Flit

THIS IS THE WAR WE'RE

THIS IS THE WAR WE'RE MISSING, GUYS

God save us all. Or, as the Iraqis might say, al hamdilillah.

THE MIXED BLESSING OF THE

THE MIXED BLESSING OF THE M1 TANK

Not to harp on a point, but we're beginning to see more of the weaknesses of the M1/Bradley armour system in Iraq. It's still early, but you can already see more of the problems than you could in the previous outing.

Now, of course, the M1 tank is, when in its element, all but invincible. Even when something goes wrong, it's immensely survivable. But every plus comes with minuses.

First and foremost is the sheer weight of the tank itself, and the restrictions this places on its mobility, particularly on where it can cross rivers. The M1 isn't well-regarded in the Bosnian theatre (nor are other heavy tanks)... experienced soldiers prefer a slightly lighter tank like the Leopard I, solely because it can get to more places more easily. A big part of this problem is bridges... very few can take repeated crossings by M1s. In heavily-irrigated Mesopotamia, we've already seen at least one M1 temporarily disabled when it BROKE the bridge it was crossing (during the 7th Cavalry's encirclement of Najaf... no casualties, and the tank was later recovered).

More worrying than that risk is the predictability that the reliance on only a few bridges imparts to American movements. This produces chokepoints that a defender can take advantage of... this was highlighted by the most tragic M1 loss so far, when a Marine tank driver was apparently shot and killed by a sniper while crossing a bridge, and the tank plunged off into the Euphrates, killing 3 others.

Another problem is showing up in the area of interoperability. Both the Army and Marines use M1s as their tanks now, but there is still a problem with infantry carriers. The Army's Bradley is too heavy for Marine use or air-portability. Instead, the Marines are currently using a combination of Amtracs (armoured amphibious assault vehicles) and Canadian-made wheeled LAVs. The Amtracs, which have run longer and farther from the sea than perhaps any amphibian in history, are beginning now to break down... there is no prospect of replacing them, forcing three-quarters of the Marine forces in-theatre into an increasing reliance on truck transport. The army units can't help them with spare parts, because they're using Bradleys.

But of course, the biggest problem with the M1 is the massive logistical tail it produces in-theatre. At 1.8 miles per gallon, the tank eats fuel convoys for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Keeping the M1s in theatre is using up a significant portion of the army's logistical capability. Even getting them into theatre en masse is impossible without shipborne transport, as we're seeing now... this adds weeks to a heavy division's deployment time, if not months. Relying on M1s can, in a global sense, make the American forces less flexible.

All that could be forgiven, easily, if the tank was still getting the remarkable kill ratios against other tanks it racked up in 1991. But it can't, of only because the Iraqis have no interest in making that battle happen. They've concentrated their T-72s, which are only marginal against an M1 anyway, in Baghdad for the final battles. Their really old tanks, the T-55s, are either in the north intimidating Kurds, or piled into Basra, where they've been making nice target practice for the British. So far the Americans have seen few if any tanks facing them... this is almost certainly intentional. And in city fighting, which is ever more a part of this campaign, the M1, like all heavy tanks, loses much of its advantage, if only because it can't slew its huge turret in the narrow streets. Nothing the Americans or British have faced to date couldn't have been handled as easily, with about as much loss, by an old M-60, Leopard I, or Chieftain... the 105mm gun-armed tanks of a previous generation.

Does this mean the day of the Main Battle Tank is over? Hardly. The presence of M1s is, in large part, what makes the Americans' position around Najaf, which would otherwise seem rather precarious, almost completely invulnerable. They have at least a few good days yet. But this war is almost certain to give impetus to people's search for another basket to split the army's eggs between. For instance, some people have been saying that the regular army's five heavy divisions in the States and Germany should be reduced to four, in a tradeoff with the army reserve for some of the essential non-combat specialist trades the reserves supply, to disentangle foreign deployments from their heavy reservist reliance. This will be certainly seen to have more merit now, with tanks in the States that can't be shipped and large numbers of disgruntled reservists. The planned "Stryker" brigades, which propose to replace the M1 with a 105mm wheeled direct-fire support vehicle, air-portable, amphibious, and interchangeable with the Marines' new vehicles, should also get a boost from the experience of M1s in Iraq. If America truly seeks the kind of global "constabulary power" role Wolfowitz and Perle, et al seek for it, then it's clear now, more than 2 weeks ago, that the M1 can only ever be part of the answer.

THE OTHER DOG THAT HASN'T

THE OTHER DOG THAT HASN'T BARKED

Besides the T-72s, there's another dog that hasn't barked in the night yet. U.S., British and Australian special forces have owned the western corner of Iraq for nearly two weeks now. If Iraq had any long-range SSMs left, particularly ones with chemical capability, that's where they would have been... can't hit Israel from anywhere else in the country, after all. Isn't it unusual that we've yet to see one turn up? Or was Hans Blix's contention that there were no Scuds left, and no chemical warheads for them either, right on the money after all? And if so, does that mean the elite of the elite of three armies have spent two weeks chasing, well, nothing at all? Away from a more useful role, like in, say, the north of Iraq? Just asking.

UPDATE: Den Beste comments. If we disagree, it's only on whether the military and its civilian masters could long keep news of a Scud find or similar discovery quiet, no matter the risk to operational security. I frankly doubt they could have kept it out of their briefings this long if they knew. The political payoff is obvious, and the risk to other special ops more or less minimal.

I'd also say it's questionable whether SF played any role in securing the oil fields around Basra. We know that two full brigades of Marines, covered by British armour, drove into them at high speed the first day... and because they had to do that first, before 1 Mar Div could double back to Nasariyah, the American advance north more or less lost 24 hours. If SF were heavily involved and not doing something else instead in those first crucial hours, and the Americans STILL lost that day, endangering their coup de main attempt on Baghdad, then the price of those oil fields was very high, indeed.

THE PROBLEM, YOU SEE, IS

THE PROBLEM, YOU SEE, IS ALL THE LYING... PART 2

When spin fails:

"I have seen one report of a soldier who said he HAD an MRE. I have seen one report. There is no indication of any widespread [supply] problems whatsoever."
--Pentagon spokesperson Victoria Clarke, March 29

"This division is out of rations... we are at zero balance on food." -- Brig. Gen. Charles Fletcher, the commander of the Divisional Supply Group for 3rd Infantry Division, New York Times, March 27

OUR CHIEF WEAPON IS SURPRISE.

OUR CHIEF WEAPON IS SURPRISE. SURPRISE AND FEAR. FEAR AND SURPRISE...

Sgt. Stryker has what I've decided to cryptically call a "Who wants ginger snaps?" moment. (Hint: "Deep Space Homer.") There's been a lot of these recently on the warblogs... the other, secret Marines your government hasn't told you about will invade through Jordan, the 1st Armoured will descend by spaceship, etc. The only reason I can see for it is that perennial (and perennially wrong) assumption that soldiers are ALWAYS smarter than the journalists who cover them. Don't buy it. Tactical surprise is certainly still possible in this war (I suspect the encirclement of Najaf by 7th Cavalry will likely be long studied, for instance), but I'm increasingly convinced that strategic, or even operational surprise, may not be possible in a free-communication culture. Indeed, one notable thing about this war so far is how little the Iraqis were surprised by events... after all, their best division, the Medina Armoured, WAS prepositioned right in the path of the American advance, and is now holding it up successfully, at least for the moment... hardly a sign of poor prewar intelligence on their part.

THIS WAS DISAPPOINTING READING Sy

THIS WAS DISAPPOINTING READING

Sy Hersh, in the New Yorker:

Instead, [Rumsfeld] relied on the heavy equipment that was already in Kuwait—enough for just one full combat division. The 3rd Infantry Division, from Fort Stewart, Georgia, the only mechanized Army division that was active inside Iraq last week, thus arrived in the Gulf without its own equipment. “Those guys are driving around in tanks that were pre-positioned. Their tanks are sitting in Fort Stewart,” the planner said. “To get more forces there we have to float them. We can’t fly our forces in, because there’s nothing for them to drive. Over the past six months, you could have floated everything in ninety days—enough for four or more divisions.”

Okay, well, that changes some assumptions. I had assumed with the lengthy buildup time (over a year, really), that at least the 3rd Mech Inf had brought its own equipment, and there was still some of the prepositioned stock in place for the follow-on forces. If not, then even elements of 4th Mech Inf may well not see action until Day 30 now. My earlier prediction of a 7-week war goes to 8-9 on the strength of that one quote alone... I can't see how they're out of this much before the middle of May at the earliest now. Wow. They had so much time. But still no corps artillery, no corps logistics support, and now this.

I'm still not convinced it's just the Pentagon civilians at fault, though. It may simply be the unwieldiness of American heavy divisions today. They're just too heavy to move, it seems. What good is a military formation that even its defenders concede now requires six months to fully deploy? Rumsfeld, et al, in ruling out the use of bigger formations in Iraq, might have taken the wrong course in this campaign, but ultimately with the right reasons in mind... that we are at the end of the era of heavyweight combat forces. In America's next major war, you can bet nearly everything will have to fit on a plane somehow, if only to avoid what's going on now.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS ANALYSIS?

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS ANALYSIS?

OxBlog's got a link up to a possible explanation for the American strategy, which continues to baffle people. In short:

Franks could not have reached Baghdad in under a week with two mech infantry divisions abreast. The logistical tail from Kuwait would not have supported it.

It is certainly possible this is correct: it would be impossible to evaluate without logistical information not in common possession. But it still doesn't mean the Americans are on plan. The reason is that the Americans had choices in which units they sent to this war. To simplify, they sent 1 heavy (3rd Inf), 2 medium (Marines and Brits), and 1 light division (101st). If this is where the Americans expected they might be on Day 12, essentially unable to move forward because of the lack of a second heavy division, they could have subbed one into the starting lineup. Or, as has been suggested here previously, they could have created an ad hoc heavy division by merging Marine and UK units. But they didn't do that, so obviously they didn't anticipate this situation. So obviously they were expecting to fight a different kind of war... a war that ended relatively quickly and would require large numbers of lightly armed infantry for pacification.

