For the first three years of the Iraq insurgency, American troops largely retreated to their fortified bases, pushed out woefully undertrained local units to do the fighting, and watched the results on feeds from spy drones flying overhead.
There's been no change in strategy or tactic at any point in the war no matter the branding such as: Operation "Amber Waves" (pushed patented GMO seeds on Iraqi farmers by troop handouts of seed) Operation Anaconda Operation Arrowhead Ripper Operation Enduring Freedom Operation First Casualty Operation Iraqi Freedom Operation Phoenix The list goes on and it's STILL about securing the petro-resources no matter the cost to Iraqi society in dead civilians written off by the as "...kill more of the "right" (Who IS that today?... tomorrow?) people." Gotta watch out for those "Free-Fire Zones". "[Rep.] SIEBERLING: You talked about the purpose of the free-fire zones. You have mentioned the fact that the free-fire zones and the harassment and interdiction fire at villagers were obviously designed to force the villagers to leave and go to resettlement areas. Did you ever hear anyone in a position of rank indicate expressly that was one of the purposes?" Answers may be here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-fire_zone , and FWIW, Afghanistan is being destroyed remotely by Northop Gruman contractors from companies like Silicon Systems sitting behind a coffee cup 24/7/365 at Grass Valley California. Oh and Ford Motor Company... http://www.defensetech.org/archives/003828.html Who needs the UAW when you can simply replace them with an aerospace machinist's unions just as nepotic, and way better compensated... read pampered, as a full fledged despotism might, because the military projects are BIG $$$ compared to some pissant SUV redesign project. Leigh On Nov 29, 2007 12:42 PM, raghu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Wired magazine has an interesting article on "How Technology Almost > Lost the War: In Iraq, the Critical Networks Are Social — Not > Electronic". "Network centric warfare" is not merely a catch-phrase - > it appears that it is a systematic project undertaken by the DoD. > There is quite a substantial literature even in the public domain on > it and there is even an acronym (NCW); a good bibliography is here: > http://www.comw.org/rma/fulltext/netcentwar.html > > The article traces the beginnings to a 1998 paper in Proceedings of > the Naval Institute titled "Network-Centric Warfare: Its Origin and > Future". Unfortunately the original paper does not appear to be > available online. > > > http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/15-12/ff_futurewar?currentPage=all > -------------------------------------------snip > The Defense Department wasn't blind to the power of networks, of > course — the Internet began as a military project, after all, and each > branch of the armed services had ongoing "digitization" programs. But > no one had ever crystallized what the information age might offer the > Pentagon quite like Cebrowski and Garstka did. In an article for the > January 1998 issue of the naval journal Proceedings, "Network-Centric > Warfare: Its Origin and Future," they not only named the philosophy > but laid out a new direction for how the US would think about war. > > Their model was Wal-Mart. Here was a sprawling, bureaucratic monster > of an organization — sound familiar? — that still managed to > automatically order a new lightbulb every time it sold one. Warehouses > were networked, but so were individual cash registers.......... > > The US military could use battlefield sensors to swiftly identify > targets and bomb them. Tens of thousands of warfighters would act as a > single, self-aware, coordinated organism. Better communications would > let troops act swiftly and with accurate intelligence, skirting creaky > hierarchies. It'd be "a revolution in military affairs unlike any seen > since the Napoleonic Age," they wrote. And it wouldn't take hundreds > of thousands of troops to get a job done — that kind of "massing of > forces" would be replaced by information management. "For nearly 200 > years, the tools and tactics of how we fight have evolved," the pair > wrote. "Now, fundamental changes are affecting the very character of > war." > > Network-centric wars would be more moral, too. Cebrowski later argued > that network-enabled armies kill more of the right people quicker. > With fewer civilian casualties, warfare would be more ethical. And as > a result, the US could use military might to create free societies > without being accused of imperialist arrogance............... > > And yet, here we are. The American military is still mired in Iraq. > It's still stuck in Afghanistan, battling a resurgent Taliban. > Rumsfeld has been forced out of the Pentagon. Dan Halutz, the Israeli > Defense Forces chief of general staff and net-centric advocate who led > the largely unsuccessful war in Lebanon in 2006, has been fired, too. > In the past six years, the world's most technologically sophisticated > militaries have gone up against three seemingly primitive foes — and > haven't won once. > > How could this be? The network-centric approach had worked pretty much > as advertised. Even the theory's many critics admit net-centric combat > helped make an already imposing American military even more effective > at locating and killing its foes. The regimes of Saddam Hussein and > Mullah Omar were broken almost instantly. But network-centric warfare, > with its emphasis on fewer, faster-moving troops, turned out to be > just about the last thing the US military needed when it came time to > rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan. A small, wired force leaves generals > with too few nodes on the military network to secure the peace. There > aren't enough troops to go out and find informants, build barricades, > rebuild a sewage treatment plant, and patrol a marketplace. > > For the first three years of the Iraq insurgency, American troops > largely retreated to their fortified bases, pushed out woefully > undertrained local units to do the fighting, and watched the results > on feeds from spy drones flying overhead. Retired major general Robert > Scales summed up the problem to Congress by way of a complaint from > one division commander: "If I know where the enemy is, I can kill it. > My problem is I can't connect with the local population." How could > he? For far too many units, the war had been turned into a > telecommute. Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon were the first conflicts > planned, launched, and executed with networked technologies and a > networked ideology. They were supposed to be the wars of the future. > And the future lost. > > Inside the Pentagon, the term network-centric warfare is out of > fashion, yet countless generals and admirals still adhere to its core > principles. On the streets of Iraq, though, troops are learning to > grapple with the guerrilla threat. And that means fighting in a way > that couldn't be more different from the one Donald Rumsfeld embraced. > The failures of wired combat are forcing troops to improvise a new, > socially networked kind of war. >
