Edited for length from the International Herald-Tribune.
American and British commanders are devising a strategy that they hope will enable them to defeat the Iraqi military without utterly destroying it. Land-war commanders have been devising procedures to make it possible for entire Iraqi units to signal the allies that they prefer to stay out of the fight. Units that indicate they intend to stay on the sidelines will be exempt from air and land attack and may not even be taken prisoner, allied officers say.
Start with a big white flag, Achmed, and go from there.
| That's a crummy idea. I hope this is a bad report, or disinformation. Give them the choice: surrender or die. Neutrality is something you accord to countries, not to military units. That's a real good way to end up with an armed and dangerous enemy at your back. |
"If they show the right signals and do not want to be part of a defense of Saddam's regime and weapons of mass destruction, we will do everything in our power to not target those either with air or ground formations," Lieutenant General David McKiernan, commander of allied land forces, said in an interview.
| If we do that, it's going to cost us casualties, and maybe lots of them. You read it here first... |
Air-war commanders are planning to limit their attacks on Iraq's infrastructure to reduce the hardship for the Iraqi people. In the 1991 Gulf War, the United States attacked Iraq's power plants and electrical grid to try to deprive of power air defense units and other Iraqi forces. This time they intend to conduct more focused attacks, seeking seek to avoid interrupting the civilian electrical system.
| Are we going to have Commando Solo playing "Kumbaya" over and over, too? |
The strategy is intended, in part, to speed the advance toward Baghdad and hasten the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime by letting American and British forces bypass dispirited and ill-motivated Regular Army units.
| Who will then brighten up and bite us in the collective ass... |
The strategy is also born of the realization that it is important not only that U.S. and British forces prevail but how they prevail.
Otherwise Phil Donahue will get his show back and torture us all worse than Uday ever could.
| I sounds like Phil Donahue was the goddamn planner! |
Even as they make the final preparations for a military campaign, allied commanders are making plans to administer and rebuild Iraq after Saddam is deposed. Allied commanders want to elicit the support of the Iraqi public, which planners hope will be more accepting of foreign forces that have spared its sons. Allied military planners are also hoping that the soldiers in the Iraqi army can become part of the new military in a post-Saddam Iraq.
| If we beat the crap out of it, why would we want to keep it? If they don't start all over from scratch, they import the existing traditions, which aren't what you'd call savory... |
"At the end of this we want to have an Iraq that is a viable country to build up," McKiernan said. "I personally can see a utility of the Iraqi military for the future of Iraq. No doubt about it."
| If they keep it, they'd better remake it into an external defense force, not an instrument of "internal security" or something for a subsequent Iraqi government to rattle at its neighors. |
The allied goal of decisively defeating the Iraqi military without causing too many casualties is by all accounts a difficult mission. Some military experts question whether a blunt instrument like the military can be used in such a discriminating way. Even some air-war planners acknowledge that some Iraqi ground units may be pummeled because they are basically in the wrong place at the wrong time: that is, in the direct path of the invasion force driving into Iraq. Air and ground commanders have been studying their foe, trying to figure out which units are most likely to fight and how long they can wait before attacking them.
| I think, reading this mess, that I've come to the conclusion that we're going to lose a lot of people trying to fight a war without hurting anyone. |
"We are going to have to make some difficult choices, and sometimes we are going to simply have to destroy equipment and destroy Iraqi soldiers," Major General Dan Leaf, the senior air force officer in McKiernan's headquarters, said. "We have a plan and strategy and targeting methodology to minimize the loss of life and leave units in some cases almost intact. You can also target within a unit. The first units that affect us are artillery. If I were an Iraqi artillery man I might be looking for another line of work."
I would at least get far away from the artillery tubes.
Major General Robert Scales, the retired commandant of the Army War College, said the approach can work but is not easy to execute. Regarding efforts to target Iraqi ground forces, he said, it depends on a good intelligence about the foe's morale, the quality of its leadership and a sense of the unit's importance to the enemy's defensive scheme. "We will know from intelligence that some of Iraq's Regular Army units have been abandoned by both sides," Scales said. "The more difficult decision is how much of the Republican Guard and which ones to go after."
| How about all of them? War's over when the RG is all dead. |
American aircraft have been dropping leaflets urging the Iraqi military not to resist. But the allied forces have yet to spell out the precise procedures the Iraqis should adopt if they wish to avoid a confrontation.
| "Confrontation" is what you get when you occupy the dean's office. Confrontation isn't warfare. |
One concern is that detailing the procedures too soon would allow troops and security organizations loyal to Saddam's forces to use them to dupe and ambush American and British troops. There are a number of measures that could be demanded of the Iraqis as a war approaches; for example, asking them to turn the turrets of their tanks so that they do not threaten allied forces, or calling on Iraqi troops to move away from their heavy weapons and armored forces. A main concern is calling on the Iraqis to take steps that can be observed by allied warplanes.
"Take these white panels, Achmed, and lay 'em out on the ground."
"What sort of pattern, Ishmail?"
"How 'bout an arrow towards Saddam's nearest palace?"
Conway said that FA-18s, Harrier jets and Cobra helicopters from the Marines' air wing would identify Iraqi forces that are three to four days away from being confronted by Marine ground forces. If the Marines detect indications that the Iraqis do not want to fight, they will try to communicate with the Iraqi forces and work out an arrangement to sideline them for the war. "We would like to have them capitulate and take care of their own troops in something other than a prisoner of war camp," Conway said. "That makes it easier on them and makes it easier on us. We can say: 'Stay over there. We won't bother you. We won't attack you. But you have to understand that you are out of this and you are part of the new Iraq.'"
When was the last time an invading army showed this much concern for the soldiers of the other side?
| It's a crummy idea, and it's going to have crummy consequences. I hope it's discarded sometime around noon on Day 1. |
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