Hi IQBAL LATIF; Re: "... everything I say according to Bilow is so wrong ..."
That's not true. Maybe you're getting a little hysterical.
Re: "... however Baghdad had fallen without the war of 70 days, without the thousand casualties that he promised ..."
(a) Baghdad is still armed to the teeth. It is not safe for US citizens to walk. In that sense, it has not "fallen", but in fact is still held by a hostile foe.
(b) I repeatedly stated that conquering Iraq would be easy, that it would be the occupation that would be difficult. For example:
Bilow, September 16, 2002
In other words, the US is 22x bigger, 12x as populous, 174x as wealthy, and has a military budget that is nearly 5x as large as the entire Iraqi economy. In a fight, put your money on the big dog. #reply-17998286
Bilow, October 16, 2002
I agree with you that conquering Iraq should not be a problem, and that the military will unconditionally surrender fairly quickly. But the problem is the civilians, not the military. Wars in which one side wins with "maneuver", followed by an occupation, tend to be the ones associated with high amounts of guerilla warfare. Examples of this would be the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, and the German conquering of France in 1940. It takes about six months of occupation before guerilla warfare is organized. Both the above wars had this sort of delay, and we've seen it again with Israel's occupations. ... #reply-18123176
Bilow, December 2, 2002
As far as resistance goes, there are two different things to calculate / estimate. The first is the degree of military opposition (will the Iraqi military fight back). The second is the degree of civilian opposition (will the Iraqi population support Iraqi "freedom fighters" against an occupying force). I believe that the Iraqi military would fight back, to a certain extent, but the US has more than enough power to crush them fairly quickly anyway. The problem is in the civilian support for "freedom fighters". As far as whether this will happen or not, I don't think it is even necessary to argue it. Our troops are already getting shot up regularly in Kuwait, where our relations are the best in all of the Arab, if not Moslem world. In the face of these incidents, to expect that our troops will not face an Iraqi intifada is optimistic at best. #reply-18310807
Re: "... Iraq today is a functioning country with 100 periodicals and a constitution and a governing council unlike Vietnam ..."
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! LOL!!! BWAHAHAHHAHAHAHA!!!
Re: "... he said Nasseriah is just the first taste it is Baghdad where the great Saddam is strategizing, he was so wrong on that whole scene."
I never said any such thing.
Re: "Bilow can do it nice by broad painting, making general assumptions and than turning see I told you so! Boy that is not on, we are no kids here, he needs to deliver far more and needs to swim with the sharks."
What a joke! I couldn't have foretold the situation in Iraq better.
Re: "On war Bilow was off mark big time. This was Bilow at its best, "no war in March" and the war happened <Hey Bilow, aren't u on record saying "no war in March"?"
Yes, many times. I admit this. I voted for Bush and I didn't think he was stupid enough to get us sucked into an unwinnable war. I was wrong.
Re: "Our problem in Baghdad is harder than the Israeli one in Beirut on every single point of comparison. Baghdad is bigger, the people are more united against us, our war aims are broader, we care more about what the civilians think about us, our supply lines are longer, Americans care less about Iraq than Israelis care about Beirut, our level of protest against the war is much larger than that of the Israeli public, and despite all these advantages that the Israelis had over our situation, it took them 70 days to achieve only a negotiated settlement."
When the Israelis went into Beirut they had the good sense to disarm the locals. We "avoided" that. The result is that here it is 12 months after Baghdad "fell", and the place still isn't safe for US soldiers to walk around in. The best we did was to pacify a "green zone".
And by the way, you accuse me of making myself look good by picking out the only post I made that were correct. But here you are only coming up with one post like that of the above.
Re: "You want to read more of his strategic bs, look at this great vision as forces move toward Baghdad guerilla warfare will start, it did not Baghdad had fallen like a ripe mango in the laps of the US Army."
Why are you complaining about this??? As we moved towards Baghdad, guerilla war did start. Open up any newspaper and read the headline, loser.
-- Carl |
