I agree with you Sean-Paul. I think the military does too...last report I saw from the Kuwaiti desert (before I stopped watching cable news because it depressed me so) was that they were training for the worst and hoping for the best.

Well said.

I have to vote with Den Beste on this one.

I agree that we need to consider every possibility, but the vastly more likely possibility is that urban fighting will be limited.

1) No matter how much the Iraqis prepare to dig in, mobility is hugely important in a fight. The reason there have been almost no sieges in the last several decades is that encircling an army is now usually enough to win. Once we have all the roads and the air, the Iraqis will be down to a bunch of "Maginot dots" on the map. They will be living on stored supplies, and if they attempt any serious coordinated movement, they will be vulnerable to our air strikes.

2) Once Saddam is no longer in a position to kill them, I think it's safe to bet that most Iraqis will prefer surrender to fighting to the death. Unless Saddam has somehow imbued his conscript army with the Mejii warrior ethic in the last 11 years, his plans for them to fight to the death may be somewhat acedemic.

3) TNR just posted a piece on civilian uprisings during the last war. Once the Iraqi people thought that the US was coming, they rose up and were literally hunting Iraqi soldiers in the streets. This time, once they're sure we're not letting them down, there's a good chance of either civilian operations (and all we really need is intelligence) or mass troop defections as officers try to buy themselves a place in the new government.

None of this is a sure thing, but I would gladly take a 2-1 bet that urban warfare will be minimal.

den Beste says that nerve agents aren't persistent. Jane's Bio-Chem Handbook (frighten people by reading it on the subway!) says VX is the most persistent of the nerve agents, followed by Tabun, and then Mustard. This table at the Federation of American Scientists website is not reassuring.

The argument that the command/communications/control facilities need be destroyed to win doesn't make sense to me. If we are to gain control of the country, don't we have to capture them instead? Anthony Cordesman (somewhere on the csis.org website) warns of units that will fight on because of nationalist sentiment, not loyality to Saddam. If that's so, they'll keep going until they have a credible Iraqi voice telling them to lay down their arms.

I don't know if this war will be long--actually, I hope it doesn't happen, period. But if it does happen, my God, regardless of how long it is, I don't see how it won't be bloody.

J Mann misses an important point in his second issue, the point that while Saddam may be a secular leader defending himself against a secular force, his troops are not necessarily, nor might they consider their enemy to be. Issue number three is even less solvent. You leave thousands of people to be slaughtered 10 years ago, then expect their friends and relatives to back you up the second time around. Specious, no? Will there be opportunists looking for some American love post-Saddam, yes. Will there be a force worthy of the name 'opposition'? I have doubts.

BTW, I'd be surprised if the Iraqis really had VX. But I'd be just as surprised if they didn't have Tabun and mustard.

No.1 - United States per British Poll. The Poll was "who poses the greatest threat to World Peace"? 32% of the Brits said the United States, 24% said Iraq, 23% said North Korea.
Souce:CNN

"who poses the greatest threat to World Peace"? 32% of the Brits said the United States, 24% said Iraq, 23% said North Korea.

These are the same Brits who almost polled Princess Diana as the greatest Brit in history. "Mike", are you really "davidbyron"? Your reflexive hatred of the United States is so similar, and he has not been posting here lately.

training for the worst and hoping for the best.

That's the bottom line...it's simply too arrogant to say the truth, that we just might beat the previous time of 100 hours. No Iraqis will stand with Saddam, especially in light of the awareness that this time, we will not stop until he is dead. No soldiers will die for him, and his generals are already planning their next career moves.

