I have always maintained that Saddam wanted us to kill all those conscript soldiers he had out in the desert in Southern Iraq. He had a huge standing army after the end of the Iran/Iraq war, and there was no way he could let these trained soldiers out of the army without destabilizing the country. That many trained soldiers unemployed and at loose ends would be impossible for a despot to control. He could not afford to keep them and he could not just kill them outright. There are some things that even Saddam can't do.
So what is Saddam to do? Simple. Just have your enemy kill them for you. And we accomodated him, in spades.
But as soon as we started getting to soldiers that Saddam wanted to keep, the war ended. It is at that point that we will start the next war. No freebies this time. Doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. It just means that we we should not expect to Iraqi conscripts lined up like toy soldiers in the desert waiting to be smashed.
Also from article:
Yes, Saddam might refuse to let his civilian population leave, preferring to use them as human shields. But it would be hard to do so for long. (And the Geneva Convention suggests the responsibility for civilian deaths in such a situation falls on the party who turns them into human shields.)
Oh puhleeze! Does anybody think for one second that the US would not be blamed for every death from starvation and deprivation that would occur if we laid seige to Bagdad? The whole World would lay blame at our feet. Geneva Convention suggests...., yeah right.