reply to a friend
Alan, Reality check time. The reports I've seen indicate that the Iraqi forces to the south of Baghdad have been pounded shitless. The battlefield is so well known the US because of their means of surveillance that any major troop/armour concentrations can be hit. The US has absolute air superiority and can hunt out the Republican Guard's armour and artillery support and destroy it at will. It seems that Iraqi attempts to pull back and focus armour and artillery lead to its destruction. Therefore it is dispersed and impotent.

I was surprised to get this, because at first reading it is the unvarnished Pentagon line on the war and assumes my thinking has been that Iraq could beat off the US attack without an extended siege of Baghdad.

This leaves Iraqi troops with only mortar, RPG and other annoying but ineffective forms of support. The only problem the US troops face is their inability to round up all of the roving bands of Iraqi troops. They will inflict casualties on the attackers but the outcome is certain.

Precisely those weapons will become much more effective if the coalition is forced into urban warfare within Baghdad.
�
I agree that the administration in Washington could be trying to push their troops too far forward, but this might work. The casualties they've taken are light, but blown out of all proportion by media coverage. How and when they choose to invest Baghdad will depend on their daring. They may wait for the reinforcements to get there�or see what happens if they punch a hole into the southern suburbs. The classic response - defenders bring forces around to engulf attackers is nullified by the air support factor.

At risk of becoming an armchair general myself it seems to me that the Iraqi side can't stop the investment of Baghdad. However, air power has its limits. Neither personnel nor equipment can keep up the present tempo of operations against Baghdad indefinitely and the problem of the line of communications still exists, although improved by establishment of an air lift. The question is can the regime hold together long enough to try and take advantage of the inevitable slowdown in coalition aviation? I doubt it, but the Iraqi side has surprised us before.

Further, there are still problems in the rear. Nasiriya is still not secure. The delivery of aid through Umm Qasr is a shambles. Basra remains untaken after a fortnight of the kind of treatment about to be thrown at Baghdad .
�
Their real problems will begin when the positional war is over and they have to hold the place. The Arab world is still in shock but the mountain is starting to move. This could make Vietnam recede in importance as the latest debacle takes shape.

For the moment what happened to the RG divisions is an open question. The coalition does not hold the prisoners or bodies to justify the claim that they've destroyed them. Just possibly, they've retreated into Baghdad or gone partisan as in the south.

The neocons have all crawled out of the woodwork and are once again regaling us with tales of the imminent Shi'a rising in Baghdad. The Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, head of Najaf's Muslim hierarchy, has told the Shi'ites of Iraq only to stay neutral, not to join the coalition. It seems to me in terms of the war plan and neocon expectations we are not too far from where we were on Day 2 and 3 when we started to hear the repeated falls of cities and repeated surrenders of massive Iraqi formations.

This war is wrong and stays wrong whether the coalition is militarily successful or not. While all abhor the loss of life on either side that does not mean that force of arms makes right what was from its inception wrong.