In efforts to expose and better understand bad military command decisions, this thread’s purpose is to archive a collection of situations concerning failed command decisions with military actions during wartime or conflicts. It’s not always the troops who makes mistakes…. and as in most cases, it’s cover-ups for the military brass. Articles, reports, commentaries and opinions that share in exposing command failure with US wars and conflicts from past to present are welcomed.



Concerning the Iraq War:


http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print....s04/0706-02.htm

Published on Tuesday, July 6, 2004 by the Los Angeles Times

U.S. Response to Insurgency Called a Failure

WASHINGTON — Almost a year after acknowledging they were facing a well-armed guerrilla war in Iraq, the Pentagon and commanders in the Middle East are being criticized by some top Bush administration officials, military officers and defense experts who accuse the military of failing to develop a coherent, winning strategy against the insurgency.

Inadequate intelligence, poor assessments of enemy strength, testy relations with U.S. civilian authorities in Baghdad and an inconsistent application of force remain key problems many observers say the military must address before U.S. and Iraqi forces can quell the insurgents.

"It's disappointing that we haven't been able to have better insight into the command and control of the insurgents," said one senior official of the now-dissolved Coalition Provisional Authority, recently returned from Baghdad and speaking on condition of anonymity. "And you've got to have that if you're going to have effective military operations."

It was July 16, 2003, when Army Gen. John Abizaid stood at a Pentagon podium during his first news conference as head of U.S. Central Command and declared — after weeks of Pentagon denials — that U.S. troops were fighting a "classic guerrilla-type war" in Iraq.

Now, after a year of violence and hundreds of U.S. combat deaths, some officials and experts are frustrated that a more effective counterinsurgency plan has not materialized and that the hand-over of power to an interim Iraqi government last week was unlikely to significantly improve the security situation.

[ Immediately after the fall of Baghdad, U.S. commanders set their sights on capturing the biggest stars in the Baath Party constellation, creating the notorious deck of cards depicting the most wanted people from Hussein's regime. Brigades of the Army's 4th Infantry Division carried out raids throughout the so-called Sunni Triangle in search of Hussein loyalists such as Izzat Ibrahim, vice chairman of the Baath Party's Revolutionary Command Council.

The raids netted some important figures. Yet U.S. officials now concede that focusing too much on the top regime members did not have the expected impact on the insurgency.

"I think there was probably too great a willingness to believe that once we got the 55 people on the blacklist, the rest of those killers would stop fighting," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz told Congress recently.

Defenders of American counterinsurgency efforts argue that the violence in Iraq over the last year is part of a calculated plan by members of Hussein's former regime, not the result of missteps by the U.S.-led occupation authority.

["It is the military and intelligence and secret police that never surrendered. And they are continuing the fight," said the senior administration official.]

[After a string of bombings last summer — most significantly, the destruction of the United Nations compound in August — U.S. commanders adopted a get-tough approach in central Iraq. Troops used barbed wire to encircle entire villages, including Al Auja, where Hussein was born. In November, the U.S. launched bombing raids on suspected insurgent hide-outs in Baghdad. ]

[ "We were winning, but we didn't get a win. It's a hard pill to swallow," complained one Marine operations officer who recently returned from Iraq, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Now, nobody knows what's going on inside the city." ]

[ Although the Army recently has been incorporating counterinsurgency work into its training of young soldiers, experts say that for decades after Vietnam, the Army focused almost entirely on fighting large tank battles in the desert, not armed militias in Third World cities. ]

Concerning the Iraq War: The 5 day pause outside Baghdad. (click on link for complete story by Gen Mattis.)


http://www.d-n-i.net/grossman/itp_mattis.htm

News analysis

Marine General: Iraq War Pause
'Could Not Have Come At Worse Time'

Inside The Pentagon
Elaine M. Grossman
October 2, 2003


The five-day "pause" U.S. troops took before capturing Baghdad last spring "could not have come at a worse time" for Marine Corps forces poised outside the Iraqi capital, according to Maj. Gen. James Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division. The Marines were told to put the reins on the Baghdad offensive just as Mattis' troops became highly vulnerable to Iraqi counterattack, he told Inside the Pentagon in a Sept. 25 interview.

Top wartime commanders have insisted there was no real pause in combat during the war because fierce ground battles and heavy air attacks continued throughout late March (ITP, May 8, p1). But it was clear at the time that the impending attack on Baghdad was put on hold beginning March 26 and continuing through the end of the month, InsideDefense.com first reported March 25. "We're going to take the next couple days — the next several if necessary — to concentrate on the enemy where he's at," a top coalition commander said at a daily battlefield update briefing held March 26 at the Camp Doha, Kuwait, ground combat headquarters. With a sandstorm imposing "zero visibility" around Baghdad, "we've got to finish up taking care of all these bastards down here," said the commander, referring to irregular militias that threatened lagging U.S. supply lines in southern Iraq. A March attack on one convoy resulted in 11 U.S. casualties and the capture of seven troops, including Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch. U.S. forces moved into Baghdad in early April and quickly captured the city, facing only light resistance.

"I didn't want the pause. Nothing was holding us up," Mattis told ITP. "The toughest order I had to give [in] the whole campaign was to call back the assault units when the pause happened." Mattis said most of his division was moving up Route 1 towards Baghdad, while one Marine unit was heading to Al Kut to pin down the Baghdad Division, when the pause was imposed. He said the order was handed down from above, but he did not know exactly where the idea of a pause originated. Marine Corps Lt. Gen. James Conway, commander of 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, and Army Maj. Gen. Buford Blount, the 3rd Infantry Division commander, shared the desire to press on to Baghdad instead of pause, Mattis said.

"There was some thought about putting up operating bases outside of Baghdad and making raids into it," Mattis told ITP. "But clearly Baghdad was falling if we went in." The general said his forces were at a critical junction about 100 kilometers southeast of Baghdad where it would have been unclear to Iraqi commanders whether the Marines would proceed directly into southeast Baghdad, or come around from the northeast. Hooking around from the northeast would allow the Marines to exploit a gap between two batteries of Iraqi artillery fire.

"What I don't want to do is reveal what I'm going to do because the enemy's artillery from Al Kut can only reach this far," said Mattis, pointing to a map he had scrawled on scrap paper. "And the enemy's artillery out of the Al Nida Division can only reach this far. And that seam is a way for me to get across." Mattis' 1st Division was about to cross a critical bridge over the Tigris River "when I finally get told about the pause," he said. "So now what I can't do is leave that road open because they'll figure it out that they've got this thing uncovered and I've got a way across the Tigris," he said. "So I have to order these guys who have lost Marines, killed and wounded now, to come back," Mattis continued. "And Marines don't like doing that."


[At the same time, there was serious concern about the Iraqi military using chemical weapons to defend Baghdad. "Here's the prevailing wind in Iraq" moving south towards troops, Mattis said. "And there I have the division, two-thirds of the division strung out along this. So, no, I don't want to pause." This was one of two locations where the Marines used Mark-77 firebombs — something the Marines loosely term "napalm" — to clear foliage during the war, he said. "But here the enemy was figuring it out. So the last thing we wanted to do was pause," Mattis said. "It's at the worst possible time frame." ]


At the same time, there was serious concern about the Iraqi military using chemical weapons to defend Baghdad. "Here's the prevailing wind in Iraq" moving south towards troops, Mattis said. "And there I have the division, two-thirds of the division strung out along this. So, no, I don't want to pause." This was one of two locations where the Marines used Mark-77 firebombs — something the Marines loosely term "napalm" — to clear foliage during the war, he said. "But here the enemy was figuring it out. So the last thing we wanted to do was pause," Mattis said. "It's at the worst possible time frame."

Once given the go-ahead to move on Baghdad, the Marines easily overran the newly deployed Iraqi forces, he said. "And now I pack up 5th Marines and I say, 'Go.' And they cross Saddam Canal and the Tigris River in hours," said Mattis. The Iraqi commanders had failed to capitalize on the American troops' vulnerability outside Baghdad during the pause. "The generals were dumber than you-know-what," Mattis said. "They were real dumb." Mattis attributed the Iraqi failure to anticipate the Marine attack to "incompetence." But he said the Iraqi forces ultimately did blow up the only two bridges for 40 kilometers across the Diyala River to try and blunt the Marine attack. "That's why we were held up outside of Baghdad," said Mattis, adding that was "after the pause." "You don't blow bridges in a country full of rivers unless you have to," Mattis said.

Unceremonious End to Army Career
By Tom Bowman
The Baltimore Sun

Sunday 29 May 2005

Outspoken general fights demotion.
Washington - John Riggs spent 39 years in the Army, earning a Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery during the Vietnam War and working his way up to become a three-star general entrusted with creating a high-tech Army for the 21st century.

But on a spring day last year, Riggs was told by senior Army officials that he would be retired at a reduced rank, losing one of his stars because of infractions considered so minor that they were not placed in his official record.

He was given 24 hours to leave the Army. He had no parade in review, no rousing martial music, no speeches or official proclamations praising his decades in uniform, the trappings that normally herald a high-level military retirement.

Instead, Riggs went to a basement room at Fort Myer, Va., and signed some mandatory forms. Then a young sergeant mechanically presented him with a flag and a form letter of thanks from President Bush.

"That's the coldest way in the world to leave," Riggs, 58, said in a drawl that betrays his rural roots in southeast Missouri. "It's like being buried and no one attends your funeral."

So what cost Riggs his star?

His Pentagon superiors said he allowed outside contractors to perform work they were not supposed to do, creating "an adverse command climate."

But some of the general's supporters believe the motivation behind his demotion was politics. Riggs was blunt and outspoken on a number of issues and publicly contradicted Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld by arguing that the Army was overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan and needed more troops.

"They all went bat s- - when that happened," recalled retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay M. Garner, a one-time Pentagon adviser who ran reconstruction efforts in Iraq in the spring of 2003. "The military part of [the defense secretary's office] has been politicized. If [officers] disagree, they are ostracized and their reputations are ruined."

