Kesher Talk

What Iraqi strategy? Jim Keegan wonders what kind of war the Iraqis are fighting, and concludes - carefully enumerating their many tactical mistakes - it's not much of one at all. Strong evidence that 1) Saddam is dead, and/or 2) has lousy generals, and/or 3) may have good generals but refused to listen to them (a predictable syndrome of megalomaniac dictators).

They did not defend their frontier with Kuwait. The coalition forces passed through unopposed. They scarcely defended Umm Qasr, Iraq's only and vital port. It fell to 40 and 42 Commando after three days. They have not fought any large-scale or even small-scale battles, though the territory of their country is being eaten up day by day. More mysteriously they have neither demolished nor seriously defended any of the bridges over the Tigris or the Euphrates, which are essential to the coalition's movements into the country.

If Saddam had some great counter-attack force preparing a trap for the coalition in the national heartland, one might fear that the abandonment of the bridges intact was a devilish plot, designed to make all come right for him in one sudden reversal of fortune. As he does not possess such a force, Iraq's defensive strategy, if it can be so called, appears casual to the point of carelessness. Moreover, looking through the other end of the telescope, what Iraq has failed to do amounts also to an inexplicable abdication of advantage.

(via Damian Penny)

posted by Judith @ 4/04/2003 09:11:15 AM