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View Full Version : Who the Heck Did Invade Iraq?



SteveMetz
05-16-2008, 05:50 PM
Feith says U.S., U.K., Australia, Poland, and Czech Republic. Sanchez says U.S., U.K., Australia, Poland, and Denmark. I know those Europeans all look alike, but anyone have anything definitive?

Tom Odom
05-16-2008, 07:13 PM
Duchy of Grand Fenwick.

The Prime Minister Count Rupert Mountjoy was a longtime advocate of network centric warfare and wanted an easy win to prove his point...:cool:

John T. Fishel
05-16-2008, 07:20 PM
defeat is and orphan." JFK paraphrasing Count Ciano paraphrasing Tacitus.

BTW, I just Googled the quote - it seemed appropriate.;)

Cheers

JohnT

Entropy
05-16-2008, 08:16 PM
Ok, I will come clean and admit it - I invaded Iraq.

SteveMetz
05-16-2008, 08:46 PM
Ok, I will come clean and admit it - I invaded Iraq.

Now we're making progress. Are you a Dane? (And if so, are you great or just pretty good?) There's something fishy about Sanchez's comment.

selil
05-16-2008, 09:29 PM
My understanding was that the invasion of Iraq never actually occurred and that we have total situational denialbility (not to be mistaken for awareness).

You can't prove it happened. Are you so lacking in patriotism to even suggest there was an invasion? Go talk to congress they are the ones who authorized the spending bill.

Why there are only a few advisor's in Iraq helping the poor indigenous population build a new free democracy and they were welcomed with flowers and open arms. IED's are the work of the democratic national committee.

It is a main stream media hyperbolic imaginary fancy based on the fervor a few reactionary bloggers and has no basis in reality no matter what the facts are.

I don't want to discuss some fanciful supposition I will let history guide my current reality.


I want to be the white house press secretary how am I doing?

TT
05-16-2008, 09:43 PM
If my memory serves, which often it does but sometimes does not, Sanchez has the right five. The Australians, Poles and Danes, IIRC, all contributed SOF forces - each a couple or three hundred, but these numbers could be wrong. I think the Australians had a ship or two in the Gulf (not sure about this) but I have not the faintest whether the Danes and Poles had any ships deployed.

There were a fair number of various militaries in peripheral ‘support’. Anyone remember, in the early briefings by senior American officers talking about the ‘Coalition’, the poor Dutch officer in the background with his look of anguish as he just knew people were thinking the Dutch were part of the ‘Coalition’? (They weren’t, of course, they were providing Art 4 support to Turkey as the Dutch manned the Patriot batteries deployed there and the Dutch officer on backstage was the liaison officer.)

Not sure whether any Czech biochem units were deployed to Kuwait, just in case, but I seem to remember that the Germans sent some of their biochem people to Kuwait, so I would be surprised if the Czechs did not do so as well. And no, I am not offering any exculpating support to Feith for getting it wrong........


Selil posted
I want to be the white house press secretary how am I doing?


The knock you now hear on your door is the job offer - that, or it is the Cheney's irony police come to send you on a vacation in sunny Cuba.

SteveMetz
05-16-2008, 10:47 PM
If my memory serves, which often it does but sometimes does not, Sanchez has the right five. The Australians, Poles and Danes, IIRC, all contributed SOF forces - each a couple or three hundred, but these numbers could be wrong. I think the Australians had a ship or two in the Gulf (not sure about this) but I have not the faintest whether the Danes and Poles had any ships deployed.

There were a fair number of various militaries in peripheral ‘support’. Anyone remember, in the early briefings by senior American officers talking about the ‘Coalition’, the poor Dutch officer in the background with his look of anguish as he just knew people were thinking the Dutch were part of the ‘Coalition’? (They weren’t, of course, they were providing Art 4 support to Turkey as the Dutch manned the Patriot batteries deployed there and the Dutch officer on backstage was the liaison officer.)

Not sure whether any Czech biochem units were deployed to Kuwait, just in case, but I seem to remember that the Germans sent some of their biochem people to Kuwait, so I would be surprised if the Czechs did not do so as well. And no, I am not offering any exculpating support to Feith for getting it wrong........



The knock you now hear on your door is the job offer - that, or it is the Cheney's irony police come to send you on a vacation in sunny Cuba.

The Germans never entered Iraq. I drove past their parked vehicles at Camp Doha in April and May. The Czechs I don't know about.

Tom Odom
05-17-2008, 12:15 AM
Now we're making progress. Are you a Dane? (And if so, are you great or just pretty good?) There's something fishy about Sanchez's comment.

Dare we google "fishy Sanchez?"

What might we catch? :eek:

TT
05-17-2008, 08:48 AM
SteveMetz posted: The Germans never entered Iraq.

Sorry, I did not mean to imply that they had.

SteveMetz
05-17-2008, 10:34 AM
I asked John Agoglia and he wasn't sure. May drop a line to Keven Benson. It wouldn't surprise me if SOCCENT was running its own parallal war sort of off the books.

davidbfpo
05-17-2008, 10:43 PM
Feith says U.S., U.K., Australia, Poland, and Czech Republic. Sanchez says U.S., U.K., Australia, Poland, and Denmark. I know those Europeans all look alike, but anyone have anything definitive?

