Frank's war plan
Fred Barnes has an excellent piece on gen. tommy franks plan for liberating Iraq.
"With the Franks plan, American forces repeatedly achieved tactical surprise in the war, notably when American, British, and Australian special forces from Jordan captured Iraq's Scud missile sites in western Iraq two days before the larger war began. Iraqi defenders there 'didn't have a lot of time to be caught by surprise because we killed them,' Franks said in an interview last week at Central Command headquarters in Tampa. 'I have to believe the regime was surprised.'"
A point made here before: "A Bush administration official said Franks is 'easy to underestimate,' and Rumsfeld initially seemed to do just that."
"...Afghanistan was a laboratory for military transformation. Lessons from Afghanistan were applied on a broader scale in Iraq. 'We learned precision [bombing] is good and it makes the difference,' Franks said. 'We learned small units on the ground leveraging airpower are powerful. We learned the linkage of [CIA] operations with military operations is very powerful for both intelligence and operational purposes.'"
There were five key elements to Franks plan in Iraq--speed, precision, vision (Gen. Peter Pace said, "The combination of overhead cover and unmanned aerial vehicles and manned aircraft and special operations and the true integration of CIA assets with special operations folks really gave a clearer picture of the battlefield itself." ), jointness (coordination among elements of the different branches of the military), and special operations.
One of the reasons the coalition forces were able to achieve some surprise was the turkey diversion. By keeping ships in position to offload equipment in Turkey, Saddam was lulled into thinking that the attack would not come before either the Turkey equipment was unloaded or was sent to Kuwait.
Read the whole piece.
Fred Barnes has an excellent piece on gen. tommy franks plan for liberating Iraq.
"With the Franks plan, American forces repeatedly achieved tactical surprise in the war, notably when American, British, and Australian special forces from Jordan captured Iraq's Scud missile sites in western Iraq two days before the larger war began. Iraqi defenders there 'didn't have a lot of time to be caught by surprise because we killed them,' Franks said in an interview last week at Central Command headquarters in Tampa. 'I have to believe the regime was surprised.'"
A point made here before: "A Bush administration official said Franks is 'easy to underestimate,' and Rumsfeld initially seemed to do just that."
"...Afghanistan was a laboratory for military transformation. Lessons from Afghanistan were applied on a broader scale in Iraq. 'We learned precision [bombing] is good and it makes the difference,' Franks said. 'We learned small units on the ground leveraging airpower are powerful. We learned the linkage of [CIA] operations with military operations is very powerful for both intelligence and operational purposes.'"
There were five key elements to Franks plan in Iraq--speed, precision, vision (Gen. Peter Pace said, "The combination of overhead cover and unmanned aerial vehicles and manned aircraft and special operations and the true integration of CIA assets with special operations folks really gave a clearer picture of the battlefield itself." ), jointness (coordination among elements of the different branches of the military), and special operations.
One of the reasons the coalition forces were able to achieve some surprise was the turkey diversion. By keeping ships in position to offload equipment in Turkey, Saddam was lulled into thinking that the attack would not come before either the Turkey equipment was unloaded or was sent to Kuwait.
Read the whole piece.
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