Damnit Mr. President. When are we gonna stop messing around with these punks!? They've gotta be stopped now!
Posted on 03/23/2003 1:46:43 PM PST by kattracks
Iraqis use guerrilla tactics to slow advance
By Douglas Hamilton
DOHA, March 23 (Reuters) - Washington's hopes that U.S.-led forces would be welcomed into Iraq as liberators bled into the sand on Sunday, the fourth day of war, as Iraqi troops fought back with determination and guerrilla tactics.
There was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction being used by Iraq in battle. Instead, Iraqi troops were fighting with machinegun-mounted Japanese pickup trucks against squadrons of the world's most formidable battle tank, the U.S. Abrams.
There were reports of between 10 and 15 U.S. troops killed in fighting to secure bridgeheads across the River Euphrates at Nassiriyah, with perhaps up to 50 more wounded.
U.S. General John Abizaid acknowledged it was the "toughest day of resistance" so far. He said Iraqi forces near Nassiriya inflicted several casualties in "the sharpest engagement of the war." There were 12 American troops missing, he added.
"Everybody was predicting they'd be welcomed as liberators but it's working out differently," said one senior Arab official in the Gulf. "The Americans had a hard day today."
Evoking Vietnam and Mogadishu, Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf warned U.S. forces they were driving into "a quagmire from which they can never emerge, except dead."
Iraqi forces evidently switched from their disastrous static defence of the 1991 Gulf War to classic guerrilla tactics, using loyalist militias to bolster regular forces.
"There are a number of incidents occurring to the rear of the main combat forces," Abizaid said at the Central Command briefing, indicating guerrilla-style attacks. He said Iraqis had pretended to surrender, then ambushed U.S. forces.
FEARFUL CAPTIVES
Despite at least 2,000 Iraqi surrenders, the picture was of a far more spirited fight by Iraq's troops than some analysts had predicted, slowing the invading forces' sweep from Kuwait through southern Iraq towards Baghdad.
Iraqis operating in small pockets or hit-and-run raids held up the U.S.-led advance in at least four places and captured their first U.S. prisoners, whom they displayed on television.
In grim pictures, Iraq showed four bodies of what it said were U.S. soldiers and five captives taken near Nassiriya, who said they were from a U.S. Army logistics support unit.
Abizaid called the pictures "disgusting."
The capture suggested that Iraqi forces, perhaps in small raiding groups, attacked the exposed flank of a U.S. armoured advance which has plunged some 200 km (120 miles) north into Iraq in just 72 hours, stretching its lines of support.
Reports and television images of battling Iraqi units in the south came from reporters travelling with those American and British units. There was no hard information on the progress of other units who were not accompanied by journalists.
A U.S. military spokesman told the Central Command briefing there were movements deep in to Iraq "that we're not showing."
Iraqis also paid with their lives for their attack on the U.S. tanks near Najaf, leaving bodies strewn across the desert.
But U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had to acknowledge that U.S. soldiers were dead and others captured and Britain said a Tornado ground attack plane with a crew of two had been downed by mistake by a U.S. Patriot missile.
Britain has already lost 16 men in non-combat incidents, with two helicopter crashes and the downing of the Tornado.
British Harrier ground-attack jets were brought in to pound an Iraqi redoubt near the Gulf port of Umm Qasr only after several hours of fighting, shown live on television, in which U.S. tanks apparently failed to break Iraqi resistance.
After night fell, some Iraqis were still holding out.
There was continuing Iraqi resistance at Basra, Iraq's second city in the far south, and, at Najaf, U.S. officers expressed amazement at pickup truck attacks, a tactic dating from the 1980's Chad civil war in the Sahara desert.
The Iraqis, while massively outgunned, were also using rocket propelled grenades, machineguns and small arms to good effect to pin down U.S. forces reluctant to risk casualties.
If the tactic worked well at Umm Qasr in the relatively open territory of a port-side industrial zone, its effectiveness could be multiplied on the outskirts of Baghdad where U.S. concern to avoid civilian casualties would be far greater.
Iraq's toughest troops are arrayed south of the capital.
In Kuwait, former oil minister Ali al-Baghli said the time taken to capture Umm Qasr might undermine any faith ordinary Iraqis had that the Americans could topple Saddam Hussein.
"We are astonished that there is still resistance in Umm Qasr after all this time. It is a very small place.
"If it takes them this long to capture Umm Qasr, how long will it take to capture Tikrit or Baghdad?"
Always expect an anti-American spin from the Saudi-controlled "Reuters". Take them with a grain of sand.
Stop "spamming" all of the threads with the same message, please. Why not contribute to the discussion instead?
We may take no quarters fools!
Do they have Sh!!-for-brains or what?
Did Reuters lift this from the official Baath party newsletter?
I don't know anyone in Washington who said, "Iraq's army will welcome us as liberators and will not fight back", yet Reuters is implying that someone did.
U.S. concern to avoid civilian casualties
Not a single drop of American blood should be shed because of political pressure causing hesitation and uncertainty.
"reluctant to risk casulties" - them's weasel words. They are reluctant to risk civilian casualties, but the article implies Americans are reluctant to risk their own forces to achieve the objective. I watched a small action on TV the other day, it was obvious they could have turned that town to ashes in a few minutes.
Also the tactic of sending a small force out to make contact, surrender, and targeting it with artillery is out of the iran-iran war playbook. I wonder what they tell the guys who surrender - "Oh, we'll be right behind you..."
Oh gee, but the Bush administration told us that everyone in Iraq would love and adore us.(Set Sarcasm=Off)
"Conservatives" have long pointed out that there is all the difference between banning guns with a law, and actually getting them out of the hands of criminals. So what can't "conservatives" on Free Republic (which I abandoned years ago as no longer conservative) understand that lashing out with hatred and violence at other nations, fomenting backlash and long-term animosity even while you seize an occasional weapons lab, etc., just makes the problem worse in the future?
Real progress in peace and security worldwide will be built from foundational principles lived out consistently by people who are sincere in desiring such, and by living out those principles to create a winsome atmosphere that others will seek to learn and replicate. A childish rambo mentality will not solve difficult problems, it will aggravate them. Shame on FR. You are just another faction of liberals now.
Then please abandon and stop posting.
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