[wimpycat]

"Why didn't Saddam order all the bridges to be blown up along the route to the capital?" another studio guest wondered.

Because they're not as "elite" as they have been billed? I asked myself the same question. I'm no military expert, but from what little I know about WWII and other wars, if you know you can't hold the bridge, you blow it up. It seems to be common knowledge amongst the military people. If I had been whoever is in charge in Baghdad, I would have ordered the bridges blown up, if for no other reason than to make as big a mess as possible for the Coalition to clean up. I wonder why their Russian advisers didn't advise them to blow up the bridges? For all we know, they did, but the Iraqis were too stupid and unrealistically confident in their abilities against the Coalition to listen.

[El Sordo]

Check out: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/885504/posts for what seems to be a sound reasoning of why the Iraqi army is all but impotent.

[gcruse]

I saw this addressed the other day.
You get the bridges all wired up with explosives,
which was the case on many of these bridges.
Then, you wait until all your forces are on your side of
the river to blow the bridge, before the enemy can cross.
Since this requires a knowledge of what is going on on the
battlefield and where the different forces are deployed,
the decision to blow a bridge has to come from a high
command level. With, the theory goes, the high command
decapitated at the start of the war, and understanding
the total lack of initiative bred into commanders in a
dictatorship, there was no one to give the order.
The bridges remained intact.

[XBob]

40- why blow up bridges when you are winning?