Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!military
From: emery@aries.mitre.org (David Emery)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Lessons Learned (Panama invasion)
Message-ID: <12695@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 2 Jan 90 02:47:52 GMT
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From: emery@aries.mitre.org (David Emery)
One thing I noticed about Panama right away was this was NOT a joint 
operation.  The Army was in control, unlike Grenada, where every
service had to get their piece of the pie.  This shows in the
consistency of planning and particularly execution.  

In general, I'm not a big supporter of the Marines, but this is the
kind of operation that Marines should be good at.  In the case of
Panama, however, since the Army already has lots of troops (a complete
brigade) and a major headquarters (Southern Command), then Panama should
be an Army operation.  If we did something in the Phillipines, for
instance (or Cuba), there the Marines are the people on the ground,
and they should run the operation.

I hope the debacles in Grenada and in Iran have convinced the Joint
Staff that the ground commander should run a ground operation.

				dave emery
				emery@aries.mitre.org