These Republican Guards are the ones that have been protecting Saddam all these years, right? If that's so, I don't know how they can say getting rid of the folks wouldn't be Liberation. We SHOULD just blow these guys off the face of the earth, I agree. But if some get back into Baghdad, that shouldn't stop us from finishing the job, right? I think the average Iraqi on the street would be glad to see them go.The American intention is to bring the Republican Guards to battle outside Baghdad and not allow them to get back into the city.
That gives US forces an advantage because they can use their firepower in the desert or countryside. Otherwise, as one US colonel put it, it becomes a "knife fight in a telephone booth".
If the war ends in a damaging siege it will undermine, and possibly destroy, the concept that this is a war of liberation.
Street fighting in Baghdad in which civilians are killed is not supposed to be the way it ends.
Many folk in Baghdad have deserted the city and fled for the relative safety of rural surrounding areas is my understanding.
As JH2 says, just my 2 cents.
. . .and WELL worth the $$. :O)