They didn't get it, and that's fine... war's don't work out the way you want, and losses really haven't been that high. But there's no point in pretending that the situation at the moment is anywhere close to the original plan. It was a coup de main attempt that failed.

Incidentally, I believe both Rumsfeld and the generals are right... this was the armed forces' plan, and he didn't rewrite it. It would have been more subtle than that. The choice would have been between the coup de main plan, with an understanding that failure would mean the war would go on for a couple months instead using a backup Plan B, or a different initial plan that would have taken longer to mount, would have been less ambitious but more certain, with more troops, and would still take... a couple months. Even without Rumsfeld's well-known predilections for light forces and military revolutions, the first option would still have looked tempting.

In a way, the Oxblog commentator is half-right. In order to prove Rumsfeld wrong, the second guessers have to come up with a plan that would have at least a small chance of winning this war in a week, as "Iraq Plan A" promised to. There's lots of plans that would have promised to win the war in two months, including the Plan B the Americans are no doubt executing now: by mid May, we'll know the success of that one, as well. One can certainly fault the Bush administration for anything they may have done to raise expectations of a quick war, but it doesn't seem right to fault them solely for playing a non-risk averse game here. A "quick war" strategy was low-odds, but high payoff.

WHAT EXACTLY IS THE REPUBLICAN

WHAT EXACTLY IS THE REPUBLICAN GUARD DOING?

People are trying to figure out the RG's strategy, and apparent moving around of units around Baghdad. It's kinda simple... outside the city the Guard has three really good armoured divisions (Hammurabi, Medina (probably the best) and Nidah). They are the units with those T-72s we were talking about. They also have two divisions of infantry, without significant armour or artillery assets, the Nebuchadnezzar and Baghdad. (If this was 1814, we'd call them the "Young Guard.") They're probably somewhat better than the regular army's worst units, and not as good as its best ones. The final two Republican Guard divisions outside Baghdad proper are still well to the north of the city, around Tikrit and Kirkuk... they're not particularly well-equipped units either. So practically all the Hussein regime's remaining fighting power is in those three armoured divisions.

The Iraqi strategy throughout has been first to delay the approach to Baghdad, and second to preserve their combat power. The Medina's taking the brunt of the Americans' air and artillery attack right now: the Hammurabi and Nidah are catching a bit, too, but they're still very much to the north and east of the city, and so largely out of helicopter and artillery range. As near as I can figure, Hammurabi's still watching for an airmobile deployment north of Karbala, while Nidah's positioning to catch the Americans with a counterstrike if they try to take the war across the Tigris at any point. In fact, the threats of counterstrike from those two units is what's basically hemming the Americans into the Euphrates Valley, forcing them to come through the Medina Division to get to Baghdad. (If the Americans had had a "second fist" ie, a second heavy division, they'd have more options right now, obviously: the Marines or 101st Airborne would have some trouble with a Republican Guard armoured division, but the 4th Mech Inf, for instance, certainly won't when it shows up.)

The Iraqis know that when the Medina and 3rd Inf divisions finally clash, the Medina Division will lose, and they will be forced to finally withdraw into Baghdad proper. So their one major move was to move forward their two weaker RG divisions, their Young Guard, on either flank of the Medina, to delay that decisive clash still further. (The Iraqis know if those two are destroyed the Medina can keep fighting, but not vice versa.) It's working... the Nebuchadnezzar and Baghdad Divisions' positions are now soaking off a lot of the air and ground combat power that would otherwise be focussed on the Medina. Lacking substantial armour or artillery support, they're speedbumps, really, but they are buying hours, even days of time with their lives.

WEEKEND WRAPUP Okay, here's the

WEEKEND WRAPUP

Okay, here's the significant developments of the weekend that one can see:

*the 82nd Airborne Division's brigade in Kuwait has moved to take over the clearing of Samawah, on the main American supply route. That pretty much rules out any significant new airborne operation in Iraq for the time being... so the 173rd brigade in the north is likely to remain on its own for a while. Sandro Contenta of the Star reports that he has yet to see any U.S. AFVs with them, by the way, suggesting any plans to strengthen the 173rd with heavier units are taking some time.

*the 101st Airborne is now fully dedicated to the beseiging and clearing out Najaf.

*an Iraqi resistance in Diwaniyah has been bypassed and cut off, with American forces from the 3rd Infantry Division now coming up to Hillah. The 2nd Brigade of that Division has been fighting with the Iraqi Nebuchadnezzar Division in Hindiyah. Map updated.

QUOTE OF THE WEEKEND "...The

QUOTE OF THE WEEKEND

"...The 3rd Infantry [Division] was sent to war with only one battalion of MLRS rocket-launched artillery, a powerful long-range system that can reach out 30 miles and obliterate more than a third of a square mile of enemy soldiers or enemy tanks. Usually, it would have brought two brigades of MLRS launchers, about six battalions."

--Joseph Galloway, Miami Herald

Been over the news, and while there's still a couple question marks I need to tease out, it's notable how so very little has changed in the last 48 hours. The 101st Airborne appears to have been given that task of occupying Najaf, which would be a key acquisition to continue the advance.. The Iraqis, on a line from Karbala to Hillah, are being pounded from the air, still... the Marines are biting and holding little non-significant chunks of Mespotamian farmland, and the British all still completely stalled. In fact, it's fair to say that after 4 days of rapid advance, the American move forward basically halted last Sunday, and everything since then has been consolidation and positioning moves. I defy anyone to tell that from the last week of newspaper headlines alone, though: the time lag between reality change and expectation change seems to be about a week. So we had a week's worth of "Americans march on Baghdad" headlines when they weren't going anywhere, and now this week, when I fully expect they'll start moving again, we'll get a lot of "Are Americans stalled?" heads.

THIS PROBABLY COUNTS FOR ANOTHER

THIS PROBABLY COUNTS FOR ANOTHER OF MY 15 MINUTES

I only got the two good quotes in the recent John Allemang piece on warblogs in the Globe, but it was still a tremendously pleasant interview. He was clearly working hard at trying to understand this corner of the blogging phenomenon. Would that every reporter took such care. Cheers, John: it was nice talking to you again.

Just got back in from a weekend running a rifle range... rest assured we shall be returning to our regularly scheduled war shortly, as soon as I manage to catch up on the last 48.

BRIEF HIATUS I'm out of

BRIEF HIATUS

I'm out of town working this weekend. Posting to resume Sunday afternoon.

NOTES FROM THE MORNING TV

NOTES FROM THE MORNING TV NEWS

CNN reports the Guard's Hammurabi Division is shifting to face south, and the Adnan Division is coming down from the north. The Medina Division, the main roadblock to Baghdad's perimeter at the moment (see map) is reportedly at 65 per cent strength.

The Marines' secondary thrust from Nasiriyah to Kut has reportedly reached Qal at Sukkar. Map updated. They should be close now to the Republican Guard Baghdad Division, which I believe to be in positions in and north of Hayy. The main Marine thrust is now northwest of Diwaniyah, and may have already cut that city off. Marines with that formation report they're down to one meal a day's rations.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Meanwhile, COSCOM itself has only 150 heavy transport trucks for an operation that Army planners estimate requires 700. 'We're going to war not with what we need, but with what we have on the ground, so we threw away the doctrinal books on this operation a long time ago,' said [logistics commander Brig. Gen. Charles] Fletcher, noting that his transport units also have far less maintenance support than normal." --seen on Carter's site.

HERE'S SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

HERE'S SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

In eight days of warfare we have yet to see a confirmed report of an Iraqi T-72 tank being destroyed. Not one. They have somewhere over 500 of them that can still move, as far as people can tell, all in the Guard divisions. The Medina Division, the one Guard division that's been engaged at all, certainly had 100-150 of them at least. They've been seen... just not engaged or killed yet. Not that the T-72's so special, but it is somewhat more dangerous than the tanks the Allies have been busting up, which have been only the 40 year-old T-55s so far. Just something to think about.

INCHING FORWARD 3rd Infantry's forward

INCHING FORWARD

3rd Infantry's forward element is now in the village of Kifl, halfway on the map between Hillah and Najaf.

LOOKS LIKE WE'RE REACHING THE

LOOKS LIKE WE'RE REACHING THE END OF THIS LITTLE EXPERIMENT

Take a look at those quotes again, below. A logistics brigadier general, talking to the COSCOM commander, about the highest-priority traffic a division can have, broadcast IN THE CLEAR by the Scripps news service to any Iraqi with a web browser. And the CORPS commander, expressing his deepest personal doubts about the progress of the war.

This is the kind of communications traffic that in past wars the highest-level codes were reserved for. Now it's being sent to the enemy in real time. This is not sound. The American forces can't allow this to continue much longer. What makes marginal sense in a short cakewalk war makes zero sense now.

Sitting here, looking at a couple websites, I've been able to build up a 90% accurate picture of the strategic situation. (Not to put on airs... it's not hard.) There have been no surprises, no aces up Gen. Franks' sleeve that I and others didn't see coming hours or days off. Everyone in the world knows, if they care, roughly when the next U.S. armoured division is likely to arrive in Kuwait, how many tanks the U.S. lost yesterday, and to what... imagine how much more you'd have if you were the Iraqi commander and you also had the input of your own recce assets to feed into that.

In 1991, using skilful misdirection and overwhelming aerial superiority, the Americans basically denied the Iraqis ANY intelligence about their location or intent. When the hammer fell, it fell, for the Iraqis, out of fricking nowhere. Not this time. All that's been ceded over. Now everyone knows where the Americans are: it's the knowledge of the Iraqi situation that's imperfect.