Mike--

Well…no sh*t. We’re about to engage Iraq militarily, which is a de facto threat to “peace.” Go read more about the poll results—it also reported that 62 percent of respondents said they would be happy to back military action against Iraq so long as most members of the U.N. Security Council supported it, even if one or two of the five permanent council members used their powers of veto. (This poll, BTW, was conducted by YouGov, an internet polling service, for BBC 4 news).
Another poll about Iraq, also conducted by YouGov, was produced for the Mail and released February 11. Among other things, it offers:

72% of those polled think that Saddam Hussein has weapsons such as anthrax and nerve gas
69% think that he is seeking to develop nuclear weapons
44% think he is helping al-Qaeda (44% “don’t know;” only 26% think not)
57% think he is sufficiently dangerous to justify UN military action
55% support Blair’s sending British troops to Iraq if the action is backed by the UN
45% think Powell was telling the truth (39% think he was distorting the evidence; 16% don’t know)
53% think Hussein was lying during his interview with Tony Benn

All of which proves nothing, except that polls demonstrate nothing other than what those who cite them wish to prove. In this case, it was Reuters, generating yet another anti-American headline as part of their ongoing commitment to supply “unbiased and reliable news services.”

Or, as Peter Kellner—the YouGov writer who reported on the results of the Channel 4 poll you cited--aptly put it:

Meanwhile, any media report, or politician, or pressure group press release that plucks a single figure and claims that it measures the degree of public support for the Stop the War movement is guilty of grossly oversimplifying a complex picture. On such a grave issue, public opinion deserves to be portrayed in full, and not reduced to a single number.

So. You were saying?

Assuming that the Iraqis retreat into the cities, then all that has to happen is that we follow the age old plan of starving them out.
The idea that we have to go in after them is based on faulty thinking, the idea that we have someplace else for those troops to be by Tuesday.
If the bad guys try going into the cities all that means is they'll be pinned down where they can't hurt us. We'll sit out of range of his artillery and wait for him to get real hungry.

Until den Beste spends some time in combat or actually planning combat strategy in a real situation, his opinion is no more or less credible than anyone's including the guy I buy my paper from every day.

Randy;

Of course. He doesn't claim to be a "certified expert" in military affairs. To me, it seems he's very well read when it comes to matters of military strategy, war history and weaponry. He's definetly more informed than the average blogger out there.

So he's not a 5 star general? So what? Did his site claim him to have such credentials.

It is a BLOG for goodness sake!

Randy,

Den Beste has made his case.

What, if any, are your bona fieds on this?

I've beem there, done that, and it doesn't seem that you have.

"Steven you said: But delivery systems are a different matter, and even the most pessimistic estimates don't give them delivery systems capable of actually distributing enough of such weapons over a sufficiently large area so to impede movement of supplies. In part that's because they just plain don't have very many such systems. . . .

If they don't have them, as you clearly admit is the case, why are we invading?"

Ok, obviously the follow-up question is supposed to have _something_ to do with the previously quoted bit of Steven den Beste's. I'm a smart guy, though, and I can't figure out what the hell the relationship is supposed to be.

Steven says that "they...don't have VERY MANY such sytems..." (emphasis mine). Sean-Paul then turns that into an admission that Iraq has NO such systems. This makes absolutely no sense.

Which leads to my own question: Sean-Paul, if someone were to say that North Korea doesn't have very many nuclear weapons aimed at Seoul, Tokyo, and Los Angeles, would this reassure you, since by your own logic, this would mean that they weren't a threat?

To Sam I would say: there is a vast qualitative difference between chemical weapons that can be put in Scuds and shot about 150-200 miles and a nation that has a missile that can very possibly (according to the CIA) go 2000 miles (and is capable of taking out Seattle) and will have, if not already does have nukes. The Iraqis don't have 'em and aren't likely to have them within 3-5 years (again, per the CIA). So, what danger is more imminent?

It is a large discrepancy that this adminstration is studiously avoiding.

Back over to you Sam.

Errata...

Should read:

44% think he is helping al-Qaeda (31% “don’t know;” only 26% think not)

"It is a large discrepancy that this adminstration is studiously avoiding."

Not really. The administration has repeatedly stated that it is pursuing diplomatic (as in "non-military") strategies regarding North Korea.

This is because the North Koreans do have nukes, which severely limits our options.

This, in turn, completely justifies acting in Iraq now, before they develop nukes, and our options there are similiarly limited.

