Standoff at Baghdad?

[Edan]

Re: Standoff at Baghdad?

Originally posted by Jack the Bodiless

What will happen at Baghdad?

There's a large shiite population in Bagdad - they hate Saddam, so they might be able to kill Saddam before we ever reach to baghdad. Or we could Isolate baghdad and wait it out while we disarm the rest of the country. And at that point, AFAIK, he'll be a lot less able to attack other locations with missiles, etc when confined in a city.

Or we could go in through urban fighting - slow and dangerous, but not impossible.

[raghar]

Let's get some facts straight. This country become crowded with weapons. Sadame relased most or nearly all his political or other prisoners. Iraqi people HATE US. They remmember every day of embargo and what do you think they would do if they would find that amount of money gifts would be VERY little. (Compare to country needs). You think that US soldiers would come to country, arrest some "war criminals", give some sucker and candy to Iraqi people and all would welcome them?

If they would turn to democracy it would be democracy with 60/100, at least, people that would do nearly EVERYTHING to pay US back. If you'd like democracy you are preparing your own doom. I think there would be puppet gov with some people like Sadam, but US would like them.

Do you have names of Iraqi puppet gov? You should. This is not thing that could be safely done at last minute.

I think Bush would like to be elected again and this is nice cover.

/still have bad grammar and poor Internet conection/

[Dinner]

I hold up Italy, Germany, Japan, and Panama as places where the people had been taught to hate the U.S. but where we never the less were able to rebuild as democratic allies. An occupied Iraq is likely to follow a similiar pattern. First you set up a military government followed in a year or so by a provisional appointed government and finally a constitutional democracy.

All the way until the end the allies can maintain a veto option over the actions of the provisional government. That should prevent them from making any rash decisions until the country is stablized and the Saddam regime's propoganda is countered.

[Dr Strangelove]

If American troops need to take Baghdad they will do so at night, and instead of fighting along the streets they will fight their way through the buildings, using shaped charge explosives to blow holes through walls, there by bypassing defenses.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Gatekeeper
Hmm ... well, according to an "exclusive" CBS report, the presumed war with Iraq had been pushed back to some time in mid-March and will involve 600 to 800 Tomahawk cruise missile strikes in the first two days alone, centered on Baghdad, I think. (And the cruise missile strikes are only *part* of the overall opening package.)

It's part of some scheme that has a name I can't remember right now. "A-Day," is the name of the opening day of the war, but the technique described above was called something else (it involved psychological warfare).

Gatekeeper

Well if we are now leaking such information to the press as part of a psychological warfare campaign, why not say something like 5000 cruise missiles per day?

Now that would really make the blood run cold.

[Ned]

Originally posted by raghar
Let's get some facts straight. This country become crowded with weapons. Sadame relased most or nearly all his political or other prisoners. Iraqi people HATE US. They remmember every day of embargo and what do you think they would do if they would find that amount of money gifts would be VERY little. (Compare to country needs). You think that US soldiers would come to country, arrest some "war criminals", give some sucker and candy to Iraqi people and all would welcome them?

If they would turn to democracy it would be democracy with 60/100, at least, people that would do nearly EVERYTHING to pay US back. If you'd like democracy you are preparing your own doom. I think there would be puppet gov with some people like Sadam, but US would like them.

Do you have names of Iraqi puppet gov? You should. This is not thing that could be safely done at last minute.

I think Bush would like to be elected again and this is nice cover.

/still have bad grammar and poor Internet conection/

Raghar, you seem to speak with personal knowledge. What country do you come from?

[Dinner]

If you're going to make a threat then the threat has to be credable. I think there would be physical constraints to launching 5000 per day and sustaining it while retaining enough reserve missiles in supply.

There is also the matter of identifying 5000 targets that militarially justify missile stricks. It seems better to launch a couple of dozen, observe their effectiveness, then launch a few dozen more, etc...

[Ned]

Originally posted by Oerdin
If you're going to make a threat then the threat has to be credable. I think there would be physical constraints to launching 5000 per day and sustaining it while retaining enough reserve missiles in supply.

There is also the matter of identifying 5000 targets that militarially justify missile stricks. It seems better to launch a couple of dozen, observe their effectiveness, then launch a few dozen more, etc...

I think we told the Japanese that we would continue to obliterate one city a week until they surrendered - even though we had no nukes left.

The bluff worked.

[DanS]

Horse brings up some interesting questions. About the city of Baghdad itself, the majority is a Shiite shanty-town, IIRC. This would make it ripe for Iranian subversion and also unrest re Israel, etc. But it also seems to me that we could buy their allegiance cheaply with the oil money that was previously only distributed to the ruling class.

Iran is a real wild card. Interesting to see what they will do.

[chequita guevara]

Just because Iraq's Arabs are mostly Shi'ite doesn't mean they'd be happy to have the Iranians messing in their business. Iraq's been a pretty happy secular place, and the Iraqi women aren't about to put up with having their rights taken away (such as they have).

[Alexander's Horse]

Actually the Iranians are already active across the border. After Afghanistan fell, they lodged a Taliban style guerilla group in Northern Iraq, which the Kurds are currently fighting with the assistance of US advisors.

Iran is not going to be idle if US forces are on their Western border.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by DanS
Iran is a real wild card. Interesting to see what they will do.

I suspect they will shut up and play nice so that they do not become target #2. But you never know with those crazy mullahs.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Oerdin


I suspect they will shut up and play nice so that they do not become target #2. But you never know with those crazy mullahs.

I would think that they would actively support the Shi'tes in Iraq. If they did so, they would have a lot of influence in the post-Saddam government.

[Sandman]

If I was in the Iranian's shoes, I'd probably try for a landgrab along the Iraqi border, in order to secure defensive positions before the US could grab them. Then it's a matter of reinforcing the frontier even more than it is already from the Iran-Iraq war. If the US starts *****ing about it, just tell them that 'we'll leave when you do'.

Iran is an extremely tough country, but the US might get cocky, especially since it will have Iran 'sandwiched'.

[Dinner]

Iran is very mountainous so it would not be a very good country to modern land warfare. Best to carrot and stick them with economic terms while keeping the idea of force fresh in their minds.