ARMY GENERAL: "WE RUSHED INTO [LIBYA] WITHOUT A PLAN...NOW WE'RE GOING IN CIRCLES"

Nick, the rah-rah stories we are being fed about Libya are not true. The army is untrained, undisciplined, and dangerous in its stupidity, as this blog entry from Luis shows.

The military leaders are unprofessional, and unable or unwilling to conduct training and field exercises for their soldiers. It is an out-of-control situation, and adding weapons to it would be a freaking disaster.

The conditions in Libya with the rebels puts everyone, including our pilots, support staff, journalists, and others, in extreme danger.

THIS is why Obama, and the Defense Department, is (they say) dead-set against giving the rebel army weapons.

---------------------------------------------------

http://framework.latimes.com/2011/04/01/a-close-call-near-the-front-line-in-liby.../0

"A CLOSE CALL NEAR THE FRONT LINE IN LIBYA"

By: Luis Sinco, LATimes
Posted On: 6:43 p.m. | April 1, 2011

With my Libya assignment ending in two days, I had a very close call Friday, April Fools’ Day, near Port Brega.

I was sitting in the back of a car as a Times reporter, a driver and I pushed further toward the scene of the fighting. I heard a loud thump behind us, and a shock wave enveloped the vehicle, catching us all totally by surprise. I looked out the left rear passenger window and saw a plume of smoke and dirt very nearby. A rocket out of nowhere, with absolutely no warning.

“I told you we should not go on!” the driver screamed, spinning the car around and weaving frantically through a crowd of vehicles and rebels gathered on the road. “I told you!”

He was absolutely right. It’s April 1 and, before the blast, two very strange things happened.

At about 3 p.m., I was standing on a rocky knoll when a single shot rang out. Up the road, rebel fighters crowded around a parked car, talking excitedly. A comrade trying to clear a jammed assault rifle had accidentally shot himself.

I ran to the scene and saw his limp body sprawled awkwardly on the ground. He wasn’t moving and his eyes had rolled up into his head as several men rushed him to a nearby ambulance. I knew I was photographing a dead man.

I’ve had this nagging feeling that something like this was going to happen sometime. A few days ago, a magazine reporter standing near me was nearly shot in the face by a rebel who was also trying to free a jammed weapon. The rebel army is untrained and undisciplined — and I’m surprised more people haven’t been accidentally maimed or killed.

Before this thought could sink in, a convoy of three SUVs rolled up the road. Riding in the lead vehicle was Gen. Abdul Fatah Younis, the nominal leader of the rebel army. The troops greeted him like a rock star, thrusting their arms through the open window, hoping to shake the general’s hand.

I have gone to the front lines almost every day over the last five weeks, and I have never seen Younis anywhere near the fighting. However, I had seen him early on in an office in Benghazi, sitting behind a very large desk, surrounded by would-be soldiers smoking cigarettes and watching television.

Port Brega, Port Brega, Port Brega. The name has been drilled into my head over the last 39 days. To most people in Los Angeles, it’s a speck on the map that they will never see.

The car rode very roughly as we drove away from the scene of the blast. We got out and saw that a piece of shrapnel had punctured a large hole in the right rear tire’s sidewall. But there wasn’t time to change it. We had to get away and drove the next five miles on shredded rubber and the rim.

The odds stack up against you the longer you stay. I truly believe that — and Libya has to be the most dangerous place I’ve ever been.

I haven’t been back to this part of the world since my last trip to Iraq almost seven years ago. But for some reason, I talked myself into it. I thought this assignment would be about demonstrations for democracy, a little rock throwing, some tear gas and maybe an occasional gunshot or two. Wouldn’t you know it; a war went and broke out on me.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nick, here is a "blog" article by a journalist named Bryan Chan. Luis Sinco is the photographer on this story.

It describes the retreat of the rebels from advancing Kadafi forces. The last few paragraphs are the most poignant, but the entire article is compelling reading because this is how it really was, from those who were there.:

"You could almost see this coming. Three weeks ago, these men were butchers, bakers, laborers, teachers and clerks. They possessed no military expertise or rudimentary skills with weapons. They simply got caught up in the revolutionary fervor against a hated and ruthless dictator.
"There was no training, no strategy and no grand plan. Every so-called colonel I’ve met in Benghazi sits behind a large desk surrounded by would-be soldiers smoking and watching television.
"After a week of killing and dying the front moved about 100 miles to Bin Jawwad and back again to Port Brega where it all started. This is the reality, and the dream of an easy march to Tripoli has all but died."

--------------------

"REBELS RETREAT FROM PRO-KADAFI FORCES IN LIBYA

By: Bryan Chan
Posted On: 4:31 p.m. | March 10, 2011

Times photographers Luis Sinco and Rick Loomis are in Libya covering the conflict. Loomis is with a government-sponsored tour in the capital, Tripoli. Sinco is working in rebel-held territory in eastern Libya and filed this report after witnessing their retreat farther east:

Few things look so forlorn as an army in retreat.

