Frontline Iraq:thoughts??

[ssardon]

I enjoyed this documentary. I thought it gave the story of our conventional forces in a good light. But . . .

- I like Rumsfeld. I like that fact that he has changed the policy of going after terrorists from arresting them to killing them. I am sure he has his bad points and it does seem that having an overwhelming number of troops in Baghdad to achieve order should have happened. But White and Shenaski (sp?) strike me as very "Clinton". Rumsfeld is an easy target because he is actually doing something. This was one of the things I did not like about the doc.

- If you didn't know any better, the Coalition Forces, especially the US were reckless and kind of cowardly. The British were cautious or prudent. The Iraqi forces were flat out brave, cunning, and very close to defeating the invaders. That is what I felt like after I saw this. I might be wrong in how they portrayed it on film but they either made the Iraqis seem like the shrewd fighters or total victims of merciless Americans.

- Why was there no mention of the amazing job our special operation forces did? I thought they would at least say something about the work done in the north by the Army SF or the western desert. Wasn't that the "special ops playground"? I know most of what the SOF did was classified, but it was a very crucial role in the outcome of the war.

- Sec. White seemed really smug to me. I don't know what others have thought of him but the guy came off like a total Monday-morning whiner. I am not sure about Shineski. They both seemed to be in the same boat. I have heard good things about the new chief of the Army.

This doc - I don't know. I am really surprised buy what I saw. Was this a fight between Rumsfled and his vision for how things are done. One of the guys seemed to talk down about what had been done in Afghanistan (primarily with SOF), compared with what was needed in Iraq. Was this kind of like the ongoing fights between conventional and unconventional? The more I think about it, the more I felt like this documentary was just a big "America is the really mean bad guy". This kind of thinking just seems so dangerous to me.

[James]

See this thread.

http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=9432

[MetalBoy]

I pretty much got the same feeling about Sec. White out of this doc., but then again that's why he's ex-Secretary White. It was lame how they would have Iraqi's talking about how courageous the Fedayeen fighters were, and it didnt even talk about how the fedayeen were killing their own people especially down in Basrah.

Also I think the director spent way too much ime crying about the civilian caualties. Look, war brings bad things no matter how careful the military is. With war comes death, and unfortunately innocent people will die.

"Nobody told us our neighborhood was going to be a warzone!" :roll: "I was just coming home from work when the asshole Americans shot at me" Hello dumbasses your country is at war why are you out in the streets? At least most people were smart and staye d inside their homes.

One thing I do agree with this documentary though is that the US mlitary command seems like it relied way to much on dropping bombs to try to go after high tier targets, unfortunately killing a lot of innocent people in the process. The whole, lets not risk troops to get proper intel or go after targets in dangerous neighborhods and instead drop huge ass bombs in hope of hitting them, gives me a totaly "Clintonesque" vibe of waging war. Remember Afghanistan 1998 anyone? Didnt work too well then, I don't know why people expected it to work in Iraq.

[soma]

The Apaches let me down. I would have liked to seen Hinds in action and see if they could have made it to the medina line.