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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SirRealist who wrote (89869)	4/4/2003 5:04:32 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

April 4, 2003, New York Times Hoping to Confuse Iraqis, American Commandos Prepare to Enter Baghdad By JAMES DAO WITH SPECIAL OPERATIONS FORCES IN IRAQ, Friday, April 4 ? The runway was a highway. With orange flashes from bomb bursts over Baghdad visible on the horizon, a gray Special Operations MC-130 Combat Talon transport plane touched down on the median of a highway linking Baghdad to Karbala shortly before midnight Thursday. Moments after pulling to a stop just short of an overpass, the four-engine turboprop plane opened its rear doors to disgorge two Humvees loaded with advanced communications equipment, weapons and a team of Army Special Operations soldiers. The team is one of many Special Operations units that are being moved into position around Baghdad in preparation for the final push into the Iraqi capital. Moving on foot, by helicopter and in small vehicles, the commando teams ? typically fewer than a dozen men ? are setting up stations from which they can locate targets inside the city, gather information on Iraqi troop movements and coordinate Iraqi opposition groups' actions. The goal in Baghdad, as it has been in other cities like Basra and Nasiriya, will be to neutralize Baath Party militias and the Saddam Fedayeen, who have been mounting guerrilla attacks on American and British forces throughout the south. The teams will also be searching for senior Iraqi leaders, attempting either to capture them or pinpoint their locations for American warplanes combing the skies overhead. Ultimately, American commanders hope that their unconventional warriors will be able to hasten the collapse of President Saddam Hussein's government without a full-scale ground assault on the city, where street-to-street fighting would be likely to cause high casualties. "If we can get in the door without having to blow it up, that's the ideal thing," said an Air Force colonel who is commander of a Special Operations aviation detachment. There is a psychological component to the Special Operations actions as well: by inserting teams that can spread havoc inside Iraqi lines, American commanders hope to confuse and panic Iraqi military forces and political leaders. A raid by Special Operations forces on one of Mr. Hussein's palaces in Baghdad on Thursday was intended to do just that: send a message that American commandos can strike almost anywhere, at will. "Special Forces are everywhere," said the colonel, who would only be identified by his given name, Randy. "They're going to put pressure on from just about every direction." The six-lane road that the Combat Talon used as a runway on Thursday night and again this morning was controlled by United States marines who had moved into the area south of Baghdad in recent days. Special Operations forces had been using an airfield in Talil, to the south. But this new makeshift airstrip will provide much quicker access into Baghdad. American officers said that Air Force combat controllers inspected the road and found its concrete median ideal for aircraft landings. The Combat Talon, which is packed with radar-jamming equipment and navigation gear that enables it to fly at low altitudes to avoid detection, is designed for takeoffs and landings on relatively short, rough runways. In this case, the pilot had to drop the squat, bulbous-nosed aircraft over a row of 60-foot light towers, then bring it to a halt just short of a highway overpass. "We don't want to land long at this place," the plane's loadmaster said just before takeoff, using an aviators' expression for overshooting a runway.

To: SirRealist who wrote (89869)	4/4/2003 5:14:19 AM
From: NightOwl	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 281500

>>it could turn into another Lebanon or Gaza...<< Or Kabul or Pakistan. Come on now fellas! Surely there must be some glimmer of hope that Iraq will present a better outcome than the above. If there is one thing we should know beyond all doubt, it's that "democracy" is one thing that money can buy! <vbg> And if there is one thing that Iraq has that the others you mention don't it is tons of money. ...Or perhaps I should say "barrels" of money. All we have to do is get the oil revenue flowing. Make sure the bulk of the revenues get into the hands of the Iraqi people. Build up some cargo container facilities in Umm Qasr. Get the dadburned longshoremen off their duffs in Oakland and Yokohama. And PRESTO!! ...Six months later you'll have your first national elections complete with baby kissing, cigar chomping, promise them anything and everything politicians. 0\|0

To: SirRealist who wrote (89869)	4/4/2003 2:39:15 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Resistance in Iraq and here at home By MAUREEN DOWD SYNDICATED COLUMNIST Friday, April 4, 2003 seattlepi.nwsource.com <<...WASHINGTON -- The president and his war council did not expect so much heavy guerrilla resistance in Iraq. And they really did not expect so much heavy guerrilla resistance at home. But you can't have transformation without provocation. This was a war designed to change the nature of U.S. foreign policy, military policy and even the national character -- flushing out ambivalence and embracing absolutism. As two members of the pre-emptive Bush doctrine's neo-con brain trust, Bill Kristol and Lawrence Kaplan, argued in a book-length call for battle, "The War Over Iraq": "Well, what is wrong with dominance, in the service of sound principles and high ideals?" So it should not be a surprise that the troubled opening phase of the war has exacerbated territorial and ideological fissures in the administration and the Republican Party. Democrats are muter than mute. But a dozen days of real war in the desert has turned the usually disciplined Bush crowd into a bunch of schismatics: There is internecine warfare between the "hold out a hand" Bush I team and the "back of the hand" Bush II team. There's a feud between Donald Rumsfeld and some of his generals and ex-generals, and animosity between the Pentagon -- where Rummy, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith spin schemes for intimidating the world and remodeling the Middle East -- and the State Department. Colin Powell and his deputies wince as old alliances shatter and the Arab world seethes, and mutter that there had to be a way to get rid of Saddam without making everyone on the planet despise the United States...>>