All I can say is this: Posted by Launchywiggin (Member # 9116) on :
yeah, this isn't a poorly run war at all.
Posted by Nato (Member # 1448) on :
I think the number of weapons lost represents about 30% of all the weapons the Iraqis got from us. Could an error that large just be due to bad planning?
Posted by TMedina (Member # 6649) on :
Yes - the US has never really done anything like what we're attempting in Iraq before.
There isn't an established SOP, blueprint or guideline to really go by, so plans are executed to solve the immediate problem without considering all possible future problems caused by the immediate solution.
Which is not a criticism, per se, but you can't really blame the mouse for going the wrong way in a maze because he doesn't have your perspective.
Armchair quarterbacking is always easier when the offensive line isn't thundering down on your head.
-Medina
Edit: Not to mention the Iraqi aspect of the equation.
Posted by vonk (Member # 9027) on :
I don't understand this part:
quote:A Pentagon official in Baghdad, who asked not to be identified, said some of the weapons went back to Iraqi forces and some were destroyed. But he conceded some of them may be missing.
So they went missing, this guy found some of them and destroyed them? I don't get it.
Also, they mention that none of the weapons had serial numbers. Is that for security reasons? It seems like if there were serial number this kind of thing would be easier to prevent, and easier to track down.
Further, what's with the response? The only things the article mentioned were suggestions to create accountability and beef up the staff. Well, duh. Are they not telling us what else because it's a security issue, or because they aren't doing anything? (<- obviously conjecture, as I assume nobody on Hatrack knows for sure.)
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
There were, however, recommendations drawn up in advance, by experts, which were ignored, that seemed rather obvious (such as "have many more than the number of troops you consider minimal for the occupation"), were based on what experience there is in the area (Japan, and more recently places in Africa and eastern Europe), and hindsight shows would probably have helped considerably.
Sometimes the armchair quarterbacking is easy because the people making the badly chosen decisions really did boneheaded things.
Posted by TMedina (Member # 6649) on :
By conceeding that some weapons are missing, he is admitting that we cannot account for the whereabouts of all the weapons.
I don't know what kind of tracking mechanisms were put in place for monitoring the weapons, but it's not nearly as easy as it sounds.
As for "what else," what else can they do? The weapons cannot be accounted for. We don't know the whereabouts and we can try to take steps to keep something like this from happening again, but if the things were stolen or otherwise illegally dispersed, we'll never be able to prove it or locate the bloody things.
If it's an accounting error and they're actually collecting dust in a warehouse (don't laugh - it could happen), great. But I'm not holding my breath.
-Medina
Posted by TMedina (Member # 6649) on :
quote:Originally posted by fugu13: There were, however, recommendations drawn up in advance, by experts, which were ignored, that seemed rather obvious (such as "have many more than the number of troops you consider minimal for the occupation"), were based on what experience there is in the area (Japan, and more recently places in Africa and eastern Europe), and hindsight shows would probably have helped considerably.
Sometimes the armchair quarterbacking is easy because the people making the badly chosen decisions really did boneheaded things.
Oh, granted. I'll be the first to admit that some things should have been obvious to all except the most thick-headed idiots.
But then again, that doesn't apply to every issue. I just want people to remember that while decisions can be second-guessed after the fact, don't forget to realize that the decision made was under different circumstances and, at the time, was the deemed the best possible with the information at hand. [Edited to add: Assuming, of course, the people involved weren't narrow-minded idiots on an ego trip and ignoring advice out of habit. Which has been known to happen as well. But not all mistakes are attributable to malice, stupidity or some combination thereof.]
If I'd known the winning lottery numbers, I wouldn't have gotten a quick pick.
-Medina
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Hey, Trevor! Don't you get to come home soon? Or did you decide to stay and help the new guys get organized?
Posted by vonk (Member # 9027) on :
quote:but if the things were stolen or otherwise illegally dispersed, we'll never be able to prove it or locate the bloody things.
