Re: MacArthur [Was: Slow period for list]

[Robert <wanaki@infi.net>]

You are right on about the "short waist", but wrong about all forces thinking
there was no danger from the Chinese.....Gen. Smith,commanding the Marines
took the proper precautions, and because he secured his back door with the
1st Marine Regiment, was able to conduct a text book retrograde movement,
destroying whole enemy formations and bringing out all equipment and wounded.

SDonell73@aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 12/20/02 11:28:26
> AM Pacific Standard Time, Home@DanSources.com writes: 
>  
>  
> > Again
> > we were caught in Korea.....BLINDLY unprepared.... and held to a draw. 
> >   
>  
> IMO there was no way that we could have won the war for the entire peninsula,
> but we could have won the war, if we'd stopped at the shortest waist of Korea,
> from Wonsan to Pyongyang. There would have been plenty of time to build up
> defenses to brace against any possible Chinese attack. But hindsight is 20-20.
>  
>  
> The success of the Marine Corps, especially at Inchon, and the combined X
> Corps and 8th Army thrust to push the North Koreans out of South Korea led
> to "victory disease," in which all of the UN forces in Korea thought that
> they couldn't be stopped regardless of the situation, in their quest to reunite
> the entire peninsula as a non-Communist country.  
>  
> It was short sighted at best, to ignore China's repeated warnings that they
> would attack if certain lines were crossed and a gross intelligence failure
> to anticipate what the Chinese, and possibly the Soviets, would do when approaching
> their borders. 
>  
> Sandy  
>