Watch for the embeds to start being left behind or clawed back. We've already seen one reporter kicked out of theatre, for saying something actually rather innocuous. It was probably more to encourage the others. In fact, the lull you're seeing today in news probably has less to do with actual quiet on the ground, and more on reporters and their minders trying to establish what the new rules are going to be. And expect the generals to start shutting up.

UPDATE: Den Beste comments. Just to be clear, it's not the exposure of some plain positional data by itself that bothers me. That would have to have been assumed as soon as you brought reporters along with cameras: I find myself getting far more cues from images than the words anyway. What concerns me is the obvious complete loss of ANY secrecy if reporters are listening into general-to-general conversations and reporting the results the next day to the world, censorship-free. That speaks to a general loss of perspective in the American camp over whether operational security or the desires of embedded reporters for total access takes primacy. That can't be sustainable. Yes, you can have the reporter there, but that information could have been released a few days later, after the food arrived... it was just stupid to have it out in real time like that.

Plus, there's a problem with his anti-thesis... that the Americans are trying to lure the Iraqis out by being upfront about their position and plans. Take the counterattack he points at... that happened because the Americans had cut Najaf and its defenders off (the fact 7th Cav was exposed on the near bank of a major obstacle, and the weather was adverse, were no doubt also factors). The news media had nothing to do with that: the attack had been made and failed before most people watching the news, including myself, were clear on 7th Cav's route and intent, for one thing. Yes, I agree the Americans would prefer a fight outside Baghdad, but there's no connection between that and your commander telling the world, including even his own men and their families at home, that they are out of food and their resupply is nowhere to be found. (Frankly, if anything, it would only confirm the Iraqis' beliefs that their economy of force strategy was succeeding and that they should continue to hunker down, or keep picking away at the rear areas, instead. The only thing more stupid than broadcasting everything in the clear for purely PR reasons would be an nearly intact American mechanized division trying to play the "wounded bird" act. No one's that naive.)

DAILY WAR NOTES The main

DAILY WAR NOTES

The main body of the 101st Airborne is finally on the move, by truck, although 3rd Brigade appears to be already with 3rd Mech Inf near Najaf, possibly subbing in to the order of battle for 3rd Brigade of that division, which seems to still be held up at Samawah. The Marines seem to be due east of Diwaniyah, more or less (a Christian Science Monitor reporter was booted yesterday for saying that they were on the main highway, 100 miles from Baghdad). Map updated accordingly.

The big question mark today is how bad the fighting in Najaf and Diwaniyah, significant cities now more or less cut off by the American advance, is going to be. If the Americans can clear them quickly, they can be moving north again by the end of the weekend. If they run into Nasariyah-type resistance, it could be middle of next week.

The 173rd Airborne Brigade, with a battalion of armour attached (about 30 M1 tanks) is at Harir airfield, 75 km northeast of Irbil. They probably have the combat power to push on Irbil in a few days, and to act as a lightning rod for a larger Kurdish force. They probably don't have the power to push onto the oil fields at Kirkuk, at least not by themselves. Their probable main role is to create enough of a demonstration to attract the attention of the two Iraqi divisions, the Adnan Division in Mosul and the Abed Division in Kirkuk, that would have had enough motorized lift to head south if a northern option didn't materialize soon. The rest of the Iraqi force in the north can be assumed to remain in position until overrun, regardless... again, the Iraqis seem to have concentrated all the transport vehicles that can actually move with their Guards units... still, two fewer divisions in Baghdad is two fewer divisions in Baghdad, definitely worth the fairly minor diversion of resources. Just don't expect too much from the north. The Americans have 500 tanks in the south... at most they might be able to support 50 in the north, solely by air.

The question mark here is whether the Americans' one remaining parachute brigade, the 2nd/82nd, will also be dropped in Kurdish territory, probably to the south, closer to Sulaymaniyah. Right now the location of the first American drop can be seen to favour the Kurdish Democratic Party, the northern faction, who owns that airfield. Dropping the other brigade in Patriotic Union of Kurdistan territory might be seen to be evening the score.

GARBAGE IN, GARBAGE OUT "The

GARBAGE IN, GARBAGE OUT

"The enemy that we're fighting is different from the one we'd war gamed." -- V Corps commander Lt. Gen William Wallace, Washington Post

THOUGHTS FROM THE NEWS Two

THOUGHTS FROM THE NEWS

Two images from last night's TV stuck in my brain... it was tragic to see that 155mm SP gun blow-up... and remarkable the crew escaped... one of these days soon one of those embedded videophones is going to capture something far more tragic on live TV... the other was the residents of Umm Qasr cheering Saddam as the first food shipment from Kuwait arrived. Obviously it was a publicity stunt, but it shows how deeply embedded Saddamism still is in the "pacified" population that some loyalist felt confident enough even to start the cheering.

Quote of the night: "This division is out of rations... we are at zero balance on food." -- Brig. Gen. Charles Fletcher, 3rd Infantry Division

MIDDLE OF THE IRAQI NIGHT

MIDDLE OF THE IRAQI NIGHT UPDATE

The encirclement of Najaf also involved 1st Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division, which is now across the Euphrates with the 7th Cavalry, the NYT reports. Map updated. The final tank tally for the operation seems to have been three... two to the Iraqis, one to an accident.

The battle seems to have begun when 7th Cavalry, after bumping up against Karbala on the west bank, doubled back about 50 miles south to sneak across the Euphrates near Samawah, then drove 50 miles BACK north on the east bank to capture the first of the Najaf bridges from the other side. Nice work, that. CNN's Walter Rodgers' cryptic comments on Tuesday morning our time (see post below) are cleared up. As I said, no new ground advances... but still a LOT of fighting as the Americans consolidate and regroup. They need to clear out Najaf, and then also Diwaniyah, to have a secure paved road back to Kuwait, and a firm base going into Phase Two.

UPDATE: More on the AT-14 Kornet missile, which is the supposed Abrams-killer from yesterday.

UPDATE, 1815: We're hearing 173rd Airborne Brigade is in play somewhere in North Iraq tonight. The 173rd is known as the "secret" American airborne force because it's not part of either of the two famous paratrooper divisions... Also, it seems clear by now that at least one brigade of the Iraqi 6th Armoured Division are also in Basra and took part in today's spoiling attack. The Iraqi regular army is putting up a better fight than anyone expected.

You'll see in the papers no doubt soon that this was somehow a day of attacks by the Iraqis on all fronts. I'm not convinced of that, actually. The center of the action for now is still the Najaf fight. The Medina Division certainly seems to be in play there. Another Iraqi force is moving near Kut, but that seems less an attack than a reinforcement, to prevent the Marines from running amok over Mesopotamia. That force is still nowhere close to the Americans. The Basra breakout, meanwhile, is probably really just a spoiling attack, at most timed to maximize Allied confusion over the other main battle. The Iraqis' tanks are almost as useless in city fighting as the Brits' tanks would be... they were bound to throw them out to see if they could do some damage before they were destroyed anyway... like the short range missiles fired from Basra at Kuwait, it was use them or lose them. Note, the Basra attack went southeast, to hit the lightest-armed of the British forces (3 Commando Brigade). Gaining ground here gives the Iraqis little... they couldn't hold it anyway. If they'd wanted to pretend to threaten the U.S. supply line as part of a coordinated offensive they would have attacked towards Umm Qasr (and run into 120 British tanks in doing so, and been promptly destroyed for their pains.) So instead they attacked out of Basra in a way calculated to do the most damage to the besiegers, and put the Brits back on their heels a bit. It was an attack to improve their local circumstance, not contribute to a larger "Mother of all offensives."

FINAL UPDATE: Just to be clear: I'm not saying that these attacks, involving units from at least two Iraqi corps, aren't coordinated. They are. What I'm saying is that any commentator you read or hear who says this is the Iraqis' "mother of all counterattacks," their last big push before they collapse, is arguing facts not in evidence. The Iraqis have pushed this war into at least a second week largely through skilful application of the military principle of economy of force... the evidence in so far indicates these are a set of small movements and counterattacks all along the line to improve the local situations of units while the American sledgehammer is in a strategic pause.

OKAY, FINAL, FINAL UPDATE: Barry rightly calls me out in Flitters, saying tanks aren't "useless" in city fighting. Of course they're not, either on offense or defense: I should have used a different word. What I was trying to get at is the Iraqis in Basra probably have more armoured vehicles at this point than they know what to do with from a siege perspective, so they can still afford to lose a few on the occasional sally. The alternative is just to see them steadily plinked away from the air anyway. Interestingly, the Agonist reported today (unsourced) that there were, in fact, only 14 vehicles in the sally, and the Brits managed to destroy 2.

THE HORROR. THE HORROR. Connie

THE HORROR. THE HORROR.

Connie Chung show cancelled. Chung quits.

WE MAY HAVE THE FIRST

WE MAY HAVE THE FIRST EVER MIA PIN-UP

If the inevitable tragic outcome implied herein doesn't manage to get Americans madder than they already are, little will.

A COUPLE NOTES A couple

A COUPLE NOTES

A couple things that the current reporting isn't making clear. The fighting around Najaf yesterday was all about the 7th Cavalry moving to link up with the Marines, and encircle Najaf at the same time. Najaf is a city of 400,000, and it's likely to be heavily defended, a la Nasiriyah, but if the Americans can finish resistance there they've got a good line of advance to Baghdad open to them. I may have spoken too soon when I said Karbala was likely to be the decision point... it could still be, but the tea leaves are now unclear again. What's certain is the Iraqis wanted to keep a supply line into Najaf as long as possible, and are now involved in periodic attempts like yesterday's to break the American siege, and the Americans are likewise committed to do everything they have to to keep Najaf cut off now. (Najaf is also useful to capture if the Americans just want to restore their supply lines before a further drive north.) The fact the Iraqis apparently detonated a bridge the Americans thought they captured shows how tense this is likely to get.

