How fast will the war go? How bad will civilians casualties be? What will the Arab "street" do? How will Iraqi civilians greet us? What will happen between the Kurds and Turkey? What will we find, as far as Saddam's weapons development?
Well I guess if I could be certain on the future I would be in Vegas right now laying down some bets, but I'll predict this. The war will be fast. All resistence will collapse within the first couple of days except for probably in Baghdad and Saddam's home town. They'll put up a fight but not much of one. I'll say the war will offically end in 1 month or less. The number of civilian casulties is really hard to predict. The US may inflict more civilian casulties because the plan is for a large number of bombs to be dropped in the first couple of days. I would think with so many bombs in such a short time frame that mistakes are more likely to occur. Who else knows what Hussein and his Generals are planning against his own people to make it look like the US committed the act? The peak of human casulties will occur in the first couple of days and after that it will be "minor". In total I predict minimal casulties. Can anyone tell me what were the number of civilian casulties in the 1st Gulf War? If I could lay one bet down, it would be that Arab Streets will protest what is happening. The usual scene of burning American flags and death to America. And this I don't believe it is propoganda, it is what the sentiment really is. Iraqi civilians will greet the US soldiers with open arms. But it will be short lived and in the end IMO it will kind of like the Eastern European countries greeting the USSR when they were "saved" from Germany. Fox News and Republicans will make a big deal about some people "celebrating" in the streets. Kurds and Turkey, really depends on what Turkey's involvement is. This is the most challenging task of our involvement in Iraq. The Kurds in Iraq will not be allowed to break away, they will be given maybe a certain autonomy. The Kurds in Turkey will remain in the same situation. This will continue to be a future problem much like Kosovo is. Will find weapons development. Though it will not be overwhelming nor underwhelming. Enough for both sides to say that we should have gone to war or it was worth it. The finding of weapons will be gradual and for a number of months.
bombs will drop, the war will end rather quickly, civilians will die (surprise, shocker, after all it is a war..) and the world will hopefully be better off in the long run with the war having occured. Republicans will claim that they shaped and improved the Arab world before credit can be accurately accounted for, Democrats will continue to nitpick and use isolated examples and generalizations as to why the Bush administration is terrible... BS posters will continue to duck questions when confronted, and fill cyberspace with biased links to stories that serve their on views... All in All the expected will happen...
The war will last twenty minutes and involve no US or Iraqi civilian casualties. Iraq will instantly become a fully functioning secular Jeffersonian demcoracy as Iraqis vote to entirely disband their armed forces and give oil away free to the US in erturn for their freedom. The entire religion of Islam will dissolve as all Muslims convert en masse to Southern Baptists. All terrorists ever will instantly recognize the futility of their actions and turn themselves in to the FBI and CIA. North Korea will rise and overthrow Kim and integrate themselves seemless into South Korea within three weeks. The US economy will magicaly grow at a 38% rate for the next three years and we will be able to spend as much as we want on whatever we want and still run huge surpluses. France will surrender and the EU will apply to become the 51st state. Oops, wait. Damn. Sorry, folks. I was somehow channeling Dubya there for a second.
Don't quote me but I saw a documentary where they guesstimated casualties during the 91' war at 25,000 dead Iraqi military personnel and 2,500 civilians.
Baghdad will fall in a week. Then, US forces will make a right turn to Teheran, where they will find Bin Laden. Blitzkrieg, Total War, Total Victory Heil Bush! In the meantime, North Korea will nuke Tokyo.
The war will go very very quickly. We will do very much a simultaneous combined arms operation. It won't be a month of bombing followed by the entry of ground troopsas in the '91 war; the troops will start moving on Day 1, with close air support at the ready. I also think it will be VERY transparent BEFORE we bomb about which MILITARY targets OUTSIDE of Baghdad we will hit. For example, if you are an Iraqi pilot, you had better leave your jet on the ground, on the airbase, and you'd better go out into the desert and pitch a tent or dig a foxhole with a jug of water and some cans of foodn and your white flag, because 24 -48 hours after we tell journalists and arms inspectors to get out, your airfield is going to be leveled, and the troops will be fast on so you can surrender conveniently. We will also tell Iraqi troops OUTSIDE of Baghdad how to surrender and survive. I have no doubt that Special Forces operatives either directly or through intermediaries have contacted Iraqi commanders in the field to ease the surrender process. Two big issues in my view are the oil fields/infrastructure and Baghdad. On the oil fields, if we don't have the Turkish entry point, I think we will send a significant recon-in-force operation, using helicopters and parachutists, to drop in and secure them as quickly as possible, maybe even the minute we say we're coming. I don't think we can telegraph that one, because all it takes is a handful of Baath fanatics to set the wells off. To me, this will be the trickiest and potentially most hazardous of the missions, but the good news there is there will not be a lot of civilians in harms way on that one. We will need to do this kind of fast strike action on other infrastructure items such as certain dams and bridges. As for Baghdad, I simply can't see us getting involved in house-to-house fighting. Take key sections of the city without fighting as circumstance allow, but generally surround it, cut it off, and wait 'em out. Drop food and other humanitarian aid in, but don't try to do a frontal assualt on a Republican Guard hedgehog defense. Let 'em come out with their hands up. Another big issue is the refugee problem. This is why striking fast, and covering lots of ground quickly is the key. We want to get the population spatially BEHIND us so they'd don't feel compelled to run either toward us or AWAY from us. The optimist in me tells me we can control all of Iraq outside of Baghdad VERY quickly, say, in under a week. Yes, that's right, in under a week. For that to happen EVERYTHING has to go right. Good weather (no huge sandstorms), virtually everybody who CAN surrender does, there is little or no struggle to hold onto the oil fields and the key dams and bridges, and Saddam's henchman don't let the chemical weapons fly. But, as the saying goes, in war, all plans become obsolete the minute the fighting starts. So LOTS could go wrong. The odds I'd give for the "perfect" set of military circumstances happening come in at around 1 in 5. Longish, but not spectacularly improbable. I put the TOTAL disaster -- oil fields burning, chemical weapons launched, huge refugee problems and and tens of thousands of civilian casualties -- at 1 in 25 or so. Probably a scenario between the two extremes is likely, with more toward the perfect than the disastrous.
