-Caveat Lector- I remember when there was all that buzz about "Millenium Challenge 2002", here's a link for their original page laying out the goals and plans (to a point) of the operation, from the Joint Forces Command: http://www.jfcom.mil/about/experiments/mc02.htm
When news began trickling out about how they skewered their own game (read: cheated) in order to have a "win", I laughed. Unfortunately I'm not laughing now, for the poor folks in the current battle of their lives were given a flawed gameplan to start with, because somebody couldn't be "wrong". How could they do something like this??? This wasn't a college exam they were fudging - lives were depending on it. To me this shows a total and utter contempt for their own military, that they would even skewer the results of a game because winning was everything, at all costs (even human lives). Even when they were wrong, they HAD to be right! What incredible arrogance! Three articles below, including the Guardian report from August 2002 on the results of the "game". goldi Editor's Note: If top fighting generals are making statements like this with troops still in the field, the level of frustration among those tasked to fight this war must be enormous. The game plan espoused by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Perle has left our troops exposed, underfed, lacking fuel and open to attacks from the flank. Nasiriya and Basra remain untaken, with Baghdad looming ominously in the distance. Many of our soldiers are dead or wounded. General Wallace has every right to be angry. - wrp Outspoken Army General Upsets White House By The Associated Press Friday 28 March 2003 WASHINGTON -- His war plan may not have panned out in Iraq quite as neatly as Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace had hoped. "The plan is to be decisive, rapid, lethal and to give our adversary no edge he can take advantage of,'' Wallace, commander of the ground battle in Iraq, was quoted as saying earlier this month. After a week of war, Wallace upset the White House Thursday by saying publicly that Pentagon strategists had misunderstood the combativeness of Iraqi fighters. The miscalculation, he said, had stalled the coalition's drive toward Baghdad. "The enemy we're fighting against is different from the one we'd war-gamed against,'' Wallace, commander of V Corps, told The New York Times and The Washington Post. "We knew they were here, but we did not know how they would fight.'' Wallace's comments fed into the frustration the Bush administration already was expressing over media coverage of the pace of the war effort. The war, the White House says daily, is going well and at a good speed. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer on Friday would not say whether he agreed with Wallace. "The strength of the plan is at the ability to adapt to the realities of the circumstances while still focused on what it is we seek to do,'' Fleischer said at his daily briefing. At a briefing at U.S. Central Command in Qatar, Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said uncertainty is part of battle. "No one can ever predict how a battle will unfold,'' Brooks said. ``We remain confident that we have a good grip on what's going on here and we're proceeding.'' Tough talk isn't new for Wallace, 55, who was promoted to commanding general of V Corps in June 2001. Chafing at the wait for action to begin earlier this year, Wallace growled to a reporter that he was sick of having to deal with missile warnings of Iraqi incoming "lawn darts'' without striking back. Saddam Hussein, he said in less polite terms, was ticking him off. Wallace also said he found the responsibility humbling. He had worked for it all his career. Wallace, who goes by his middle name, Scott, graduated from West Point in 1969 and then the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College and the Naval War College before earning postgraduate degrees in operations analysis and international relations. A Vietnam veteran, Wallace progressed from soldier to student to trainer and commander. By June 1999, he was serving as commander of the Joint Warfighting Center and director of joint training at the U.S. Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Va. (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.) © Copyright 2003 by TruthOut.org http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-War-Lt-Gen-Wallace.html http://truthout.org/docs_03/033003B.shtml *** War game was fixed to ensure American victory, claims general Julian Borger in Washington Wednesday August 21, 2002 The Guardian The biggest war game in US military history, staged this month at a cost of £165m with 13,000 troops, was rigged to ensure that the Americans beat their "Middle Eastern" adversaries, according to one of the main participants. General Paul Van Riper, a retired marine lieutenant-general, told the Army Times that the sprawling three-week millennium challenge exercises, were "almost entirely scripted to ensure a [US] win". He protested by quitting his role as commander of enemy forces, and warning that the Pentagon might wrongly conclude that its experimental tactics were working. When Gen Van Riper agreed to command the forces of an unnamed Middle Eastern state - which bore a strong re semblance to Iraq, but could have been Iran - he thought he would be given a free rein to probe US weaknesses. But when the game began, he was told to deploy his forces to make life easier for US forces. "We were directed... to move air defences so that the army and marine units could successfully land," he said. "We were simply directed to turn [air defence systems] off or move them... So it was scripted to be whatever the control group wanted it to be." The Army Times reported that, as commander of a low-tech, third-world army, Gen Van Riper appeared to have repeatedly outwitted US forces. He sent orders with motorcycle couriers to evade sophisticated electronic eavesdropping equipment. When the US fleet sailed into the Gulf, he instructed his small boats and planes to move around in apparently aimless circles before launching a surprise attack which sank a substantial part of the US navy. The war game had to be stopped and the American ships "refloated" so that the US forces stood a chance. "Instead of a free-play, two-sided game as the joint forces commander advertised it was going to be, it simply became a scripted