In Basra, meanwhile, we're seeing spoiling attacks by the Iraqis OUT. Again, this is no surprise... it's what beseiged forces do... the question mark is whether this is still all 51st Mechanized Division (you remember them, they were the formation that was reported to have entirely surrendered?), or whether 6th Armoured Division to the north has also got some of its forces into the city before the British could finish their envelopment.

THE BIG WINNER SO FAR

THE BIG WINNER SO FAR

One of the big winners out of this war, so far, institutionally speaking, is going to be U.S. army chief Shinseki and his airportable medium-weight brigades. If there was ever any doubt about their utility, it's basically vanished this week. Two simple facts guarantee that:

1) The 4th Mech Inf, the next formation in the shipping line to Kuwait, is unlikely to engage before Day 20... any other divisions could be longer than that. Heavy armoured divisions are just TOO BIG for rapid theatre deployment, especially when there's already a war on.

2) The simple fact about the Iraqi opposition is that there's nothing bigger than a T-55 tank east of Kut at this point, an obsolescent tank well within the engagement capability of any medium-weight force. (The Marines, with three brigades travelling in armoured amphibious vehicles, are basically medium-weight, and they're having no problems). The Iraqis have some T-72s that would give a medium-weight force pause, but they're all conveniently lined up against the U.S heavy troops. There's almost certainly none in Basra, or near Nasariyah.

So, if one of Shinseki's "Stryker brigades" was good to go today, it could presumably fairly quickly get to Kuwait, deploy, and take up the slack in that long front to send other, stronger, units forward, like the British 7th Armoured. Critics had said they'd be of limited utility in an Iraq war, but it's certain the Pentagon wishes they had one ready at the moment.

Here's the flipside of that, for Canadians, though... there's nothing the Iraqis have at Basra or Nasariyah that our own three mechanized brigade groups couldn't handle, either. Critics here have said that Canadian forces, which are basically all "medium-weight," would be too outclassed to do much on the ground in Iraq, so it's better to send them to Afghanistan. But if Canada had had its own integral air and sealift capability, so it wasn't drawing down American logistical resources, a unit like 2 Brigade could easily have been a valuable asset to the Americans and Brits right now.

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE TANKS

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE TANKS

The Agonist is reporting 7th Cav had 2 tanks knocked out in fighting near Najaf yesterday: crews survived. If true, those would be the first M1's EVER lost to hostile fire.

Which brings up another way to look at the fighting. The tanks are really the closest thing we have to a finite measure of American ground power. They are, up until yesterday, considered almost completely invincible. There is no enemy tank that can stand against them in an open fight. So you can measure sort of where the American-US emphasis is, largely by the location of their tank assets.

3rd Mech Inf (plus 7th Cavalry): 250-plus, near Najaf
1st Marine Div: 60 or so, SE of Diwaniyah
2nd Marine Exp. Bde: another 60, held up at Nasariyah, now headed north
1st UK Div: 120, around Basra.

So the Americans have 50 per cent of their ground combat power restoring its strength on good ground west of the Euphrates. The Marines have another 25 per cent of it, but it's split between two axes and on closer terrain, which is why the Marines are very much the secondary thrust in this advance (really, the focus of their job has been and is likely to remain opening up supply lines for the army's tanks so they can start rolling again sooner.) The Brits have the other 25 per cent, but it's of limited value at Basra, where, given the terrain, the city has to be taken or otherwise fall before those tanks can start moving again (basically the Iraqis are tying up a full quarter of the Allies' offensive power with a miniscule fraction of their own). That, at its core, is the problem that's starting to cause ex-generals to mouth off on cable news. There is no second fist.

UPDATE: Confirmation on the tank kills, from the BBC. More from USA Today.

NOTE TO SELF Don't watch

NOTE TO SELF

Don't watch Starship Troopers and CNN in close succession, as I did last weekend. It really messes with your head...

I also watched, by coincidence, Last of the Mohicans... underrated flick, and useful if only to remind us what Americans once thought of un-uniformed troops defending their homes.

SPEAKING OF HEARTS AND MINDS...

SPEAKING OF HEARTS AND MINDS...

The U.S. ambassador took a swipe at Canada's nominal non-support yesterday. Everything he said is true, of course, but surely the Americans know by now there's no better way to get Canadians to refuse to do something than to say Americans will be disappointed if they don't. If this is the same kind of finesse diplomacy that was used on Turkey, no wonder things went sideways.

Speaking of which, there's a real simple answer to the whole Turkish dilemma Colby's talking about, if only everyone would drop their prejudices and think about it. The Turks claim they need a security zone to help with the refugee problem. The Americans are afraid this will antagonize the Kurds (it will). The answer? How about you put a NATO brigade on the ground in that security zone? The Turks can't complain, because their only valid reason for seizing Iraqi soil is being resolved. The Kurds would be mollified, so the Americans would have to be happy, too.

Actually, it would work in a lot of ways. It would also be seen, inevitably, as a Bush sop to Europe and domestic multilateralists, that would moderate a whole lot of opposition to the war. Canada, for instance, would have no choice but to offer their military support, if only to keep the PM from rolling completely into a ball, policy-wise. Plus I suspect there are a lot of people in the world, myself included, who are suspicious of the value of the UN, but still think NATO, an alliance of democracies, was still a pretty good idea. Even if you didn't think it's a good idea in its current form, the best way to drive a stake through its heart is surely to force the countries you're trying to kick out of your existing alliance network to choose between starving refugees and opposing the U.S. Would it give NATO a bargaining position in postwar Iraq? No bigger a position than Turkey's going to take for itself anyway. It's a proposal with no downside... except one. The Americans would have to propose it, or at least secretly push an ally like Canada or Britain into proposing it for them. And this administration almost certainly won't. They don't "speak softly" in Washington, anymore, you see. They just brandish the Rooseveltian stick. Loudly.

HEARTS AND MINDS WILL FOLLOW?

HEARTS AND MINDS WILL FOLLOW?

Stephanie Nolen, who's been doing great work from Kurdish-occupied Iraq, reports that so far 46 Kurdish fighters have been killed due to U.S. fire. I'd trust this one.

IF YOU'VE BEEN WAITING FIVE

IF YOU'VE BEEN WAITING FIVE DAYS TO TAKE A SMOKE...

I concur with the Agonist (whose accuracy and timeliness record, just for the record, is way ahead of that other war metablog), that we're looking now at a pause before phase 2, possibly to go on as late as Friday night. There'll still be helicopter action and airstrikes, but the main move is going to be to get the hookup between Marines and 3rd Inf around Diwaniyah accomplished, and possibly get some more of the heavier units that were left back at Samawah and Nasiriyah up closer to the action, reload, repair, etc. If there's something you needed to get done, now's a good day to turn the TV off. You're unlikely to miss too much. I plan to.

In other news, it appears the Marines are broadening the area of control by advancing slowly up the Nasiriyah to Al Kut road. It appears only units of 2 Marine Expeditionary Brigade are involved, and they are stalled now at Shatrah, 40 km north of Nasiriyah. It's a secondary advance, at best... they're just trying to pin down the remaining Republican Guard units in Kut as much as possible to keep them from moving west.

UPDATE 1000: Looks like the Iraqis are moving equipment down the Shatrah road, as well. What appears to be happening is the Iraqis are moving one Guard formation, probably the light Baghdad (Motorized) Division, down the road to add to the defense, rather than attack outright (although any pressure they can put on that Nasiriyah road right now will slow the Americans' plans). The other part is probably the Nida (Armoured) Division moving south into Kut... the Nida, along with the Medina and the Hammurabi (still reportedly north of Karbala and off the map) are the three Republican Guard divisions outside the capital the Americans are most concerned about. Map updated accordingly. I still don't think we'll see much in the way of new ground advances today, though.

SPITTING ON THE SIDEWALK, DRINKING

SPITTING ON THE SIDEWALK, DRINKING THEIR TEA WITHOUT MILK, YOU KNOW... CRAZY STUFF

"We aren't seeing anything, we're just hearing reports that there are people who are appearing on the streets in significant numbers and who are essentially being less compliant with the regime than they are normally."
--British Maj. Gen. Peter Wall, on the Basra uprising. Either this is typical British understatement, or we're really defining "revolt" down...

HEIRS OF CUSTER CAUGHT ON

HEIRS OF CUSTER CAUGHT ON WRONG SIDE OF RIVER AGAIN

A major ground battle was underway near Baghdad tonight, after Iraqi troops--possibly the elite Medina Division of the Republican Guard--attacked elements of the U.S. 7th cavalry in the vicinity of Najaf.
--Washington Post, 15 minutes ago. Map updated accordingly. And, yes, of course the headline is tongue-in-cheek.

MAP PAGE UPDATED I've added

MAP PAGE UPDATED

I've added an Iraqi order of battle to the maps page, as well as the Allied one. The Iraqi OOB also includes a rating scale based on comparative ratings of the units from a sampling of pre-war analysis articles. (It should be noted that any Iraqi division other than the Special Republican Guard is about one third the size of what the U.S. would call a division.)

Little-mentioned fact about the Iraqi regular army: that between 1991 and the present, the army, which had been over three-quarters Kurdish and Shiite in Gulf War I, was purged of Kurds and Shiites (they were exempted from military service). The regular army today may be down to 11 infantry divisions from 40 in the first war, but even those divisions, the worst Iraq has, are now almost entirely Sunni Muslim men of military age.

The problem with the regular army now isn't troop quality, it's mobility. The Iraqis are so lacking in working transport vehicles that any of the regular army units, even the armoured ones, can be safely considered to be static for the duration of the war. The only Iraqi players that are even capable of moving to anticipate Allied thrusts are the Republican Guard units. We've already seen the Medina Division shift east towards Najaf to meet the 3rd Mech Inf.

MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT IN

MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT IN IRAQ UPDATE

Okay, the Americans have basically got Nasiriyah in hand, now... if they can get Diwaniyah, Najaf AND Samawah secure enough to run supplies through they'd be able to coil up 3rd Inf and the Marines again and then blow right through together to Baghdad. That's why the two divisions are hooking up at Diwaniyah now, cutting off the remaining Iraqi defenders along the Euphrates in the process.

