| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Raymond" |
| Date: |
26 May 2007 04:33:11 PM |
| Object: |
Anticipating his defeat, Sadam Hussein planned to fight a guerrilla war |
Seeds of Chaos
Anticipating his defeat, Sadam Hussein planned to fight a guerrilla
war from the underground that would make the enemy an easier target.
It is obviously working. The United States is now clearly involved in
a guerrilla war in Iraq. As a result, U.S. forces are engaging in
counterinsurgency operations, which historically have proven most
difficult to deal with and win.
The nature of counterinsurgency requires that guerrillas be
distinguished from the general population. This is
extraordinarily difficult, particularly when the troops trying to make
the distinction are foreign, untrained in the local language and
therefore culturally incapable of making the subtle distinctions
needed for surgical identification. The result is the processing of
large numbers of
noncombatants in the search for a handful of guerrillas.
Another result is the massive intrusion of force into a civilian
community that may start out as neutral or even friendly, but which
over time becomes hostile -- not only because of the constant
intrusions, but also because
of the inevitable mistakes committed by troops who are trying to make
sense of what appears to them an incoherent situation.
Part of the strategic equation are the large numbers of foreign
fighters from other Arab countries that are in Iraq, not because of
any loyalty to Saddam Hussein but rather are in Iraq to answer the
call for a Muslim Jihadi to kill all Americans in Iraq. These fighters
are highly trained terrorists and are well funded as exhibited by the
U. S. raid of a terrorist camp along the Iraq-Syria border, where a
large cache of new weapons from Basra was discovered.
Thus, the United States is in a tough spot. It cannot withdraw from
Iraq and therefore must fight. But it must fight in such a way that
avoids four things:
1. It cannot fight a war that alienates the general Iraqi
populace sufficiently to generate recruits for the guerrillas and
undermine the occupation.
2. It cannot lose control of the countryside; this could
destabilize the entire occupation.
3. It cannot allow the guerrilla operation to undermine its
ability to project forces elsewhere.
4. It cannot be allowed to extend the length of the conflict to such
an extent that the U.S. public determines that the cost is not worth
the prize. The longer the war, the clearer the definition of the prize
must be.
Therefore, the task for U.S. forces is:
1. Identify the enemy.
2. Isolate the enemy from his supplies and from the population.
3. Destroy him.
The dos and don'ts of guerrilla warfare are easy to write about, but
much more difficult to put into practice
SEE:
Friday, May 25, 2007
World Cities Current Time Directory
INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING
18 June 2003
by Dr. George Friedman
Summary
http://www.globalspecialoperations.com/gwiraq.html
There may not be an end to such a war and America may have to remain
in Iraq until the American people insist on bringing our troops home.
The war - now a civil war-cannot be won by the United States
The Baghdad Files:
A trove of secret intelligence reports shows how Saddam Hussein
planned the current insurgency in Iraq long before the invasion that
toppled his regime was even launched
In the fall of 2002, several months before the United States and its
allies invaded Iraq, Saddam Hussein dispatched more than 1,000
security and intelligence officers to two military facilities near
Baghdad where they underwent two months of guerrilla training,
according to a secret U.S. military intelligence report. Anticipating
his defeat, intelligence reports show, the Iraqi dictator began laying
the foundation for an insurgency as Washington worked to convince the
United Nations and allies around the world that Saddam had to go.
The insurgency that has gripped much of Iraq the past 19 months wears
many faces and has many different actors. But Baath Party operatives
linked to Saddam, along with Sunni extremists from both inside and
outside Iraq, have played a central role in resisting U.S.-led forces
and the creation of a new democratic government in Baghdad. Although
Saddam and many of his relatives and top aides have been captured or
killed, American intelligence officials and others say that his
supporters remain a formidable foe. "I believe that Saddam regime
elements are still playing a significant role in the insurgency," says
Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official who recently returned from a
fact-finding mission to Iraq. "Of course, there are many other
insurgents--radical Islamists supported by Iran, for example--but
most
certainly, Saddam planned his insurgency long before we invaded
Iraq."
Until now, it hasn't been clear how Saddam created his guerrilla force
or what role he played in directing attacks against U.S. troops and
allied forces on the ground. But classified intelligence reports,
reviewed by U.S. News, provide the clearest picture yet of his role in
planning and carrying out an insurgency before he was captured in his
"spider hole" last December, near his hometown of Tikrit. They also
detail the roles some key regime aides have played in the insurgency.
The reports cover the period July 2003 through early 2004; they are
based on interviews with Iraqis and other sources throughout Iraq,
including fighters captured by U.S.-led forces. Most of the reports
were prepared by U.S. analysts and military intelligence officers,
although they also include assessments by British intelligence
officials. The reporting organizations include the CIA; the Defense
Intelligence Agency; the Iraq Survey Group, which was dispatched to
Iraq to hunt for weapons of mass destruction; the Coalition
Provisional Authority, the caretaker government in Iraq until last
June; and various American military commands and units on the ground.
Although many of the raw intelligence reports are uncorroborated,
interviews with current and former government officials indicate that
information linking Saddam to early planning of an insurgency was
right on the money. In his public report issued in October, Charles
Duelfer, the chief weapons inspector for the Iraq Survey Group,
suggested that Saddam was planning an insurgency as the U.S.-led
invasion neared in March 2003. Duelfer wrote: "In Saddam's last
ministers' meeting . . . just before the war began, he told the
attendees at least three times, 'Resist one week, and after that I
will take over . . .' There are indications that what Saddam actually
had in mind was some form of insurgency against the coalition."
Save lives. Get out now.
Iraq Veterans Against The War
http://www.ivaw.org/
.
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