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Saddam's strategy appears to center on drawing U.S. forces into Baghdad and other cities, where his equipment and troops would be surrounded by civilians and less exposed to United States warplanes...

No problem Omego. =] The countryside is the key to victory anyway. Like MacArthur said, "Hit'em where they 'aint.' If they want to surrender their oil fields, harbors, roads, and airports without a fight, so much the better. LOL. Once the oil fields, etc. are secure, we can be patient.

Now for the cities. First we tell the world he is a coward, telling his once proud army to hide behind women and children. Second, we drop leaflets warning civilians that they have 24 hours or 48 hours [or so] to clear out of the cities, and that food and shelter will be provided to them at a certain point. Third, when Saddam forces his women and children to remain near the soldiers [assuming he is that determined], we have three choices....

1. We invite the Turks to take and KEEP the cities while we secure the countryside, the oil, the roads, and the airports. [Or let the Turks have it all.]

2. We let the Iraqis sit in the cities under seige, and encourage revolt from within. Once the Kurds get rolling they can take the cites, one after another, piecemeal.

3. We reluctantly bomb and attack our targets, having at least tried to clear out the women and children, only to have the cowards hold them by force.

I prefer options 1 and 2, a combination of the two. We can also plan surgical strikes.

Truth is, without roads, airports, harbors, and oil, what strategic use is a city anyway? Nadda. Zip. Only good as a base for hit-and-run sorties. And they would be forced to do that, because time would be on our side. And we can dig in WW1 style like no one else in the world.

And now for a reality check. First off...if the mission is to take Iraq and force the leadership out, then you must take the cities, because as long as the leadership holds out the war is not over. You assume that the Iraqies will just roll over this time. I don't think they will. This is not '91. They have no reason to love Americans this time...they've watched 500,000 children die, their children...from pointless embargoes, when the West could have removed Saddam....next: the Turks are not going to take the cities for America...sorry to inform you, this time around there are no mercenaries to do the dirty work, only US/British troops. As for the Kurds, 1. they are split between pro Saddam Communists: KPP Kurdish People's Party and 2. Al-Quida allied religious fanatics...no convenient N. Alliance troops here. Not to mention, the Kurds are just happy sitting in their semi-autonomous region and have little wish to die conquering the rest of Iraq and a totally different ethnic group.

Next, what makes you think the civilians won't fight to defend their homes...this is not the Iraqi army dieing off on some fool hardy foreign adventure, this is the people's homes, personal property. Enough will fight to cause casualties and when it comes to urban warfare, casualties are the name of the game and taken land is counted in houses and at best blocks not kilometers.

As for a seige, they last way to long and make for very bad foreign press, not to mention the billions it would cost to surround and hold a seige on a city the size of Baghdad. Personally, this is the smartest thing Iraq can do. It's armies can't win straight out against the US but they can attempt to atrit the US as much as possible hoping that with enough body bags (as recent and not so recent US history proves in their favor) the US Congress and people will get turned off to the whole war...not to mention that prolonged street battles will be a drain on men and machines to the point that present US recruitment levels will not be enough, counting all the myrad US deployments, and a draft will eventually have to be implimented...further friction with the public.

Lastly you conveniently ignore the martyer syndrom. As it is, desperate peoples do desperate things, but when you throw in a religion that promises endless pleasures if you die in it's defense...watch out for a lot of suiciders coming your way.

But then again you ignore a few other military points: supply...expensive and a must...this is something on the other side of the world with no really friendly powers about to locally get the US what it needs, outside of maybe the oil. What does this mean? The longer a seige goes on, the more the local public opinion turns against the US. This will cause the other local powers to turn against the US and at best deny portage and at worst be out right hostile. The Persian Gulf is a long, narrow water way, easily cut off with mines and missiles. Turkey is a long mountainous road. If other countries attack: Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc...the war, troop needs and supply problems multipy almost as quickly as casualties.

I am not saying this can not be done, but you ignore tons of issues and over simplify into black and white the rest.

Siege warfare is a sure sign of operational failure. You would expect Saddam to fallback on his cities this time around since Desert Storm proved that the Iraqis can't fight a mobile battle.

What are we going to do if we kick the door in and then get bogged down? What if Saddam unleashes a bio-weapons attack on a US city while we are encircling one of his?

There aren't any easy answers. Your enemy will always seek to attack you where you are most vulnerable. If this were easy, Saddam would already be gone.