The big logistical problem for 3rd Inf right now has to be that long drag along camel tracks west of the Euphrates from Samawah to Najaf... they need to free up some hard-top road lines to regenerate their combat potential for what I guess we would then call Phase Two. That could happen very fast, around Day 10 perhaps. 3rd Inf will keep bashing away from the air, in the meantime, but I can't see them moving on Karbala and Baghdad now for another 24 hours at least... they've got a brigade trailing back at Samawah, and the Marines are still a day's march away from being able to muckle in if needed. Better to handshake the Marines and regroup: there's still plenty of time.

If that doesn't work for whatever reason, then around Day 20, or even a couple days earlier, 4th Mech Inf could be in play coming up from Kuwait finally, giving them that second big fist they need. So I'd still say American troops in Baghdad within one month is almost a surety.

Could things happen any faster than that? Sure they could. Recent events in Basra have huge promise, not because British entry in the city would make any operational difference, (it won't) but because a successful and spreading internal revolt would practically force the Saddamites back to their last-ditch positions. Memes spread faster than armies, even: if the war happens to end this week, it'll be because the Basra contagion caught.

PS: The downside to a popular uprising in Basra taking the city for the U.S., in effect, is that whoever is resisting inside the city inside now is almost certainly strongly pro-Iranian, probably affiliated with the Iranian-backed Supreme Assembly for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. (3 Commando Brigade encircled the city to the east yesterday, in part to keep Iranians OUT.) It would be rather awkward if the Brits finally rolled into the city centre to find a new mullah firmly in charge...

GOOD STORY ON A MARINE

GOOD STORY ON A MARINE PAO

Noted for future reference, the next time I need to remind myself why I did this.

GOOD TO SEE I've been

GOOD TO SEE

I've been a big fan of the writing of Phillip Carter for some time. Glad to see he's got a personal site on the war up and running, too.

GET THAT? We as a

GET THAT?

We as a government are supportive of the United States' desire to get rid of Saddam Hussein... --the foreign minister, Monday

No, Canada has never been in favour of regime change... --the foreign minister, Tuesday

I WENT TO THE WAR,

I WENT TO THE WAR, AND A HOCKEY GAME BROKE OUT

"The CBC does not feel Hockey Night in Canada is the appropriate place for discussion on the war in Iraq," CBC spokeswoman Ruth-Ellen Soles said yesterday.
--the Globe and Mail, today

HIS NAME IS FLIPPER, FLIPPER

HIS NAME IS FLIPPER, FLIPPER

Perhaps this is how you can tell the end of phase one of an American offensive: they start bringing out the animal stories to fill the lull. Reports the Iraqis are earnestly evaluating American flame-bat research are still unconfirmed.

THEY HAD A NAME FOR

THEY HAD A NAME FOR THIS ONCE

Just one more thing on the erosion of democracy in Ontario. On one side you have all the country's leading constitutional experts, and on the other you have some pathetic two-page briefs from a couple commercial lawyers from party-beholden firms. But that doesn't matter to the government, who are going to go ahead with their authoritarian budget decree on Thursday anyway, in a closed circuit TV broadcast from the auto plant of Frank Stronach, himself coincidentally a business associate, through his soccer connections, of Austrian far right wacko and possible neo-Nazi Jeorg Haider. Okay, so we've established optics mean nothing to these people. But that's not the real problem.

Hey, I've often been a Conservative supporter. The current finance minister and I even had a nice dinner once, a long time ago. And I think it's entirely possible that the tax measures decreed in this budget will be benign. But in the English constitutional system, precedent is everything. If Premier Ernie Eves is NOT planning to permanently suspend democracy in Ontario, then he has to assume that the Opposition party, some day, some how, will get in again. And as parties of the left often do, they will raise taxes. And using this appalling incident as their precedent, they will do so, just as Eves is doing, without the opportunity for debate by the people's elected representatives. And it WILL be this current Premier's fault. He gave them the tool. They had a name for this once, a quaint little name: "taxation without representation." It was wrong then, and it's wrong now. As I said in the comments, if Ernie Eves really wants a second coming of the Family Compact in Ontario, then it's time for a second coming of William Lyon Mackenzie.

The Globe and Mail, which has been fighting the good fight on this one, is too nice, frankly. Let me be blunter. There is no fricking way I voted to elect a fricking proconsul, and even if I had it wouldn't have been Ernie fricking Eves. Bring back the elected legislature, you fricking dictator. Otherwise you and your ilk will rot in hell before I ever lift a finger for your fricking party again.

(UPDATE: Edited for PG consumption. I was reminded this is a family-rated blog.)

CNN'S MAN AT THE SPEAR

CNN'S MAN AT THE SPEAR TIP

Caught a bit of CNN's Walter Rodgers, who every Iraqi intelligence officer should watch, around 8 a.m. Eastern, in which he cryptically said that the 7th Cavalry was crossing BACK across the Euphrates, and that their objective was NOT Baghdad at this point. Video showed a farming area, as opposed to desert, in a driving sandstorm.

I can think of at least three tactical scenarios under which this would make sense, but if I had to guess on the current info, I'd say 7th Cav is crossing just north of Najaf, to hook up with the approaching 1st Marine Div and thus fully encircling Najaf and Samawah. 3rd Inf, meanwhile, is still probably letting its air assets pound the Guard at Karbala. Map updated accordingly. Sounds more and more like the Army's keen to wait a day or two for the Marines for once, until they can fully disentangle from Nasariyah.

UPDATE 1700: Sounds more and more like the Cav actually crossed just south of Najaf (give me a topo map of the Najaf area, I'd tell you for sure). It seems they're planning to close the pocket at Diwaniyah, which would give the American 3rd Inf at least some logistical access to that big six-lane highway the Marines are on right now, instead of relying on camel tracks through the desert from Samawah to Najaf.

HEY, SORRY ABOUT THAT Reading

HEY, SORRY ABOUT THAT

Reading Colby Cosh this morning, I thought to myself, "What do you mean you never learned standard NATO map terminology, Cosh? What are they teaching in those Alberta schools today? Chemistry or French or something? I tell you, when I was a boy, grumble grumble..."

On the odd chance that there is someone else out there who would benefit, and I'm sure there isn't, I've added a map key. I keep forgetting other people look at this thing...

(In answer to other email questions, I'll put up some Iraqi orbat info, and links to older maps for archival purposes, when I can.)

TICK TOCK The journalistic lockdown

TICK TOCK

The journalistic lockdown on those reporters actually with the front line units has been going on for something like 12 hours now (the shot down helicopter story only escaped it because the airbase would have been itself more accessible to journalists). The "embeds" have been silent a long time. Expect the news, when it comes, in the next 24 hours, to come quickly, when their minders take the duct tape off.

On the other hand, maybe they're all just exhausted... the BBC weblog is still churning stuff out... notably that the Marines are 160 km south of Baghdad (I find it hard to credit Tony Blair's assertion in the commons that they're actually moving on Kut, which is a narrower road leading in the wrong direction for the moment... so if they show up in possession of Kut tomorrow, I'm wrong, I guess), and that British Marines have landed to the east of Basra to fully encircle that city.

Prediction for the day: we're going to see a day of little movement from 3rd Mech, as they give the airforce one more day to pound the positions in front of them while they rest up; meanwhile the Marines will use the time inch a little farther north, probably exchanging fire with Iraqis in Diwaniyah. Another day should bring them close enough to start to pin down any Iraqi reinforcements coming through Hillah. 3rd Inf would then launch its own ground assault as early as late Tuesday night Eastern time. (NB: Edited to delete an earlier unsupported wild surmise. Map updated.)

UM, AHEM Once again, the

UM, AHEM

Once again, the captain of the Clueless:

And the advance we've made is also close to being historical. It isn't a record; the Mongols were able to make sustained advances of 50 miles per day and maintain that rate for weeks. No modern mechanized force has ever come close.

Umm, not if you count Richard O'Connor in 1940, I guess. He, of course, advanced 150 miles across the North African desert in one day to fight at Beda Fomm, capturing 25,000 Italians and 100 AFVs by doing so, and suffering almost no casualties himself.

Desert and steppe advances are often dramatic. Even Montgomery, who Americans consider pokey, advanced 1,400 miles in 11 weeks in his retaking of North Africa after Alamein in 1942... and he still didn't catch Rommel. Rommel's own record may have been his first liberation of Libya (400 miles in 12 days). Guderian, in taking Minsk in 1941, travelled over 200 miles in 5 days, beating his own record from France in 1940 (400 miles in 17 days). And those were exploitation advances, not a long flank march like we're seeing here. The American advance this week of 250 miles in some four days, is certainly a historic accomplishment, but it's not unheard of in the mechanized era by a long shot.

CROSS YOUR FINGERS (Post temporarily

CROSS YOUR FINGERS

(Post temporarily removed out of concern for a blogger's personal safety. -ed.)

LET'S BE CLEAR ON WMDs

LET'S BE CLEAR ON WMDs

People keep anticipating the evidence of WMDs, or more particularly ineffective inspections, that some needed to justify the war in the first place. First came the accusations of Scuds landing in Kuwait; to date not a single Iraqi missile fired has been confirmed as a Scud, as opposed to one of the non-prohibited varieties of battlefield rocket allowed to the Iraqis (Ababils and Al-Samouds.) They've all been fired from Basra, completely without useful effect of course, and yes, it's entirely believable that Patriots have shot a couple down. But we haven't seen any Scuds yet, which due to their longer range and chemical capability certainly wouldn't be located in vulnerable Basra, if any remain from the 1991 war at all.

