[xm177e2]

This is BS. We're not worried about the Republican Guard fighting against us in conventional battles. Hiding in cities is exactly Saddam's best strategy: to make the war as costly as possible for us, to slow us at every opportunity, to raise the morale of the populace to fight against us, in hopes that we will give up and go home.

[goldstategop]

That has been the heart of Saddam's strategy. He's slowed us down a bit but hasn't been able to stop our advance on his capital. And the uprising in Basra reveals that he can't tie us down in the southern cities indefinitely. All he can really do is pray we can't get into Baghdad fast enough to blindside its defenders.

[driftless]

You are correct. Saddam is not that big of an idiot that he doesn't know massing his troops and armor will result in a very short war and his quick death. The Japanese used the same tactics when they realized mass assaults against Marines in the Pacific during WWII made for very short battles. I'm sure Hussein already has plans in the works to slaughter more of his own people in front of the coalition advance and other dirty tricks to make us seem to be the villains. His only hope to live longer is to prolong things.

[fporretto]

It's even more insidious than that, XM. You might call this "Tet II." The Iraqis cannot defeat us in the field... but they might be able to operate on our home front, as the North Vietnamese did, by:

1. Inflicting unacceptable losses on American troops, or:
2. Forcing our troops to slaughter civilians in sufficient numbers to invoke huge moral qualms against prosecuting the war to a conclusion.

The United States fights under moral constraints. Saddam Hussein does not. Yet one more asymmetry for the Era of Asymmetric Warfare.

For further thoughts, please see:

The Evolution Of Victory

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason:
http://palaceofreason.com