Interesting History Lesson

This via Slacktivist.

Marine Gen. (ret.) Paul Van Riper has joined the chorus of retired generals calling for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's resignation.

You may remember Gen. Van Riper from "Millennium Challenge 02" -- the largest war game ever staged by the U.S. military. The game, involving some 13,500 troops at a cost of around $250 million, was essentially a dress-rehearsal for the invasion of Iraq. Van Riper led the "Red," enemy, team.

And he won.

Or he would have won, if the game hadn't been rigged. For instance, he outfoxed the "Blue" (American) generals, sinking much of the American fleet in the Persian Gulf. So they called a time-out and a do-over to refloat the fleet. Just like in a real war.

...

Retired Ambassador Robert Oakley, who participated in the experiment as Red civilian leader, said Van Riper was outthinking the Blue Force from the first day of the exercise.

Van Riper used motorcycle messengers to transmit orders, negating Blue’s high-tech eavesdropping capabilities, Oakley said. Then, when the Blue fleet sailed into the Persian Gulf early in the experiment, Van Riper’s forces surrounded the ships with small boats and planes sailing and flying in apparently innocuous circles.

When the Blue commander issued an ultimatum to Red to surrender or face destruction, Van Riper took the initiative, issuing attack orders via the morning call to prayer broadcast from the minarets of his country’s mosques. His force’s small boats and aircraft sped into action

“By that time there wasn’t enough time left to intercept them,” Oakley said. As a result of Van Riper’s cunning, much of the Blue navy ended up at the bottom of the ocean. The Joint Forces Command officials had to stop the exercise and “refloat” the fleet in order to continue, Oakley said.

...

But not only was the Pentagon braintrust flummoxed by Van Riper in the war game, they were just as surprised, months later during the actual invasion, when Iraqi insurgents began employing many of these same tactics. This was, they said, just another one of those calamities that "no one could have predicted." Except that everybody had.

And of course Bushco is reacting to this news story exactly as you would expect.