Now we see people criticizing the UN for going to Najaf without finding this chemical factory. It should be noted that the factory in question, which may indeed have chemical weapons is not in Najaf the city, but Najaf the province... if you look on the map, it'd be about 75 miles south of Najaf proper, about due west of Samawah. It's basically about as far out in the desert as one could go and still be on a road, as befits a top-secret facility. Therefore it can't be the same facility as the "Al-Kufa Cement Factory" in Najaf itself that the UN visited. Patience, people.

THE QUESTION MARK FOR TODAY

THE QUESTION MARK FOR TODAY

The big question mark for today, the one thing we've heard no good intel on yet (as of 1 a.m. Iraqi time) is how far the Marines have gotten north on that six-lane Basra-Baghdad highway, the one that crosses the Euphrates just west of Nasariyah. The Marines have four brigade-sized formations to play with, one in wheeled LAVs and three in a mix of AAVs and lighter vehicles. They also have about 120 tanks (the same as the Brits, but just over half what the 3rd Mech Inf has). If they can get up around Diwaniyah in the next day or so, the whole equation improves markedly, as the Iraqis can still be levered out of their Karbala position to fall back on the last-ditch defenses around Baghdad. Until they manage it, well, then 3rd Inf remains on its own.

Basra, meanwhile is being invested by the one heavy and two light (motorized at best) brigades remaining to the Brits. It's hard to see that fight as much more than a sideshow at this point... not much Iraqi fighting power is being invested in holding them back, and even if Basra fell tomorrow, that would only free up the one heavy brigade to start bumping up the far side of the Tigris to pin down the remaining Iraqi regular army forces in the south at Amarah. If that's the price of avoiding friendly fire losses and/or keeping unity of national command, it may come to be seen as having been too heavy in retrospect.

Finally, it seems clear that in the next 24 hours, we should see the 173rd and/or 2/82nd Airborne Brigades, the two lightest formations the Americans have, put down somewhere in northern Iraq to keep any reinforcements from coming down to help in the Karbala battle. They won't be able to maneuver much, but with Kurdish and Special Forces help they should at least be able to keep the Iraqis busy up there... and act as further discouragement to the Turks and Iranians.

WARBITS Salam Pax is back,

WARBITS

Salam Pax is back, and reports part of the American attack is coming in the form of email spam telling Iraqis what radio freqs to listen to... some Apache crews are sounding rather rattled... you can never do wrong by inviting the Poles to a war... now Slow-motion Aneurysm Man is angry at the Australians; wow that American gratitude just lasts forever, doesn't it... meanwhile the Toronto army headquarters was picketed by antiwar protesters today, and several arrests made; the Canadian pacifists now say that since Canadian warships and planes are working for U.S. Central Command to keep clear navigation through the Straits of Hormuz, we're really in the war, just not officially admitting it. What can I say? They're right.

DEAR GOD, NO. NOT THE

DEAR GOD, NO. NOT THE LAWYERS

Even a team of six Marine public affairs officers and lawyers sent to investigate Saturday's disappearance of three British journalists near Basra were ambushed today and two were injured. While normally not combatants, the Marines grabbed their weapons and returned fire, Marines said.

--Washington Post, today.

KARBALA IT IS, THEN The

KARBALA IT IS, THEN

The Americans appear to have bypassed Najaf to the west, too. Their chosen ground for the big battle they've been wanting all along is Karbala, then. Because they don't have a second maneuver division, it's basically a frontal attack for them, in closer terrain than they've seen (farmland, and the streets of Karbala). By going on their long flank march before seeking battle, the Americans preserved the division from losses as long as possible. But now it's decision time... whether this is a war of days, weeks or months depends entirely on whether the 3rd Mech Infantry is as good as it undoubtedly thinks it is. I remember working with soldiers of the division back when it was still the 24th Mech... to them and their peers, fight hard, fight well, guys. You're in a lot of people's thoughts and prayers right now.

WOW I see my old

WOW

I see my old inspiration, John Keegan, has drawn a completely different interpretation from the battle reports he's reading... that the 3rd Infantry is actually BETWEEN the Tigris and Euphrates rivers at the moment. We'll have to see who's right, but I just don't see how he gets that from what we've seen.

I'm actually beginning to think the exact opposite of Keegan... that the Iraqis WANT to push the Americans in between the rivers. They are not challenging on the desert plateau west of the Euphrates at all... their "lesson learnt" from the 1991 war seems to have been that the Americans are unbeatable in desert warfare and need to be drawn into the cities and farmland of Mesopotamia. In which case, they would have placed no great emphasis on "blowing" the bridges at Nasariyah. It's the 3rd Inf, which I, unlike Keegan, still maintain is out in the desert near Najaf, that remains the main Allied threat, as far as the Iraqis are concerned. The whole reason they're trying now to hold them at Najaf and Karbala to force them IN to Mesopotamia, and the closer country, in fact.

LOOKS LIKE HE LIVED The

LOOKS LIKE HE LIVED

The WashPost now believes the Iraqi southern commander, "Chemical Ali," was still alive after the first-night decapitation strike. As I said earlier, the local Shiite resistance has said all along he's in Nasariyah. Given the growing ferocity of that fight, I'm ever more inclined to believe them.

NASARIYAH, REDUX The real reason

NASARIYAH, REDUX

The real reason a 3rd Inf maintenance convoy was whacked and its members captured by Iraqis has at least a little to do with the American plan to this point. The centre of mass for 3rd Inf Div is now 100 km, more or less, west of the next Allied division, 1st Marine (see updated map). Their only flank guard is the river itself... there are no doubt kilometers after kilometers of their flank that have no observation on them at this point, at all. The Iraqis don't have the strength south of Najaf to try to pinch them off in any way, but they still have tremendous capability to infiltrate into rear areas.

One would have thought some of this would have been solved by moving 101st Airborne troops by truck up out of Kuwait to increase the troop density up front. But possibly in part because of the grenade strike in one of their brigade HQs, 101st Airborne is still out of it. It's notable we're not hearing the ranks of those wounded in that attack... by all accounts those grenades were rolled right into the Brigade headquarters... a traditional Middle Eastern version of a "decapitation strike," really. Much more cost-effective, and as far as we know to this point, just as successful.

It also appears the ITN journalistic crew was killed by Allied fire, unfortunately.

ANOTHER PROMISING INITIAL SIGN NIXED

ANOTHER PROMISING INITIAL SIGN NIXED

Turns out the "divisional commander captured" story fell through on closer inspection, too.

Also in the Star today, Rosie Di Manno in Jordan confirms the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (Marine Special Ops) is operating in west Iraq. If that's the Marine presence people have been reporting, then the 3rd Inf thrust west of the Euphrates is really the only major force going for Baghdad at the moment... west and north must be all special ops types.

AS i WAS SAYING ABOUT

AS i WAS SAYING ABOUT NASARIYAH...

If "Chemical Ali" isn't running things in Nasariyah (see posts below), someone with his unique personal take on the laws of war certainly is. But the point of the recent fake surrender, and parading of POWs caught in an ambush, is not, as one might think, to get the Americans to declare "no quarter" and overreact: they're not thinking that far ahead. Right now the defenders in Nasariyah are simply trying to draw as many Americans onto them as possible. The more of the strictly limited number of M1 tanks that the Marines have they can draw into street fighting that city, the fewer left to drive up that six-lane highway on the other side of the Euphrates to help the 3rd Inf at Najaf, who seem to be facing quite the fight in the coming days with the Republican Guard's Medina Division.

The Americans are really beginning to hurt for a second heavy division about now. I had initially assumed that they would put together their heavier elements of the Marines and Brits and create a second heavy unit, along with light divisions. Instead, they've left their armour parcelled out, giving them the equivalent of 1 heavy (the 3rd), 1 light (the 101st) and 2 medium divisions (Brits and Marines). The medium divisions have enough armour to assault a city, but not enough to maneuver independently against enemy armour. So right now the Marines are sitting outside Nasariyah, the Brits are outside Basra, and the 3rd Inf was doing all the heavy maneuvering until they got held up at the first real Iraqi prepared defense at Najaf. Instead of a boxer, hitting with two fists, they're acting like a fencer, with just the one striking attack to block.

One alternative (what I honestly thought they'd do, in fact) would have been to brigade the one Marine heavy formation (the expeditionary brigade) with the British 7th Armoured, and give Franks a US-UK armoured division, a second fist. The downside that seems to have ruled that out, though, is the increased likelihood of "blue-on-blue" friendly fire incidents. That seems to have been such a concern that the British have effectively been left behind at Basra because of it. Again, this isn't a showstopper... it's a tradeoff... one more tradeoff that's adding hours, if not days, to the time until any Americans "reach" Baghdad.

UMM, WHAT? Sgt. Stryker has

UMM, WHAT?

Sgt. Stryker has already found his scapegoat: it's all the Brits' fault. Mandrake, comment?

"10,000 PRISONERS" MEME CATCHES ON

"10,000 PRISONERS" MEME CATCHES ON

Den Beste and Blair are both buying the 8,000-plus prisoners by Friday stories, even though Franks specifically disavowed them today. Never let it be said the pro-war side isn't occasionally slipshod about figures, too. The difference is, just like the ludicrous reporting-ahead-of-the-facts we've also been seeing out of both Fox and Skynews, the facts on the ground will no doubt catch up to the hyperbole eventually.

JOURNALIST CASUALTIES MOUNT Another three

JOURNALIST CASUALTIES MOUNT

Another three journalists, including two Americans, are reported dead at Nasariyah.

UPDATE: CBS has now said this was in error.

THINGS LOOKING UP WITH THE

THINGS LOOKING UP WITH THE DAWN

(Iraq map) The Americans definitely seem to have regained some momentum through the Iraqi night. 3rd Division troops now have the south bank of the Euphrates as far as the half way point between Samawah and Najaf. They've bypassed Samawah, suggesting they're sticking to the desert plateau on that bank as long as possible now, for maximum mobility (the other side of the river is basically all farmland), and to stay out of urban streets. The Americans have also bypassed Nasariyah, but notably don't seem to be doing more than holding the bridges they took yesterday between that city and Samawah for now... presumably another formation is coming up from behind to take up that line of advance in the more restrictive terrain between the big rivers. They'll have to get something moving up that road, soon, though, to watch 3rd Inf's exposed right flank, or they'll get held up for sure at Najaf.

