Useful Fools

If Saddam does not leave Iraq in the next 23.5 hours (and he probably wont), it will be because he thinks he can survive IN IRAQ!

Here is my guess about his plans:

Saddam plans to hide deep underground in fortified Baghdad (he has at least one bunker that could survive all but a hit from a large nuclear weapon). He will try to make the battle for Baghdad like the bloody and interminable Battle of Stalingrad. He knows that many of our advantages are lost fighting in a city.

Military equipment is being placed adjacent to civilian targets, so that even with precision weapons our destruction of those weapons will cause a lot of collateral damage. Longer range weapons, such as artillery and rockets, will be firing chem/bio ordinance so that we will feel forced to destroy them.

He may also use chem/bio weapons to cause mass civilian casualties and refugee flows from other cities - especially Kurdish cities in the North, and Basra (Shia) in the south.

He also may use chem/bio weapons in the coalition countries in an attempt (which would fail in a terrible way) to sap our will.

He expects large numbers of American casualties as a result of street fighting and his weapons of mass destruction. He expects that weeks of continuous American casualties, and lots of Iraqi civilian casualties will destroy America’s will to fight. His primary strategy is to overload the world’s compassion and our willingness to lose Americans.

Ultimately, he hopes to negotiate with us from fortress Bagdad, using his own citizens and our soldiers as his bargaining chips. If he feels all is lost, he may trigger the release of doomsday weapons, such as smallpox, or he might attack Israel with his most deadly weapons, hoping to trigger a nuclear counterstrike.

Our strategy will be to use mobility and precision weapons to avoid the necessity of capturing large areas of Baghdad. We will also quickly remove the ability of higher levels of command to communicate. We will completely obliterate any military or civilian command facility such as Saddam’s palaces. We will destroy all known long range missiles and occupy western Iraq to protect Israel.

Depending on intelligence, we may use bunker-busters to attack deeply buried structures, although they would be unable to take out Saddam’s 300 foot deep bunker (we might be able to trap him there, however).

We will use brute force and elite forces such as rangers or marines to directly assault and capture critical locations including Saddam’s hideouts.

We will also do our best to encourage and help enemy units to surrender, especially the Republican Guards, by a combination of negotiation and awesome intimidation strikes. If this succeeds, ultimately the only loyal Iraqi troops left in Baghdad may be the Special Republican Guard Division, about 15,000 loyal troops. U.S. forces would make quick work of them, as might the citizens of Baghdad.