I am doubtful that the original partners in the war's opening stages included the Czech Republic; Denmark was not involved in the opening and I recall some Poles surprise they were - as revealed by some TV footage of Polish SF before the government said yes we're there.

Wikipedia has some bizarre comments on the allies role.

davidbfpo

Ken White
05-17-2008, 11:10 PM
(again *) sent a Chemical Recon/Decon Co initially...

* As I believe they did in the 91 war.

SteveMetz
05-17-2008, 11:41 PM
(again *) sent a Chemical Recon/Decon Co initially...

* As I believe they did in the 91 war.

But the question is whether they were in the initial entry force. Maybe that's what Feith meant.

TT
05-18-2008, 11:25 AM
Davidfpo posted Denmark was not involved in the opening


Steve’s question has been bugging me, so I have done a bit of digging around my e-files. As far as I can find, I was completely wrong :( suggesting that Denmark may have contributed SOF forces (possibly the conflation of my fallible memory - Denmark contributed to 200 SOF to OEF in 2002). David is right that Denmark was not involved in the opening.

But it was a 'member' of the invading coalition.

The Danish parliament on 21 March 2003 passed resolution nr. B 118, which furnished parliamentary consent for the contribution of Danish military forces to the ‘multinational effort’ (this resolution was notable as reportedly it was the first time since 1864 that Denmark was a ‘warring nation’). The Danish contribution was one corvette and one submarine. Given how late in the day the resolution was passed, the corvette did not get on station until 9th April when it joined the US-UK-Aus operations; reportedly it was deployed in the northern area of the Gulf. I found nothing on precisely when the submarine arrived or what it did, only a vague statement that it was ‘deployed in the area’ (the Gulf?) and so seemingly would have arrived in the Gulf (if it was not there already) before the corvette.

So it seems officially Denmark was one of the five members of the US-led coalition that invaded Iraq, but only furnished two ships, no ground forces, and did not participate in the initial phases of the invasion (hence, as an answer to Steve's latest question, were not part of the initial entry force, unless there were Danish SOF forces surreptitiously involved - but again, I did not find anything saying there were)

The only stuff in my files I found on the Czech Republic was that it was undecided whether to side with the US-UK or France-Germany on the issue. That that newly elected president Vaclav Klaus was against the war, as was Czech public opinion, suggests that is is very unlikely that the Czech Republic was a member of the invading coalition (but I may stand to be corrected on this last point).

J Wolfsberger
05-18-2008, 06:03 PM
As best I can tell based on the memoirs...

Nobody really "invaded" Iraq. There were a bunch of troops in Kuwait for a joint training exercise that sort of got out of hand...

:rolleyes:

selil
05-18-2008, 06:10 PM
As best I can tell based on the memoirs...

Nobody really "invaded" Iraq. There were a bunch of troops in Kuwait for a joint training exercise that sort of got out of hand...

:rolleyes:

It was a military industrial complex coup against the good nature and thought out considerations of the POTUS and Feith... Really I read it in their book. Powell and the CIA did it all on their own.

davidbfpo
05-18-2008, 09:45 PM
I am proud to say the British forces deployed to Kuwait, to prevent an Iraqi incursion, in 1961, were so embedded by 2003 we forgot they were there and they executed the entire mission to re-take Baghdad when Tony Blair wanted revenge for the USA invasion of Grenada (a sop to Mrs T). A coalition of AJ and US networks used CGI techniques to pretend it was the USA and friends, yes even the Danes.

Then we thought revenge for the so-caleld War of Independence and we left it to you to cope with and learn the hard way about imposing alien standards on a people in revolt.

I blame these thoughts on watching General Michael Rose and the half hour interview on Charlie Rose.

davidbfpo

Ken White
05-18-2008, 10:08 PM
Banastre Tarleton at the root of it all...

120mm
05-19-2008, 09:15 AM
Well, I'm "pretty sure" some BRDM Rkh's went north from the Czech Republic. I was thinking they were following the Marines???

But I didn't take notes, and was in the Corps "Rear" when the initial invasion occurred, and as such, really wasn't paying that close attention to the maneuver forces.

I could ask my NCOIC, who was the NBC NCO for the Corps.

120mm
05-19-2008, 09:43 AM
And the answer appears to be: Both.

I did a quick survey of the three former V Corps Battle Captains I work with, and they seem to think the Danes went in with the Brits in the Southeast, and the Czechs followed somebody north, though we cannot appear to reach consensus on whom.

SteveMetz
05-19-2008, 11:44 AM
And the answer appears to be: Both.

I did a quick survey of the three former V Corps Battle Captains I work with, and they seem to think the Danes went in with the Brits in the Southeast, and the Czechs followed somebody north, though we cannot appear to reach consensus on whom.


Interesting. I asked COL John Agoglia, who was a CENTCOM planner at the time, and he wasn't sure. I'm going to ask COL (ret) Kevin Benson who was the lead CFLCC planner.

120mm
05-19-2008, 01:23 PM
If nothing else, it points out how "the fog of war" acts on high level staffs. As well as the memories of middle-aged reservist staff officers.

Hacksaw
05-19-2008, 02:16 PM
I invaded Iraq:D but they looted my supply of 2 by 4's

SteveMetz
05-19-2008, 02:34 PM
I invaded Iraq:D but they looted my supply of 2 by 4's

I hope you hid your rebar and toilets since they were grabbing those too.