My usual pessimism aside, it's fair to say things couldn't be going that much better. The Americans are using their surfeit of light troops differently than I expected, but with the same overall effect... the 101st and to a lesser extent 1st Marine Division and the Brits are being used to bottle up and reduce Iraqi forces in the cities, basically holding the line of the Euphrates, while 3rd Inf keeps pushing up the west bank. It's actually kind of like that Plan B I batted around, except instead of putting down the airborne carpet and then running the armour over it, they're running the armour through first and rolling out the carpet behind them.

The city that 3rd Inf can't bypass, though, is Karbala... no room right or left. So they either have to take it, or take Najaf instead, in order to get the armour back across the Euphrates again and have a clear run on Baghdad. Najaf would seem to be the easier target of the two... both are cities of around 400,000 people, but Najaf's closer to them. But again, to clear Najaf quickly they have to get something heavy moving up right away on the east side of the Euphrates between Samawah and Nasariya to put simultaneous pressure on the Iraqi left and rear. Watch for that to start happening tomorrow, apparently with some part of 1st MarDiv.

Of course, the Iraqis aren't stupid either, and may even have foreseen it would come to this, which is why one of the Republican Guards' nine divisions (Medina) is reportedly now in Najaf. It's possible that is going to have to be where the real city fighting starts: if you have bought that attractive time-share in Najaf, I'd consider selling it for whatever you can get about now.

What's hard to figure out at the moment is how much this was planned. The initial U.S. deployment of two divisions on Basra seems to have lost them at least 24 hours: for instance, they could have taken a British-led division across the desert with them to bottle up Nasariyah while 3rd Inf was vectored farther west... they could have then been on the outskirts of Najaf already, perhaps before the Medina Division was fully ready. 1 Marine Division could have done what's needed to be done in Basra by itself (not counting 3 Commando Brigade in Umm Qasr, only two of the Marines' four brigades, plus a quarter of the Brits, seem to have even been engaged). One can only presume that they didn't want to risk somehow muffing the seizure of the oilfields. But this switchback of units from Basra to Nasariyah has cost them time. The switchback is the most obvious sign of "calling audibles" to date, ie switching from an initially cautious strategy vis a vis Baghdad to a somewhat more ambitious one. If they'd meant to do this this way from the start, they'd certainly have done it differently. The question is, is this change because resistance in the west was less than expected, or resistance in the east (ie, Basra and Umm Qasr) was worse?

JOURNALIST CASUALTIES MOUNT Now an

JOURNALIST CASUALTIES MOUNT

Now an ITV crew is missing near Basra.

FRANKS SAYS LITTLE ABOUT BASRA,

FRANKS SAYS LITTLE ABOUT BASRA, NASARIYAH

In response to a question, Franks says 1-2,000 Iraqis are currently POWs, nothing like the much larger numbers the networks have been bandying about in the last day. The likely reason: the story was that the 51st Mechanized surrendered with 8,000 men, dozens of tanks, etc. Eight thousand is the establishment strength of an Iraqi division... using it as an estimate of how many people in the 51st actually surrendered yesterday is rather ludicrous. The division probably went into the fight about half-strength, and had already lost two thirds of that as deserters, casualties, etc. And the initial Times report said they didn't surrender en masse... just fell apart... some reports said the divisional commander was picked up on the road to Nasariyah, while his troops were by all accounts in front of Basra... odds are he actually was deserting his post and just ran into some American marines by mistake.

Franks is also saying they're going to bypass Basra, which makes sense. But the terrain stretching to the west of the city, between Basra and Nasariyah, isn't good for maneuver or transport... if they were going to run their logistical line north along the Tigris, and move on Amarah from the south, they would HAVE to take the city itself and its road network sooner or later. If that's NOT the plan, watch for Franks to start switching forces, particularly the British, back to the Euphrates line and Nasariyah, which would allow them to sustain a drive going north, northwest or northeast from those Euphrates crossings under supply.

UPDATE: Some people are also basing their optimistic conclusions on Wednesday's "decapitation" strike on the fact the Iraqis aren't really "doing" anything. Of course, that's also entirely consistent with the prediction that the Iraqis had no Scuds or weapons of mass destruction left, and they were planning to really start fighting only at Baghdad's outskirts. At any rate, the Iraqis have yet to fail to execute any capability they were KNOWN to have. And it's notable that two days later, low-level fighting is still going on in Umm Qasr. Umm Qasr is right on the border... the Iraqis had to know that it was certain to be overrun in hours. So certainly anyone still fighting in that town isn't doing so under military orders... we're talking francs-tireurs and guerillas now... likely Iraqi functionaries who know their lives are forfeit in a predominantly Shiite area anyway.

UPDATE, 1015 EST: Seems I'm right... CNN's Martin Savidge with 1st/7th Marines is now on a highway driving WEST from Basra. That's suggests elements of 1 Mar Div are now switching back, moving towards Nasariyah. Notably there was no traffic on the road going in the other direction... CNN's Walter Rodgers meanwhile, just reported that the 3rd Infantry Division hasn't moved forward in 6 hours, and the 7th Cavalry is hunkering down for the night, presumably to the west or northwest of Nasariyah. He said they were in contact with a significant enemy formation, larger than they expected, in the presence of an "unusual terrain feature." (I'm guessing Samawah.)

THEY'VE STARTED BLOWING UP THE

THEY'VE STARTED BLOWING UP THE JOURNALISTS

Something that may not have occurred to everyone yet... the highest-value target on the Allied side isn't the soldiers. It's the journalists. Ansar al-Islam's figured it out, though.

NASARIYAH 2 It appears the

NASARIYAH 2

It appears the Americans have now bridged the Euphrates between Nasariyah and Samawah. (Iraqi report -- British report)

There's a lot of premature media ejaculation going on, particularly on MS-NBC and Fox News, about Basra. Watch for what Gen. Franks actually says at 9 this morning.

NASARIYAH Financial Times is reporting

NASARIYAH

Financial Times is reporting the 11th Iraqi Infantry Division at Nasariyah has fallen apart.

This doesn't mean the road to Baghdad's clear for the 3rd Infantry, though. If nothing else, Nasariyah still has the headquarters for Hussein's chosen military commander for the south, his cousin Ali Hassan al Majid, "Chemical Ali," the scourge of the Kurds. He's allegedly holed up in Nasariyah's hospital. If anyone's life is worth less than Hussein's when Baghdad falls, it's this man. He undoubtedly has a few other desperadoes with him, too, enough to keep the entry to Nasariyah from being an automatic victory parade just yet.

(EDIT: On the other hand, ABC News is now reporting Ali, instead of Hussein, died in that initial strike on Wednesday night.)

MAYBE WE CAN CALL THEM

MAYBE WE CAN CALL THEM THE TRUCKING EAGLES

Colin Soloway with the 101st Airborne has been on CNN saying the troops he's with are still moving north slowly behind the battle in their trucks as dawn comes up again... looks like "Market Garden 2" (ie a punting forward of an airborne unit for the armour to race for and then through), is not, in fact, part of the plan for at least this initial phase. (Someone should have taken that bet.) That's strong evidence the Americans planned all along to go casualty-averse and conservative, not for any quick knockout. NOTE: That doesn't mean things can't still END quickly... if the Iraqis are clearly disintegrating, the plan goes out the window and it's everyone onto the road to Baghdad as quick as possible. But what's the plan for 3rd Mech Inf assuming that DOESN'T happen? The most likely option is that 3rd Mech secures a Euphrates crossing somewhere between Nasariyah and Samawah, and then keeps rolling slowly north through the farmland between the two rivers, acting as a blocking force along the Baghdad-Basra road until the Basra battle is over and the Anglo-Marine right wing can come up to join them to move jointly on the capital. It is a sounder plan. But the Americans will have to start managing expectations down... that old fart David Hackworth is on with Larry right now saying the whole thing will be over by Thursday. Not if they have to go through Basra first -- and Hussein's still alive -- it won't.

BACKFIELD IN MOTION The Turks

BACKFIELD IN MOTION

The Turks seem to be establishing the 20 km buffer zone along the border they desired. Not a huge problem, if it helps with the refugee problem. It's when they start making noises about protecting the Turkoman minority in the cities, however, then watch out.

UMM, WHAT? The Toronto Star

UMM, WHAT?

The Toronto Star isn't distinguishing itself this war, at least in the headline department. First we had the mortar thing, then this as the page 1 lead today: "Air, Ground Blitz Opens Second Wave." What does that MEAN? That's not headline writing, that's free association...

OFF THE MAP WITH YOU,

OFF THE MAP WITH YOU, THEN

The NY Times is reporting the Iraqi 51st Mechanized Division has fallen apart and its commanders have surrendered. Off the map you go, then.

WE SEEM TO HAVE LOST

WE SEEM TO HAVE LOST SALAM PAX

He and all his recent entries seem to have gone missing. Typical Blogspot screwup? Or something else?

UPDATE: Blogspot screwup. He's back.

INTERESTING NEWS The BBC warblog

INTERESTING NEWS

The BBC warblog is providing the best news from the ground front today:

BEGINNING TO LOOK LIKE THEY'RE

BEGINNING TO LOOK LIKE THEY'RE GOING FOR THE BASE HIT INSTEAD OF THE HOME RUN

Increasing signs in the last couple hours that the Anglo-American advance from Kuwait has securing Southern Iraq as its only target for now, and that the actual Baghdad drive, from the south at least, may be getting put off for a few days, or even weeks. It's hard to understand why the caution, but there's no other reason that 3rd Infantry Division is headed for Nasariyah, and BOTH 1 UK Division and 1 Marine Division would be headed for Basra now. If the Americans were going for the "long ball," 3rd Inf would presumably want to cross the Euphrates higher up, so they can stay on that inviting open desert they're on as long as possible and out of the populated area between the rivers. I'm amending the map, accordingly, but I've got to wonder at the implicit caution we'd be seeing, given the resistance thus far.