Wait, isn't that a Blondie song?? I didn't know the Redeemer was a fan!! Jeez, you learn something every day on this board. Boogaloo, baby!!
And you hip-hop, and you don't stop Just blast off, sure shot 'Cause the man from Mars stopped eatin' cars and eatin' bars And now he only eats guitars, get up!
Are you sure the Rapture hasn't already started? Anyone who quotes Jimmy Carter as an authority certainly isn't all "here" anymore.
Most of Iraq will fall within a week, Baghdad within 2-3 weeks, small-scale mop-up operations around the country could go on for another month or 2. From allied attacks, most likely 1-2,000. As to what Saddam will do to his people, all bets are off. Short term, bitch and moan. Long term, overthrow their own repressive governments. With open arms. I have no idea. Hard to say, there's no doubt he has WMD, he'll probably either try to use it or destroy it before we find it tho. Alex
War will be relatively short. Most of the Iraqi army and a good number of the Republican Guard will surrender on short order. The remaining Republican Guard and the Internal Security Services will fight as best they can, retreating to Bhagdad and trying to inflict casualties and slow US progress by blowing up bridges and dams in the Mesopotamian Valley. US will have Bhagdad surrounded within a week. Shelling will result in significant civilian casualties when a market, mosque, or hospital is inevitably hit and it will be broadcast on Arab media. US will decide that siege is too costly internationally. US troops will achieve some kind of breakthrough offensive, ending the war in about a month. We will find small amounts of WMD. An equally small amount will be spirited away into Iran by Shiite dissidents. Possibly some will be kept hidden by Iraqis. Iraqis will initially welcome US troops, parades, celebrations, etc. Gradually, Iraqis will begin fighting each other, using weapons that Saddam has been handing out over the past months, settling scores, striving for power. US troops will secure Bhagdad, where most reporters will remain inside the protection afforded by US troops. Southern Iraq and the Bhagdad suburbs will be much more turbulent and dangerous, with private militias forming among different emerging warlords who will fight each other. The postwar US peacekeeping force will not be enough to eliminate this low scale civil war, and the US press will basically ignore it except for when US troops get caught up in the fighting. Their reports will give no good understanding of who the different sides are and why they are fighting. The US will ally with some, who will be no better or worse than those they ally against. Some kind of nominal government will be formed that has little control at the peripheries of Iraq. The US will be left with a choice of deploying more troops or going to the UN for a peacekeeping force. I have no prediction of what will happen between the Kurds and the Turks, but if the 80,000 Turkish troops on the Iraqi border cross into Krudish Iraq, it will only take one Kurd lobbing a grenade into a Turkish troop carrier to set off both sides. Or it could be completely different. That's the problem. We don't know until we get there and there's no way of predicting.
Remember that Bush the Younger and Saddam have different goals. Bush wants to conquer Iraq. Saddam wants to humiliate Bush. I think they are both going to succeed. The war outside the major cities will be quick and won't involve lots of (or any) fighting. But it will take time to take Baghdad. First, it is far from Kuwait and there are no good logistic paths from Kuwait to there. You will need such a path because Baghdad is 500 miles from Kuwait, and won't be easy to keep even without opposition. There is a railroad from the port city of Basra that would be great, except that Saddam will certainly render both useless (this will also make post-war reconstruction and feeding more difficult). The major cities are being surrounded by moats which will be filled with burning oil. This will make laser guided bombs useless (although we don't really use that many now). If Iraq is able to figure out a way to jam GPS guided bombs (shouldn't be too hard) then our bombing becomes less accurate, meaning many more missions to accomplish tasks and more unintended destruction. It also means more of the city is turned into rubble, helping defenders and again making post-war control more difficult and expensive. The big prize in north Iraq means constant and never ending conflict between the Kurds and the Turks (and amongst the Kurds themselves). The Kurds have already said they would open their border to the Iranians if Turkey invades (and the Turks are already massing on the border for just this). Iran is unlikely (read unable) to invade, but would certainly give weapons to the Kurds. The US won't be able to do anything but watch, not wanting to upset and ally (who can cut off port access to the northern US troops whenever it wants). If I were Saddam, I would leave large weapon caches for the Kurds to find. No matter what happens, America (and the world) is going to enter a deep recession once the war starts. No one can pick up the slack of Iraq stopping oil production. Energy prices will double. And if Saddam does professional-level damage to the oil fields, expect the suffering to be permanent.
The war will end quickly. Last time, it took a few weeks of bombing and 5 days or so of invasion. This time, I figure that they'll save the money on the cruise missiles and invade after a week of bombing. Then two weeks of fighting and another week of playing loud music outside of the French embassy, where Saddam will have gone for refuge. I'll go out on a limb and predict that they'll find the machines that made the anthrax that was mailed to Daschle & co. and indentical anthrax powder.