But this is common sense. This is MacArthur's "Island Hopping" on the ground, bypassing strong points, cut them off---they already have no C&C, no food, no reinforcements. These Basra guys are a sideshow, and STRATFOR nails this one.
In this morning's Pentagon news conference, some reporter kept harping about the "danger" of leaving "a boiling pot" behind to "endanger your lines of supply" as if a human wave of civilians was going to trek out of Basra and across the desert to cut of the supply line of an American armored division. No matter how much the spokesman said that the field commander must feel that the "risk" was justified, the reporter kept insisting that it was a "risk" not to capture Basra".
I kept wishing that the Pentagon spokesman would have used MacArthur as a historical example but he never did.
Here's a bit of historical trivia: Remember the 100,000 crack Japanese troops waiting to fight to the death at Rabaul, "The Impregnable Gibralter of the Pacific"?
After Mac Arthur bypassed them and left them cut off and stranded, they had to stay at Rabaul for two years after V.J. Day........It took an American loan before the Japanese government could afford to bring its boys home again from their humiliation on New Britain. :-)