"Imminence of threat" is a red herring. It assumes that, but for the presence of nukes, the situations of Iraq and North Korea are exactly alike. They're not, and never have been.

Re: Curtis Leung

Saddam had VX even before Gulf War I. He admitted such during the initial cease fire agreement. UN hasn't been able to confirm whether he had actually destroy the estimated 3-5 tons of VX he had admitted to. And by their very conservative estimate, Saddam had the cability to produce much much more.

I presumed that US troops have been issued known antidote to VX (which must be administrated immediately)

Nice try, Sean-Paul, but you didn't answer the question. I was not making any comparison between Iraq and North Korea. I was specifically asking whether you knew the difference between SOME (aka not very many) and NONE.

I was further pointing out that the difference between SOME and NONE was, in fact, crucial when you are talking about available methods of distributing WMDs.

Here is my question again, rephrased. Why did you translate "they...don't have very many systems" in Steven's post to an admission that "they don't have them" in your follow-up question?

I must say that you're doing a better job of this than Kos. I'm here from Den Beste's site, and while I agree with him much of the time, he's a little too rosy on this topic. Not as rosy as Kos is pessimistic, but still.

Your point about the Iraqi's learning from GW1 is very valid. All they need to do is take note of what got bombed vs what didn't, and there's the first clue to what they need to do to survive. Of course, this cuts both ways - at least some of them on the front line will be vets of GW1, and they'll scare the crap out of the green FNGs with stories of what it was like. They'll also know that POWs get fed by Americans, not shot. I don't know which way the 'experience' issue will break, but I know PsyOps is going to be critical if we want it to break our way.

And Den Beste is dead right about the chem/bio warfare vs US troops. Iraqi capabilities can't compare to the gas attacks of WWI, since there's no way in hell they'll ever mass the kind of arty/missle batteries it takes to do that. Those weapons only work right on the battlefield if you deliver them just right, in sufficient quantity, and in the right weather.

And I have to add, while Saddam may not be able to effectively use chem/bio against our troops, a terrorist deploying them in, say a subway, or maybe the Lincoln Tunnel, would be a MUCH different story. In those controlled, confined conditions, chem or bio weapons might be 10 or even 100 times as effective as they would be on the battlefield.

The urban fighting will probably happen, but not nearly as much as Kos believes. We'll do that only where absolutely necessary. We'll also do it at night, with armor support, and probably AC130 gunship support as well, assuming we can kill off the S-A threat. Before anyone spouts off about kill rates for attackers in urban terrain, I want to cite a relevant series of facts: In Mogadishu, we lost 18 Rangers in a confused and poorly supported urban operation. They had no armor support, a HUGE numerical disadvantage, no arty, and a hamstrung command structure. When it was over, Spectre told us that they counted over 900 new graves. (I say "told us" because my unit was in country to provide Close Air Support to 10th MTN, so I kinda have a bit of a clue about this subject)

Before you go thinking about urban combat, think of that mission, and remember, while it was a political disaster, militarily it was a massive victory.

Whatever happens in Iraq when the war starts, the US forces will use a vast amount of supplies. The supplies for the ground forces will have to be carried from the rear areas on trucks. Lots and lots of trucks. These trucks need roads. The roads in Iraq go to the cities. If you don't capture and garrison the cities, then your trucks have to leave the main road and drive the back roads around the cities. These roads are back roads for a reason-they can't handle heavy traffic, and if there is one thing the supply trucks of the US Army at war represent, it is heavy traffic.

I've never been to Iraq, but I understand it has two major rivers, and a lot of irrigation ditches. Every bridge or culvert can only support so much weight. Were I once again a 17 year old Army private driving a truck, I would drive across each and every one at speed limitted only by my vehicle's governor, but now I am older and wiser, and I harbor doubts about third world civil engineering. I would not relish the prospect of driving a truckload of rockets over a culvert that might collapse beneath my truck's weight.

Even if the US were to surround Iraq's cities and starve them out, with the resulting humanitarian and public relations disaster that could represent, it would present the US Army's transportaion corps with the truly vexing problem of how to move all those supplies on all those back roads.

