[Rockitz]

Maybe an active siege is best, whereby our night vision technology and Predator UAVs are employed to mop up the bad guys under cover of darkness and gain a political surrender from the remainders. The rub may be that the Russians have supplied night vision technology to the Iraqis.

[Mike Darancette]

Baghdad seems to be a beautiful city, at least the part they show on TV. It seems that Soddom has built himself one nice mausoleum.

[Beck_isright]

This is why I find strong disagreement with Stratfor lately. The models used in their arguements are over 50 years old. We will use a modern model using more non-lethal civilian friendly weapons as we can. I can see a low loss rate but God forbid we don't dreg up the worse case scenarios so they can get more subscribers. The only way I can see high casualties is if the Iraqi military unleashes biologicals on their own population.

V

[DainBramage]

I prefer the Hanoi strategy and make a few thousand B52 swimming pools throughout Baghdad.

[Beck_isright]

"The rub may be that the Russians have supplied night vision technology to the Iraqis."

One differing rub; we've trained with night vision for over 20 years. Having a tool and using it effectively are two different things.

V

[EternalHope]

Unlike every previous siege, we can go where we please by air. We can destroy any exposed target from the air, and insert our special ops troops by air whenever and wherever we see a target that needs boots on the ground.

Other factors include the fact that Saddam's thugs have no source for resupply and no clear guidance from their leaders. They are not trained to operate on their own, nor are they likely to keep fighting for Saddam once it is clear that Saddam has lost.

As long as we can keep this focused on a fight against Saddam, we win as soon as enough Iraqi's think Saddam has lost. We are not fighting the Iraqi PEOPLE. We are fighting Saddam, and liberating Iraq in the process.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

OFFICIAL BUMP(TOPIC)LIST

[LS]

I am so SICK of people dredging up "Stalingrad." The Germans did NOT control the skies, and in fact could not reinforce their troops when their men became surrounded there.

A better example would be the British march on Ulundi in the Zulu Wars of 1879. King Cetswayo had two choices, both poor. He could come out and fight, and get slaughtered, or he could wait for the British to surround Ulundi, and get slaughtered. He chose the former, and about 8,000 Brits formed a square and wiped out the better part of 20,000 Zulus in a couple of hours.

Stalingrad was at the furtherst end of German supply lines, when the Nazis had no substantial air support, and when their lines were also stretched all the way to Leningrad. Most military historians agree that if the Germans had chosen ONE of their objectives---Moscow, Leningrad, or Stalingrad---and focused their effort entirely on that, they would have taken any of the three. Moreover, the Germans were already facing a second front from England and the newly-arrived USA, even though the big invasions of Italy and Normandy were some time off. Still, the Germans had to allocate ships, personnel, air defenses, and coastal defenses to the western front in 1942.

[RightWhale]

U.S. forces will probe the edges of Baghdad

Edges? They are biting off chunks of Bagdad. They are roaming Saddam's palaces without obstruction. Bagdad is down to pockets of resistance. The north of the city is being left open so busload after busload of residents can escape. It's over and the gov't is already in exile in a couple smaller cities in the north, where they are about to be overrun.

[SBprone]

I'll admit that I only skimmed this piece. But every line I skimmed had that characteristic Stratfor smell of BS.

Baghdad is a large city. It takes more than one or two Bozos with RPGs to interfere with an airmobile assault. Do the Fedayeen know how to move and mass their limited resources with the speed it would take to block our insertions and extractions? Can they threaten a loitering gunship from their rooftops? Will they know when they've been target by a laser guided bomb? Can they do Jack S*** when our teams go hunting for their sorry asses?

I doubt it.

[Ramius]

Well... considering that Stratfor is pretty much always *wrong* I would say that this is a good sign.

There is a peculiar usefulness in reliably being wrong all of the time.

[TheLooseThread]

I predict a siegeless siege. We will hang out around the city but will allow supplies and commerce to enter and leave the city.

Then like the softening up of a military target (where assets are destroyed) the city "assets" will be destroyed. These assets will be key people, emplacements, and pyscological seats of power.

Then when the support structure of the city is weakend the push will come.

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

Shut off the water supply to the city. Cyrus did this to Babylon ca 500 B.C. We could do it today. Divert the river, shut off the aqueducts and the siege would last about one week.

[bootyist-monk]

Another situation where reality crushes a Stratfor article before the ink can dry.