After a week of fierce fighting against forces loyal to Libyan dictator Moammar Kadafi, the ragtag rebel army beat a hasty retreat Thursday from the oil town of Ras Lanuf, leaving the future of breakaway eastern Libya in doubt.

It was not a pretty sight. Undisciplined and untrained rebel volunteers scuffled with each other, some urging their comrades to stand and fight. But most realized the futility of continuing to take on Kadafi’s better armed and trained military for now.
Along the only route out of Ras Lanuf, battle-weary rebels boarded pickup trucks for the long ride to the rear. Many immediately fell asleep as they trekked out of the desert. Some wept along the roadside. Some tried to put on a brave face, weakly flashing the now familiar victory sign as they pulled out.

A steady stream of ambulances brought the dead and wounded to hospitals in Port Brega and Ajdabaya. One fighter told me that some of the casualties were left behind. The earlier high morale had evaporated, and many were in a surly mood.
Unlike a week ago, when they triumphantly moved the front line to Bin Jawwad with little resistance, few uttered the words “sura, sura” or “picture, picture.” None posed proudly beside their antiquated antiaircraft artillery, and instead insisted on no photographs. One rebel brusquely pushed me aside when I raised my camera.

The only time they wanted me to take a picture was when an ambulance pulled to a stop and the side door slid open to reveal an older man with a brushy beard and the top of his head blown off. A pair of rebels pushed me to the front of a gawking crowd. The dead man was a bloody mess and I declined to photograph him. As I walked away, the rebels stared with disbelief, their eyes imploring what was wrong with me.
Back in Port Brega, I saw two dead fighters wrapped in thick blankets in a truck bed. A rebel bent down to kiss one of the men’s hands. Several then gently lifted the bodies from the vehicle, placed them on stretchers and carried them into a morgue.
Inside, hospital personnel removed the men’s shoes, socks and belts. They emptied their pockets of identification, cigarettes and money before tying together their thumbs and big toes and sliding them into refrigerated chambers.

Outside, a large gathering pressed against the hospital gates, shouting “God is great!” A young man sat near the entrance and shed tears for his brother, who was gravely wounded. The ground was littered with cigarette butts, empty water bottles, crushed tuna cans and shell casings. The air was silent of celebratory gunfire.

You could almost see this coming. Three weeks ago, these men were butchers, bakers, laborers, teachers and clerks. They possessed no military expertise or rudimentary skills with weapons. They simply got caught up in the revolutionary fervor against a hated and ruthless dictator.

There was no training, no strategy and no grand plan. Every so-called colonel I’ve met in Benghazi sits behind a large desk surrounded by would-be soldiers smoking and watching television.

After a week of killing and dying the front moved about 100 miles to Bin Jawwad and back again to Port Brega where it all started. This is the reality, and the dream of an easy march to Tripoli has all but died.

--------------------------------

Yes, you are wrong.

When CIA have been in Libya for quite awhile now, intel sufficient to conduct the operation should have been available, and if it wasn't available, then we should not have gone in until we had enough information to do it right.

Hell, we shouldn't have gone in there, anyway. It is the biggest damned spider trap--it makes Vietnam look like an easy-breezy-in-and-out deal.

It was a spontaneous response to a spontaneous turn of events

I don't think so. Marines from Camp Lejune were offshore Libya before we knew Obama had illegally committed us to fighting in a Libyan War.

the navy pretty much patrols all the oceans

The rebels are untrained in about everything. Their "leaders" are useless. These are the reports who have been coming home to us since the beginning.

1. *I* didn't say anything about "boots on the ground." However, since you did, there have already been "boots on the ground" and there are Marines who are being kept technically with their boots off the ground, by keeping them on ships offshore---and that is a pathetically stupid and dishonest maneuver, to keep Obama technically not lying.

2. Nobody with two neurons firing at the same time can trust what is coming from the Obama administration on this. He is acting just like Bush/Cheney did in Iraq, including lying us into the war. Would you trust Bush/Cheney again? If you wouldn't, then you shouldn't trust Obama, either.

3. Do you know anyone who was in one of America's "technically" non-wars, like Vietnam? Iraq? Afghanistan? If you were close enough to them to be someone they would confide in, you will know that our government and military leaders lied their asses off at every turn to keep funding coming to the military's efforts, and to hide the illegal activities that were going on. My ex-husband and his squad were one of the squads in Cambodia when we were not supposed to be there. He almost died because, you see, he was not "technically" in Cambodia (because it was illegal for him and his men to be there), so when he was wounded they couldn't send a helicopter to evacuate until his men half-carried, have dragged him, into Vietnam, where it was legal for them to be.

The UK and France can train the rebels all they want. It won't make them professional soldiers. They're up against professional soldiers. It's rare a military action can be successful without going in on the ground. Battle fronts can't be established from the air. The US has two choices through NATO. Turn and run or go in on the ground.