Posted on 07/25/2002 6:54:11 AM PDT by Tallguy
Conquering Iraq - American Strategies by Tom Holsinger's June 27, 2002
Inspiring Saddam Hussein's own people to assassinate him is the safest opening move for the American conquest of Iraq. Deploying overpowering force is the most effective way to this, as that would phenomenally enhance a psychological warfare campaign against Saddam?s regime-protection services. The bodyguard standing behind Saddam is in a better position to kill him than we are, can do it earlier, and only needs tacit motivation from us.
A reinforced corps in Kuwait, with a Marine division-equivalent off-shore, could conquer Iraq fast, while also being such a psych-war force multiplier that a reasonable chance exists that forcible conquest would not be necessary. This psych-war campaign would likewise be a force multiplier for invasion if that is required.
A large deployment would also deter nearby terrorist-supporting states from causing trouble while we eliminate Saddam's regime. These are good reasons for giving CentCom's commander, General Tommy Franks, most everything he wants.
But we shouldn't twaddle getting it there. The time for delay is after we're ready to invade, to concentrate the minds of Saddam's henchmen on their fates while fostering related deception plans.
Understanding the differing objectives of the participants is crucial to strategy formulation. Ours conflict only a little with those of Saddam's deputies.
Our goals require occupation and control of Iraq, to secure Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD - biological, nuclear and chemical) plus production infrastructure and personnel, and to track any which escape our conquest. We also want the complete records of Saddam's many intelligence services plus the intelligence personnel themselves. This prospect worries guilty consciences around the world.
We therefore want Saddam's minions alive and safe, which cheers them immensely. Keeping their loot can also be arranged.
Saddam's goal is his own survival (losing power means he dies). Al Qaeda cares nothing for either - they want to kill Americans, and will use whatever WMD Saddam gives them on their schedule, not his. Giving them WMD means Saddam loses control of the sequence, timing and extent of WMD attacks on the U.S. just when he most needs that to influence American policy. It would be more in Saddam's interest to use the threat of giving WMD to Al Qaeda as a deterrent to invasion.
Further anthrax attacks on America, before or shortly after we invade Iraq, would far more likely be done by Iraqi agents directly than by Al Qaeda. While Saddam will give anthrax to Al Qaeda after the invasion starts, it will take them months to use it in America. Our best protection from Iraqi anthrax is to kill Saddam before he orders its use or delivers more to Al Qaeda.
Coordinated psychological warfare and deception plans could produce everything we want while enabling a fallback speedy conquest with reduced risk of anthrax attack on our homeland. Here is one way to do that. There are others.
Mission - motivate Saddam's henchmen to kill him. Solution - convince them that they'll be killed if they don't. Means of doing that - convince them that our conquest of Iraq is inevitable and that, if they don't kill Saddam first, we'll disarm them after the conquest and let their victims kill them. Communication technique - send the corps to Kuwait.
Simultaneous means - convince them that paradise awaits if they kill Saddam and then surrender to us unconditionally. That really would be a best-case scenario for Iraq. Throw in a few billion dollars in bribes which we can easily afford (this is not the time to be stingy), plus protection, and this would be true for the henchmen too. Communication technique - Congressional screams about the bribes.
Mission - motivate Saddam's people to kill him immediately if he orders anthrax use on us, and also make Saddam fear that will happen. Solution - convince the henchmen that their families will be killed if they don't (threatening the henchmen, alone, with postwar trial is laughable). Means - genocidal nuclear retaliatory strike on the areas populated by Iraq's 20% Sunni Arab minority (almost all the henchmen are Sunni Arab - most are from Tikrit), including blanketing the area with fallout plume lethal zones from megaton-yield groundbursts. Communication technique - loud credible threats with well-publicized movement of the delivery capability to the Gulf, and training of invasion forces for NBC combat.
