Word: combatted
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...against a more powerful aggressor." That's precisely the situation in which Iraq now finds itself. The coalition rules the skies over Iraq--Saddam's tiny air force hasn't once scrambled its jets since the start of fighting--raining down Wagnerian fury on cities and armies. In open combat, Iraq's armored divisions are being annihilated by allied forces. In such circumstances, it is natural for the Iraqis to resort to small-scale strikes on lightly armed targets, to avoid open combat, and to practice deception at all times...
...debated last week was whether Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld bet right when he decided on the scope of the invading force. Deployment is now at 250,000, but only the Army's 3rd Infantry Division is a heavy fighting force, and just 150,000 of the total are ground-combat troops. Chairman Myers insisted last week that the U.S. had deployed "just the right forces." Certainly those forces had a lot to do, from taking Baghdad to searching for Saddam's bio-chem weapons to delivering water and food to civilians. An additional 2,000 soldiers reach the war theater...
Critics say Franks needs an additional heavy Army division. The Administration sent Franks into combat without the 4th Infantry and other reinforcements that he expected to have. Those heavyweight 62,000 troops were supposed to swoop down on Baghdad from bases in Turkey to open a second front. The Administration assumed a multibillion-dollar aid gift plus permission to put Turkish troops across the Iraq border into Kurdish territory would persuade its NATO ally to allow U.S. forces to use Turkish territory. What the Administration didn't seem to factor in was the strong opposition of Turkey's mainly Muslim...
...both the worried and the sanguine understood well that the lesson of the war's first act was that however long the campaign lasts, coalition soldiers would probably be bedeviled by pockets of resistance that would continue to complicate their missions and imperil their lives. After 10 days of combat, 38 Americans and 23 Britons were confirmed dead, as were hundreds if not thousands of Iraqi fighters...
Allied leaders attributed the perception that U.S. and British forces have suffered battlefield setbacks to the constant reports of combat from journalists embedded with the troops; those snapshots of the war, military commanders say, have failed to convey the larger picture of the allies' progress. "We're one week into this," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said last Friday, "and it seems to me a little early for history to be written...