Heres a General thats finally agreeing with pretty much all I have been saying...We went against a lot of historical military rules in our start of the war- and he may be right... Old military rule is that the attacking force, if they intend to conquer and secure should have a 5 to 1 advantage in troops--also from old Patton/MacArthur history, you have to keep the lower leadership of government and military in place on the conquered force- be they bathist or Nazi, until the country has stability....
I used to be a big Rumsfeld supporter- but I'm now hearing that many of these ideas were thrown out by Rumsfeld who overrode the decision of the generals....
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Too little, too late, says retired general from Montana
Funk commanded armored forces in Desert Storm in 1991
By JIM GRANSBERY
Of The Gazette Staff
A retired U.S. Army general who led armored forces in Desert Storm in 1991 said Wednesday that adding U.S. troops to Iraq now will only spread U.S. forces more thinly.
"We didn't have enough troops in the beginning," said Lt. Gen. Paul Funk, a native of Montana.
"My take is that we needed 70,000 to 100,000 more and not just U.S. troops," he said. "We need 100,000 just for Baghdad alone.
"We don't have them, and it is too late," Funk said. A Roundup native and graduate of the Army ROTC program at Montana State University in Bozeman, Funk was one of 13 generals to lead Operation Desert Storm. He commanded the 3rd Armored Division in the 100-hour war that drove Iraqi forces from Kuwait. After the first Iraqi conflict, he was promoted to lieutenant general and given command of the III Corps, consisting of 162,000 soldiers in eight divisions.
He owns a ranch and teaches at the University of Texas in Austin.
President Bush's plan to put 21,500 more combat soldiers into Iraq beginning at the end of the month will be "spreading the forces too thin," Funk said in a phone interview. The additional soldiers will augment the 132,000 there now. Many in U.S. units are serving second, and even third, tour of duty since the war began in March 2003.
"We have worn out the Army, the Marines, the National Guard and the Army Reserve," he said.
"Those are the real heroes," referring to the Guard and Reserve Units. "They've done more than they signed up for."
Funk said he understood that Bush, in his speech to the nation Wednesday night, would admit to making mistakes in the conduct of the war, but he doubted there would be an apology to Gen. Eric Shinseki, who before the war began said it would take several hundred thousand troops to secure Iraq after the war.
Shinseki was subjected to public scorn by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, at the time. Both have since resigned from their positions, Rumsfeld after the November elections when Republicans lost control of both the U.S. House and Senate.
Before, during and after the initial phases of the Iraq war in 2003-04, Funk outlined in interviews with The Gazette what he thought was needed for a successful conclusion to the conflict. Most, if not all, of his observations and predictions have materialized.
Funk said three major mistakes were made in the conduct of the war.
"We should have done the original war plan," he said, which called for troop levels to fight a conventional war and secure the country. Second, the Iraqi Army should not have been disbanded.
"We could have taken out the nasty figures," Funk said, but retained the officers and forces from the colonel rank down.
Removing all members of Saddam Hussein's Baathist Party from the governmental structure was the third mistake, he said.
"We needed to keep the lower-level people who were responsible for sewer service and electricity," he said.
"These were fundamental, strategic wrongs," Funk said, producing "big-time problems for the United States.
"Our heavy-handed, arrogant ways gave up every advantage we had," he said.
Funk conceded the possibility of a general war in the region with "ancient enmities between the two cultures" of Sunni and Shiite Muslims spilling across borders.
"We are caught between," he said. "The (Iraqi) government must take control and insist the sectarian killing stop. The armed militias are ethnically cleansing the other side."