Mission - convince Saddam that he has a chance to survive without using anthrax. Here it gets complicated. Getting Saddam to believe he has any chance at all, while simultaneously convincing his henchmen to believe precisely the opposite, could be a problem.
Solution - be insincere. Blatantly insincere. Joe Isuzu insincere.
Saddam, you see, wants to believe. As long as we tell Saddam what he wants to hear, he'll likely believe that and ignore all evidence to the contrary. He did in 1990-91, and we have his then intelligence chief advising us now on what Saddam wants to hear. The man defected.
So here's a possible deception plan. Convince Saddam that a pre-emptive chemical weapons attack on our forces in Kuwait, notably with persistent agents on our vehicle parks, would delay our invasion for months. And convince him that such would not result in a nuclear response, i.e., raise the nuclear threshold for this while conspicuously lowering it for anthrax.
The idea is to give Saddam both hope and a means of realizing it, in order to distract him from doing something really dangerous. Saddam has reason to believe that his forces got off some scattered chemical attacks in 1991 without any retaliation by us, and will act on what he wants to believe happened regardless of what actually did happen.
Iraq's WMD mandate a decapitation attack as part of America's strategy for conquest. We as yet lack the political will to do this with nuclear weapons, and so must use accomplices. This is one way to do that. Failure could kill millions, both here and in Iraq.
Tom Holsinger is a California attorney and wargaming grognard. He began writing for Strategy Page in April 2002 when Jim Dunnigan asked him to rewrite an email for publication.
Anthrax alert. Personally, I believe the anthrax is already distributed and the agents are merely waiting for their marching orders.
Not being obnoxious, I also believe Saddam and Bush have been playing some type of covert cat and mouse game. Possibly, more than likely, I think the anthrax from last year was of an Iraqi source and a sort of warning...ofcourse, I dont know any of this to be true, just a feeling.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/7/14/214727.shtml
John O. Edwards FEMA, the federal agency charged with disaster preparedness, is engaged in a crash effort to prepare for multiple mass destruction attacks on U.S. cities - including the creation of sprawling temporary cities to handle millions of displaced persons, NewsMax has learned. FEMA is readying for nuclear, biological and chemical attacks against U.S. cities, including the possibility of multiple attacks with mass destruction weapons. The agency has already notified vendors, contractors and consultants that it needs to be prepared to handle the logistics of aiding millions of displaced Americans who will flee from urban areas that may be attacked. The agency plans to create emergency, makeshift cities that could house hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Americans who may have to flee their urban homes if their cities are attacked. Ominously, FEMA has been given a deadline of having the cities ready to go by January 2003 – in about six months. A source familiar with the deadline believes the effort is related to making the U.S. prepared for counterattacks if the U.S. invades Iraq sometime next year. FEMA is currently seeking bids from major real estate management firms, and plans to name three firms in the near future to handle the logistics and planning for these temporary cities. FEMA officials have told these firms they already have tents and trailers ordered. The tents and trailers would provide shelter for displaced populations. The real estate firms are expected to provide engineers and architects to lay the plans for emergency infrastructure needs, such as sewage and electricity.
FEMA Preparing for Mass Destruction Attacks on Cities
This scares the absolute crap out of me. Combine somone advocating a decapitation attack on Saddam with govt. preparations for whole cities being evacuated and it looks like anthrax city when we invade Iraq.
Monday, July 15, 2002
No comment one way or the other on the article, be I have doubts about the authors credentials. There are better sources in the public domain than a wargame hobbiest website.
Yeah, but those "better sources" to which you refer either aren't talking, or are mixing in a heavy dose of disinformation. This author does address the major strategic concerns as far as this civilian can tell. Moreover, his blueprint fits recent troop movements, theater basing, and troop training -- all of which is near impossible to hide.
Hmmm, one simple way would be to have a sleeper agent tip a briefcase full of the stuff onto the tracks of a deserted NYC subway station round closing time, so that the aerosol gets dispersed pneumatically for maximimum exposure to the four million people who use the system the next day. Expect a death toll in the hundreds of thousands to millions, plus total economic loss of the city. That's from one sleeper -- one "human missile," to use Iraqi parlance.
