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To: Lucretius who wrote (232053)	3/29/2003 6:29:40 AM
From: MythMan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 436258

Message 18769260

To: Lucretius who wrote (232053)	3/29/2003 9:59:54 AM
From: orkrious	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

a great piece from stratfor. it is difficult to see how the market can rally anything other than weakly and sporadically from here given the situation. luc, you may want to break down and buy some puts <g> War Diary: Thursday, March 27, 2003 Mar 28, 2003 The attack toward and around Karbala on the Euphrates front remained in the consolidation phase. Regrouping, reorganization and resupply were the main activities. C-17 and C-130 aircraft were landing in the airfield taken by the 173rd Airborne Brigade, as the buildup of forces began there. The main fighting was in the Basra area, where British troops tried to deal with pockets of resistance around Basra and the problem of Basra itself. Attacks on Iraqi command and control facilities appeared to be in their second day of intense operations. The effect on the battlefield was not yet noticeable. The Basra problem represents one of the core military issues facing the coalition. It is a city, albeit much smaller than Baghdad. Nevertheless, a relatively small force still creates terrific problems for the attacker. Entering the city to engage in house-to-house fighting would rapidly chew up British forces, as well as much of the town. It would be a Pyrrhic victory. Laying siege to the city, even if terrain allows it, effectively eliminates the siege units from the order of battle. They couldn't be used elsewhere. Moreover, siege creates political problems, since starving out the resistance also starves out the population. The standard solution to urban warfare by the superior force is to reduce the siege time by bombarding the city from the air and with artillery. If the rules of engagement prohibit that, as they seem to, the good options disappear quickly. Basra is not a strategic problem, in the sense that the situation there will not determine the course of the war. The quantity of forces needed to contain the situation without recourse to bombardment is steep, but not prohibitive. Nevertheless, it points to fundamental decisions that will have to be made before the coalition reaches Baghdad. If Special Republican Guard and Republican Guard units resist, what will be the course of action? Forces cannot enter the city to engage in house-to-house fighting. That leaves siege with or without bombardment -- a long, miserable siege or a short and bloody one. Unless Washington gets lucky and there is no determined resistance, it will come down to that. This is why the northern front is so important. The goal must be to close in on Baghdad from both north and south, smashing the forces guarding the city with air power and creating a sense of spatial claustrophobia for the defenders. It may be possible to differentiate Baghdad from Basra in this sense. The defenders of Basra see themselves as an outpost in a broader war. The defenders of Baghdad might see themselves as prisoners in a hopeless cause. To create that sense, the forces approaching Baghdad will have to be substantial indeed, substantially greater than they are now. The northern front in particular is anemic. It is difficult to imagine an airlift that would introduce a multi-divisional force in the north -- and keep it supplied. We expect there are pre-positioned supplies in Kurdish areas, but that will not solve the problem entirely. The northern front will not be as robust as the southern. Moreover, it has to deal with substantial Iraqi forces in the Kirkuk area as well as dealing with the oil fields -- all this before it moves toward Baghdad. Clearly, the United States has realized that the forces used in this plan are insufficient, and Defense Department officials said Thursday that an additional 100,000 troops would be deployed to Iraq by the end of April. That is a substantial increase in combat power, bringing the total force count close to the levels of Desert Storm. Clearly Plan A (the decapitation strike) failed. Plan B (the ground assault against a collapsing Iraqi army) also has not taken place. Now the United States is moving on to Plan C (Operation Desert Storm II). The success of that plan will depend very simply on one issue: how Baghdad is managed. Militarily it should succeed, unless the rules of engagement prohibit siege or bombardment. If that happens, things will get dicey. Clearly, the air campaign will continue and coalition forces, particularly in the south, will continue probing northward, searching for ways to pry apart the Iraqi defenses. If we see a month-long bombing campaign designed to shatter the Republican Guard formations, it is possible that coalition forces will be able to enter Baghdad without resistance. The central problem is political. Having set expectations of a rapid victory -- or having allowed them to be set -- the Bush administration has a double credibility problem. On the one side, it has the anti-war faction. On the other side, it could develop a pro-war faction that lacks confidence in the ability of the leadership to execute the war. The anti-war faction does not threaten the administration. Pro-war doubts about competence could very much threaten it. The administration has tried to stick to the line that the war is going according to plan. That is technically true, when we remember that the plan had multiple contingencies and the United States is now at Plan C. But the clear fact is that this is not the war that the administration wanted or expected to fight. The war can still be won, but the pretense -- particularly by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- that there have been no unpleasant surprises in this campaign will quickly wear thin. Rumsfeld's strength after the Sept. 11 attacks was that he faced difficulties squarely, honestly and bluntly. Now he is simply being blunt. The next few weeks will be very difficult for the U.S. administration. It is unlikely, barring surprises, that there will be any decisive strategic solutions on the battlefield. We are now back to an extended air campaign, a slow buildup and deployment forward in the north and careful operations in the south. The political battle will be the most difficult. Internationally, the administration will have to deal with the fact that civilian casualties will be greater than hoped during the air campaign. Domestically, the administration will have to deal with the fact that the war being fought is not the war it had hoped for