He Who Fights and Runs Away...

Over at Main and Central, I see a report, issued publicly by an Army Information Office, that American convoys in Iraq will no longer cut and run when engaged by the enemy, but instead will stand and fight. Because trying to speed up and get away from the ambush sends the "wrong message" to the attackers.

Well, isn't that just fucking great. Fucking stupid is what it is.

I was in the Transportation Corps in Vietnam, so my knowledge of convoy tactics is a little out of date, but I can tell you that the convoys that sustained the most damage were the ones that got bogged down and had to stop. I had friends get shot on the infamous Tay Ninh convoy ambush in August 1968; it was one of those, the trucks stopped dead when one got blown up, the drivers and people like me who were riding "shotgun" on the trucks shot it out with the VC/NVA until the infantry came in and kicked some ass. As a result of his heroic action in this battle, Sergeant William Seay was awarded, posthumously, the Medal of Honor.

So based on my experience in convoys in a war zone, I seriously question the wisdom of this new tactic; I might have been willing to give it a try if I were a convoy commander, but not now. Now that we've blurted out to the world what our new tactic will be.

All changes in battle tactics should be conceived in secret and applied in stealth, varied at every turn, so the enemy won't know what you are doing.

Telling them right out in so many words -- before you even do it -- is just fucking stupid. It's right up there with selling atomic secrets to North Korea. Stupid.

Now that they know what we're up to, all the insurgents will have to do is prepare their ambush with enough weaponry, a couple hundred claymores, and a mass of fighters, enough to overwhelm the lightly-guarded convoy.

What are the odds that some lame-ass chickenhawk civilian BFEE crony/campaign-contributor -who-was-promised-a-job in Rummy's office came up with this one? I'd say they're pretty good.