Little-Used Punishment

A senior officer's loss of a star is a punishment seldom used, and then usually for the most serious offenses, such as dereliction of duty or command failures, adultery or misuse of government funds or equipment.

Over the past several decades, generals and admirals faced with far more serious official findings - scandals at the Navy's Tailhook Convention, the Air Force Academy and Abu Ghraib prison, for example - have continued in their careers or retired with no loss of rank.

Les Brownlee, who was then acting Army secretary and who ordered that Riggs be reduced in rank, said he stands by the demotion. "I read the [Army inspector general's] report and made that judgment. I happen to think it was that serious. Maybe I have a higher standard for these things," Brownlee said in an interview. "I still believe it was the right decision."

Rumsfeld's office had no comment for this story, referring all questions to the Army, which issued a statement.

The two contracting infractions "reflected negatively on Lt. Gen. Riggs's overall leadership and revealed an adverse command climate," the Army statement said. "Based on the review of the investigation and Lt. Gen. Riggs's comments, the Acting Secretary of the Army [Brownlee] concluded that Lt. Gen. Riggs did not serve satisfactorily in the grade of lieutentant general."

Garner and 40 other Riggs supporters - including an unusually candid group of retired generals - are trying to help restore his rank.

But even his most ardent supporters concede that his appeal has little chance of succeeding and that an act of Congress might be required.

From the Ranks

Riggs' rise to three-star general was heady stuff for a man who left the family's cotton farm in Missouri and enlisted in the Army in 1965, the same year America deployed combat troops to Vietnam. After three years as a soldier, Riggs went through Officer Candidate School and soon was piloting a twin-rotor Chinook above the central highlands of Vietnam.

On March 17, 1971, Riggs flew the lumbering, troop-carrying helicopter on a voluntary medevac mission to a base at Phu Nhon which had been under heavy attack from a battalion of North Vietnamese soldiers, according to Army records. On his first approach to the base he was forced back by enemy fire, but he tried another flight path and was able to set down on a small and dusty landing zone.

The young officer flew out 59 wounded soldiers, 30 of whom "probably would have died if Captain Riggs and his crew had not acted as they did," said Riggs' citation for the Distinguished Flying Cross, a top medal awarded for "exceptionally valorous actions."

After the war, Riggs worked his way up through the ranks in the Army, serving in Korea and Germany as well as a stint with NATO headquarters in Brussels. He commanded troops from the platoon level to the First U.S. Army, which is based in Georgia and is responsible for training National Guard and Reserve troops east of the Mississippi.

Among Riggs' accomplishments with the First Army was the largest rotation of part-time troops since World War II, when the Guard's 29th Infantry Division, which includes troops from Maryland and Virginia, deployed to Bosnia for a peacekeeping mission in 2001.

In 2001, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, the Army's top officer, asked Riggs to take over the Army's transformation task force. The group was organized to create an Army for the 21st century, centered on the Future Combat System, a series of armored vehicles, drone aircraft and sensors that would give soldiers greater control over future battlefields.

Those who worked with Riggs, as well as his endorsement letters, say the general worked hard at trying to turn the Army into a high-tech force.

The December 2002 Scientific American magazine singled him out as one of the country's top 50 technology leaders for his work. Riggs, the magazine said, was "leading the often contentious, even acrimonious debate among military planners about how to transform today's ground divisions into high-tech fighting units of the future."

But documents and interviews reveal that some of those who worked with Riggs chafed at the constant pace of work and the authority he gave to private contractors, whom he said he relied on heavily.

Riggs himself and investigation documents say he was the subject of anonymous allegations that he was violating the Pentagon's contracting regulations and having an affair with one of the contractors.

The Army inspector general's office opened a probe in the spring of 2003. At the same time, a criminal investigation also looking at the issue of contractors was launched by the Army's Criminal Investigation Command.

Only the inspector general came back with findings of fault. An October 2003 letter from Lt. Gen. Paul Mikolashek, the inspector general, found two violations of contracting rules but concluded that the allegation of "an adulterous affair with a female contractor was not substantiated."

Memo of 'Concern'

The report prompted Gen. John M. Keane, the Army's No. 2 officer, to write a disciplinary "memorandum of concern" to Riggs. The memo found that a female contractor was allowed to draft congressional testimony, respond to congressional correspondence and communicate with Capitol Hill staffers.

Allowing a contractor to perform functions that should have been undertaken only by government employees was improper, Keane wrote.

Also, since the contractor was serving in a role similar to that of a deputy director or executive officer, that amounted to an improper "personal services contract" that should have been filled by a government employee. Riggs was put on notice "to comply with all regulatory requirements," but Keane wrote that the memo would not be filed in Riggs' personnel records.

Riggs was also questioned in the related criminal investigation, he and his attorney said. It produced no charges and, said Rigg's attorney, Army Lt. Col. Vic Hansen, "The investigation's dead, and it's not going anywhere."

A spokesman for the Army's Criminal Investigation Command said he could not comment on the status of any investigation.

Now retired, Keane said demoting Riggs based on a penalty that represents the "minimum administrative punishment" at his disposal was a "tragic mistake."

"It is outrageous that John Riggs was reduced in rank for such a minor offense, which should never outweigh his 30-plus years of exemplary service to the Army and the nation," Keane wrote in a letter to Army officials supporting Riggs' restoration as a lieutenant general.

Keane said the Army was partly to blame for Riggs' predicament because the service downsized its support personnel and forced officers to hire private contractors. "I believe we blurred the lines of contractors and department employees, so much so that many of the supervisors just saw it as one team," Keane wrote. "While John Riggs did blur those lines, we, the Army, contributed directly to that without a clear policy and clear command guidelines."

Candid Assessments

Riggs, long known for offering blunt, unvarnished opinion, wasn't chastened by the contractor probe.

He stepped on the toes of other generals in pressing for a modernized Army and advocated the planned Comanche helicopter, which he viewed as vital to the future Army. Riggs was instructed by the Army not to make a speech supporting the Comanche, which the Army decided to kill to save money.

"John Riggs had the moral courage to stand and be counted on the tough issues concerning [the Army's modernization efforts] when his contemporaries took the easy approach of agreeing with their seniors," wrote retired Army Gen. Larry Ellis, a Morgan State graduate who is supporting Riggs' return to three-star rank.

In a January 2004 interview with The Sun, Riggs said the Army was too small to meet its global commitments and must be substantially increased.

The interview made him the first senior active-duty officer to publicly urge a larger Army - and the first to publicly take on Rumsfeld and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker, who had repeatedly told lawmakers that such increases were not necessary.

After the interview appeared, Pentagon sources said, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz stormed into the office of the Army's vice chief of staff, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., and demanded an explanation for Riggs' views. Riggs said Casey called him that day and ordered him not to talk about troop increases but to "stay in your lane."

Casey, Riggs said, then asked him when he was planning to retire.

"I did become sort of a persona non grata," said Riggs.

Several days after Riggs' remarks on troop strength, Rumsfeld and other officials asked for a temporary increase of 30,000 soldiers for the Army, although they continue to argue that a permanent increase was not needed.

Handled Differently

What's striking about the Riggs case is the comparison with how the Army and the other services have handled even more serious cases.

Seven years ago, Maj. Gen. David Hale, the Army's inspector general, was allowed to hastily retire after allegations that he pressured the wife of a subordinate into a sexual relationship. An Army investigation uncovered other affairs with subordinates' wives, and Hale was later put back on active duty and court-martialed. But it took an Army review panel another six months after his conviction to determine that Hale should be reduced by one star to a brigadier general.

Two Navy rear admirals were given letters of censure for not stopping lewd behavior at the 1991 Tailhook Association convention in Las Vegas, where dozens of women were groped and fondled by Navy and Marine Corps aviators. Both admirals retired at their two-star ranks.

More recently, the Air Force removed the four top officers at the U.S. Air Force Academy as part of a housecleaning after a sex scandal in 2003. While the superintendent was demoted from a three-star to a two-star rank, the other officers went on to jobs with similar responsibilities.

In March 2004, with his mentor Shinseki gone and his own future clouded, Riggs said, he saw the "handwriting on the wall" and put in his retirement papers.

Under Army rules, a general officer must complete the retirement process within 60 days or risk reverting to previous rank. By April 3, Riggs still had heard nothing so he sent an e-mail to Casey to remind him that time was running out.

"We are very conscious of time," Casey responded, according to a copy of the e-mail kept by Riggs. "Discussed with [the assistant secretary of the Army] yesterday. I expect some movement next week."

Eleven days later, Riggs got a terse letter from Casey, saying that the acting secretary of the Army, Brownlee, was embarking on a "grade determination" of Riggs.

He had just five days to respond because Brownlee was leaving on a trip.

A couple of weeks later, on April 29, Riggs said, Casey told him in a phone conversation that Brownlee had determined that his time as lieutenant general "had not been satisfactory" and that he would retire at a two-star rank. Riggs was told to sign his retirement papers the next day so he could leave the Army by the weekend.

Brownlee still has never talked to Riggs about the decision; Brownlee said Casey would do that in his role handling disciplinary matters for general officers.

Casey, who now is the top U.S. commander in Iraq, declined through a spokesman to comment or answer e-mailed questions.

Brownlee did send the decision to reduce Riggs' rank to Rumsfeld, who could have reversed it. But he chose not to. "The only thing I heard back [from Rumsfeld's office] was that it was noted," Brownlee said.

The decision cost Riggs $10,000 to $15,000 a year in pension benefits. But, he added, "what I've lost is a lot of my personal self-respect."

In a series of interviews, Riggs said he still wrestles with why he was demoted but believes his outspokenness was part of the equation.

"Do I think it is?" he said. "I thought it must have something to do with it. You've got to do it the Rumsfeld way, or you're not going to go forward.

"When you ask a general officer, 'What do you think?' you should be able to answer candidly. I think he's politicized the general officer corps by making the personal selections of everyone."

Brownlee dismissed the contention that his actions amounted to a political vendetta. "I know that's what some of them will assert," said Brownlee, an Army combat veteran in Vietnam who was the top staffer on the Senate Armed Services Committee. "It was not political."