Of course, we know from 9-11 and the fires of Kuwait that Saddam thinks bigger than a single attack by a single agent. This is not unanticipated: since receiving the anthrax threats, Bush has ordered 100 million doses of Cipro and 25 million doses of a new anthrax "morning after" vaccine. He's also ordered 300 million doses of smallpox vaccine.
9-11 was the mother of all surprise attacks. Expect the mother of all battles before we are finally rid of its ultimate author.
Here's a bit more background reading, if you want to figure out what's really going down:
Contradicting Some U.S. Officials, 3 Scientists Call Anthrax Powder High-Grade
Leaving aside for a moment the fact that I doubt we have a reinforced corps free to put anywhere, he is still ignoring the fact that if we did then cram all of then into a country as small as Kuwait would be putting all our eggs into one very small basket and would make attacking them easier for Iraq. Please save us from military 'experts' such as this.
Maybe by inspection of the obvious, but not by the thorough analysis of all friendly/enemy capabilities and possible courses of action. I am not saying he is wrong, but anyone can armchair a hundred scenarios to fit the observable. Few of these speculators can still correctly predict the ultimate course of action that the professional strategists will recommend to the Commander in Chief (as witnessed as recently as last fall). I just caution the obvious, don't believe everything you read from every commentator that can get a headline. And since time is usually a luxury for me, I try to choose better sources than a gaming promo writer.
FRegards,
On a more serious note, I tend to believe the administration has already received an if you...then you can expect...message. Should be interesting-I, personally, don't tend to think we will make a move on Iraq anytime in the near future. I think it is checkmate.
I will avoid riding any subway system when the war with Iraq starts. I've already told my sister not to ride the Wasington metro when eveything starts up. But I think its more likely Saddam will order the release when he knows his time is almost up.
Need I say more. He is one of the stupidist congressmen NC has ever sent to DC. He will play the good guy as long as he looks good. He sits in on a meeting and spills out questions as if they are answers. Makes it sound as if he is in charge. FEMA is in charge not edwards why would he even write such crap is beyond me.
Maybe he should stay with playing war and leave the real stuff to the professionals. Logistically speaking it ain't that easy. Can we do it? Sure. But it ain't going to be Afghanistan.
Either what Edwards said in Newsmax is true or it isn't. The sun still rises in the east even if a leftie idiot like Noam Chomsky says so.
If FEMA really is doing this, it's time to worry.
Don't be too quick to dismiss war "gaming". Some of it is for real. In spite of the name, the military does a lot of it at the leadership level, and it is no "game". Think of it as extensive scenario testing prior to starting the real thing.
Don't know about this guy specifically, although he seems to be both informed and connected.
It very well could be.
Time is not on our side. If we wait too long, the problem gets worse.
But if we move before we have vaccines and antibiotics in place, our civilian population gets decimated.
A time of particularly high danger will be just BEFORE we are protected at home. If Saddam thinks we are on the verge of eliminating his deterent threat, he may very well strike first. Hence, I expect to find out how far along our preparations are only after they are done.
The gripes about Holsinger seem to concern his credentials, though there was a hoot by someone who says Kuwait is too small to deploy a corps. My experience with credential complaints about news commentary is that those generally come from people who feel threatened. They're afraid they can't refute what was said so they attack the guy who said it.
You can generally tell when someone's an idiot about these things. This isn't.
Agreed.
Also agree about the corps comment. However, if we put that many troops in Kuwait, my guess is that they would be "influencing" Saudi Arabia as much as Iraq. They would also help keep our "friends" in the UAE, et al, from panicking, and discourage Iran from anything rash.
My guess is that the actual ground attack on Iraq will be based in Turkey. The logistics are less vulnerable to attack from the surrounding nations.
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