[IP] re Risks of Iraqi war emerging Some officials warnof a mismatch between strategy and force size.

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

------ 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-


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