Your point was the LOGISTICS of the American effort...I simply pointed out that the British, home-based further away achieved an equivalent logistical feat, and that overall the RN's logistics effort 1789-1815 far SURPASSES the US effort in the period 1812-15.  So, if Perry on Lake Erie is meant to be taken as some kind of evidence of EXCEPTIONAL American genius, I'm afraid you're incorrect.

 

Someone suggested UH-1's...first off if they're in the boneyard, you are not talking about a cheap resurrection.  You are not talking reuse you're talking re-BUILD, new engines, new avionics, the works...and the UH-1 was a very limited bird, as compared to the UH-60, less capable and less crash-worthy.  In a choice between new UH-60's and re-furbished UH-1's I think the US is better off with more UH-60's.

 

The Philippines is a little different...they are getting a deal on UH-1's and the UH-1's are filling a void...they are the something that is better than the nothing.  the US, OTOH, has to pay full price for whatever helo it fields, and we have several thousand somethings in existence already, so we might be better served by fielding more of those, rather than an older "new" something.

Build a bark out of prefabricated parts and stores with machines and experts that you brought with you. Plus you sailed in half of your fleet already pre-made....versus.....

1 Naval officer 4 shipwrights about 100 raw recruit sailors (and 40from USS Constitution)and about 2000 clueless US Army regulars backswoodsmen, farmers, tradesmen and assorted landlubbers. +1 forest of green timber.

 

Even at that: the one British ship built on the lakes: HMS Detroit, fell easily enough. (General Harrison, that American witless wonder, had the good sense to send troops into Canada to intercept the dozen or so 24 pounder cannon shipment from Britian intended for her-THREE of those long guns wound up arming Perry's, built to take advantage of the windfall, gunboats). The British built one ship and had FIVE already cannon armed and manned whereas Perry had to build the USS Lawrence and the USS Niagara from the keel up as well as haul new forged 32 pounder carronade cannon and 12 pounder long guns for them from Pittsburgh. Now Perry built (the two brigs and the four ginboats) six to one and he had in addition to float everything he built from his landing over a sandbar, besides using locally built float pontoons called "camels' to do so.

 

Not only was Perry's logistics achievement immense-compared to the British actual, but his admiralship was better^1 as was his luck. Elliot as a second in command was a complete tyro.

Both Perry and Barclay were served by amateurs and incompetents. Perry especially was handicapped by that imbecile, Elliott, who failed to close up and support Perry in the USS Lawrence with the Niagara when the British surrounded Perry. Lawrence had 3/4 of her crew killed or wounded and Barclay thoughht he had that battle won when Perry set out in a longboat with survivors, commandeered the Niagara, sorted out his line of battle and thundered down on Barclay  and finished him off in a close quarters fight that wrecked HMS Detroit and left the rest of the British running for their lives. Perry didn't let them get far.       

 

^1 Perry, for example used that sandbar as a shield to protect his nascent fleet building site and anchorage from the frustrated and out of cannon range blockading Barclay, until Perry was ready to GO AND GET HIM

 

 

The Brit's planned ahead, built there vessels elsewhere, shipped the parts thousands of kilometres, and assembled them, kept the troops supplied thousands of kilometres from "home" and the US built the ships in situ....sounds like the Brit's did a D@mned fine job of logistics themselves....of course I don't recall if the Brit's had troops sick like Perry,  so if they didn't I'd give the nod to the Brit's, after all if they didn't have dysentery and Perry did, suggests the Brit's had a better grasp of field hygiene.

 

Now this is rapidly becoming one of those interminable Herald-"X" threads where Herald makes a point, and then the thread becomes hijacked to debate the esoteric fine points of Herald's assertions and evidence...

 

So let's try to stay on track.  You've suggested that US generalship was sub-standard in the OIF period.  Suggest reasonable alternative courses of action.

Your complaint is that the US did almost all the things you wanted...it wasn't about WMD's it was about many things, read the AUMF.  It was the domestic opposition that spent it's time talking about not finding WMD's...

 

And the POTUS didn't agree with your goal, it wasn't to depose Saddam it was to install a DEMOCRACY...you know like we did.  Now you might disagree with George W. Bush on that goal, but thats not bad "Generaling", that's bad national Command Authority'ing....or not, I think it's a great idea.  Reasonable folks would may disagree...

 

I would argue your idea would simply have lead to a civil war in Iraq, with Iran, Turkey, and Sunni Arabs all backing various factions, and leading to the break-up of Iraq and the possibility of a wider war in the Persian Gulf.

The war was NECESSARY, the WMD's and the 15 other reasons were the excuse....

The goal was to produce a reasonable democracy in a strategic area, in short to transform the Middle East.  And that made the war necessary, Saddam's WMD programs and his failure to comply with the UNSC made it POSSIBLE.

 

To install a democracy, you need to kill Saddam. Your argument thus as a lawyer or a physicist would say "is incompetent."  Strategy is incidentally POLITICAL in war. You just made the same mistake Darth usually does

 

I'd say you were the clueless here, strategy is INHERENTLY political, hence the statement "War is politics by other means."  We DID kill Saddam, BTW or hadn't you noticed?  And we tried to kill him in the war, but failed.  And the death of AN individual is not a legitimate goal in war.  Had we killed Saddam the nation of Iraq would not have been made into a democracy.  The goal of the Second World War (in Europe) was NOT to kill Hitler, but to uproot the Nazi regime in Germany.

 

And I'm not sure that a lawyer or a physicist would label any argument "incompetent."  But you keep throwing out the big words if it makes you feel better.

 

Stick around for the floor show. After BHO screws up in Afghanistan let's see what happens to Malarkey.

The PM of Thailand? when SAIGON fell???

As for failing/not failing in the "Gan", that remains to be seen. Only two peoples have ever "taken" them, and that was through eliminating about 80% of the population. That is not an option, to convince the people there that we are not trying to conquor them is going to take some serious work.

Herald has it that IF Afghanistan fails, THEN Maliki in Iraq is doomed...

 

Well Saigon fell in 1975.  Did the government in Thailand change?  They were neighbors and supporters of the US and Vietnam in the war, the US lost and it's client fell, did Thailand go Communist?

 

So because Kabul falls, then Baghdad does, too?  I'm not so sure I buy that argument.