On Sun, Mar 23, 2003 at 05:39:05PM -0800, Mike Rosing wrote:Don't get your hopes up. With air power and seige tanks the Iraqi's don't
have much ammo or food. Just like the US "controls" Afghanistan, they
will claim they "control" Iraq. There will be "incidents" and a few
"minor" operations to clean out enemy cells, but I don't expect to see any
well organized defense. The US technology is orders of magnitude better,
they can easily destroy large armies.
Not inside the cities they can't, not without tons of collateral damage,
which will crucify Dubbya and Blair. There are buses full of armed irregulars
coming into Bhagdad. I'll bet we see US/UK deaths in the thousands, if they try
to move into the city. And they'll have to, the international community won't go
for starving the civilians anymore than they will bombing them.
The COW (Coalition of the Willing) losses are mounting as urban areas are approached.
Unsurprisingly, U.S. power is most obvious out in the desert, out with exposed enemy columns, out where air power and satellite imagery makes a big difference.
Defenders have a massive advantage when they can just sit and snipe. (Sure, COW can call in air strikes, but even the Empire's budget will start to suffer when multimillion dollar airstrikes are called against lone gunmen).
I expect the COW forces to get increasingly "strung out" (geographically, mentally) and for mistakes to increase. More scenes of exhausted and demoralized grunts, more reports of a batch being blown up, a another chopper crash.
"The Siege of Baghdad" begins.
The train wreck is developing nicely.
--Tim May