Wait, so if (IF) 200,000 weapons and thousands more units of armor were stolen by Iraqi insurgents we should shrug and say, "lets beef up the accounting staff"? I disagree. I don't know what exactly could be done, not being in any kind of crime fighting organization, but are there not ways to track down grand grand grand larceny? I do not accept that there is absolutely no way to find the weapons. I would accept that this is such a black eye that dragging out the investigation would be a bad thing for those in charge, or even that this is part of a deliberate conspiracy to develop a secret underground militia at the hands of civilian investors in the region (<-- my pet theory, just 'cause I like it.)
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
you assigned 300 AKs to a battalion.
You check back a week later and see if they still have those 300.
If they don't then I think we have a prime suspect(s).
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
T, A large part of the problem is that I, with my limited knowledge of things Iraqi or military, was able beforehadn to see that certain things were really bad ideas. As such, it makes other things seem much more likely to be screw-ups that should have been prevented by people actually doing their jobs.
As fugu said, the experts were often ignored and, when it came time to send people over there to deal with critical issues, people were chosen based on their political loyalty, rather than ability. Right now, they are still ignoring the Iraqi Study Group and 9/11 Commission. They are also largely not following the counter-insurgency manual laid out by their new golden boy, General Patraeus. When things are audited, like the main Iraqi police training facility, we find out that the people tasked to oversee them (in that case the Army Corps of Engineers) weren't doing so, despite taking money for it.
It's possible that this really wasn't a case of negligence. It's even possible that the weapons didn't go, as has been suggested, to the 50-60% of insurgents that the Pentagon believed were infiltrating the people they were giving weapons to. To me, even without the backdrop I presented, those possibilities don't seem all that likely.
Posted by TMedina (Member # 6649) on :
1. Vonk - Or, "we're taking steps to insure this doesn't happen again." The Iraqi insurgency isn't like your neighborhood gang - American gangs have turf and are pretty easily located if you have a mind to. The "insurgency" are guerilla fighters and as such, not so easily constrained to a geographic area. Which makes the notion of finding them for purposes of retrieving aforementioned weapons as difficult as finding them to prevent them from attacking Coalition forces. Take a guess at which one would be a priority if it were that simple.
When people say, "riddled with corruption", they aren't joking. The Iraqi institutions haven't been around long enough to develop standards and personal responsibility - the only frame of reference they have was functioning under Saddam. "Public good" and "civic responsibility" are pretty wild concepts from a "me and mine, frack you" outlook.
In America, if a family patriarch or a Church elder told a cop to steals weapons and body armor from his department, odds are the officer would refuse to do so from a sense of right and wrong that extends beyond family and Church. And if he didn't, the logistical supply system should be, in theory, developed enough to prevent such a theft from occuring.
In Iraq, that isn't the case. Family and religious demands can very often exceed the power of civic responsibility. And there isn't a higher authority to demand otherwise. So a major concern is the ability to convince Iraqi military and police elements to support the government rather than political, social or religious factions. Producing trained personnel is only half the problem - convincing those trained personnel to support the government over faith, family and ethnicity is just as critical as the first half.
2. Oversimplification, Bradley. If the paperwork wasn't completed thoroughly, we couldn't track the weapons through our own logistic chain. Anyone who has worked in a warehouse can attest to how easily things can get lost - the bigger the warehouse, the greater the chance. Now, think of Iraq was one, really big, freaking warehouse.
The next step - the Iraqi logistic channel is, to say amazingly underdeveloped would be a grotesque understatement. Accountability for equipment is slim to none without paperwork or documentation to support claims; thieves don't exactly wear name tags announcing "hi, I'm a thief but not an insurgent - hire me!". So assuming we could track the movement of the equipment to the point of handover to the Iraqis, trying to navigate the Iraqi side is almost impossible.
I won't say that there is no chance of finding the specific failures within the supply chain that allowed this to happen, but I'm not particularly hopeful either.
3. Squick - somethingsomething "Emerald City" which deals with the initial "redevelopment" where people were selected for political/religious views and not general capability.
I'm not saying ignoring experts and common sense didn't happen; what I am saying is that you can't apply that blanket generalization to every-freaking-thing that happens in Iraq.
And not every "I told you so" after the fact was quite as loud when actually saying so. It takes nerve to stand up and say, loudly, no in the face of public opinion.