If they don't have them, as you clearly admit is the case, why are we invading?

We don't really care about chemical weapons, we need to stop Saddam from getting nukes. And Saddam DOES have delivery systems for those, you only need a single missle to launch a nuke.

Sean-Paul: People like you seem to be studiously ignoring that a war with North Korea will likely go nuclear almost immediately while we try to take out their nukes faster than they can destroy Seoul, Tokyo and San Diego. Squawking "crises!" is merely trying to change the subject from Iraq. What are additional convetional forces going to do besides increase the number of targets to the North Koreans? 2nd Infantry Division does the tripwire job just fine thank you. Iraq needs to be dealt with now, before it has more times to develop, or try to obtain, nuclear weapons. Dealing with Iraq first might help convince the North Koreans that we are deadly serious about WMD's. Leaving Saddam in power is going to convince them that the UN's resolutions are toothless and the US can be blackmailed. If you think the world is going to be scary after a successful US war against Iraq try one where every failed state realizes a couple of nukes offers diplomatic immunity.

Sam,

Perhaps I'm reading Sean-Paul incorrectly, but I do not think he is making the translation you are suggesting. His focus is "they...don't have that many" PERIOD. If they don't have that many why are we going to war against them.

So, Sean-Paul, am I correct in my read or not?

If I am, my follow up would be why are you equating WMD with their delivery systems? A distinction den Beste is, in fact, making.

Arafat has people lined up around the block ready to blow themselves up in Israeli markets. Is it either inconceivable or even improbable to assume that people would also be willing to expose themselves to WMD during a very low tech delivery of biological or chemical weapons? I'm not going to argue that this is a reason to go to war, but lack of delivery systems isn't a reason not to go either.

Quickly on 1, 2 and 3 from Stratfor.
1. Unless you believe that we do not actually have spy satellites in space, you cannot really believe that we are not now and have not, since 1991, been watching these people with the greatest possible care. The Pentagon and DOD have a great timelapse picture of Iraqi movements, IMO.
2. Where's the money coming from? This costs LOTS of money.
3. This isn't new, he did it during Gulf War 1.0 and he'll do it again. If we are not sending US propaganda into Baghdad to that affect shame on us.

Stratfor, IMO, is making the mistake of assuming that Hussein thinks like we do. I cannot find the article I want to link to, but there was a recent article (NY Times?)about our CIA falling into this trap with UBL.

I'd like to point out that starving out a city and providing humanitarian relief are NOT contradictory.

It's called a seige. And anyone who LEAVES the city and surrenders will be fed, given medical treatment if needed, sheltered and protected.

If you're a civilian who just wants to survive, surrender now, surrender fast. Then, anyone left in the city isn't a civilian anymore, but an enemy who can legitimately be bombed flat.

Or starved to death, if we have the time. Either way, it's "Submit, and we treat you kindly. You may even rise in the world as we rebuild Iraq. Defy us and die."

The Romans pulled this off many a time, and it worked well for them. And for all the flaws of the Roman Empire, even their most violent detractors admit that at its best and brightest, the Roman Empire was a place where a citizen, even a second class citizen, lived in peace and prosperity.

Slavery? Well, the Romans needed it. But WE have machines that do those jobs better still.

I don't LIKE the thought of an American Empire.. or even a Pax Americana. But a Pax Americana, even at its worst, is better than the unbridled anarchy where everyone with a few bucks can get their hands on weapons of mass destruction.

Lord knows it would be safer.

And, with a little luck and a peaceful world, we can get back to colonizing space. Hell, if the Palestinians want a homeland, we could give them a nice Lunar colony. Or perhaps a spot on Mars... *grin*

Ed: Safer for who?

BigFire: my understanding is that the Iraqis had difficulty manufacturing stablized and pure VX. The status of whatever stocks they might have had is ambiguous, but unless they were able to stablize and purify their VX, they're likely inert now.

