1999 – The Army Plans For Iraq

War games are held, with the most sophisticated simulations that money could buy at the time, and the results weren’t what the neoconservatives’ analysis showed them after running their own war games, with the most sophisticated asian hookers that money could buy at the time, hundreds and hundreds of pheasants with their wings cliped, plenty of top shelf booze, Cuban cigars…of course I was doing my best penguin immitation throughout these simulations, spending 16+ hours a day in one of three expando-vans connected to one another, monitoring radios, marking down movements on the map overlays on top of the geographical yellow yellow yellow with rivers for the engineers to rig up bridges to cross, combat teams of 2 tank companies and a mechanized infantry company whose fisters are already dead from an hour ago, and some poor bastards…these imaginary companies of 11B, infantry without the Bradley to drive around in…they’re humping it 80 miles on foot, and the scud missiles will not get in their way, because nothing will get in their way, not the oil wells on fire at 15 separate grid points all 16 digits long, recorded by specialist swearengen in between two filthy spits of coppenhagen and the feeling of deja-vu mixed with another feeling, something like the feeling a NASCAR pit crew member gets when the lugnuts come right off with the gun, then right back on in no time…”****-4, Ramrod-4 OVER”…drop the gun, pick up the receiver and talk back, record numbers, call out to Dragon-1 and Dragon-4 and Ramrod-1 and Knight-1 and Knight-4…wait a minute and three of them get back with their numbers…Ramrod-1, Dragon-4, Dragon-1…5 minutes later and all the numbers are in, numbers crunched, called up to division and the laminated unit insignia and laminated missile hits and laminated oil well fires and laminated enemy positions all with their own piece of scotch tape stuck to the back onto the overlay with the phase lines and notes and all kinds of bullshit to be deemed useless in about 5 hours once the battle is over and we start all over again and again and again for about 40 days in the middle of nowhere, Germany…

The neoconservatives had their ideas, and I suppose it’s possible that the likes of Rumsfeld, Cheney, Kristol, Perle, Wolfwicz, etc. were simply brilliant in a way that tens of thousands of millitary officers and the simulations weren’t…I’m just glad that they were wise enough to make the most of all that training and preparation.  The Documents – detailing something I actually lived through.  Imagine that…I do two of these warfighters and get to miss the actual war, which turns to shit because the outcomes of the warfighters were ignored.