Stardate 20030130.2227

(On Screen): It's hard to say if Saddam is crafty like a fox or as dumb as a rock. Is this disinformation, or simply a manifestation of someone who is so hopelessly out of touch as to not even realize how out of touch he is?

A BBC reporter in Baghdad reports on the defense preparations being made which will bloody us, defeat us, and send our troops home in a bag. Ready for the fearsome plan?

One commander said his unit had trained walking fully equipped and had succeeded in covering nearly 50 miles in only 17 hours with two hours rest.

The Iraqi president said this was not enough.

They would have to increase their speed because they could be asked to infiltrate enemy lines on foot at a specific place and would need to return the same night.

"In the daytime," he was quoted as saying, "all eyes discover you."

Actually, light troops in the desert are easier to spot at night than in the day, because the temperature differential between their bodies and the surrounding ground is greater so they're easier to see in IR. But in practice the difference is negligible, because the radar on JSTARS works exactly the same day and night, and is quite capable of picking up the metal in an AK-47. They are not going to be sneaking up on us. No way, no how. In daytime all eyes discover you; in nighttime just the British and American eyes do.

I'd also like to know what these "enemy lines" he's talking about will be. Is he expecting us to stop and dig in? Fat chance... when we move, we're going to be moving, baby. Ain't gonna be no lines.

But if the Americans are not unnerved and do lead an attack on Iraq at some stage, the warning the Iraqi leader is giving them at his heavily publicised sessions with military and party leaders is that "Iraq is not Afghanistan".

In 1991, a force of American and British troops (and some others who were there to watch and pretend to help) defeated the Iraqis in the most lopsided major battle victory of the last hundred years. And going into Afghanistan last year, the warnings were that "Afghanistan is no Iraq". And there we won almost as overwhelming a victory, in an entirely different way.

I am certain that Iraq is not Afghanistan. But Iraq is Iraq, and part of why the 1991 war went as well (for us) as it did is that the wide open terrain is essentially "laboratory conditions" for a lot of our equipment and tactics. It's just about the best terrain you could ask for. (The worst is jungle. Pray we never have to attack Brazil, or fight in PNG again.)

He has dismissed the idea that the Americans and their allies would be able to engage in battle in Iraq without, he claims, meeting the stiffest of resistance and suffering significant casualties.

The resistance will be there, but that doesn't mean we'll meet it. If our people see a concentration of defenders, they'll stand off and call in air strikes. That's how we fight a modern combined-arms war now. Our ground forces only directly engage when they have no choice. For anything else, "never use a small hammer when you've got a big one."

We're not interested in a fair fight. We're interested in winning. We're sure as hell not interested in letting them get a few licks in on us along the way, just to let them prove their courage. Pfeh.

And there was this, the article lede, the most preposterous idea of all:

Iraq's leader has warned those who attack the country that they will face successive lines of trenches before they are "crushed totally".

Trenches? They think they're going to defeat us with a prepared defense made up of trenches? What does he think this is, World War I?

The solution to trenches is cluster bombs or thermobaric weapons. Cluster bombs burst relatively high and distributes what amounts to hundreds of hand grenades over a wide area. They fall into anything, including trenches and foxholes, and then explode and kill anyone nearby. They can be dropped by heavy bombers or fighter-bombers or be delivered by MLRS.

And everyone now knows about thermobaric weapons (sometimes called "Fuel-Air Explosives") which generate an immense concussion in a huge area, and not incidentally consume all the oxygen there. Anyone not blown apart by the shock, or incinerated by the flame, has a good chance of smothering afterwards. And a trench is no defense. (Or, if you want to fight on the cheap, you use napalm.)

Nor is any of this kind of prepared defense going to be any surprise. We'll have spotted any defenses like that long since with photo-recon, and the ground pounders will know exactly where they are long before they get near. They'll stand well back, use a bullhorn to give the defenders one (count 'em, one) chance to surrender, and if they don't take it, then the bombs start falling.

In the 21st century, a trench is nothing more than a pre-dug grave.

Now I have no high regard for Saddam's intellectual powers, but even he isn't this stupid. It's clear that he can't possibly have any faith