Posted on 03/23/2003 1:46:43 PM PST by kattracks
Iraqis use guerrilla tactics to slow advance
By Douglas Hamilton
DOHA, March 23 (Reuters) - Washington's hopes that U.S.-led forces would be welcomed into Iraq as liberators bled into the sand on Sunday, the fourth day of war, as Iraqi troops fought back with determination and guerrilla tactics.
There was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction being used by Iraq in battle. Instead, Iraqi troops were fighting with machinegun-mounted Japanese pickup trucks against squadrons of the world's most formidable battle tank, the U.S. Abrams.
There were reports of between 10 and 15 U.S. troops killed in fighting to secure bridgeheads across the River Euphrates at Nassiriyah, with perhaps up to 50 more wounded.
U.S. General John Abizaid acknowledged it was the "toughest day of resistance" so far. He said Iraqi forces near Nassiriya inflicted several casualties in "the sharpest engagement of the war." There were 12 American troops missing, he added.
"Everybody was predicting they'd be welcomed as liberators but it's working out differently," said one senior Arab official in the Gulf. "The Americans had a hard day today."
Evoking Vietnam and Mogadishu, Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf warned U.S. forces they were driving into "a quagmire from which they can never emerge, except dead."
Iraqi forces evidently switched from their disastrous static defence of the 1991 Gulf War to classic guerrilla tactics, using loyalist militias to bolster regular forces.
"There are a number of incidents occurring to the rear of the main combat forces," Abizaid said at the Central Command briefing, indicating guerrilla-style attacks. He said Iraqis had pretended to surrender, then ambushed U.S. forces.
FEARFUL CAPTIVES
Despite at least 2,000 Iraqi surrenders, the picture was of a far more spirited fight by Iraq's troops than some analysts had predicted, slowing the invading forces' sweep from Kuwait through southern Iraq towards Baghdad.
Iraqis operating in small pockets or hit-and-run raids held up the U.S.-led advance in at least four places and captured their first U.S. prisoners, whom they displayed on television.
In grim pictures, Iraq showed four bodies of what it said were U.S. soldiers and five captives taken near Nassiriya, who said they were from a U.S. Army logistics support unit.
Abizaid called the pictures "disgusting."
The capture suggested that Iraqi forces, perhaps in small raiding groups, attacked the exposed flank of a U.S. armoured advance which has plunged some 200 km (120 miles) north into Iraq in just 72 hours, stretching its lines of support.
Reports and television images of battling Iraqi units in the south came from reporters travelling with those American and British units. There was no hard information on the progress of other units who were not accompanied by journalists.
A U.S. military spokesman told the Central Command briefing there were movements deep in to Iraq "that we're not showing."
Iraqis also paid with their lives for their attack on the U.S. tanks near Najaf, leaving bodies strewn across the desert.
But U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had to acknowledge that U.S. soldiers were dead and others captured and Britain said a Tornado ground attack plane with a crew of two had been downed by mistake by a U.S. Patriot missile.
Britain has already lost 16 men in non-combat incidents, with two helicopter crashes and the downing of the Tornado.
British Harrier ground-attack jets were brought in to pound an Iraqi redoubt near the Gulf port of Umm Qasr only after several hours of fighting, shown live on television, in which U.S. tanks apparently failed to break Iraqi resistance.
After night fell, some Iraqis were still holding out.
There was continuing Iraqi resistance at Basra, Iraq's second city in the far south, and, at Najaf, U.S. officers expressed amazement at pickup truck attacks, a tactic dating from the 1980's Chad civil war in the Sahara desert.
The Iraqis, while massively outgunned, were also using rocket propelled grenades, machineguns and small arms to good effect to pin down U.S. forces reluctant to risk casualties.
If the tactic worked well at Umm Qasr in the relatively open territory of a port-side industrial zone, its effectiveness could be multiplied on the outskirts of Baghdad where U.S. concern to avoid civilian casualties would be far greater.
Iraq's toughest troops are arrayed south of the capital.
In Kuwait, former oil minister Ali al-Baghli said the time taken to capture Umm Qasr might undermine any faith ordinary Iraqis had that the Americans could topple Saddam Hussein.
"We are astonished that there is still resistance in Umm Qasr after all this time. It is a very small place.
"If it takes them this long to capture Umm Qasr, how long will it take to capture Tikrit or Baghdad?"
Durn. It's so obvious now that you've pointed it out! Thanks!
No kiddin'...What are they supposed to do, go back to Bahgdad and tell the Republican Guard that they quit the war and gave their weapons to the Americans??? Or maybe hide in the desert without food or water til the war's over???
And you no doubt support open borders and like George, believe islam is a religion of peace... You Buchanan bashers are something else...
