HOW WE'LL FIGHT

New York Post ^ | 10/14/02 | BEVIN ALEXANDER

[kattracks]

ELIMINATING Saddam Hussein will cause far fewer casualties than many commentators have suggested.

A war against Saddam's forces need not require large numbers of troops and need not necessitate a bloody urban battle through the streets of Baghdad, as some doomsayers have predicted. To win, U.S. forces don't have to attack Baghdad at all. Nor need they attack the Iraqi army directly.

[The Great Satan]

Saddam Hussein has no chance whatsoever of defeating this new kind of army, and only the slimmest of chances of inflicting more than superficial losses on it.

Absolutely true, and Saddam understands this, of course. But he thinks "outside the box," as he demonstrated so spectacularly on 9/11/01. This whole operation was thought through with meticulous care, including the back-end security, obviously:

THIS IS NEXT
WE HAVE THIS ANTHRAX
YOU CANNOT STOP US

[Tom Bombadil]

Such an operation would blockade Baghdad

You can bet that civiians will starve before any troops and that video cameras will be available to record the tragedy for the rest of the world.

Saddam's only real recourse though, is to take the war to the American heartland via terror vectors. But that is Bush's point, either we provoke him or he provokes himself. Either way we get hit. Accurate bombs hitting Iraqi targets are a better start than sitting around eating ice cream and waiting to come down with small pox or anthrax.

[Billthedrill]

Why do we need to occupy Iraq?

We don't, in and of itself. But we're trying to force a change of government here and I seriously doubt that we're going to be able to accomplish this against a prepared enemy by dropping bombs, however smart. My point was that placing an army in a remote location and waiting for Saddam to come out and play is extremely unlikely to admit of success, especially inasmuch as Saddam remembers (unlike a whole bunch of people who are insisting that Bush is "avenging" his daddy) what happened last time he embarked in a standup fight.

I hate to sound like a hidebound fuddy-duddy here but we've heard this song before, before WWII, that a cleverly constructed bombing campaign could break a government in the absence of a ground committment. That sort of "thinking outside the box" was creative, innovative...and wrong.

[dixierat22]

"We WOULD be occupying, effectively, the rest of the country"

That is assuming the countryside isn't littered with Iraqis who are willing to fight the invaders forces (that would be us). If small infantry type units are roaming around, planting Mechanical ambushes, conducting hit & run raids, and making a general nuisance of themselves, things could get a little uncomfortable.

Maybe the hawks are right, but I'm thinking there'll be some casualties, especially if we have to go into Bagdad or any other major city where they've had a chance to prepare defenses.

[Bon mots]

Of course one way to avoid urban warfare in Baghdad is to eliminate Baghdad.

That's why we have a nuclear deterrent. If you don't use it, it's not much of a deterrent. Time to break out the big stick.
But why did you leave out Mecca, Medina, Riyad, Damascus, Jakarta, Cairo, etc.???

[Pagey]

Does anyone remember in the Gulf War how Saddam created his own little environmental catastrophe by blowing the caps off all those Oil Wells and they burned for months? For the life of me, I don't even want to think about what he may do this time around with our troops on the ground. A few hundred thousand Iraqi citizens die here and there, he could really care less if he knows he's going down.
"We can win a war against Iraq with comparative ease..."
I nominate that sentence as Foolish comment of the month, for the use of "War" and "Ease" in the same sentence.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

put Exxon/Mobil in place, and then say "come stop us from taking your oil."

Excellent!

Their ability to get petrodollars, and not Bagdad, is what defines them as a power.

Dominate that . . .

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Hardly. When Lexington and Concord happened, the farmers picked of the British troops from behind 'rocks and trees' as you put it... After the Continental Army was formed, the US troops learned to fight in the linear lines of the day

The fascinating book, Paul Revere's Ride (author's name not in memory bank) must be read. It indicates that it wasn't just a case of hiding in the woods and getting off a shot. Rather, the road passed seemingly numberless stone walls. Each one had to be taken by a flanking party charging across the field, so that the militia was not allowed to snipe at the main column. When attacked, the small group of militia behind the wall would disperse, and join the main body of militia pressing the rear of the British column. One thing to charge a wall like that once--but there were so many walls . . . exhausting work!

This group became quite numerous, but had to be cautious not to concentrate too much of a target for the two cannon the British had. The British, for their part, had limited ammunition for the cannons . . .

The salient point was that the colonies were pretty much spring-loaded to rebel. It was just a matter of when.

[cibco]

"The Pentagon's weapon of choice in Afghanistan was the joint direct-attack munition (JDAM), a $21,000 device attached to the tail of a simple gravity bomb that enables it to be guided by GPS to fall within thirty feet of the target. Only four of 4,000 JDAMs dropped in Afghanistan went off target."

