Posted on 03/02/2003 3:51:16 AM PST by kattracks
WASHINGTON - U.S. forces will have an even easier fight this time than they did in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when coalition bombs sent many Iraqi troops running for home, a former Iraqi general predicts."There will be a decisive and fast war - the regime will fall within a week or less," former Iraqi Brig. Gen. Najib Al-Sahli said in a recent interview with the Daily News. "The Iraqi Army corps, they will fail right away."
The million-man, sad-sack Iraqi Army was a pushover 12 years ago. Now only a third of its former size, it faces a better-equipped, thoroughly trained, technologically superior U.S. force, he said.
Al-Sahli, 51, should know. He commanded a rear-guard division in Basra and western Kuwait during the 1991 war, and watched as at least half the troops in his army corps deserted when coalition planes rained thousands of bombs on their tanks, armored vehicles and bunkers.
"The damage to our tanks was extreme," said Al-Sahli, who defected in 1995.
Once the air campaign softened the way for ground troops, his division was routed by Egyptian tank columns as Americans and British divisions stormed other targets.
Dictator Saddam Hussein ordered a sweeping counterattack, but Al-Sahli and the other generals refused, knowing their depleted units would be slaughtered if they carried out the directive.
"We said no to the counterattack because so many officers and soldiers had left their positions," he said through his interpreter. "As generals, we knew there was no way to compare the better American forces to Iraqi forces."
Al-Sahli also says the Bush administration and U.S. media have overstated the threat of weapons of mass destruction.
Jet fighters and field artillery are the most dependable way to deliver chemical and biological warfare, but U.S. air superiority would again cripple the Iraqi air force, and ground troops would not be able to get big guns close enough to hit American forces, Al-Sahli said.
Although I trust this general on matters like the strength and readiness of the Iraqi (conventional) army, I don't think he knows too much about the current state of Iraq's WMD program. How could he?
Note that he doesn't really comment of Saddam's WMD capacity, he just says the delivery capability is overstated, which he would have more tactical knowlege of.
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