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Strategies & Market Trends : Strictly: Drilling II -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Art Bechhoefer who wrote (28371)	2/19/2003 6:08:37 PM
From: patron_anejo_por_favor	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 36161

...or to put it in cinematic terms, invading Iraq may much more closely resemble Black Hawk Down than Band of Brothers or We Were Soldiers....<NG> OTOH, one can certainly carry the Stalingrad analogy too far...by 1942, the Russian civilians and army were totally and completely behind the war effort (out of fear of the Germans and news of their extreme treatment of civillians in the Ukraine and Byellorussia in 1941, if nothing else). It remains to be seen how committed the Iraqi's will be (having dealt with the not-so-gentle hand of Saddam's leadership for the last 20 years.)

To: Art Bechhoefer who wrote (28371)	2/19/2003 9:09:21 PM
From: habitrail	Respond to of 36161

<<To assume that a war would be won quickly >> I agree, and also do not assume quick resolution, but for other reasons, and so would still not want to liken it to Stalingrad. Germany wanted to occupy Stalingrad, Russia wanted to keep it. Both tried their hardest and were equally matched for 6 months. On the other hand, Iraq is not an equal match for US Instead of having to clean the Russian army out of Stalingrad, I see the US goal as a little different. We are going after targeted military and industrial installations either where we think he's making WMDs, or where he centers his military power. The soldiers can either defend the installations or run away, if they leave their post and start hiding in old parts of Baghdad, they are no longer near our objectives and so are not an issue any longer. If nothing else, our desire not to be seen as baby-eating urn-bashers by the rest of the world should prevail over any desire to blast the ancient city of Baghdad in search of every militant Muslim. I think that the Iraqi J6P (is there an acronym for him yet?) knows that Saddam has already proven his willingness to use WMDs on his own people, shows no desire to stop, and so some sort of action is the only way to rid themselves of that ever present threat along with all the other more day to day, and perhaps more important, problems that come with statist regimes. I think that many Iraqis will be with us, or at least not in opposition to us, and I think that Frank P. even gave a link to that effect in Message 18600013 Rather than Stalingrad, I think the admittedly over-worn Vietnam cliches seem more appropriate because it's the same old political factors that limit our scope rather than any military ones. US politics is reactive and ruled by blame. Politicians don't want to be blamed for being wimps, and they don't want to be blamed for getting their constituents killed, so they vacillate constantly between two poles, usually accomplishing neither.