Of course, a gram of tabun will get you as dead as 10 milligrams VX and is correspondingly easier to produce so, I'm hoping our military won't have to deal with it at all.

The threat that North Korea manifests is not nuclear, it is convential and old fashioned.

North Korea can hit Seoul, a city of some 10 million people, with old fashioned artillery, of the kind that caused 3/4 of all casualties in WWI and WWII. Although it might not generate the "shock and awe" of a single nuclear bomb, the cumalative effect is no different. Rationally speaking, that is dangerous enough to deter just about anyone.

North Korea probably has several nuclear weapons. Whether these nuclear weapons have to be toted about on a semi-truck, or if they are small enough and light enough for a missile payload is anyone's guess, but the tried and true methods of our fathers, grandfathers, and great-fathers (and maybe great-greats, for you young 'uns) are more than enough to outright kill more Korean civilians than the number of US military casulaties in WWII (killed and wounded, 320,000 [?]).

The current nuclear threat of North Korea, although by no way insignificant, does not really change the current calculus. During the Nixon administration, the North Koreans could have done nearly as much harm.

Eric, my point was that Sean-Paul obviously mis-framed his response to one of Steven's points. I'm not sure if this was because he misread the original posting, or if he was twisting Steven's words in order to score a cheap point.

I think your reading is that he did not misread the post, and is responding with the novel claim that Saddam + a few WMDs = no justification for an invasion. Like you, I'm not sure whether that was the argument Sean-Paul was trying to present. I would hope not, though, because that claim would be, not to put too fine a point on it, breathtakingly stupid.

re Etc: That Seoul is in artillery range is a huge problem for the ROK but, frankly, not quite so much for us. North Korea didn't blackmail the Clinton adminstration because they could shell Seoul. It worked because 1.) the Clintonites are chickenshits 2.) proliferation implications with other failed states. Conventional Soviet style armies are expensive and get killed in large numbers for very little gain. Nuclear weapons on the other hand scare the crap out of all your neighbors and get you fuel oil and power plant offers. We could ignore North Korea's bluster indefinitely if this was merely a conventional force issue.

Sam,

Thank you for missing my point.

>To me, it seems he's very well read when it comes to matters of military strategy, war history and weaponry. He's definetly more informed than the average blogger out there.

Augusto and Sagi,

I don't claim to be an expert either, which is my entire point. My primary beef with den Beste is a post he made back in November in which he essentially said that the US should seek to take over the middle east in what amounts to a new form of colonialism and forcing the values of the US on the people living there and expecting to transform the world that way. History contradicts that theory of his. If these nations struggled against colonialism from the Ottomans, British and French before WWII, why would they accept it now? It showed his utter ignorance of the history of that part of the world.

He wrote me citing a litany of human rights abuses that take place in those countries and essentially said that if I don't agree with the methods he suggested, then I must not be against ending these abuses. I wrote back that I had in fact been working against such abuses in these countries via letters to my congressmen, my work on behalf of Amnesty International and other human rights volunteer work I have done since I was in college in the 1970's. It also didn't take people crashing airplanes into buildings in the city in which I live for me to become aware of these injustices. he didn't respond to that part of my response to him.

Curtiss: VX is the only persistent (low volatility) nerve agent. GA, GB, GD, and GF are the high volatility, non-persistent agents. Mustard gas is a blister agent, not a nerve agent.

BigFire: Soldiers are issued 3 viles of atropine for hip injection in the case of a nerve agent attack. For VX, the atropine must be administered once every 5-8 minutes to remain effective. If the VX is actually inhaled, the atropine must be injected directly into the heart.

Kevin: my lumping of mustard with two nerve agents was sloppiness, and I apologize. 

But persistence of a chemical agent refers to persistence of its lethal effects, not its shelf life in a stock pile.

For persistence data--which is relative to temperature and other weather factors--please see this chart, which I referred to in my first comment. At a persistence of 240-720 hours (70-90 deg F), VX is by far more persistent than Tabun or Sarin or Soman, but Tabun is persistent for 24-48 hours in the same temperature range, which is an order of magnitude lower, but still something (that ought) to give one pause--and is as persistent as mustard.