During his 18 months as acting Army secretary, Brownlee could not recall any other general that he reduced in rank.

Praise for Riggs

Former Army Secretary Thomas White, who was fired by Rumsfeld over policy differences and was succeeded by Brownlee, praised Riggs' work and said he found the reduction in rank puzzling. But White, a retired Army brigadier general, questioned the notion that the officer corps had suddenly become politicized.

"It's always been political," White said. "It operates in a capital filled with politicians. I don't know if it's more or less than it was 20 years ago."

Nonetheless, several senior officers said they privately fear that Riggs' treatment could have a chilling effect on the willingness of other officers to provide their candid views, forcing them instead to bend to the political winds. Five of the retired officers who wrote letters urging that Riggs' rank be restored agreed either to be interviewed or to let their letters be quoted.

One of those was Shinseki, who himself had a stormy relationship with Rumsfeld and battled with the secretary over troop levels and spending programs. At his retirement ceremony in June 2003, Shinseki warned "our soldiers and families bear the risk and hardship of carrying a mission load that exceeds the force capabilities we can sustain."

Neither Rumsfeld nor his top deputies were in attendance.

In his letter of support for Riggs, Shinseki said, "There was no one who was more professional, more honest, more selfless, more dedicated, nor more loyal to the Army and to its soldiers than John Riggs."

An Outcast

Riggs has become an outcast, saddled with a reduction in rank that is one of the harshest and rarest punishments in an institution built on honor and rank.

Hansen, Riggs' military lawyer, said the Army could simply have retired the general and not demoted him. "Why do you put that last knife in the back? That's petty and mean-spirited," he said. "How do you tell him he didn't deserve to be retired at three-star rank?"

Riggs has filed the paperwork to the Army Board for the Correction of Military Records, an appeal process that could restore him to three-star rank, Army officials said.

A hearing officer will review the case and make a recommendation to a three-member panel. A final decision, expected this summer, rests with an assistant Army secretary.

"It's a stretch," said Hansen, Riggs' lawyer.

The investigations have taken both a professional and personal toll on Riggs. His marriage of 38 years fell apart. Now, the former general shuttles between Washington and Florida, spending his time on consulting and real estate work.

And while he is both saddened and sometimes angry about how his military career came to a close, he still has a great deal of respect for the Army. "It's the most noble institution we've got," he said.

But Garner, the retired lieutenant general, has a more hardened view of the Army's top brass and is troubled by what happened to Riggs, "this superb soldier."

"The real tragedy here," Garner said in an interview, "is that none of the leadership of the Army has the guts to stand up and say it's wrong."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/053005Y.shtml

April 28, 2005 by the New York Times
On Abu Ghraib, the Big Shots Walk
by Bob Herbert

When soldiers in war are not properly trained and supervised, atrocities are all but inevitable. This is one reason why the military command structure is so important. There was a time, not so long ago, when commanders were expected to be accountable for the behavior of their subordinates.
That's changed. Under Commander in Chief George W. Bush, the notion of command accountability has been discarded. In Mr. Bush's world of war, it's the grunts who take the heat. Punishment is reserved for the people at the bottom. The people who foul up at the top are promoted.

It was a year ago today that the stories and photos of the shocking abuses at Abu Ghraib prison first came to the public's attention. It was a scandal that undermined the military's reputation and diminished the standing of the U.S. around the world.

It would soon become clear that the photos of hooded, naked and humiliated detainees were evidence of a much larger problem. The system for processing, interrogating and detaining prisoners at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in Iraq was dangerously out of control, and the command structure responsible for it had collapsed. Detainees were beaten, tortured, sexually abused and, in some instances, killed. Many detainees should never have been imprisoned at all, as they had committed no offenses.

So what happened? A handful of grunts were court-martialed, a Marine major was cashiered, and the Army plans to issue a new interrogation manual that bars certain harsh techniques. There was no wholesale crackdown on criminal behavior.

We learned last week that after a high-level investigation, the Army had cleared four of the five top officers who were responsible for prison policies and operations in Iraq. The fifth officer, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski of the Army Reserve, had already been relieved of her command of the military police unit at Abu Ghraib. (She has complained, and not without reason, that she was a scapegoat for the failures of higher-ranking officers.)

As Eric Schmitt wrote in The Times: "Barring new evidence, the inquiry by the Army's inspector general effectively closes the Army's book on whether the highest-ranking officers in Iraq during the Abu Ghraib prison scandal should be held accountable for command failings described in past reviews."

This is the way atrocities are dealt with in Mr. Bush's world of war. The higher-ups responsible for training, supervising and disciplining the troops - in other words, the big shots who presided over a system that ran shamefully amok - escaped virtually unscathed.

The abuses at Abu Ghraib, which seemed mind-boggling at the time, turned out to be symptomatic of the torture, abuse and institutionalized injustice that have permeated the Bush administration's operations in its so-called war against terror. Euphemisms like rendition, coercive interrogation, sleep adjustment and waterboarding are now widely understood. Yes, Virginia, it is the policy of the United States to kidnap individuals and send them off to regimes skilled in the art of torture.

Two things are needed. First, a truly independent commission, along the lines of the bipartisan 9/11 panel, should be set up to thoroughly investigate U.S. interrogation and detention operations, and make recommendations to correct abuses.

Second, the U.S. government should make it clear, beyond any doubt, that torture and any other inhumane treatment of prisoners is wrong, just flat wrong, and will not be tolerated under any circumstances.

"In our contemporary world, torture is like the slave trade or piracy was to people in the 1790's," said Michael Posner, executive director of Human Rights First, which is suing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over the prisoner abuse issue. "Torture is a crime against mankind, against humanity. It's something that has to be absolutely prohibited."

If the president made it clear that men and women up and down the chain of command would be held responsible for the abuses that occur on their watch, the abuses would plummet. Instead, the message the administration has sent is that its demands for accountability will be limited to a few hapless, ill-trained grunts.

The big shots who presided over behavior that has shamed America in the eyes of the world can count on this president's embrace.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0428-24.htm

Concerning Iraq: Gen Sanchez.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...5062701322.html

Command Responsibility

By Andrew J. Bacevich

Tuesday, June 28, 2005; Page A15

Who "lost" Iraq? With blame for the unhappy course of events since U.S. forces occupied Baghdad in April 2003 routinely heaped on civilian officials, the military itself has gotten a pass. In fact, senior U.S. commanders have botched the war. Acknowledging that fact is an essential first step toward improving the quality of U.S. generalship.

For this reason, reported plans to promote Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez deserve particular attention. According to media reports, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld intends to nominate Sanchez for a fourth star. But the general does not merit promotion; he can best serve his country by retiring forthwith.

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. military commander in Iraq gestures during press conference in Baghda Saturday Nov. 29, 2003. Sanchez said that the United States is boosting the number of infantry soldiers in Iraq and moving from a force based on tanks and heavy armored vehicles to one specializing in urban assault raids, using lighter vehicles and intelligence. (AP Photo/Dusan Vranic)
Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. military commander in Iraq gestures during press conference in Baghda Saturday Nov. 29, 2003. Sanchez said that the United States is boosting the number of infantry soldiers in Iraq and moving from a force based on tanks and heavy armored vehicles to one specializing in urban assault raids, using lighter vehicles and intelligence. (AP Photo/Dusan Vranic) (Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez In Iraq In 2003/By Kevin Lamarque -- Reuters)

The public knows Sanchez as the senior commander in Baghdad when the Abu Ghraib story broke last year. Since then several Pentagon investigations into the scandal have cleared him of any personal wrongdoing. Yet, if this conclusion insulates Sanchez as an individual from disciplinary action, it cannot acquit him of his accountability as a commander. On this point the code of officership is unambiguous: Commanders bear responsibility for all that happens on their watch. This tradition applies to those at the top no less than to lieutenants and captains. Given the egregiousness of Abu Ghraib, it cannot exempt Sanchez. On that score alone, his advancement would do untold damage to the military professional ethic.

But pretend that the abuse of Iraqi prisoners never happened. Sanchez still does not qualify for promotion for one simple reason: He failed to accomplish his assigned mission in Iraq.

When Sanchez assumed command of U.S. and coalition ground forces in Iraq in June 2003, the insurgency was barely in its infancy. When he left Iraq a year later, it was raging all but out of control. By any measure -- estimated number of enemy fighters, frequency of attacks, Iraqi civilian casualties and U.S. troop losses sustained -- conditions in Iraq worsened appreciably during Sanchez's tenure in command. His task was to provide security; his efforts produced chaos.

Historians will remember Sanchez as the William Westmoreland of the Iraq war -- the general who misunderstood the nature of the conflict he faced and thereby played into the enemy's hands. Vowing in December 2003 to use "whatever combat power is necessary to win," Sanchez echoed promises of victory made by Westmoreland in Saigon a generation earlier. "That's what America expects of me," Sanchez declared, "and that's what I'm going to accomplish."

But victory is precisely what he did not accomplish. Combat power as such was never the answer. Indeed, as with Westmoreland, whose doctrine of search-and-destroy committed U.S. forces to an unwinnable war of attrition, Sanchez fought his war in ways that turned out to be monumentally wrongheaded. His kick-down-the-door tactics served only to harden resistance to the U.S. occupation. Rather than winning Iraqi hearts and minds, he alienated them.

That's an easy one ghost. Saddam Hussien.

It is a big Q. but first and foremost on the top of my mind is letting politcal fanatics whit out any millitary experince whatsoever plan and control a millitary operation of that magnitude, incl the non-excistence plans for the aftermath.

Sounds awful familiar Marine!!

Didn't the SHRUB say "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" , when he was playing TOP GUN on the USS Lincoln on 5/2/03????

Yet the beat goes on Bro' - right??

Hang Tough~

Buzzzzzzzzzzzzz.... wrong avatar marine... it's BUSHCONS! You know, the RepublicNeocon mix. Scoring a total Zippo in Iraq!

