The military way?

Question

People do understand that while there are 141,000 troops in Iraq only about a third are actual combat troops in the sense that they go out on daily patrols. Units like Armored, Infantry, & Military police. Mechanics, Cooks & other support troops dont normally do guard duty, patrols, check points, raids, or other "combat" issues nor do nurses or doctors even if some support troops carry guns. Obviously they all know how to fight & shoot but they don't all do it on a daily basis so why tied the military's hands even more? The media reports there being 141,000 troops theres really only a third of that are actually "policeing". I think there's more then 141,000 law enforcement troops in california or Texas which are both said to be about the size of Iraq so either way Iraq is relatively calm given the over all numbers even compared to other wars. Why must we tie the hands of the military even more? Why why why

Mistakes are always made in war because you can't predict or prepare for everything. I was not trying to support or disagree with either political party for their standing on the war. My point as former army & someone with many friends over, was that most of the problems were increased because of trying the hands of the military. Instead of letting the military & war planners focus on the details they had to focus on limiting public & world opinion first & planning around that which you can't do. We bombed every inch of Europe in world war 2 & yet now right or wrong we're suppose to tell the bad guys we're coming before we come in which makes no sense & again even with smart bombs we are limited to bombing select targets. We dropped nukes on Japan & killed thousands yet we're allies now & they committed horrible things during the war to us but again we're friends now so the military needs to focus on its job of being the military its not the public relationships department....

Answer 1

I agree many of the troops in Iraq are "support" troops. Forcing the government to remove troops will cause them to remove much needed support troops such as doctors, cooks, mechanics, ect. This will result in great hardships for policeing troops. Our troops need as much support as they can get.

Answer 2

If the question is "why are there so many military personnel and so few "shooters", the answer is what is called the "tooth to tail" ratio. Simply, you need a lot of people to support a combat force...logistics, transportation, fuel handlers, etc. If the question is "why do we tie the hands of the fighting force", look to the ROE. Believe it or not, there are rules to the conduct of warfare. Our actions are limited by the Rules of Engagement (ROE) which spell out what the military can and cannot do and under what circumstances. The ROE are written for the military in response to the perceived political situation, the ultimate objective and, truthfully, what "others might think of us". Here we became our own worst enemies because of the publicity of Desert Storm wherein we saw "precision" and "surgical" attacks with "smart" munitions. Everyone now expects the military to "kill the bad guys" and not cause any collateral damage or harm to the civilian population. The current ROE reflect that misconception. Although this leads to another answer for an unasked question, war simply is not pretty and the ROE are often an attempt to keep it pretty so people not involved won't be "offended".

Answer 3

The liberal media likes to strike at conservatives as much as possible. They use facts which are not known by the general public, like these, to make a situation seem worse than it is. They like to hype up stories and events so that things will go the way they want.

Answer 4

Thats bull, the army is known for details and more details, I spent years in the army doing things other then my MOS like going to the range and CTT training and detail after detail, why my alternate MOS, I swear was driving trucks.

Answer 5

Too compare Iraq to California and or Texas is a non-sequitur. US troops in Iraq are lacking support and basically have their asses flapping in the breeze. Bush has over 3,000 American lives on his conscience, if he has one, and the lives of those in the coalition.

Bush failed miserably in this war.