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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: i-node who wrote (138246)	7/20/2001 9:59:15 PM
From: hmaly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1588380

David Re..Today, yes. Not pre- Gulf War. Iraq could have walked over Israel at that time, absent support from the US (which Israel, would, of course, have had).<<<< Nonsense. Israel has shown time and time again, it is master of desert warfare. Desert warfare depends upon manuverability and air power. Israel has both in spades. Israel defeated Egypt, Jordan and lebanon in 6 days. And Egypt supposedly had the best army in the middle-east at that time. How much help could we have given Israel in that short of time. Israel has a professional army and air force. Iraq has a bunch of starving conscripts, who threw up their hands before the tanks arrived. We had done a great job of arming Iraq, as had Russia. <<<<< We gave Iraq intelligence reports, not a lot of arms. Almost all of Iraq's tanks were Russian as were their artillerary, and jets. It is easy to second-guess Iraq's military after we trounced them; but one only need to read transcripts of the debate in Congress and refer to other materials of the period to see that there was REAL CONCERN about how difficult and how bloody the war would be.<<<< A lot of that was just scare tactics, bought up by the dems. It wasn't true then and their scare tactics aren't true now. This gets to my original point, which has been lost here -- not how powerful was Iraq's military, but how much courage it took for George Bush to take us to war when there is all this talk about how strong the Iraqi military is<<<<< Yes, all of that talk did make the dems. look foolish after the war. However, as you can see, it hasn't stopped the dems from using scare tactics. They will be trying to scare the senior citizens for yrs. how unpopular the war was amongst the American people. His actions exemplify true leadership. <<<< I really think most americans were in favor of freeing Kuwait. Saddam was made to look like, and he acted like the devil incarnate, so it was easy to villify him. If the war had dragged on fro months and yrs, then there could have been problems. But with the air power advantage we had, how could we lose.

To: i-node who wrote (138246)	7/23/2001 11:03:20 AM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1588380

Today, yes. Not pre- Gulf War. Iraq could have walked over Israel at that time, absent support from the US (which Israel, would, of course, have had). I disagree. Iraq had more men and more tanks but numbers aren't everything. Israel is better at coordinating maneuver warfare and it's tanks are more effective at range or on the move. Iraq's forces where large but inflexible. In warfare in the open desert air power is a major factor. Israel would win air superiority over Iraq. When Syria's air force tried to stand up to Israel's air force over Lebanon dozens of Syrian planes went down without an Israeli air to air loss. Iraq's air force was bigger then Syria's but it has never shown any sign of being much better. Israel's main disadvantage is lack of strategic depth and the need for some time to mobilize. But Iraq would have to go through Jordan which would give Israel a little time to get ready. If Iraq knew that the US would not intervene there best bet might be a threatening mobilization without an actual invasion. Israel would have a problem with affording the cost of maintaining full readiness. At a state of full readiness a large portion of Israel's workforce becomes active military. Tim