net> wrote in message
> > news:1204636.UY531aNM1O@news.verizon.net...
> >> DeadMeat wrote:
> >>
> >> >
> >> > I understand what Overwhelming Firepower is. That's where a bomb is
> >> > dropped on a house housing your enemy. Or where you have the troops
> >> > come in behind a couple or three M-1s that blow the 2nd floor, 3rd,
> >> > 4th, and fifth window on the 2nd and third floor completely away.
Hell,
> >> > kid, it's done all the time and it saves lives on the US side. If you
> >> > overkill it then it's still dead and you lost NO people in the first
> >> > place. If you underkill it your ground troops are going to get some
> >> > pretty nasty surprises.
> >> >
> >>
> >> That makes sense.  But then why is it, pray tell, that one of the other
> >> military geniuses on this thread assures me, on the basis of war blogs,
> >> that this doctrine, i.e., overwhelming firepower, is outdated?
> >
> > Easy answer.  They either repeat what they are told while on base or
they
> > just make it up as they go.
>
>
> Right.  So why get your shorts in a bunch about doctrine at all, whatever
it
> was trying to be, if you're just going to throw it out the window, as soon
> as you get into combat?

It's not being thrown out.  The Military was practicing the Doctrine
starting in 1976 hoping that congress or the prez wouldn't muck up the next
one.  It's what we wanted to do in Nam but couldn't.

The change wasn't in the Army doctine as much as in the Air Force, Navy and
Marine.  And the biggest change was the way that Overwhelming Force was to
be used.  It was used quite affectively in just last 8 days.  Our losses
would have been much higher.

>
>
> > Either way, their's is just an opinion just
> > like yours is.
>
>
> Look, these guys are highly trained war machines.  Ask them.  They'll tell
> you.  They're not supposed to have opinions like civilians like me.
> They're supposed to have a set of instant, and often lethal, reactions,
> hard-wired into the cortex of their brains, according to a set of
> perceptual grids called Doctrine.

And then you have civilians killed at such a rate that even the shop keepers
bear arms against you.  Not a good thing.  Foxnews reported a shooting that
may be along the lines you suggest.  I don't know of a single Military
Person with more than 4 years that doesn't find the film alarming.  The US
Troops have to think these days otherwise, we are no better than the
Insurgents/Terrorists.


>
>
> > Not a single one of them will ever be involved in
> > Overwhelming Force.
>
>
> Hello?  Doctrine is Doctrine.  If you're in the military you recieve it.
If
> you didn't, you'd be dead.

No, there are many doctrines.  The Ground Pounder gets a different doctine
than the guy dropping that 2000lb bomb.  The Grunt has trouble doing
overwhelming force since he's on a one to one basis.  The Jet Jockey pickles
his load, follows it in with his sights and then goes home.  Very clean,
very anticeptic for him but more devistating than 200 ground pounders.  The
closest thing from the Army would have to a heavy, real heavy Artillery
barrage which also fits securely in the Overwhelming Force category.


>
>
> > That's normally left, these days, to the Air Force,
> > Navy or Marines who have the Air and Sea Power on hand.  They might (not
> > likely with these guinuses) be involved in moving in aftewards to either
> > sweep up or clean the place up of the last vestages of resistance.
>
>
> Where, oh where have you BEEN for the last fifty years?

Let's see, I retired from the AF in 1990 where I was employed in SAC with
the REAL Overwhelming Force Weapons.


>
>
> > Don't
> > get me wrong, the clean up can be quite deadly and should be avoided
> > whenever possible.
>
>
> Which is the primary place where the whole Doctrine breaks down.  "If you
> break it, you then have to fix it".  (Powell's famous 'pottery shed
> principle')  And to fix it, the bombardment has to cease.  And then guess
> who is still there?  Even if you've succeeded in bombing every existing
> insurgent at the time of the attack to smithereens, that very bombardment,
> in and of itself, just made fresh insurents out of all the male relatives
> of every one you killed.

It's not broke. It was broke until about 8 days ago.  You have to use it
when you need it.  But the troops have been trying to play Policemen with a
bunch of Guirrilla fighters.  You have to root them out by killing them.

>
>
> Bad Doctrine!  Bad, bad, bad!

I disagree.  I have seen bad doctrines. I've lived bad doctrines and the
current (in the last 8 days) is nowhere near as bad as we once had.


>
>
> > While the use of Overpowering or Overwhelming force is
> > being used, it's the enemy that normally dies.  But during the cleanup,
> > you have to send in your own troops and that is never anticeptic.
>
>
> Let alone fresh outbreaks of civil disorder throughout the Sunni triangle.
> The enemy didn't die in Fallujah.  Largly, he escaped.  Who died was
> innocent civilians.
>
> BAD DOCTRINE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

About 1600 of them didn't escape.  That's 1600 less to worry about.  Many
moved to Mosul.  Guess what kicked off in the last couple of days?  Mosul is
getting the same treatment.