Did you find the embarassing misprint/miscalculation in the caption of that last link?
To be sure, it’s an absolutely amazing accomplishment to push tens of thousands of combat troops with their 500 tanks and other vehicles hundreds of miles into enemy territory and park them 50 miles outside the capital city in a week with only a few dozen (not to be minimized) combat deaths. But an Abrams tank takes a gallon of fuel to go a half-mile; do the math. It’s gonna take 20 successful 300-mile Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck (HEMTT) tanker runs from Kuwait just to get the fuel in position to run those tanks the rest of the way to the Baghdad city limits, and still more truck runs to keep them from running out of gas when they get there. And even more HEMTT tanker runs to fuel the Humvees. And to fuel the Bradley Fighting Vehicles. And to fuel the Apache helicopters. You get the idea. Plus, the Army has a pretty sound policy of trying to feed its troops, preferably with Meals, Ready To Eat (MREs). With 100,000 troops in Iraq needing three meals a day at an average weight of two pounds per MRE, that’s 300 tons of food per day or around 60 M1093 Standard Cargo Truck runs from Kuwait every day for food. And then there’s water, precious water. Iraq is (surprise) a desert country and if you don’t win the war quickly in March, you get to fight in an oven come summer. To survive, you sip a liter of water an hour, which weighs a kilgram or 2.2 pounds. A hundred thousand troops needing say, 30 pounds of water a day equates to another 300 M1093 Truck runs from Kuwait, each and every day. When the reinforcements arrive in a few weeks, the number of truck runs required doubles, of course. And each tank of fuel, MRE or bottle of water absolutely, positively has to be there overnight. The logistics task faced so far has been like setting up a country-wide FedEx system in ten days under sniper fire.
Update [2003-3-31 10:10:33 by rickyjames]:: Hey, the cover story of Monday’s USA Today is about military logistics! Told you it was important!
Yep, many things are possible when you outrun your supply line. But if you don’t really want to go in until liberated civilians are ready to throw rose petals on your tank treads, then what? If the original plan was flawed, you start distancing yourself from the plan and shutting down embedded journalist satellite phones after letting them run unrestricted for a week during the “Baghdad 500″…
U.S. commander General Tommy Franks, who is bringing an extra 100,000 troops to the Gulf in April, insists there is no “operational pause” in the U.S. and British invasion. But U.S. officers and soldiers in units south of Baghdad told Reuters they had orders to dig in for at least two weeks to give U.S. air power and artillery a chance to pound Iraqi defenses. Officials point to the incoming reinforcements as “always in the plan”, but they were originally intended to be peacekeepers, not warfighters. “[Iraq’s] determination was really a surprise to us all,” said Brig. Gen. John Kelly of the Marines on Friday. “What we were really hoping for was just to go through and everyone would wave flags and all that.” Nice hope. Saddam has vowed to make a bloody stand and inflict huge losses on invaders in street fighting. Urban engagements historically result in 30% casualty rates on both sides; while the U.S. believes it can cut its losses to 10% of its total urban fighting force, that would send U.S. casualty figures into the thousands.
Iraqi casualties may well already be in that range. So far US has hit Them with 675 Tomahawk missiles (at $600,000 each) and 5300 JDAM “smart bombs” (at $20,000 each). Funny, after dropping half-a-billion-dollars of ordinance on Iraq, there’s yet to be a single BDA (Bomb Damage Assessment) released to the press or public (and if anybody finds one, please let me know!).
War is a horrific thing that brings death to men and women both brave and innocent. So do Weapons of Mass Destruction. Everybody’s got an opinion about whether this is a just or justifiable war. My own opinion? IF the U.S. is going to insist on plunging headlong into a war, THEN let’s be really, really certain we’re aiming at the right target when we pull the trigger. And God help any leaders who have initiated a WMD wild goose chase against an ultimately impotent imaginary threat, particularly if they do it ineptly.