Wow! That's a better percentage rate than a DNA test.

[Polybius]

Saddam disclosed in 1995 that he had 5000 gallons of weaponized Botulinum poison. Our forces would be sitting ducks.

And the Iraqi delivery system to get that Botulinum on fast moving armored columns over a wide front when U.S. air power has total domination of the Iraqi skies would be.......what?

In addition, during the Gulf War, the US emphatically stated that it would retaliate with nuclear weapons if Iraq used chemical or biological weapons against the coalition forces.

Saddams chemical and biological weapons will be just as effective this time around as they were in the Gulf War.

[Henk]

And the Iraqi delivery system to get that Botulinum on fast moving armored columns over a wide front when U.S. air power has total domination of the Iraqi skies would be.......what?

The scenario outlined in the article did not describe a fast moving armored column (how are they going to position armor near Baghdad?) I took it as a stationary force intended to essentially lay siege to Baghdad. In that case, the delivery mechanism is any of the five aerosol generators we know Saddam has purchased from the French (see Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War), a truck, and prevailing winds.

In addition, during the Gulf War, the US emphatically stated that it would retaliate with nuclear weapons if Iraq used chemical or biological weapons against the coalition forces.

That is really our only deterrent against his use of the WMD he already has. However, this will be a classic case of winning the battle and losing the war. Our use of nuclear weapons will result in the immediate cessation of any further prosecution of the war against Islamists. The knee-jerk left will shut it down in hand-wringing America-hating fury.

Iraq is only the first step in the long war ahead of us. It needs to be a clean quick kill.

[Polybius]

If he let the force remain unopposed, he'd lose control of his country.

Pardon me, but this is silly, IMHO. We put a force in place in the boonies and say "come attack me" and Saddam just says "so what?". You win wars by occupying ground and killing the enemy, and that hasn't changed in a few hundred thousand years, and that is what we're going to have to do.

I believe that what the author means to say is that the Iraqi Army cannot just remain buried like cowering gophers to avoid being killed by U.S airpower without giving the U.S. armored columns complete freedom of movement to occupy all of Iraq without firing a shot.

The Iraqi choices would be:
A) Remain cowering underground while the U.S. occupies the country unopposed.
B) Come out into the open and die fighting.

Either way, the Iraqis lose.

Battles are not always won by killing the other guy. They can be won by making the other guy totally irrelevant which is what would happen if the Iraqis choose Choice A.

Take, for example, the "Battle of Rabaul" where 100,000 of Japan's finest troops were ready to inflict catastrophic losses on American invasion forces.

MacArthur solved the problem of Rabaul, AKA "The Impregnable Gibraltar of the Pacific", by simply isolating Rabaul and bypassing it. That left 100,000 crack Japanese troops on Rabaul as useless to the Japanese war effort as if they had been on the Moon.

The Japanese strong points at Madang was likewise "leap-frogged".

Those 100,000 Japanese on Rabaul never saw an American Marine. They spent 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945 and even 1946 and 1947 stuck on the Island of New Britain. They never got back back to Japan until the U.S. Government loaned Japan some money in 1947 to rescue them from their humiliation.

[Polybius]

The scenario outlined in the article did not describe a fast moving armored column (how are they going to position armor near Baghdad?) I took it as a stationary force intended to essentially lay siege to Baghdad. In that case, the delivery mechanism is any of the five aerosol generators we know Saddam has purchased from the French (see Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War), a truck, and prevailing winds.

Armoured columns are only needed to advance into Iraq and secure vast stretches of territory.

Once all the territory surrounding Baghdad has been secured, a seige does not need to included a campout outside the city gate as was the case during the Trojan War.

A seige of Baghdad can be effected by securing all roads into Baghdad from a point 20, 40, 50 or 100 miles away and using airpower to make any vehicle going into Baghdad a burning hulk by the side of the road.

In regards to unleashing bio-weapons with aerosol generators, Saddam would soon learn what both sides of the World War One Western Front learned when they first started using chemical weapons.........Those d@mn winds have a nasty habit of changing on you and bringing that stuff right back at you.

That would be an ironic end to old Saddam. :-)

[hinckley buzzard]

The Communists never occupied any ground in South VietNam. It isn't necessary if you can deprive the enemy of the capacity to continue the fight.

The only thing I would add to this scenario is an emphasis on pinpointing and destroying the CBR facilities and ammunition depots, and that might well take numbers of Special Forces on the ground. Eliminating WMD's is still a top priority for this misssion.