Saddam latwo pokonal US

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Fragmenty:

Uncle Sam sunk in the credibility gulf
By Julian Borger
September 8 2002

At the height of the northern summer, as talk of
invading Iraq built in Washington like a dark,
billowing storm, the US armed forces staged a rehearsal
using more than 13,000 troops, countless computers and
$US250 million ($A456 million). Officially, America won
and a rogue state was liberated from an evil dictator.

What really happened is quite another story, one that
has set alarm bells ringing throughout America's
defence establishment and raised questions over the US
military's readiness for an invasion of Iraq. In fact,
this war game was won by Saddam Hussein, or at least by
the retired marine playing the Iraqi dictator's part,
Lieutenant-General Paul van Riper.

In the first few days of the exercise, using surprise
and unorthodox tactics, the wily 64-year-old Vietnam
veteran theoretically sank most of the US expeditionary
fleet in the Persian Gulf, bringing the US assault to a
halt.

What happened next will be familiar to anyone who ever
played soldiers in the playground. Faced with an abrupt
and embarrassingend to the most expensive and
sophisticated military exercise in US history, the
Pentagon top brass simply pretended the whole thing had
not happened. They ordered their dead troops back to
life and "refloated" the sunken fleet. Then they
instructed the enemy forces to look the other way as
their marines performed amphibious landings.
Eventually, Van Riper got so fed up with all this
cheating that he refused to play any more. Instead, he
sat on the sidelines making abrasiveremarks until the
three-week war game - Millennium Challenge- staggered
to a star-spangled conclusion, on August 15, with a US
"victory".

If the Pentagon thought it could keep its mishap quiet,
it underestimated Van Riper. A classic marine -
straight-talking and fearless, with a purple heart from
Vietnam to prove it - his retirement means he no longer
has to put up with bureaucratic niceties. So he blew
the whistle.

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His driving concern, he says, is that, when the real
fighting starts, American troops will be sent into
battle with a set of half-baked tactics that have not
been put to the test.

"Nothing was learned from this," he says. "A culture
not willing to think hard and test itself does not
augur well for the future." The exercise, he says, was
rigged from the outset.

Millennium Challenge was the biggest war game of all
time. It had been planned for two years and involved
integrated operations by the army, navy, air force and
marines. The exercises were part real, with 13,000
troops spread across the US, supported by actual planes
and warships; and part virtual, generated by
sophisticated computer models. It was the same
technique used in Hollywood blockbusters such as Gladiator.

The game, theoretically set in 2007, pitted Blue forces
(the US) against a country called Red, a militarily
powerful Middle Eastern nation that was home to a
crazed but cunning megalomaniac (Van Riper).

"The game was described as free play. In other words,
there were two sides trying to win," Van Riper says.

Even when playing an evil dictator, the marine veteran
takes winning very seriously. He reckoned Blue would
try to launch a surprise strike, in line with the
administration's new pre-emptive doctrine, "so I
decided I would attack first".

Van Riper had at his disposal a computer-generated
flotilla of small boats and planes. As the US fleet
entered the Gulf, Van Riper gave a signal - not in a
radio transmission that might have been intercepted,
but in a coded message broadcast from the minarets of
mosques. The seemingly harmless pleasure craft and
propeller planes suddenly turned deadly, ramming into
Blue boats and airfields along the Gulf.

Meanwhile, Chinese Silkworm-type cruise missiles, fired
from some of the small boats, sank the US fleet's only
aircraft carrier. Sixteen ships were sunk altogether -
had it really happened, it would have been the worst
naval disaster since Pearl Harbor. At this point, the
generals called time out....

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The name Van Riper draws either scowls or rolling eyes
at the Pentagon these days, but there are anecdotal
signs that he has the quiet support of the uniformed
military, who, after all, will be the first to discover
whether the Iraq invasion plans work in real life.

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