You're right on Alex.... I can see you understand the Neoconics in the military who created the IraqNam mess. Ever notice the one in here who supports the Bush crap lies? The only exit strategy prepared by the BushCons is leaving Iraq and entering into Iran or Syria... if not on a mushroom cloud first. There's the exits.

Concerning Afghanistan: General Buster Hagenbeck

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2005Mar24.html

The Fog of War

Reviewed by Linda Robinson
Sunday, March 27, 2005


NOT A GOOD DAY TO DIE

The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda


Operation Anaconda was not one of the U.S. military's finest moments. In March 2002, five months into the war in Afghanistan, American commanders decided to mount an attack to root out Afghan and foreign fighters who had holed up in the eastern Shahikot Valley, which was ringed by mountains that reached 12,000 feet. Until then, the war had been fought with a combination of U.S. Special Forces, anti-Taliban Afghan militias and precision-guided air power, but U.S. conventional forces had arrived in Afghanistan and were anxious to get into the fight.

U.S. Central Command decided to put a U.S. Army general, Buster Hagenbeck, in charge, and his staff planned a large battle using conventional, special operations and Afghan forces to attack the valley. The most senior al Qaeda leaders had almost certainly fled into neighboring Pakistan by then, but Special Operations forces who had carried out an early reconnaissance of the valley estimated that a large number of hard-core foreign militants were still hiding there. Until the very eve of the battle, however, American forces believed that the extremists numbered at most 200 and that they were in the valley, not the surrounding mountains. Those two facts, compounded by a welter of mishaps, poor decisions, and unclear lines of authority, would spell disaster for the first days of the biggest battle Americans had fought since the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

For Not a Good Day to Die, Army Times reporter Sean Naylor has doggedly pursued the full story of Operation Anaconda from the time he was "embedded" with 101st Airborne Division troops who fought in the battle. For the next two years he strove to interview the many participants in this complex operation, often against the wishes of their commanders. Naylor does an admirable job of exposing the many shortcomings that plagued this chapter of the Afghanistan war, although he does not sort the major from the minor failings or linger over the broader lessons. What the book lacks in analytical heft, however, it more than makes up in drama. Readers without a knowledge of military jargon will find it slower going.

Anaconda got off to an abysmal start when the Afghan militia that was to lead the charge into Shahikot came under fire from an American AC-130 gunship. A Special Forces chief warrant officer was killed, and the militia was thrown into a disarray from which it never really recovered. This particular band of Afghans, unlike other more experienced forces, had been training and fighting with the Special Forces for only a few weeks.

On the heels of that friendly-fire tragedy came another debacle that is the best-known episode of the two-week operation. Navy SEAL commandos assigned to infiltrate the mountaintops around Shahikot came under heavy fire as they attempted to land. One commando fell from the helicopter and was captured and killed as the damaged Chinook limped away. A Ranger rescue force unwittingly landed on the very same spot and was mercilessly chewed up by enemy fire. Ranger Capt. Nathan Self, his men and the Nightstalkers aircrew fought through some of the ghastliest conditions that any Americans have ever braved. The intense fighting led to another fateful decision -- not to risk landing another aircraft to extract casualties until nightfall -- that resulted in another American death.

Much of what happened could be attributed to the inevitable fog of war, especially given the formidable terrain. But the plan and command structure had grievous flaws that should have been detected and corrected. The principal error was the inadequate intelligence about the size and disposition of the enemy: It turned out that there were at least 1,000 well-trained militants dug into the mountainsides, armed with mortars and heavy machine guns. That made a hash of Hagenbeck's plan to chopper in conventional forces to the valley floor where, in broad daylight, both men and machines became sitting ducks for the waiting guns. Because they did not expect such heavy resistance, the conventional troops were not deployed with their artillery sections or a full complement of attack helicopters. Finally, inadequate air support from bombers overhead left the men vulnerable in the first day of the battle.

The basic problems of Anaconda, Naylor concludes, were "CENTCOM's decision to treat the operation as a pickup game and its failure to establish a clear, tight chain of command for the operation; the reliance on aircraft to provide almost all the heavy firepower; and the overriding belief in all higher headquarters that the war was virtually over." Some of these lessons were heeded in the subsequent war in Iraq, where coordination between air and ground forces, and conventional and Special Operations forces, improved. Friction points remain -- specifically the tendency of far-off commanders to use technology to micromanage -- but Naylor overemphasizes the importance of personality, intramural and interservice rivalries. In particular, he places great stock in one Delta Force officer's account and does not provide any countervailing viewpoint by SEAL commanders, whom he apparently was not permitted to interview.

Anaconda raises the broader issue of whether large conventional set-piece battles or Special Forces with precision-guided bombs are the best way to fight the terror wars. The answer is, "It depends." There were options to deal with the Shahikot other than massing forces, but having decided on a frontal attack, sufficient conventional tools should have been brought to bear. Even so, it's impossible to know whether a fully equipped conventional force would have killed more than the 800 enemy tallied, or whether they would have done any better in keeping Osama bin Laden from slipping over the Pakistan border some months earlier, as the author believes. The one certainty is that more U.S. officers now have combat experience than at any time since the Vietnam War, and thus ample opportunity to put these lessons learned into practice. The U.S. military also clearly needs to expand its repertoire to include more nuanced and less kinetic forms of dealing with unconventional, hidden threats. A longer-term effort to win over the Shahikot area's population, for example, could have paid major dividends in intelligence and even local opposition to the foreign presence. Since the U.S. military has not released its own official inquiry and after-action reports, this important book stands as the definitive account of a tragic chapter in that learning experience. •

SAD CALAMITY.
A STEAMSHIP SUNK AT SEA.
Collision Between the Steamer City of
Bath and Steamship Pocahontas.
The Pocahontas Sunk and Forty
Lives Lost.
The U.S. steam transport City of Bath, Capt.
LINCOLN, hence June 1, at 11 A.M., bound to Wash-
ington, D.C., returned to port last night, having been
in collision with the steamship Pocahontas, from
New-Orleans, near Cape May, having her bows
stove in and stern carried away. The Pocahontas
sunk in twenty-five minutes, carrying down with her
about forty of her passengers and crew. Capt. LIN-
COLN reports:
The City of Bath left New-York June 1, at 11 A.
M., bound to Washington, D.C. At 11:50 P.M.,
made a steamer's light ahead; put our helm a-port
to clear her; at the same time the Pocahontas' helm
was put to starboard, and the two boats came togeth-
er, the City of Bath striking the Pocahontas about
the fore rigging; backed off from her, and found that
we were leaking badly; commenced throwing over-
board cargo to lighten her forward, and succeeded in
stopping the leak. Sent our boats to the assistance
of the other vessel, and lay by the place until day-
light, in hopes to find more of her people (a large
number having already been received on board), but
picked up only one. At the time of the collision,
Cape May light-ship bore S.W. 17 miles.
FURTHER PARTICULARS.
Her Captain, (BAXTER) and one discharged Lieu-
tenant and two engineers were lost. The passen-
gers lost were soldiers discharged or on furlough.
The Pocahontas was a screw steamer of 800
tons, commanded by JOHN BAXTER, of Hazannis, and
sailed from New-Orleans on May 24, with 101 souls
on board. She had rendered good service to the
Governemnt during the Texas expedition under
Gen. BANKS. The voyage up to the time of the dis-
aster was unusually pleasant. The captain (BAX-
TER) was in feeble health. With the consent of the
Chief Quartermaster of the Department of the Gulf,
he had placed in charge Capt. SAMUEL BAXTER, an
efficient officer of much experience. All the officers
did their very best to render the passage a pleasant
one. On board of the steamer was the body of the
noble Capt. FRANK B. HALLECK, Company K, Scott's
Nine Hundred, in charge of his brother, Capt. HAR-
VEY HALLECK. On Wednesday night, June 1, the night
being dark and hazy, a steamer's light was seen
within a few hundred yards of the Pocahontas. Capt.
BAXTER and officers were on the lookout; soon our
whistle was blown very loud, several times; the Po-
cahontas was making 10 or 11 knots through the
water by steam and a heavy piece of canvas. Every-
thing apparently was done to prevent a disaster, but
by some fatal mistake of the helmsmen on both
steamers, the ships came in collision. The City of
Baltimore, bound to Washington, ran into the Poca-
hontas bow on, striking her on the starboard side, just
abaft the fore rigging. It being nearly 11 o'clock,
most of the passengers had retired to their berths,
many of whom soon started for the upper deck. The
two Captains soon discovered that the vessel was
sinking. The boats were ordered to be lowered imme-
diately; the engines were stopped. The two ves-
sels remained thumping each other for a few min-
utes, and then separated. One of these boats, during
the excitement, was swamped, and the other two did
what they could to save the poor souls already afloat;
for the Pocahontas went down in about 20 min-
utes. Planks and ladders were thrown over-
board, and Capt. LINCOLN, of the City of Bath,
threw overboard scores of cork life-preservers;
but the sea was high and the wind fresh, which
caused many of the poor fellows to sink into a wa-
tery grave. A Chaplain in the United States Army,
an invalid on a leave of absence to his family, staid
by the ship to the last, encouraging the men, and
threw many planks into the water, and kept saying,
"Hold on, boys," until he was quite hoarse; and
when the ship was going down, bow first, the Chap-
lain deliberately took off his overcoat and plunged
into the sea. He swam off as fast as he could,
not having been able to secure a plank or
life-preserver for himself. He providentially reached
the stern of one of the boats, exhausted, and
was kindly helped in by two men already in the boat.
There not being sufficient means to keep the water
out of the boats, the Chaplain gave his cap to one of
the sailors to bail with. This boat, which was un-
der the charge of Capt. SAML. BAXTER, did good ser-
vice by picking up many a soldier near the jaws of
death. One of the soldiers saved had but one arm,
having lost the other in the battle of Pleasant Hill;
his name is TENISON, and belongs to the Veteran
Second Regiment. The survivors have been very
kindly received on board the City of Baltimore.
Capt. LINCOLN was compelled to throw over-
board much of his cargo to keep his own
ship from sinking. He remained near the
spot until morning, and had the satisfaction
of saving one poor fellow who had hugged up to a
good plank all night. The scene was beyond descrip-
tion. Many have been saved without a hat or a shoe,
losing everything but their lives. Mr. DUNCAN,
second officer of the Pocahontas, deserves much
praise for his great exertions in saving many who
were ready to perish. There is an excellent chance
for the gentlemen of the Christian and Sanitary
Commission to do good. Many of the soldiers have
not any means to reach their homes in comfort.
Many of the destitute may be found on board of the
City of Bath for a day or two.

