Monthly Archives: August 2004

US Marines – Marine Corps Fratricide Reduction Efforts

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Marine Corps Gazette – As the column of Marines advanced north to secure a strategic Euphrates River bridge just south of the city of An Nasiriyah they observed Iraqi soldiers along the roadside who appeared to be surrendering. Upon approaching them, the Iraqis opened fire with assault rifles and rocket propelled grenades. The Marines took cover in and around their assault amphibious vehicles and began to return fire, and then, in an incident tragically reminiscent of an engagement that occurred 12 years earlier during Operation Desert Storm, a U.S. Air Force Añ10 Thunderbolt strafed the columnódestroying one of the vehicles and killing as many as nine Marines.
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Iraq – Rumsfeld's War Plan Shares the Blame

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Washington Post – Thomas Ricks on how Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s leadership of the Pentagon has been weighed by a jury of his peers and found somewhat wanting.

A report by a blue-ribbon panel he appointed to review the military establishment’s role in creating and handling detainee abuse problems at Abu Ghraib prison said that the Iraq war plan he played a key role in shaping helped create the conditions that led to the scandal.

The panel’s findings provide new support for two central criticisms of the Rumsfeld team’s approach in Iraq last year: that the invasion plan called for too few troops, half as many as were used in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and that the Pentagon failed to plan smartly for occupying the country after the United States defeated the Iraqi military.

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History – Rift leaves hundreds of planes in world's bodies of water

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Virginian Pilot – The aluminum carcasses of crashed aircraft at the bottom of Lake Michigan ñ and other wrecks across the world ñ are also at the heart of a clash between two Navy agencies with different ideas on how best to preserve the wrecks. Officials with the National Museum of Naval Aviation want to retrieve the planes and put them on display.
But archaeologists with the Naval Historical Center in Washington, which claims ownership of all Navy aircraft and ship wrecks, believe the treasures may be better left alone.
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