Letter Never Sent Tell me when to go.

The US military is discovering that their billions of dollars in high-tech weaponry is vulnerable to ingenuity, guerrilla tactics, and the intelligent application of very low-tech and antiquated technology. Not only that, but many of the precious and hugely expensive weapons systems bought from corrupt defense contractors are fraught with their own problems and have caused many embarrassing situations in the short five days of Bush’s Iraq takeover.

Consider the US missiles hitting Turkey and Iran, or the British plane destroyed by Patriot missiles. Then there’s the ingenious tactics the Iraqis and Iraqi partisans have used. Using cheap rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire to bring down two Apaches helicopters worth more than most Americans (not to mention Iraqis!) will make in a life time (you can see jubilant Iraqis assembled on the helicopter here). The other 30 or so odd Apaches were forced to retreat. The Iraqis have also successfully used portable mortar fire to cause confusion to the US military, captured supply line units, and have downed other planes. There is some evidence that the Iraqis have acquired those Aviaconversia GPS jammers, night-vision goggles, and RPG’s from Russian arms dealers about which the US has whined and complained that this violates the UN sanctions. Since when has the US cared about international law? It doesn’t seem as if the US is ready for any kind of fair fight. They expected the Iraqi people to roll over. On the news yesterday, I heard that over half of all US flights have been to support ground troops by suppressing fire and enemy units. It’s impressive what the Iraqis have done with no air support of their own.

Additionally, the so-called psyops campaign by the US has largely failed. The 5-10 million propaganda leaflets dropped by the military have been an utter failure. While some deserters and a few thousand troops have surrendered to the US invasion force it has not been in the numbers the Pentagon had hoped for. In fact, the Iraqi people appear to be fairly united against this invasion. I would hope we Americans would act the same way should Russian or Chinese troops attempt to invade our cities and rural towns. If anything, this only shows what a bad idea this war is. I hope the Bush administration comes to its senses, but I doubt it. Which reminds me, chemical weapons, the public justification for this war, have yet to be found or used.

Related:

1. Resistance raises fears for the endgame
2. U.S. Losses Expose Risks, Raise Doubts About Strategy
3. US protests at Russian arms sales to Baghdad: High-tech weaponry vulnerable. The Bush administration reserved its highest-level efforts for halting the delivery of the jamming devices, which officials said sell for thousands of dollars apiece and can interfere with global positioning equipment important to aircraft navigation and ground forces.
4. CNN: Russia hits back in shipments row: The Washington Post identified two of the companies as Aviaconversiya, which allegedly supplied jamming equipment, and KBP Tula, an optics company.

   But the Russian official countered the allegations, saying: “On numerous occasions Moscow gave a detailed account of all of this to the American government starting with October of last year.

   “If you ask me why this news appeared lately, my only response would be that it’s just to distract public attention from an illegitimate military operation by the United States government against Iraq and to distract attention from the fact that this war turned out not to be a picnic.”

This entry was posted on Monday, March 24th, 2003 at 11:12 am and is filed under Military and defense. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.