Concerning Iraq: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml%3Fi=20050620&s=editors

editorial | posted June 2, 2005 (June 20, 2005 issue)
Torture in the US Gulag

Amnesty International secretary general Irene Khan's scorching description of Guantánamo as "the gulag of our times" has provoked a new White House line: Stories of torture and mistreatment of terror detainees are the fabrications of repatriated ex-prisoners who "hate America" and are trained to lie, as George W. Bush declared at a May 31 press conference.

Up until now the Administration's response to its multifront human-rights scandal has been characterized by the defiant evasions of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Now, the line has shifted to outright deception. Fact: If the testimony of ex-prisoners figures significantly in the story, it's because the Administration has persistently blocked human rights investigators' access to current detainees at Bagram, Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. Fact: AI's report is primarily based not on ex-prisoner interviews but on sources like the Pentagon's own Independent Panel to Review Department of Defense Detention Operations and court-martial testimony.

For three and a half years, AI, Human Rights Watch and other monitoring groups, frustrated by official stonewalling, have maintained a cautious approach to torture allegations. It has taken repeated breaches in the Administration's wall of secrecy--through investigative reporting, the ACLU's FOIA requests and court orders--to document the patterns Amnesty describes. And scarcely a week goes by without further supporting evidence. Just days before Bush's remarks, the New York Times detailed cover-ups in the sadistic killings of two prisoners at Bagram. No sooner did Newsweek, under Pentagon pressure, retract its Koran-desecration story than reports of Koran desecrations emerged from the Defense Department's own records. Lieut. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez assured the Senate Armed Services Committee that he "never approved" the use of intensive sleep deprivation, guard dogs and excessive noise in interrogations at Abu Ghraib. Now the latest document cache obtained by the ACLU includes a memo over Sanchez's signature, dated September 14, 2003, explicitly approving techniques for "significantly increasing the fear level in a detainee"--including (surprise!) sleep deprivation, noise and "presence of military working dogs."


Bush may find Amnesty's charges "absurd," but the debate has already moved from whether the United States is a purveyor of torture to what to do about it. Slowly, instruments of legality and due process, within and outside the United States, are encircling US policy. In late May the United Nations Commission Against Torture ruled that Sweden violated the Convention Against Torture when it "rendered" asylum-seeker Ahmed Agiza to Egypt on a CIA flight. It is only a matter of time before the commission--to which the US is a signatory--turns to the United States itself. In Britain the Law Lords are preparing to consider whether evidence coerced through torture abroad is admissible in its courts. The same question now shadows Washington: Two doctors who examined American student Abu Ali, awaiting trial for allegedly plotting to assassinate Bush, have concluded that the young man was tortured in Saudi Arabia after his arrest.

Guantánamo's hundreds do not compare with Stalin's millions, but the gulag is a fair analogy--how else to describe an international network of cells and interrogation centers holding prisoners without charge, for indeterminate terms, beyond reach of any court? But Bush's torture system and his obsession with secret executive authority are shaped by the contradictions of democracy: courts that won't cooperate, legislators who ask questions, reporters who drag secrets into the light. Harnessing those forces--whether through Congressional committees, new legal actions or citizen protests--is today's great task.

Concerning Iraq: General Moseley


http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20...n13strikes.html

All 50 raids were off mark; civilians killed

By Douglas Jehl and Eric Schmitt
NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE

June 13, 2004

WASHINGTON – The United States launched many more failed airstrikes on a far broader array of senior Iraqi leaders during the early days of the war last year than previously acknowledged, and some caused significant civilian casualties, said senior military and intelligence officials.

Only a few of the 50 airstrikes have been described in public. All were unsuccessful, and many, including the two well-known raids on Saddam Hussein and his sons, appear to have been undercut by poor intelligence, current and former government officials said.

The broad scope of the campaign and its failures, along with the civilian casualties, have not been acknowledged by the Bush administration.

A report in December by Human Rights Watch, based on a review of four strikes, concluded that the singling-out of Iraqi leadership had "resulted in dozens of civilian casualties that the United States could have prevented if it had taken additional precautions."

The poor record in the airstrikes has raised questions about the intelligence they were based on, including whether that intelligence reflected deception on the part of Iraqis, the officials said. The March 19, 2003, attempt to kill Hussein and his sons at the Dora Farms compound, south of Baghdad, remains a subject of particular contention.

But in an interview last summer, Lt. Gen. T. Michael Moseley, the Air Force vice chief of staff who directed the air campaign during the invasion, acknowledged that inspections after the war had concluded that no such bunker existed.

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MILITARY IMPACTS
Airstrikes on Iraqi leaders 'abject failure'

All 50 raids were off mark; civilians killed

By Douglas Jehl and Eric Schmitt
NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE

June 13, 2004

WASHINGTON – The United States launched many more failed airstrikes on a far broader array of senior Iraqi leaders during the early days of the war last year than previously acknowledged, and some caused significant civilian casualties, said senior military and intelligence officials.

Only a few of the 50 airstrikes have been described in public. All were unsuccessful, and many, including the two well-known raids on Saddam Hussein and his sons, appear to have been undercut by poor intelligence, current and former government officials said.

The strikes, carried out against "high value" targets during a one-month period that began March 19, 2003, used precision-guided munitions against at least 13 Iraqi leaders, including Gen. Izzat Ibrahim, Iraq's No. 2 official, the officials said.

Ibrahim is still at large, along with at least one other top official who was a target of the failed raids. That official, Maj. Gen. Rafi Abd al-Latif Tilfah, the former head of the Directorate of General Security, and Ibrahim are playing a leadership role in the anti-U.S. insurgency, according to a briefing document prepared last month by the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The broad scope of the campaign and its failures, along with the civilian casualties, have not been acknowledged by the Bush administration.

A report in December by Human Rights Watch, based on a review of four strikes, concluded that the singling-out of Iraqi leadership had "resulted in dozens of civilian casualties that the United States could have prevented if it had taken additional precautions."

The poor record in the airstrikes has raised questions about the intelligence they were based on, including whether that intelligence reflected deception on the part of Iraqis, the officials said. The March 19, 2003, attempt to kill Hussein and his sons at the Dora Farms compound, south of Baghdad, remains a subject of particular contention.

A CIA officer reported, based primarily on information provided by satellite telephone from an Iraqi source, that Hussein was in an underground bunker at the site. That prompted President Bush to accelerate the timetable for the beginning of the war, giving the go-ahead to strikes by precision-guided bombs and cruise missiles, senior intelligence officials said.

But in an interview last summer, Lt. Gen. T. Michael Moseley, the Air Force vice chief of staff who directed the air campaign during the invasion, acknowledged that inspections after the war had concluded that no such bunker existed. Various internal reviews by the military and the CIA still have not resolved the question of whether Hussein was at the location at all, said senior military and intelligence officials, although the CIA maintains that he probably was at Dora Farms.

One possibility is that Hussein was above ground in one of the houses that were not destroyed in the raid, a senior intelligence official and a senior military officer said.
A warning sign
In retrospect, the failures were an early warning sign about the thinness of U.S. intelligence on Iraq and on Hussein's inner circle. Some of the officials who survived the raids, including Ibrahim, have become leaders of what the Defense Intelligence Agency now believes has been a planned anti-U.S. insurgency, several intelligence officials said.

"It was all just guesswork on where they were," a senior military officer said. Another official, a senior Army officer who served in Iraq, described early intelligence on the Iraqi leadership as producing "a lot of dry holes."

A third senior military officer described the quantity of "no kidding, actionable intel" as having been limited, but added, "In a real fight, you go with what you've got."

Senior military officials said they were not sure whether the Iraqis deliberately deceived the United States, in the information they provided or was intercepted. They described the intelligence as problematic at best, but said intelligence agencies were engaged in a hard task.

An unclassified Air Force report issued in April 2003 categorized 50 attacks from March 19 to April 18 as having been time-sensitive strikes on Iraqi leaders. An up-to-date accounting posted on the Web site of the U.S. Central Command shows that 43 of the top 55 Iraqi leaders on the most-wanted list have now been taken into custody or killed, but that none were taken into custody until April 13, 2003, and that none were killed by airstrikes.

An explicit account of the zero-for-50 record in strikes on high-value targets was provided by Marc Garlasco, a former Defense Intelligence Agency official who headed the joint staff's high-value targeting cell during the war. Garlasco is now a senior military analyst for Human Rights Watch, and he was a primary author of the December report "Off Target: The Conduct of the War and Civilian Casualties in Iraq."

The broad failure rate was confirmed by several senior military officials, including some who served in Iraq or the region during the war, and by senior intelligence officials.

Rules for the raids

Moseley, the top Air Force commander during the war who is now the Air Force vice chief of staff, said in the interview last summer that commanders were required to obtain advance approval from Rumsfeld if any planned airstrike was likely to result in the deaths of 30 or more civilians. More than 50 such raids were proposed, and all were approved, Moseley said.

Back in Dayton, Orville was shouldering a yeoman's burden. He worked feverishly to build an aircraft for the U.S. Army with the two Charlie's — Charlie Taylor and Charlie Furnas. And he took over the correspondence, a job that he hated and gladly left to Wilbur.
Nonetheless, he put his pen to paper and pumped out letters and articles for Scientific American, Aeronautics, and other periodicals. The best of these was a piece that he wrote for Century magazine, "The Wright Brother's Aeroplane." It was a clear and entertaining account of the Wright's aeronautical adventure, from the small rubber band-powered toy their father gave the, in 1878 to the creation of a practical airplane in 1905. Orville was so unsure of his writing skills that he offered to return a portion of the $500 fee when he sent the article. The editor paid the full fee, and rightly so — the Century article remains a masterpiece of aviation literature, even today.

