OT: Iraq War Strategies

Since it looks like there is a good chance we will soon have a war in Iraq, I wonder how it will be conducted. I have read a few things here and there. No real comprehensive article or information yet though. But there are a few items here and there.

1) Saddam is keeping most of his forces out of the city. Supposedly morale is low in the army and he doesn't want them around.

2) Some folks seem to think that as soon as it looks like we will attack, there may be a coup, Saddam gets killed and this is over quickly. That would be nice, but I wouldn't hold my brath on this one.

3) There will be much more guided munitions (smart bombs) this time around. I think that is fairly obvious. We have the technology and they did good work recently in Afghanistan.

4) Attack the cities and keep the military out. This sounds really messy. The city is where all the civians live. What will they do?? Chase the civilians out?? Urban warfare is th messiest and most deadly war there is. Lots of dead bodies possible with this approach.

5) Work with dissident paramilitary groups to assist. Again this sounds like wishful thinking. The folks who could really help us are already in Iraq under a very repressive regime. We obviously do not have the time or access to develop anything like this. The folks outside of Iraq who want to help will probably let us do the dirty work and then move in. And there are no private armies like they had in Afghanistan.

6) The nightmare scenario is he releases some kind of biological agent on his neighbors. I think he would if he could. Hopefully he doesn't have the capacity to do that just yet. That is the very argument being used by Bush to justify this war.

My thoughts??

Whatever happens will be very fast. As in any war situations some things will work well. And some things will fail big time. We will definitely take some causulties this time around. Iraqi's infrastructure will be destroyed in record time.

Lot of parachute drops, rangers, special forces, etc. I think that they will try to keep the main militry forces outside of the main areas of combat (the cities?). I think there is an expectation that the Iraqi army is not going to fight for very long. Let's hope so for our sake.

Hard to tell on this one. I don't think there will be anywhere near the hardware, manpower or support as the last Iraqi war. But we did not need everything we had last time.

Whatever is done will be a gamble. We have lots of hi tech, deadly weapons. The whole thing about this is how messy it gets. After all wars are now fought on CNN. How well will it play out on TV?? That will ultimately be the legacy of this war.

Hopefully when this war is over, they will take all the media pundits out and shoot them for humanitarian reasons.

Interesting topic. Ehud Barak was *just* here speaking (literally a couple of hours ago) and he touched on some of this stuff. Since he's privy to certain intelligence in the region that we're not to, I think some of the stuff he said was pretty reasonable.

Basically, he said the best way to do this would be to do a 'surgical

<snip>

Iraq is digging new oil wells,aren't they?

Oil is good

Regards,

Iraq doesn't have anything that could stop a heavy US mechanized brigade with air support. Most Iraqi tanks in GW I were firing heavy steel sabot practice rounds, which have about the same chance of penetrating the armor of an M1 as I have of scoring with Ashley Judd.

You gotta remember the Marines by themselves took out 12 (!!) Iraqi divisions in 48 hours while liberating Kuwait proper.

If they hide out in the towns we'll just send in the Predators to find them and hand off GPS coordinates to orbiting strike planes dropping JDAMS.

The Iraqis could also just surrender. They know Saddam is going down and once they are in US custody they're 'safe'.

So, I'd say 50,000 ground troops + support tail and at least 50k of MP's. And lots of tuna packets.

Your armchair strategist,

-Scott Johnson 'be a man ,stop looking for handouts , eat ,lift and shut your mouth' -John Carlo

'nation building' has developed an unreasonably poor image. Didn't we nationbuild in Japan after WWII? That worked out pretty well. Same thing with Germany, no?

Some of these parts of the world could really use some nationbuilding.

Seeing what happened to the Kurds might be a bit stifling to dissident groups until it is plainly obvious we have the ground forces there to do the job properly. At which point the dissident group is not needed.

Such a complicated region. If we topple Saddam we have to go in with major force and plan to stay in large numbers for 10 years at least. We have to be ready for the backlash of fundamentalists who will surely see this as yet another straw of Crusaderism on the camel's back. Some will snap and there will almost certainly be a surge of terrorism.

By the way, why not a preemptive attack on China while were in the area? They are clearly the biggest threat of an actual war with the US. Might was well occupy North Korea and just take out the 15 old fools running Iran and all the young people can take over. Also, there should be 24 hour a day carpet bombing of Afganistan, just because. Don't even get me started on Russia.

hot dog mikey!! I like your attitude!!!

a. lose

b. lose badly

c. lose badly on tv

d. prevent troops from dating camels causing more aggresive behaviour

e. buy bullets for guns

f. get prettier berrets

g. teach body doubles to sing, make boy band, flood airwaves with bad music making enemy constantly ill

h. check out one way airfares to france

i. put george bush's picture on milk carton and send it to him. cause us president to expend resource trying to figure out just when he went missing

j. use strategery

First of all the Iraq people hate Saddam.

We should use the Iraqi people against him. They are the Assyrians (Babylonians) to the north who are the original people of the middle east who will fight Iraq. Iraq doesn't like Assyrians because they are the true christians and sill retain there religion and fight against muslims. That is why Saddam has placed the christian troops on the front line. Spread the word to the christian Army to move to the south. Now you have troops to the north and south. I believe once we take over Iraq, give it back to the Assyrians who would be a great strong ally with the US in the middle east.

I blame the middle east on the British for killing off the christians and putting muslims in power. They British thought they can rule easily over the muslims then the Assyrians. Well I guess now us Americans are suffering the

Armchair quarterbacks do their best work on the bench. It's the reality thing that messes them up.

Don't know what you mean by that. Even the best military campaign has its problem with unforseen difficulties. That is why the feild commander had the authority to change genrral orders if need be.

And I do not expect anybody in the pentagon to release the game plan before the shooting starts.

But there is a very improtant issue here. And that is the perceptions before and after the war will have profound influences around the world. Our perceptions, guesses and reactions are all part of the mix. There are many countires making decisions based on almost no information.

I am genuinely curious and concerned. It helps to talk about it. And any conjecture I created is a part of that process. I also would like to see how I do in terms of predicting what will happen. I predict that I will get the obvious 30 % and not do so well on everything else. This is (potential) war. People talk about it. And they should.