As for shelf life, http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/ota/934404.pdf note 31 on page 12 (PDF pagination) states that the US method for production of VX only achieves yields of 15%; I think it's reasonable to assume that Iraqi yields must have been lower. The same document on page 44 notes that there is an inherent trade off between simplicity of production and shelf-life of the agent. The source also notes at pp.12-13 that tabun is far easier to produce than VX or sarin or soman--hot HCl is a by-product of the production of the latter three.

It's still awful anyway you slice it.

Curtiss:

I understand that the persistence is not a reference to shelf life. By calling VX the only persistent nerve agent, I was referring to the (V) nomneclature as oppososed the the (G) nomenclature used for the non-persistent agents. As you rightly point out, the naming is not the issue, it is the effects that are relevant. My understanding of VX is that it is also "sticky" and will bind to soldier's clothing, buildings, etc. rendering entire areas unusable. Supposedly it is possible to thicken the "G" agents (tabun, sarin, soman) to achieve somewhat the same effect. In addition to the low yield of VX and how complicated it is to make, I read that it can be highly flammable under certain circumstances. In summary, I agree that it is bad, bad stuff no matter how you slice it.

Kevin

P.S. I think fas.org is an amazing source of free info.

They will surrender.

In droves. As quickly as possible. To any thing that moves.

If word gets out that any one disarmed and lined up in formation saluting an American flag will not be attacked we will find them surrendering to flag poles. In a neat and orderly military fashion.

It is possible the war could last two days. But it might be over in one.

Simon

==============================
I fell in with a young Iraqi student. He spoke quietly and kept moving out of earshot of the whooping peace-pack around us. He had fled Baghdad 11 months ago, he said, after several of his friends were executed. The Iraqi people fear the sons more than Saddam. The sons are more cruel, he told me. Are you against the war? I asked. He shrugged. If it will come, it will come. Everyone close to the regime is selling their property. Theyre buying apartments in Syria and Jordan. This was news to me. But the Iraqis will fight? Another shrug. The first bomb that falls, the first sign of war, the regime will collapse. Everyone knows this.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php3?table=old%A7ion=current§ion=current&issue=2003-02-15&id=2782

He left me with a chilling soundbite: Saddams survival is Iraqs death. It was never my intention, but the peace movement converted me. I came away from that soccer match a full-feathered hawk. And those who attend the march though they quaff deep from the springs of liberty must know that they are exercising the very freedom they would deny to others.

I still think I'm right (surprise).

1) No one argued with my first point, so I'll leave it alone.

2) This is the key point. Sean-Paul's analysis assumes that Saddam has learned from the first war and decentralized his command. However, decentralized command is just about impossible for a dictator. It depends on people you can trust to remain committed to your cause, and Saddam probably doesn't have many of those.

Similarly, a few of the Iraqi soldiers may be religiously motivated to fight to the death, but I doubt enough to consitute a valid war - they weren't there ten years ago, and there probably aren't many more now.

3) I think the people will rise up against Saddam pretty quickly. They are a demoralized and oppressed people, and they will have a strong incentive to either strike back at their oppressors or to gain favor with the perceived new power (us).

If we go in, time will tell . . . If I turn out to be wrong, I'll admit it. Hopefully, you guys will if the situation is reversed.

>>Chris.

The problem with NK being able to shell Seoul, isn't that it will kill lots of americans. (although 20,000 or so of our troops are also in range) The problem is SK will never agree to a war with NK if their capital city is going to be destroyed. I'm really unclear how you plan to win a war with NK with out SK's help.

Here's why we won't engage North Korea militarily: cartoons.

The Simpsons, Samurai Jack, Dexter's Laboratory...all of those and more are produced in South Korean animation workshops located for the most part in Seoul.

My god, man, we just can't risk it! If we move against North Korea and they nuke Seoul (just 30 miles from the DMZ), where...where we will get our beloved, animated laughs?

The North Koreans hold our Big Big Funnies hostage.