When the Army aircraft was complete, Orville sent the two Charlie's ahead to Fort Meyer with it while he tied up loose ends in Dayton. They were transporting the crated aircraft from Arlington Station to a large balloon hangar when Orville arrived on August 20, 1908. He was immediately swept up in a whirlwind of reporters, politicians, officers, and dignitaries who barraged him with "..ten thousand fool questions…about the machine." A week after Orville arrived, he complained in a letter to Katharine, "I haven't done a lick of work since I got here."

In point of fact, he had done some work. Orville and the two Charlies worked with efficiency and focus that amazed many of the Army officials who observed them. And they needed to focus — things did not go well. The engine refused to run properly; it would not develop the hoped-for horsepower. This put the screws to Orville and his assistants. One of the requirements in the Army specifications was that the airplane fly 40 miles per hour. If it flew slower — even by just a small amount — the payment to the Wrights would be significantly less. That summer, Baldwin and Curtiss had delivered a dirigible to the Army that flew 4/10 of a mile per hour slower than specified, and they were docked $6,750!

Orville, Charlie, and Charlie nursed the sick engine back to health with higher octane gasoline and some new oil cups. On September 3, Orville made his first public flight. Like Wilbur's, it was short and sweet — just a turn and a half of the Fort Meyer parade grounds. The public was unimpressed — the news story was buried on page 3 of the Washington "Evening Star."

But they did not remain impressed for long. The flights began to get longer and longer, and by September 9, Orville was breaking records almost daily and remaining aloft for over an hour at a time. He also began taking passengers, flying the aviation experts that the Army had assembled to review the Wright airplane.

On September 17, he took Lt. Thomas Selfridge flying, and he was none too happy about it. Although Selfridge was a member of the review board, he was also one of Bell's Boys, a member of the A.E.A. and a potential competitor. "I don't trust him an inch," Orville wrote to Wilbur. "He plans to meet me often at dinner where he can pump me."

The flight began normally and uneventfully as Orville made climbing circles around the grounds. Suddenly there were two loud thumps. Later, the Wrights and the Army would learn that a propeller had split. As Orville reached to cut off the engine, the airplane gave a violent shake as the broken propeller caught the aircraft rigging. The craft lunged for the ground, hitting nose first and burying the pilot and passenger in a twisted mess of wood, wire, and cloth.

The two Charlies reach Orville first and pulled him clear , bleeding and unconscious. It took much longer to retrieve Lt. Selfridge; he was trapped in the wreck. When he was finally extricated, both men were taken to the fort's hospital. Late in the evening, a doctor announced that Orville had suffered a broken leg, broken ribs, and an injured back. His condition was serious, but he would live — although Orville's leg and back pained him for the rest of his days.

Lt. Thomas Selfridge was less fortunate. He died on the operating table, the first victim of an accident in a powered aircraft.

The news of Orville's accident galvanized his sister Katharine. Without hesitation, she took an indefinite leave from her teaching job in Dayton and left for Fort Meyer. Once there, Katharine oversaw Orville's medical care and attended to his affairs while he was convalescing.

Katharine asked Octave Chanute to help her look after her brothers' fledgling airplane business. Members of the A.E.A. were in town for Lt. Selfridge's funeral and they were curious for a peek at the wrecked Wright flying machine. They had, in fact, visited the balloon shed where the wreckage was kept and Alexander Graham Bell had measured the wing.

When Orville was well enough, he had the two Charlies bring him bits of the wreckage to inspect. He quickly found the cause of the accident — one propeller had broken and clipped a bracing wire that held the tail in place. As the tail collapsed, it sent the Flyer into a deadly dive. Orville explained his conclusions to the Army, and the Army was quick to assure him they would extend his contract. Although he had not yet completed his demonstration flights, the Board of Ordinance was convinced the Flyer would do everything the Wrights had claimed.

http://www.first-to-fly.com/History/Wright...atfortmeyer.htm

Concerning Afghanistan: General Franks

U.S. Concludes Bin Laden Escaped at Tora Bora Fight

By Barton Gellman and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 17, 2002; Page A01

The Bush administration has concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle for Tora Bora late last year and that failure to commit U.S. ground troops to hunt him was its gravest error in the war against al Qaeda, according to civilian and military officials with first-hand knowledge.



After-action reviews, conducted privately inside and outside the military chain of command, describe the episode as a significant defeat for the United States. A common view among those interviewed outside the U.S. Central Command is that Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the war's operational commander, misjudged the interests of putative Afghan allies and let pass the best chance to capture or kill al Qaeda's leader. Without professing second thoughts about Tora Bora, Franks has changed his approach fundamentally in subsequent battles, using Americans on the ground as first-line combat units.

In the fight for Tora Bora, corrupt local militias did not live up to promises to seal off the mountain redoubt, and some colluded in the escape of fleeing al Qaeda fighters. Franks did not perceive the setbacks soon enough, some officials said, because he ran the war from Tampa with no commander on the scene above the rank of lieutenant colonel. The first Americans did not arrive until three days into the fighting. "No one had the big picture," one defense official said.



Franks continues to dissent from that analysis. Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, his chief spokesman, acknowledged the dominant view outside Tampa but said the general is unpersuaded.

"We have never seen anything that was convincing to us at all that Osama bin Laden was present at any stage of Tora Bora -- before, during or after," Quigley said. "I know you've got voices in the intelligence community that are taking a different view, but I just wanted you to know our view as well."

Battle of Argonne Forest

On September 26th, Allied troops now took the offensive, under the command of General Foch. Thanks to the presence of a million American soldiers in France by this time, the Allies made slow, but steady, progress. The German high command warned that it could no longer ensure victory and, as the German army began mutinying, it sued for peace.

The Sun Stood Still
by
Don Richter

THE GOETTGE PATROL

On August 12, Lieutenant Colonel Frank Goettge, senior officer of D-2 Intelligence, set out from Kukum at 6 p.m. in a Tank Lighter craft, somewhat bigger than a Higgins boat, witih twenty five officers, scouts and infantry men. Most of these men were from the Intelligence sections of the Division and Fifth Marines. A Regimental surgeon, Dr. Pratt, also accompanied the party. Colonel Goettge's ultimate aim was to achieve a possible victory for the Division and bring land operations on Guadalcanal to an end by giving the enemy the opportumty to surrender. He brought Lt. Ralph Corry, who was proficient in Japanese, with him. He had worked in government service in Japan prior to the war and would be an ideal man in this situation if the Japanese soldiers offered to lay down their arms.

A Japanese naval warrant officer, who had been taken prisoner, indicated that there were many men who would surrender if they had the chance. They were wandering aimlessly in the jungle without food. There were also wounded men needing medical attention. Another prisoner gave a very similar story. A report also came from the Marines from the Matanikau line that they believed they saw a white flag flying inland from Point Cruz. There had also been Korean laborers who had come through the lines and surrendered. Colonel Goettge felt these indications were sufficient evidence to warrant immediate action. No time should be wasted in capitalizing on this situation.

If a surrender did not eventuate then a plan outlined by First Sergeant Steven Custer would be followed. A patrol would make a reconnaissance of the Matanikou region, starting near the mouth of the river. When this was accomplished they would begin to move southward. A one night bivouac at a vantage point in the hills overlooking the river would be secured. The next day the patrol wouldcontinue following the Matanikau upstream, then move eastward toward the Lungga in the afternoon. They would bring in any prisoners who surrendered, as well as determine the strength and disposition of the enemy in this entire sector. The patrol planned to enter the Marine perimeter before dusk on the 13th.

Just before the patrol departed from the 5th Marine Regiment Command Post, Colonel Whaling, the 5th's executive officer, warned Goettge and Captain Ringer to stay clear of the ground between the Matanikau and Point Cruz. The Japanese were defending this particular section very aggressively. A landing west of Point Cruz was recommended.

The sun was beginning to set on the western horizon. There is little twilight in the tropics and darkness was soon upon them. At sea they saw a signal flare to the east. Goettge took this as a warning to return. He ordered the Lighter back to Kukum. When all was clear the patrol embarked once again. It was 9 p.m. Because so many unknown factors lay ahead of them, several men aboard were a bit edgy about starting out at this late hour.

As they approached the shore it was extremely dark. There was no moon out. When the darkening shadows of the trees came into view Colonel Goettge instructed the coxswain to beach the craft. Before reaching shore, they ran aground on a sandbar protruding from the delta of the river. The coxswain shifted the engine into reverse gear and gunned the motor Marines got out and pushed and rocked the boat and finally she was free. This episode would have alerted any enemy in the area. Just on the west side of the Matanikau's estuary they went ashore. It was shortly before 10 p.m. This was the very place of which Colonel Whaling had warned them to stay clear Two hundred yards from the shore was an elevated rise in the terrain of approximately two hundred feet. It was a rugged coral ridge named Vayaya. The Japanese shore patrol heard the landing craft and immediately informed their command. Infantry men and their weapons were positioned near the base of the ridge and ready.

Colonel Goettge gave instruction to his men to establish a defense cordon at the beach while he, Captain Ringer and First Sergeant Custer set off to find a bivouac for the night on the ridge. Goettge led the way. Shortly after the three men left the beach area, Goettge was cut down by one rifle shot; then machine gun fire cut loose. Custer was seriously wounded. Ringer helped the First Sergeant reach a protective position back on the beach.



Not knowing if Colonel Goettge was dead or alive, Platoon Sergeant Few, Corporal Spaulding and Sergeant Arndt volunteered to go and bring him in. Upon reaching the Colonel, Few saw that he had been hit in the head and killed instantly. Removing his heavy wristwatch and insignia so that the enemy would not know his rank, they began to make their way back to the high water point at the edge of the beach.

Before reaching their destination, they were attacked by Japanese soldiers. Few thought his assailant was an American, so in disgust he barked out, "What's the password?" In response he was bayoneted in the arm and leg. A struggle ensued and Few was able to wrest the enemy's weapon and bayonet him. Before reaching the beach, Few killed another attacking soldier with Arndt's 45 pistol. His own Reising gun malfunctioned because sand had got into the breach.