exercise. They had a predetermined end, and they scripted the exercise to that end," Gen Van Riper said. He said he quit when he found out his orders were being over ruled by the military coordinators of the game. Vice-Admiral Marty Mayer, one of the coordinators, denied claims of fixing. "I want to disabuse anybody of any notion that somehow the books were cooked," he said. The games were designed to test experimental new tactics and doctrines advocated by the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and were referred to in Pentagon-speak as "military transformation". The transformation is aimed at making US forces more mobile and daring, but Gen Van Riper said that the "concepts" the game were supposed to test, with names such as "effects-based operations" and "rapid, decisive operations", were little more than "slogans", which had not been properly put to the test by the exercise. http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,778139,00.html *** War games vs. war reality BY FRED KAPLAN, SLATE.COM Much has been made of Thursday's remark by Lt. Gen. William Wallace, commander of U.S. Army forces in the Persian Gulf. Talking about the fierce and guerrilla-style resistance of Iraqi militia groups, Wallace said, "The enemy we're fighting is a bit different than the one we war-gamed against." IN FACT, however, militia fighters did play a crucial role in a major war game designed to simulate combat in Iraq -- but the Pentagon officials who managed the game simply disregarded or overruled the militias' most devastating moves. The war game, which was called Millennium Challenge 02, took place over three weeks last July and August. Planned over a two-year period, at a cost of $250 million, the game involved 13,500 personnel from all four services -- Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines -- who waged mock war in 17 simulation locations and nine live-force training sites. The scenario envisioned a war in a fictitiously named Persian Gulf country that resembled Iraq. RED VS. BLUE The objective was to test (and, if all went well, to validate) a set of new combat theories based less on massive force and more on speed, agility, highly accurate weapons, and supremely coordinated command and control. These theories -- known as "military transformation" and "effects-based operations" -- would serve as the underlying strategy of the real war against the real Iraq that's happening now. Officially, the war game was a great success; the theories were proven sound. However, on Aug. 12, as the game was winding to a close, a retired three-star U.S. Marine Corps general named Paul Van Riper wrote an e-mail to some of his friends, casting grave doubt on this conclusion. Pentagon war games pit "Red Force" (simulating the enemy) against "Blue Force" (the United States). In this war game, as in many war games over the years, Van Riper played the Red Force commander. In his e-mail (which was promptly leaked to the Army Times then picked up, though in much less detail, by the Guardian and the Washington Post), Van Riper complained about Millennium Challenge 02, writing that, "Instead of a free-play, two-sided game … it simply became a scripted exercise." The conduct of the game did not allow "for the concepts of rapid decisive operations, effects-based operations, or operational net assessment to be properly assessed. … It was in actuality an exercise that was almost entirely scripted to ensure a Blue 'win.' " For instance -- and here is where he displayed prescience -- Van Riper used motorcycle messengers to transmit orders to Red troops, thereby eluding Blue's super-sophisticated eavesdropping technology. He maneuvered Red forces constantly. At one point in the game, when Blue's fleet entered the Persian Gulf, he sank some of the ships with suicide-bombers in speed boats. (At that point, the managers stopped the game, "refloated" the Blue fleet, and resumed play.) Robert Oakley, a retired U.S. ambassador who played the Red civilian leader, told the Army Times that Van Riper was "out-thinking" Blue Force from the first day of the exercise. PLAYING BY THE RULES? Yet, Van Riper said in his e-mail, the game's managers remanded some of his moves as improper and simply blocked others from being carried out. According to the Army Times summary, "Exercise officials denied him the opportunity to use his own tactics and ideas against Blue, and on several occasions directed [Red Force] not to use certain weapons systems against Blue. It even ordered him to reveal the location of Red units." Finally, Van Riper quit the game in protest, so as not to be associated with what would be misleading results. As he explained in his e-mail, "You don't come to a conclusion beforehand and then work your way to that conclusion. You see how the thing plays out." He added, somewhat ominously in retrospect, "My main concern was we'd see future forces trying to use these things when they've never been properly grounded in any sort of an experiment." The Army Times quoted some game managers who disputed Van Riper's version of events. However, it also quoted a retired colonel who was familiar with the game and supportive of the theories being tested. "I don't have a problem with the ideas," the colonel said. "I do have a problem with the fact that we're trying to suggest somehow that we've validated them, and now it's time to pay for them." WAR WITHOUT SCRIPT Finally, the paper quoted a retired Army officer who has played in several war games with Van Riper. "What he's done is, he's made himself an expert in playing Red, and he's real obnoxious about it," the officer said. "He will insist on being able to play Red as freely as possible and as imaginatively and creatively, within the bounds of the framework of the game and the technology horizons and all that, as possible. He can be a real pain in the ass, but that's good. … He's a great patriot and he's doing all those things for the right reasons." Clearly, the Pentagon needs to encourage obnoxious Red commanders, not suppress them. Scripted war-game enemies may roll over, but, as we're seeing, real enemies sometimes think of tricky ways to fight back. Fred Kaplan writes the ''War Stories" column for Slate. MSNBC Terms, Conditions and Privacy ©2003 http://www.msnbc.com/news/892218.asp?cp1=1 <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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