“grave and deteriorating,” not

This report in the NY Times on the presser with Tony Blair on Thursday repeats the phrases from the ISG report that is stunningly inaccurate in its assessment of the situation in Iraq.

...

The president addressed reporters after meeting in the White House with his closest ally in the war, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. In light of the report’s stark warning that the situation in Iraq was “grave and deteriorating,” Mr. Bush came close to acknowledging mistakes. “You wanted frankness — I thought we would succeed quicker than we did,” the president said to a British reporter who asked for candor. “And I am disappointed by the pace of success.”

But Mr. Bush, and to a lesser extent, Mr. Blair, continued to talk about the war in the kind of sweeping, ideological terms the Iraq Study Group avoided in its report. While the commission settled on stability as a realistic American goal for Iraq, Mr. Bush cast the conflict as part of a broader struggle between good and evil, totalitarianism and democracy.

If extremists emerge triumphant in the Middle East, Mr. Bush warned, “History will look back on our time with unforgiving clarity and demand to know, what happened? How come free nations did not act to preserve the peace?”

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To get a better idea of how the term grave is used in warfare the Marines' breakout from the Chosin reservoir provides an excellent example. The 5th and 7th Marines were surrounded at Yudam-ni by three Chinese divisions and would face even more divisions on their march back to the sea along with the rest of the 1st Marine Division. When the initial attacks began, communication with the division headquarters was difficult and the commanders of the regiments were concerned that the division headquarters was not aware of how serious the enemy attacks were. Lt. Col Murray discussed the situation with the senior commander Col. Litzenberg.

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... "They didn't seem to understand how much trouble we were in. I finally spoke to Litz about it. 'Let's send a message with the word 'grave' in it. Let's tell 'em the situation up here is 'grave.' That'll shake 'em up."

"No," said Litz. "We're not going to do that."

The Division staff was, in fact just beginning to grasp how bad the situation was; but for now there wasn't much they could do about it. Interrogation of Chinese prisoners had revealed that the Marines at Yudam-ni were confronted with three Communist divisions: the 79th to the north, the 89th to the northwest, and the 59th to the southwest. Other divisions would soon join them. The Chinese had achieved two major objectives in their overall plan of annihilation: They had broken the 1st Marine Division into three major fragments, isolating them from one another: the first at Yudam-ni, the second at Hagaru, and the third at Koto-ri. And they had blocked the road connecting them....

The Chinese had in fact poured 300,000 troops into North Korea. A full strength Marine division has around 10,000 troops. Compare that with our current situation in Iraq. The enemy would have difficulty mustering a company of troops, roughly 200. If he did, they would face immediate destruction. Estimates of enemy strength in Iraq are between 10,000 and 20,000 at any one time. They are disorganized and disbursed, because if they attempt to mass they will be destroyed. While they can make a mess there is zero evidence that they present a "grave" danger to US forces or to our objectives in Iraq. It seems clear that the ISG just used the words for their shock value and not as an accurate representation of facts on the ground.

The excerpts above come from Martin Russ's Breakout, The Chosin Reservoir Campaign, Korea 1950. It is one of the better books on the Marines battle with the Communist. The Division Commander, O.P. Smith when asked if the Marines were retreating, responded that "No. We're just attacking in a different direction."

The achievement of the Marines is in the same category of Xenophen's legendary Persian Expedition where an army of Greeks found themselves surrounded and alone when their allies collapsed and fought their way back to Greece. Most armies collapse and surrender in those circumstances. Unfortunately, many in Washington want to do that in far less grave circumstances.

Meanwhile, the NY Times also reports that the members of the ISG were panicked by their trip to Baghdad. That is my word not theirs but it appears to be a fair description of their reaction to being in a war zone. The only member of the group to leave the Green Zone was former Marine Chuck Robb who visited Marines in Anbar province. Imagine what these guys would have done if they had been dropped into Yudam-ni.

Peter Mulhern takes a look at the panic.