At the beach Captain Ringer took charge. He established a left and right protective flank. Captain Ringer asked Sergeant Arnt to send an S.O.S. by firing three sets of tracershots simultaneously this command was carried out immediately. Amdt fired his Reising gun and the tracers were seen and the shots heard back at Kukum, but they were puzzled as to their meaning.

The Japanese were pressing an attack on both of their flanks. Captain Ringer knew that they needed reinforcements or they wouldn't survive. In discussing their situation with Platoon Sergeant Few, the Platoon Sergeant recommended that they send Sergeant "Monk" Amdt for help. He was tagged this nickname at Calebra, Puerto Rico in '39 when he climbed a coconut tree to get some nuts. The name stuck, He was as agile and spry as a monkey.

"If anyone can get through, it'll be Amdt," Few said.

Soon the small tough sergeant from Mississippi, who always responded to a challenge, slipped into the water and was on his way. It was around 10:30 p.m. Lungga Point was five miles away. The enemy occupied much of the territory. Arndt knew this, but the only thing on his mind was to get through.

At the mouth of the Matanikau River he was shot at by a Japanese soldier, Amdt returned the fire with his 45 pistol which he had strapped in his helmet. He believed he killed the enemy, but quickly moved on before other soldiers appeared

Amdt stayed close to the beach, about twenty yards out, because he still had his boondockers on. He couldn't get them off. In the excitement of his anticipated mission he had tied them into knots. In several places Amdt slipped on the reef and was tossed about by the waves. His body was badly cut and bruised by the jagged protrusions on the coral reefs. Tiring, he made for the beach to rest.

Much to his delight he found a damaged dugout canoe. Although the bow had been destroyed by shell fire he discovered that by sitting in the stern, it elevated the open end above the sea water. Using a board, he paddled over two miles to the Lunga Boat Pool. It was where they had embarked. Amdt arrived at 5 a.m.

Sympathetic sailors wrapped him in a blanket then took him ashore in a landing craft. After giving the password, "Lillian," to the shore guard, he went to headquarters and reported the patrol's dilemma. There was little that they could do while it was still dark without compounding the problem.

Back at the patrol the Japanese were increasing their pressure at the extremity of their flanks. A platoon commander named Sakura, had been given the task of annihilating the Americans. Marines were being picked off one by one. First Sergeant Custer was critically wounded. Dr. Pratt was caring for him, but had also been hit. Shortly after, the Doc was wounded again in the lower back and died as a result.

Sakurai sent up flares so his men could get a clearer view of the Marine position. It was still very dark. The flares resulted in stepped up machine gun firing which was pinpointed at their small perimeter behind the beach abutment where the high tide found its mark. Marines were also crouched behind the root base of mangrove trees and coconut palms which had a broad protrusion, and gave good protection from frontal firing. The enemy was not far away. Marines put their heads above the abutment trying to spot the firing of their weapons, but without success.

"They must have had muzzle flash suppressors on their machine guns," Few said. "We could almost feel the muzzle blast of their weapons, but could not locate their fire."

Corporal Spaulding had been moving up and down the line checking positions and reporting the situation to Captain Ringer. The Captain told him that he had already sent one Marine back for help, but he was afraid he didn't make it. He asked Spaulding if he thought he could get through if they pinned the enemy down with concentrated firing. Spaulding replied that he thought he could. After saying "so-long" to his close buddies on the left flank he took off. The line laid down a heavy barrage. He was on his way.

In the water he shed his dungarees and boondockers and started swimming east. When he tired he came ashore and rested, At one point he was walking on the shore and saw a bonfire. He had assumed that he had reached the Marine perimeter, so he approached the bivouac area and almost stumbled onto a group of Japanese soldiers sitting around the glow of the fire talking.

Fortunately, he was not seen. He slipped into the water again and made Kukum at 7:30 a.m. Coming ashore he was almost shot by a Marine guard, mistaking him for the enemy.

As dawn broke there were only four men left of the Goettge Patrol who were able to fight. At this point Platoon Sergeants Few, Caltrider and Captain Ringer decided to move inland to get the protection of the jungle. They were trapped on the beach and knew they wouldn't survive if they stayed there, The three moved forward about fifteen yards. They motioned to the corporal behind them to move up and join them. In attempting to do so he was cut down by enemy fire. The remaining three dashed forward to several coconut trees for protection. Captain Ringer and Platoon Sergeant Caltrider fell to enemy machine gun fire. An enemy bullet struck Caltrider's cartridge belt, causing the rest of the ammunition to go off in a series of small explosions.

Platoon Sergeant Few was now the sole survivor. He glanced back at the beach and saw a Japanese soldier firing his rifle into the corpses of the fallen Marines. Few rose slowly between four coconut trees, steadied himself and squeezed off a round from his forty-five pistol. The soldier dropped in his tracks. This could have been Sakurai, who was reported killed in the early morning hours near the end of this foray.

But for Few this was it. He'd take his chances and try to escape. He might make it. To stay was futile and certain death. One man against an undiselosed number. He took off with all the speed he could muster. He made a bee-line for the beach, shedding his dungaree jacket, then dove into the sea. He peeled off his boondockers and trousers and swam for the open sea as quickly as he could.

Japanese infantrymen took positions and began firing at him. Looking back he could see the flashing samarai swords mutilating the corpses of the fallen Marines. The Japanese brought a heavy machine gun to the edge of the beach and commenced firing, They fired to his right and left, then moved to center trying to zero in on him. Few dove under the water and constantly changed his swimming pattern. When he reached the flow of the Matanikau, he could feel the surge of the current taking him out. He was relieved because he was soon out of range.

Platoon Sergeant Few had on a pair of silk white Japanese undershorts that he had picked up in an enemy storage shed after landing. He thought sharks were attracted to white, so he tried to take them off, but he couldn't untie the wet cord that held them up, They were silvery white, almost fluorescent, but he could do nothing about it.

Few swam the entire distance. Along the way he grabbed a coconut to gain added buoyancy, but it was probably more of a morale booster than anything else. He was a strong swimmer.

When he came out of the water at the Marine perimeter he was exhausted. He had also suffered from salt water intake and could not readily respond to a sentry's challenge. He was almost shot.

Later he gave a full report of the tragic events that had befallen the patrol to Lieutenant Colonel William Maxwell, Commanding Officer of the First Battalion, Fifth Marines to Major General Vandegrift, the Commanding General. Vandegrift felt this loss very keenly. Some of these men had been his close friends for years and also served in the very vital D-2 and R-3 Intelligence Sections, the hub of operations.

There were those among them who had been trained scouts and one officer, who was a competent interpreter in Japanese, had only recently joined the Division. It was a great loss.

Concerning Vietnam: Colonel Robert S. Allen

Parallel military stratagey in the Iraq War possibly? Nothing really changes.

http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/army/tradoc/...-1/BAKERfnl.htm

The Easter Offensive of 1972: A Failure to Use Intelligence

It was not Intelligence (evaluated information of the enemy) that failed. The failure was [that of] the commanders and certain G2s, who did not act on the intelligence they had.

Colonel Robert S. Allen, on The Battle of the Bulge

Like the Battle of the Bulge, the 1972 Easter Offensive in Vietnam has often been referred to as an "intelligence failure," mainly because it caught the United States and South Vietnam completely by surprise. A look beneath the surface, however, reveals that U.S. and South Vietnamese combat commanders were aware of significant changes in the posture of the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and had access to many indicators of an impending NVA offensive. Colonel Allen's assessment that commanders at The Bulge failed to embrace the intelligence available to them holds true when evaluating why American and South Vietnamese forces failed during the Easter Offensive, as well.

Several factors contributed to the success enjoyed by the NVA during the Easter Offensive. First, the U.S. and South Vietnamese commanders failed to use all of the intelligence available to them. Their overconfidence, coupled with command and control (C2), and communications problems, violated the cardinal rule of "never underestimate your enemy."

Also, Allied commanders relied on only two of the three forms of intelligence---imagery intelligence (IMINT) and signals intelligence (SIGINT). In ignoring human intelligence (HUMINT) data, they overlooked the most accurate forecast of enemy intentions leading up to the Easter Offensive.


Conclusion

The Easter Offensive caught the Allies by complete surprise needlessly so. While the indicators of attack were numerous, U.S. and South Vietnamese commanders ignored them in favor of a more reassuring position: that the NVA could not and would not attack before the end of March. Their failure to use HUMINT to the fullest extent possible also contributed to the Allied forces being caught off guard. The "intelligence failure" during the Easter Offensive was less a failure to collect intelligence than it was a failure to exploit obvious indicators.

Publius Quinctilius Varus


Publius Quinctilius Varus (46 BC - 9 AD): Roman senator, friend of the emperor Augustus, killed in the battle in the Teutoburg Forest.

The son of Sextus Quinctilius Varus was probably born in 46BC. His family belonged to the patriciate, the ancient Roman aristocracy, but during the past centuries, none of the Quinctilii had been a really important senator. Father Sextus was quaestor in 49 and defended Corfinium when Julius Caesar besieged the city during the civil war against Pompey. He was forced to surrender the town, was pardoned, but immediately went to Africa, where Caesar's deputy Curio was fighting against Pompey's allies. Sextus Quinctilius did his best to win over Curio's soldiers. Although Curio was defeated, Caesar won the civil war. From 48 to 44, he was sole ruler of the Roman empire. Sextus probably remained away from Rome, because it was not Caesar's policy to show his clemency twice to the same man.


On 15 March 44, he was assassinated by conservative senators like Brutus and Cassius. We do not know whether Sextus was involved, but it is certain that he was at the battlefield of Philippi, where the new leaders of the Caesarian party, Marc Antony and Octavian, defeated the last republicans. Sextus asked one of his freedman to kill him.
What happened to his son Publius Quinctilius Varus is not known, but one thing is certain: he accepted the end of the Roman republic, and became a personal friend of Octavian. It was not uncommon that fathers and sons had different opinions about the rise of the Roman monarchy. Perhaps, Varus was present at Actium, where Octavian defeated Marc Antony in 31. However this may be, it is certain that Varus was quaestor in 23 or 21, and accompanied Augustus (Octavian's name after becoming Rome's first emperor) on his tour through the eastern provinces.


