We really need to start hitting the Republican Guard divisions hard. The media keeps talking about how there are "ongoing surrender discussions" with leaders of the Republican Guard, but if they haven't surrendered yet they're STILL an enemy force. If they don't surrender today, we should bomb that division for the entire night. If they don't surrender the following day, continue the attacks. These guys are just stalling, and it pisses me off that we're not moving on them. By the time our troops arrive, there should be nothing left but infantry running around on foot. All armor should be annihilated. For crying out loud, they only have 90 T-72 tanks in the entire military! If they don't surrender, tough ************. Start prepping the battlefield.
I agree wholeheartely. The time for surrendering has passed. Those RG units arn't going anywhere, and they aim to fight. Time to cluster bomb the ************ out of their positions tonight,and maybe we could deploy some of those nifty fuel-air explosives too.
Please, GringoTex, tell me how you would solve the coming encounter with the Republican Guard divisions? Maybe we should go in with ground forces hoping for their peaceful surrender? Hell, it doesn't matter if our soldiers die by the hundreds, as long as Saddam's ruthless minions are given a chance to surrender. Air dominance? Who needs that anyway? [/sarcasm] Seriously though, I want to see what your solution is to the Republican Guard divisions. PS: I read an article (don't remember where) that B52's were one of the key factors in the surrenders of huge amounts of troops in the Gulf War. Even if the soldiers aren't as easily demoralized this time, it will at least decimate Iraqi armor.
Where did you get the idea that the US Army is slowing down to allow top level defections? After dashing a couple hundred miles, it takes a little time to concentrate for the next push - especially if the next push will be the hardest of the war.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/b-52-ops.htm Arc Light In Operation Desert Storm. B-52s struck wide-area troop concentrations, fixed installations and bunkers, and decimated the morale of Iraq's Republican Guard. During the first early morning raid, Stratofortresses flew 2,500 miles from the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia to pummel forward Iraqi bases and runways. Sometimes skimming the ground at 400 feet, B-52s dropped cluster bombs that paralyzed and destroyed four airfields and improvised highway landing strips. A few hours later, seven Barksdale AFB aircrews delivered the first conventional air-launched cruise missiles fired from a B-52G in combat. The mission, which had bombers launching from and returning to Barksdale, was at the time the longest distance combat mission in history: 35 hours and 14,000 miles. For the next several weeks, B-52s continued battering Iraqi's elite Republican Guard. Around-the-clock hammerings became a powerful psychological weapon as ground forces gradually wore down and surrendered in droves. The en masse desertions were attributed to the devastating B-52 air strikes. All total, B-52s flew 1,624 Desert Storm missions, delivered 72,000 weapons weighing 25,700 tons, and accounted for 29 percent of all U.S. bombs dropped and 38 percent of all Air Force bombs. And despite being more than 30 years old, it had a mission capable rate of 81 percent - 2 percent higher than its peacetime rate. Two Barksdale B-52H's, the first of that model to fly in combat, struck Iraqi targets on Sept. 2, 1996, with 13 conventional air-launched cruise missiles as part of Operation Desert Strike, a 34-hour, 16,000-mile round-trip mission from Andersen AFB. The flight was the longest distance ever flown for a combat mission. Only two days prior, the BUFF crews had completed a 17-hour flight from Louisiana just to reach Guam. http://www.af.mil/news/airman/0597/b52b.htm "I have a friend who served in Desert Storm with Army Special Forces," said Col. David Evans, commander of Barksdale's 2d Operations Group. "While he was asleep in a foxhole behind Iraqi lines, B-52 strikes from 12 miles away shook him awake. Imagine how Republican Guard troops felt at ground zero." http://www.danshistory.com/vietnam.shtml#arclight Operation Arc Light June 18, 1965 - August 15, 1973 Linebacker II December 18, 1973 - December 28, 1973
Maybe the US troops need the rest, too? Stormin Norman went on MSNBC and said the troops should not wait, but move in as soon as they get there, if possible.
I think the Army is moving extremely quickly, maybe almost too quickly. I'm just worried that the ground troops will move into Baghdad before the planes get a chance to hit the Republican Guard units. We haven't heard much about attacks on the Guard units, so I was assuming we were laying off the air attacks to hopefully allow defections and save the lives of a few Iraqi soldiers. If the Guard is at full strength when thet 3rd Infantry division arrives, it's going to get really bloody. Also not encouraging is the fact that almost all our helicopters which attacked the Medina division came back with some damage.
It's important to remember that, as fun as it is playing armchair General, men like General Franks and Vice Admiral Keating have more military knowledge in their pinkie nail than most people on this board. Alex
I don't have 'real' military experience, but what the hell was the 101st doing in Kuwait so long? Planning? I figured we'd start dumping in reinforcements in Southern Iraq ASAP to cool off that area.
They won't move in IMHO without air support having gone in and softened them up. I'd say the time to lay off for defections is over....and yeah our 'copters took some damage but we don't know what kind of damage they inflicted on the Iraqi Army.
No, but they did manage to take out 10 Iraqi tanks per this article:http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030325/ap_on_re_mi_ea/war_rdp&cid=716&ncid=716 This IMHO is an easy situation to resolve--just get their coordinates or general location and bomb the hell out of them with planes.
I've heard reports that they don't want to move just yet in case there are more people like the nutjob who fragged his officers the other day. They want to make sure he was an "isolated incident" and that there is no danger that there is some kind of conspiracy to attack more American troops from within their own ranks.
As we get closer to the rep. guard and saddam, I fear that Saddam (since he doesnt play by the rules) is going to make it his goal to increase civilian casualties and turn this into a "blackhawk down" rerun with door to door firefights.. In return this forces the U.S. to weight the option: do we play along, definitly risking increased u.s. casualties but save more civilians, attempting to show the world that we arent killing at will? -or- Do we save our troops, say f' it, and drop MOABS on the hospitals and mosques in order to blast out the bunkers underneath, where the majority of the re. guard is hiding out? A tough call indeed, but every more U.S. casualty I see, I am opting for the latter.... Especially as time goes by...
If we start dropping MOABS on hospitals and mosques, we've lost the moral high ground that we're supposedly on. That would be an international public relations disaster of monumental proportions. Which means the Bush adminstration will probably do it.
Don't worry, I don't think it would really bring down the Bush administrations reputation any further...
Remember that in Mogadishu, we lost 18 troops compared to 5000 Somalis. And this time around, we are prepared for such a situation (you think US troops haven't been re-enacting the Battle of the Mog in training for the past 10 years?) and our troops will have better air cover. A Battle of Baghdad would be tough, but we would win, and with fewer casualties than people think. No way. If an entire company of Republican Guards is hiding in a mosque, or if Saddam has a chemical weapons plant in a hospital, that mosque and that hospital just became a military target. Now obviously if we're just talking about 2 or 3 soldiers hanging it in there then no, we don't bomb it, but if there's a significant objective in there that would cause severe US casualties if we tried to take it with ground troops, we take it out. The PR damage can be smoothed over later, but lives can never be brought back. In short, I think we use a combination of the 2 approaches. If we can safely get the objective with special operations or ground troops then we do it, but if we would lose dozens of guys, bring out the Tomahawks. Alex
They will set up attack positions - put out perimeter security - get 3 - 4 hours of sleep - wait for the sandstorm to subside - and then attack at night when the storm has hopefully died down.