4. KM - nope, I'm rotating home soonish. As it turns out, the new people will actually have more people to start with than we did, so they should be good. Not without the occasional hiccup, I'm sure.
-Tmedina
Edited: for additional pondering
[ August 07, 2007, 11:20 PM: Message edited by: TMedina ]
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
I just wish that so damned much of the situation in Iraq didn't read like black comedy. The Iraq Study Group Report has a section talking about the Iraqi Army which says: Units lack leadership... Units lack equipment... Units lack personnel, and many people rarely show up... Units lack logistics and support... The loyalties of large sections of the Iraqi Army are decidedly unclear... And then the following segment says, "The state of the Iraqi police is substantially worse than that of the Iraqi Army."
This feels like that. The majority of the violent casualties in Iraq have come from explosives... Oh, and did we mention that there's also enough small arms missing to field a medium-sized army?...
Just to add insult to injury, the fact that so many of the missing weapons are those damnedly common Kalashnikovs suggests that even if some of the weapons do show up in insurgent hands, we might not know if they came from those stockpiles.
Posted by James Tiberius Kirk (Member # 2832) on :
quote:3. Squick - somethingsomething "Emerald City" which deals with the initial "redevelopment" where people were selected for political/religious views and not general capability.
Good book.
--j_k
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:I'm not saying ignoring experts and common sense didn't happen; what I am saying is that you can't apply that blanket generalization to every-freaking-thing that happens in Iraq.
I don't think anyone here advocated that. However, in this specific situation, there were reasons for serious suspicion of screw-ups even before taking into account how god-awful the performance has been so far by people who haven't seemed to have changed the way they do things.
In this specific situation, the "maybe this really wasn't preventable" explanation was already the less likely one. When you've performed so amazingly bad and are extremely dishonest about it, you use up all the trust you should reasonably expect from people.
Is it possible that this wouldn't have been prevented by people being competent at their jobs? Yes. Do we have good reasons to believe that this is the case (and, as such, that similar mistakes aren't currently occurring or that there won't be preventable future mistakes)? I have yet to hear any. But, as you say, I can't be completely sure that this isn't the case. Somehow, that's not a standard I'm comfortable with right now.
---
edit: The general thing that is applicable here is that the people in charge have shown themselves to be dishonest, incompetent, willing to ignore expert advice, and seemingly focused on other things besides effectively dealing with this situation. As such, people are going to see them as unworthy of trust or the benefit of the doubt.
When presented with specfic situations where it is only by giving them a rather significant benefit of the doubt do they come out looking okay, people are generally going to see it as most likely another example of them screwing up.
[ August 08, 2007, 10:18 AM: Message edited by: MrSquicky ]
Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
TM, my fear is that your comments on the problem will result in a non-solution instead of real progress. "We've never tried anything like this so mistakes were bound to happen" is great for avoiding the responsibilities for those mistakes as much as blaming someone else is. It won't fix those mistakes or stop them from happening again. 300,000 guns disappear over a four year period. "Oops. Sorry. In Iraq, things like this happen." won't stop the next shipment of guns from disappearing.
Posted by TMedina (Member # 6649) on :
1. Squick - It's not a matter of "advocating that" as it's becoming a common theme in all things Iraq. Which, I realize, can be taken as a distressing commentary on certain leadership approaches in general or specific, but at the same time it's also amazingly frustrating when previous examples get dredged up and applied to other SNAFUs. I realize all the uniforms look alike, but it's not the same planners or leaders every time something goes wrong or gets handled badly.
2. Dan - which doesn't make it any less true. I'm not advocating a lack of responsibility or attempting to mitigate what did and didn't happen; I am saying that under ideal conditions, it wouldn't have happened. The current situation in Iraq is far from ideal. These are not excuses, but they are explanations. And they certainly are not solutions - but people always want a two-fold answer to any question: "How did this happen and why did it happen."
Now that we see the gaping flaws in the "plan", we can correct them. Whether these flaws should have been obvious from the start or not, I don't know - I wasn't involved in the planning or execution. But I do know that before jumping to the conclusion of military incompetence, I respectfully submit that there are other factors in play.
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