The two men became political friends and Varus must easily have passed through the stages of the cursus honorum. He was aedile, praetor, and after commanding a legion or governing a minor province, he was made consul in 13, together with Tiberius, the stepson of Augustus. Both consuls were married to daughters of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, another close friend of the emperor. Tiberius and Varus introduced legislation that gave additional powers to their father-in-law, who was now officially recognized as Augustus' equal in power. However, in the next year, Agrippa died, and Varus had to deliver the funerary oration.
Not much is known about Varus' marriage to Vipsania. It is possible that one of the consuls of 8 AD, Sextus Nonius Quinctilianus, was Varus' and Vipsania's child, adopted by Varus' brother-in-law Lucius Nonius Asprenas (the husband of Varus' sister Quinctilia). If this reconstruction of Quinctilianus' ancestry is correct, we are left with the question why he was not educated by his own father. Perhaps Varus' governorships in Africa and Syria offer an explanation?


By now, Varus had befriended Tiberius, and the latter may have seen to Varus' appointment as governor of Africa (modern Tunisia). After the death of Agrippa, Tiberius was regarded as Augustus' successor, and he seems to have been behind many appointments in these years.
The governorship of Africa was a very prestigious position: it was one of the provinces ruled by the Senate, and the only one with a legion, III Augusta. (All other garrisoned provinces were ruled by the emperor.) Varus ruled this part of the Roman world in 8-7 BC. Although we do not know about any military interventions, he must have shown that he was a capable general, because he was reappointed as governor of Syria, where he had to command one sixth of the Roman army. It is possible that Augustus and Tiberius had always wanted to make their relative and friend commander of the Syrian army; in that case, the governorship of Africa was a mere traineeship.


In 7 BC, Varus arrived in Syria, one of the most important provinces of the empire: its four legions -III Gallica, VI Ferrata, X Fretensis, and XII Fulminata- guarded the eastern frontier against the Parthians. The governor of Syria was also responsible for the peace in the vassal kingdoms.
One of these was Judaea, where Herod had been Rome's most loyal ally. The old king had always been suspicious of his relatives, but at the end of his reign, he became paranoid and accused his son (and intended successor) Antipater of high treason. Varus, who had just arrived in Syria, supported the accusation, and Antipater was executed. The incident made Augustus remark that it was preferable to be Herod's pig (hus) than his son (huios) - a very insulting remark to any Jew.


Three years later, Herod died. In his will, he divided his kingdom among his three sons Herod Archelaus (Judaea and Samaria), Herod Antipas (Galilee and Perea), and Philip (Gaulanitis). Immediately, there were riots in the areas ruled by Archelaus, riots that may have been (partly) messianic in nature. The leaders were a robber named Judas, a royal slave called Simon, and a shepherd named Athronges. Archelaus' troops were unable to cope with these men, and Varus had to intervene. It was a major operation, which involved three legions. Sepphoris and Emmaus were destroyed, two thousand people crucified, and although not all leaders were caught immediately, Herod Archelaus' territories were pacified and his reign could begin.
After this crisis, Varus returned to Rome. Later, one of his enemies, the author Velleius Paterculus, was to state in his Roman History that Varus had arrived as a poor man in rich Syria, and had left an impoverished province as a rich man. This is unlikely; Varus belonged to the highest elite of the empire and can not have been poor.

In the old days of the republic, the Senate would have granted the successful general the right to enter the city in a triumphal procession. Augustus, however, had monopolized this right; Varus may instead have received triumphal ornaments. Or perhaps not even that, because the political situation had changed considerably, and he may have been out of favor. Augustus had changed his mind about his succession: no longer did he believe Tiberius was the right man - instead, he preferred his grandsons Caius and Lucius, the sons of his daughter Julia and Agrippa. Tiberius had left Rome and lived as an exile on Rhodes.
We do not know how Augustus judged Varus: they had been political allies, but perhaps the former governor of Africa and Syria had been too close to Tiberius to be fully trusted. We do not know of any offices occupied by Varus in these years. It must be stressed that he was vulnerable. Although he was a patrician, he was also one of the new men who owed their career entirely to Augustus.


However, Augustus' new scheme was unsuccessful. In August 2 AD, when Lucius was 19 years old, the emperor sent him to Hispania to get acquainted with the armies. However, the young man died in Marseilles. Less than a year-and-a-half later, his older brother Caius, who had been sent to Syria with Augustus' friend Marcus Lollius, succumbed to wounds received at the siege of an Armenian town.

The result of this family tragedy was that Tiberius, the stepson of Augustus and one of Rome's most experienced generals, was recalled from Rhodes. During the next ten years, he was regarded as Augustus' successor, and in 14, he did in fact become the second emperor of Rome.
After the recall of Tiberius, Varus was appointed as governor of Germania, probably in the autumn of 6 AD. It was celebrated with a donativum, a gift of money to the soldiers; the coins were marked with the sign VAR. (There are other interpretations of these coins, however.) It is possible that it was about this time that Varus married to Claudia Pulchra, the daughter of a niece of Augustus; they had a son Quinctilius Varus.


The office of governor of Germania had been created in the years 16-13 BC, when the Romans had organized the strip of land along the Rhine and Danube as a military zone. (The legions guarding the Rhine had, until then, served as occupation force in Gaul; the fact that they were now transferred to the river proves that Gaul had become a thoroughly romanized area.) The fortresses along the Rhine had served as base for the conquest of the east bank of the river. Tiberius' brother Drusus, who had commanded the Rhine armies in those years, had even reached the river Elbe. Although Drusus had died in 9 BC, several camps were built along the river Lippe (Haltern, Oberaden, Anreppen) and it is not exaggerated to state that Germania had become part of the Roman empire. Like Gaul, it was expected to adopt the Roman way of life.

Together with the legions of the army of the Lower Rhine (XVII, XVIII and XIX), Tiberius toured through Germania in the autumn of 4 and summer of 5 AD. It was meant as a show of strength, and the Germanic tribes understood that they were by now really part of the empire - and would have to pay tribute. Tiberius was now preparing one of the largest campaigns in Roman history. In 6, he wanted to lead at least eight legions (VIII Augusta from Pannonia, XV Apollinaris and XX Valeria Victrix from Illyricum, XXI Rapax from Raetia, XIII Gemina, XIV Gemina and XVI Gallica from the Middle Rhine and an unknown unit) against king Marbod of the Marcomanni in Czechia. They were to be gathered at Bratislava.
At the same time the three legions from the Lower Rhine were to move against Czechia as well, attacking it along the Elbe. Their commander was Caius Sentius Saturninus. A third army group (I Germanica and V Alaudae) was to march along the Main. A giant base was built at Marktbreit (on the river Main), where the army of the Middle Rhine would gather. This was to be the most grandiose operation that was ever conducted by a Roman army.


However, nothing happened, because a rebellion in Pannonia obstructed the execution of Tiberius' plan. It took three years to suppress the revolt. Caius Sentius Saturninus was replaced by Varus, and the legions of the Rhine army were with him in Germania: sometimes in their winter quarters on the Rhine (Xanten and Cologne), sometimes on the eastern bank, for example at Haltern, where the presence of the Nineteenth legion is attested. The Germanic tribes were quiet: Tiberius' campaigns had been successful. It seems that Varus was actively organizing the conquered territories between Rhine and Elbe. He collected taxes, founded new settlements (Waldgirmes) and administered justice.
In the summer of 9, Tiberius had defeated the Pannonians, and it was obvious that the Romans would resume the offensive towards Bohemia and the Elbe in 10. To those Germanic leaders who wanted to get rid of the Romans, it was time to act: every German now knew what the Roman occupation meant, and several tribes preferred freedom to taxes. The Cheruscans, Marsi, Bructerians, and Chatti (or Chauci?) united under a man named Arminius, son of Sigimer. Although his father-in-law Segestes betrayed the conspiracy, Varus was not convinced of the accusations.


Varus and the three legions XVII, XVIII, and XIX were somewhere near the river Weser (perhaps near modern Minden) when he learned of an insurrection in the west. He decided to return to the Rhine and make a detour through the rebellious area. The only road led through a small strip of accessible land; to the south, there were the inaccessible hills of the Teutoburg forest, and to the north, marshes made progress difficult. It was the perfect place to trap the heavy legionaries.
And so it happened. The three marching legions were a long line, easily exposed to attacks from the hills. North of modern Osnabrück, archaeologists have excavated a part of the battlefield (called Kalkriese), and many military objects were found. Other objects attest to the presence of civilians. All in all, some 20,000 people were massacred. Like his father, Varus killed himself.


The first reports of the disaster, which became known as the Clades Variana, reached Rome five days after the news of Tiberius' Pannonian victory. It is said that the emperor Augustus, on hearing the story, was unable to sleep and paced up and down through his house, exclaiming "Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions!" He had every reason to be restless, because this was the greatest military disaster since Crassus had lost an army at Carrhae in 53 BC, and Augustus must have known that he was responsible - his Germanic strategy had been too ambitious.
Meanwhile, Varus' nephew and deputy Lucius Nonius Asprenas, kept his head cool. His uncle had left him behind with the two legions of the Middle Rhine, and he immediately sent these units, I Germanica and V Alaudae, to the north. This prevented the Germanic tribes from invading the country west of the Rhine. During the winter, Arminius created a tribal coalition, and Tiberius prepared for renewed war. In 9, 10 and 11, he restored order in the Rhineland.

However, he also decided to give up the territories between the Elbe and Rhine. As it turned out, the Clades Variana had been one of the most decisive battles in world history.

Varus' dead body was identified by the Germans, who cut off the Roman's head and sent it to Marbod, hoping that he would join the general insurrection. However, he refused, and sent Varus' remains to Rome. Augustus buried the head in the mausoleum of his own family.