When the "rules" were violated in the Waxhaws, etc., the Brits (specifically Tarleton and Wemyss) ratcheted up the reprisals/outrages, and thus lost the Carolinas. Then they lost the thirteen colonies.
COMPLETELY, totally, absolutely, 100% false.
One of the worst and hardest to kill myths of the American Revolution.
The primary mode of fighting in the Revolution was the Continental Army fighting in lines in open fields PRECISELY as the British did. Von Steuben was brought in to train our troops in pretty much precisely the same drills and tactics as the British.
Linear tactics WORKED in populated areas with a halfway decent road network with a good deal of open space, such as much of the colonies in the Revolution. They helped discpline and were often the only way to get good firepower with a horribly inaccurate and short-range musket. There was nothing stupid about them.
In the South, most of the war was in fact a Civil War with most of the fighting between guerilla bands of rebels and loyalists, with some fighting between regulars towards the end of the war.
There was guerilla-type sniping by the US at Concord at the very beginning of the war.
But other than that, the overwhelming majority of the fighting was either European-style linear battles, or sieges. Bunker hill was the British attacking an entrenched position, not an ambush. The Continental Army fought its battles with linear tactics (and it really shocked the British when the Continental Army was able to go toe-to-toe with them in an European style linear field battle at Monmouth...which we almost won but ended up as a draw.
In fact, MOST of the "backwoods ambushes" in the Revolution were British and Indian troops ambushing AMERICAN troops.
I'm not an expert, but from my understanding the musket was considered a vastly superior military weapon to the rifle, since a triple line of troops with muskets could produce a much heavier volume of fire than could a group with rifles, and when a line of troops is shooting at another line of troops, accuracy is really not an issue.
And you no doubt support open borders and like George, believe islam is a religion of peace... You Buchanan bashers are something else...
And yet another useful idiot for Saddam! I do not support open borders, nor do I coddle Islamofascists. You ought to read some of my past posts, Buster. Buchanan is an anti-Israel, isolationist nutcase. I am not the only FReeper on this board who thinks that.
I support this war and the President. I do not support every policy or statement of this POTUS. However, I support him right now because it is in my interests, and what I believe are my families, friends, troops and citizens interest to do so. It is a RISK that I am willing to take.
The alternatives are just to sit back and RISK letting the doo doo hit the fan, now or later. Sorry, Buster, I am not the type to not EVEN TRY or SUPPORT an effort to let our enemies and their proxies know that we are not pushovers and will not be bullied/blackmailed and stalled by pointless diplomacy/appeasement because we are afraid that they may hurt us even more if we stand up to them.
Our enemies are going to hurt us, no matter what we say or do. They need to know that there will be severe consequences for their actions. President Bush is taking responsibility for this RISK. I stand by him and our troops at this time in our post 9/11 history.
My homeschooled son just finished reading Guns, Germs, & Steel. That same argument was used by the author to shore up his theory of why America won the Revolution. The author also claimed that such guerilla tactics changed warfare as the world knew it back then. The author never once admitted that maybe, just maybe, it was the ideas of the American Revolution coupled with a strong will to fight (conventionally and unconventionally) for those ideas, that finally secured the colonials freedom.
My son was not impressed with the book because he had studied the American Revolution previously and knew that the battle tactics of General Washington and his fellow generals were similar to the British. (Washington did do stuff like crossing the Delaware at night, when the river was partially frozen and took the British by surprise on more than one ocassion.)
My son also thought the book itself was written with a anti-Western, anti-capitalist cultural slant.
Oh, and on a similar note regarding tactics, both my son and husband were impressed by the gutsy move of President Bush to do the Target-of-Opportunity strike as an element of suprise to the Iraqi leadership. :)
"The Rules" were not to march in lines. That was a simple matter of effectiveness with the weapons at hand. We really didn't do all that well with skirmishers in most places, as they weren't well trained for that. In any case, the British had skirmish unit too, and darn good ones.
As for the main point, yes, by and large Continental troops DID play by the rules. It was insisted upon, because where they didn't no quarter was given.
The musket typically had 5-6 times the rate of fire of a rifle. It was the machine-gun of the era.
COMPLETELY, totally, absolutely, 100% false.
100% false, except for Lexington & Concord, and the campaigns of Francis Marion (The Swamp Fox), Andrew Pickens, Thomas Sumter and Nathaniel Greene. In fact, it was Greene's use of guerilla tactics that drove Cornwallis back to Yorktown, leading to Cornwallis's defeat.
True enough, most of the major battles were fought European style. Washington was not a big fan of guerilla tactics, but those tactics were a significant part winning the war.
So, "100% false" is really 100% false.
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