The summons to meet Delapos at South Padre, along with the announcement that U.S. forces had crossed into Mexico that morning, had cheered Childress like nothing else in a long time. While waiting for Delapos to meet him in the restaurant, Childress had wondered why he had felt that way, for he had quickly realized that his sudden euphoria was more than the satisfaction one gets when a difficult and well-paying job is coming to an end. He had finished many other jobs, a few even more difficult than this one, and had never felt like he had that morning. Nor was the elation due to his anticipated return to his beloved Vermont mountains, though the prospect of being there for foliage season was, in its own way, exciting. It wasn't until he had met Delapos and found out that Alaman had decided that their campaign of provocation and agitation, rather than ending, needed to enter a new and more deadly phase, that Childress finally understood the reason he had been overwhelmed with joy when he thought his role in provoking the war was over. Despite denials to himself, Delapos, and other Americans employed by Alaman, Childress had never been able truly to reconcile himself to the fact that his actions were resulting in the deaths of fellow countrymen. The idea that his actions were treasonous was never far from his mind. The document he read, and the new instructions from Alaman, only served to reinforce that idea.
The document Delapos had handed Childress was a white paper, dated three days after Lefleur's incident with the National Guard, which summarized what Colonel Guajardo called the Council of 13's war-winning strategy. Written by both Guajardo, the minister of defense, and Colonel Barreda, the foreign minister, it laid out their strategy, not only for defending Mexico, but for achieving clear and unchallenged power as well as legitimacy for the council as the sole and rightful governing body of Mexico.
As a preamble, the paper stated in clear and uncompromising terms that, barring an unforeseen act of God, Mexico had no hope of achieving any type of military victory over American forces. In the next breath, however, the report stated that, so long as the Council of 13 and the Mexican people acted with prudence and restraint, the final political victory, the one that mattered, would be theirs. Guajardo, carefully citing American experience in Vietnam, pointed out that despite the fact that the American military had never lost a major engagement to either the Viet Cong or the People's Army of Vietnam, politically they had lost everything in Southeast Asia. The report discounted the apparent evidence of recent American military prowess demonstrated in Grenada, Panama, and the Persian Gulf, pointing out that in all three cases, the opposing governments had underestimated the American willingness to use force and its effectiveness, and had overestimated their own military position. Even more importantly, however, Guajardo pointed out that the opposing governments had lacked the type of popular support, and the willingness of their people to endure the kind of sacrifice, necessary for the conduct of a protracted war of attrition. In Guajardo's words, "The Americans won in the Persian Gulf, not by breaking machines, but by breaking the will of the soldiers and the people it fought. In Mexico, the Americans will find, as they did in Vietnam, that we have few machines to break, and a people that cannot be broken. A people who will not admit defeat cannot be defeated."
The heart of the report was an astute blend of military and political maneuvering that never left the realm of reality. In all, it was an effort that would have brought tears of happiness to the eyes of Machiavelli, the fifteenth-century Florentine theorist who had elevated modern political military thinking to an art. Knowing full well that the American president would never be able to muster the support needed from either the American Congress or the people for a full declaration of war, and citing past American incursions into Mexico, Barreda anticipated that the issue the American president would use to justify their invasion was that of security.
Guajardo, in turn, pointed out that, like Winfield Scott in 1848, and John. Pershing in 1916, the American military lacked the forces necessary to occupy all of Mexico. Therefore, Guajardo went on, the American Army would instead seize whatever terrain it determined was necessary to meet the stated objective of ensuring the security of its people, property, and land.
Three key considerations would dictate the amount of territory seized by the Americans and its location. The first was the size of force available to the Americans to seize it and hold it. Initially, this task would fall to the regular Army, consisting of twelve divisions, and the Marine Corps with two. Of these, only seven Army and one Marine division could be deployed, since two Army divisions were still in Europe, one was in Korea, and the sole American airborne and air-assault divisions could not be committed by the United States without emasculating its ability to respond to unexpected contingencies outside of Europe, Korea, or Mexico.
The use of reserve and National Guard units, Guajardo pointed out, would be limited by law as well as readiness.
Once committed, the American ability to keep its forces in Mexico would limit their effort. Supply lines, called lines of communications or LOCs for short, from the United States, through occupied territories, to the most advanced American unit, would have to be established and kept open. In 1848, Winfield Scott had gambled when he intentionally severed his lines of communications with the sea at Veracruz and marched overland into Mexico City in order to end the war. Unlike that of his modern counterparts, his army consisted only of men, mules, and horses, allowing him to live off the land as he went. That option, given the size and sophistication of the modern American Army, was out of the question. A single M-1A1 tank could consume over 500 gallons of diesel fuel in a day. In comparison, the case of rations consumed by its crew was negligible.
A division, with over 300 such vehicles, would require 150,000 gallons a day for its tanks alone. Added to the fuel needed to run the tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, self-propelled howitzers, helicopters, and supply vehicles were specialized lubricants, spare parts, medical supplies, engineer material, ammunition, water, food, mail, and a host of other items that a modern American army found indispensable. In the end, the needs of the American Army would place a requirement for moving anywhere from 100 to 200 pounds of supplies per soldier in Mexico each and every day he was there.
The final limiting factor, one few outside the military profession ever considered, was the difficulty the Americans would encounter in controlling, feeding, and administering any local inhabitants that remained in the territory occupied by American forces. Once a territory was occupied, it fell to the occupying force to administer, feed, and care for the people in that territory. Modern conventions and law, as well as moral and ethical codes, demanded that. As all civil-military units in the United States were reserve units, and they were few, the number of populated areas that could be effectively governed and administered by those units, not to mention supplied, was limited. Matamoros alone had close to 400,000 inhabitants, and Monterrey nearly four million. These populations would need to be supported by the conquering Americans.
Given an analysis of American capabilities, and assuming that American goals would be limited to the establishment of a security zone, Guajardo estimated that the American limit of advance into Mexico would be north of a line defined by Tampico, Ciudad Victoria, Monterrey, Chihuahua, Hermosillo, and Kimo Bay. Whether or not the cities mentioned would be included in the security zone depended on the American ability to support the population of those cities versus the value of controlling the road and rail networks that converged in them. Though the occupation of Veracruz could not be ruled out, such an action would be inconsistent with the announced limited objectives.