They're still huge divisional frontages by any traditional standard, but it's looking more and more this hour like the Americans mean to be sure to envelop Basra before they move north on Baghdad. The Baghdad defenders have to assume they're gaining time by this. Nasariyah's still on the road to Baghdad, but it's the longest way around.

UPDATE: Okay, so why, assuming the news is accurate? What would be the advantage of going Basra first, then Baghdad, rather than trying for both simultaneously? The main advantage is, compared to the other alternative, it's hugely casualty-averse for both sides, and plays well on TV. All the Iraqis who still want to fight are presumably in Baghdad... so just take the rest of the country away from them, the theory goes. Basra should now fall fairly bloodlessly, and this in turn should lead to a weakening of Iraqi resistance country-wide, and increase the chances of an internal overthrow that will allow the kind of peaceful entry into Baghdad the Americans might feel they need. This way you get the scenes of happy Shiites on al-Jazeera, and fewer funerals at home. The strategies I and others have been bantering around will work only if your goal is to demoralize the enemy through their own military defeat, and accept some heavier losses in return for a presumably shorter war. A Basra "short-ball" strategy demoralizes the enemy through their own demonstrated impotence, and gives them another opportunity to just give up. It's sound, for sure. (Obviously such a strategy is also more appropriate to the current force levels in Iraq at the moment, as the chance of military defeat by the forces still around Basra is almost exactly nil. Trying to take a country all at once with 4 divisions plus special forces was always a risky proposition.)

Another upside is easier access to logistical lines, particularly the one for water, which would remain a major supply problem so long as 3rd Mech stayed in the desert. Less water shipped forward means more fuel, rations and ammo shipped instead... the Americans may have concluded that the supply needs of their own troops, plus the civilians and prisoners under their care, would simply have been unmanageable so long as they stayed off the road net.

The downside is the same it always was. A Basra strategy tends toward prolonging the conflict. It also does little to reduce the number of those defenders, if any, who will never be swayed into surrender, regardless. Delay is also in Hussein's best interest. The degree to which it may delay an ultimate resolution is also the degree to which the privation of those civilians still under his control increases, as their food runs out, and the world demands to end the fighting grow. Delay can also aid in the construction of a better defense.

We could well see 3rd Mech turning left and moving north after they ford the Euphrates at Nasariyah, of course. But moving up through farmland, with their frontage between the rivers tightening as one goes, likely means today's 100-km cavalry charge will not be repeated, and achieving Baghdad itself, assuming Hussein holds on, could take at least a week as the rate of overall advance slows accordingly.

SECOND UPDATE: Just to be clear, I'm not saying the tea leaves are obvious yet. Just that crossing the Euphrates near Nasariyah now almost certainly indicates a Basra-first strategy, and staying on the south side and moving even farther west almost certainly indicates an intent to invest Baghdad in the next few days. One more good clue either way and we should know. There's lots of ambiguous clues: I'm finding it interesting how quiet the reporters with 101st Airborne have been today, for instance.

IRONY 40 Commando, Royal Marines,

IRONY

40 Commando, Royal Marines, did more to stop environmental destruction in one day than all of Greenpeace has done this year, seizing all the spigots that could pour crude oil into the Persian Gulf, before the Iraqis could open them. It's exactly the kind of job the commandoes do best. (16 dead soldiers in a helicopter crash was the lamentable price.) No dead birds this war: sorry, Saddam.

UPDATE: That fatality number is now down to 12.

PREDICTIONS FOR TODAY (Updated map).

PREDICTIONS FOR TODAY

(Updated map). If "Market Garden 2" is going to happen, ie airmobile drops ahead to accelerate the 3 Mechanized Infantry Division's advance, it'll start happening tonight, as 7th Cavalry, out front of the rest of the division, starts getting close to Samawah, which would be the obvious first target for such an activity. The other alternative for them, if the Americans feel they're going to get zero resistance for the next 300 miles, would seem to be to keep the 101st as a motorized infantry division, bumping along in trucks behind the 3rd. That would have to be seen as an unusually cautious move for the Americans right now, unless it's part of a headlong rush up the main road to Baghdad due to a total Iraqi collapse.

We're also hearing exactly zero, nothing, from the reporters with 1 UK Division, indicating there's a bit of a media blackout over that formation's activities. (Other units holding back in Kuwait, like the 101st, still have reporters giving details of their preparations to move.) I still think they're going to emerge out of this radio silence when they're already close to Nasariyah perhaps as early as tonight or sometime tomorrow, to start enveloping the Basra defence, but there's absolutely no evidence one way or the other at this point.

UPDATE, 11 AM EST: Spoke too soon. Sounds like 1 UK Division just broke out of journalistic radio silence, and as suggested here is well en route to Nasariyah to the right of 3rd Infantry.

SO FAR SO GOOD, 2

SO FAR SO GOOD, 2

A correspondent with 7th Cavalry Regiment (the divisional recce battalion of the 3rd Mechanized Infantry Division) reports on CNN he's been driving across Iraqi desert for two hours without halting. They're halfway to Busayyah, then, and will probably keep moving til dawn. They're on hard pack and have been running through Gulf War I wreckage, so 3rd Infantry is definitely going northwest in the general direction of Samawah, at least for the moment.

UPDATE: Pike's outfit is now reporting that a large part of 2nd Marine Division has deployed to Jordan, and may now be moving into Iraq from that direction. That's the first major operational surprise, if true.

SO FAR SO GOOD 1

SO FAR SO GOOD

1 Marine Division, possibly with some Royal Marine assistance, seems to have taken the border town of Umm Qasr. No surprise there, it was going to happen in the first few hours anyway, but it's notable the Brits definitely seem to be parcelled out rather than together, and 1 Mar Div is heading north along the littoral as predicted. Here's a map that may help show what's going on a little more clearly.

WELL, THEY GOT OFF Harry

WELL, THEY GOT OFF

Harry "Psycho" Schmidt and his wingman will not face court martial for the bombing error that killed four Canadians, an American military tribunal has ruled today.

STILL NO SIGN OF THOSE

STILL NO SIGN OF THOSE BANNED WEAPONS

The WashPost is now reporting the three Iraqi missiles so far have been an obsolescent naval SSM (aimed into Kuwait) and two short-range Ababils (aka Al Samoud 1), all from the Basra area. Neither would have been UN-prohibited weapons, or chem-capable.* It was no doubt a case of use it now or lose it anyway.

*(How do you know that, BruceR? -ed). The Scuds used in the last war, all but about 9 of which have been long accounted for, had diameters of approximately 90 cm. If those missiles are still in existence, they could conceivably be a chem threat. The Ababil/Al Samoud missile program that the UN allowed Iraq to continue postwar has focussed on 50 cm frames. Even the famous British report last September didn't identify them as chemical carriers. So to believe the Iraqis have any chemical missile capability left, you have to believe that they have, entirely in secret and without open testing, successfully completed an entirely new chemical warhead program since the last war, with a final product half the size of anything they've done before. By the way, the Ababil is estimated to have about the same explosive power as one 1,000 lb aerial bomb (each of the 40 cruise missiles fired last night had about the same)... and a rather ludicrous circular error of probability to boot. The firers probably counted themselves lucky to hit Kuwait. The idea they were aimed at any specific troop formation is laughable.

EVERYTHING'S BEEN RUINED BY MATT

EVERYTHING'S BEEN RUINED BY MATT GROENING

There's a woman walking around outside carrying a sign saying "Bush! Beware the ides of March!" This would actually have been an impressive allusion, if this war had been before the Simpsons' Stonecutters episode. Instead of thinking of Plutarch and Shakespeare, I've got quotes from the Book of Homer running through my head now:

Lisa: Remember Dad, "All glory is fleeting."
Homer: So?
Lisa: "Beware the Ides of March."
Homer: No!

SOMEONE GET ME COPY DESK

SOMEONE GET ME COPY DESK

Jaff's dozen Patriotic Union of Kurdistan militamen chatted non-stop, despite their leader's warning -- until an Iraqi mortar suddenly exploded some distance away... And then another mortar exploded a safe distance away, from another Iraqi position along the front line north of the oil rich town of Kirkuk...

--Toronto Star today

I hate it when my mortars explode. Really messes up the gunline...

(Okay, one last time. A mortar is a firing system, like a cannon or a missile launcher. It fires a shell. The shell explodes. For Sandro Contenta to talk about exploding mortars around him to the military reader is like reading that several submarines detonated on the outskirts of Baghdad last night. It looks and sounds ridiculous. Copy desk, come on: save the poor man from his own ignorance. He's just a reporter, after all.)

AND SO IT BEGINS Godspeed,

AND SO IT BEGINS

Godspeed, Yanks. Come home safe and soon.

NOTES ON DEADLINE Gwynne Dyer

NOTES ON DEADLINE

Gwynne Dyer is reporting on CBC that the B-52s, which Stratfor had told its subscribers earlier today, had left their airbases headed for Iraq, are in fact still on the tarmac.

WHY CONSERVATIVES LOSE ELECTIONS It's

WHY CONSERVATIVES LOSE ELECTIONS

It's official: the Ontario conservative party has crossed the line over into fascism. Knock, knock! People! You're conservatives! Fiscal prudence aside, the only reason anyone votes for you at all is because you care about things like history and tradition, and preserving our icons of liberty and freedom! Like the supremacy of an elected legislature, and constitutional procedure! What focus group told you this would be a good idea? More to the point, what extralegal substance were they on at the time?

And look, if you're going to trip the fascist switch and close down representative democracy in the province, at least follow the pattern of previous conservative extremists and have a charismatic ubermensch-type leader first before you do it. The man you have is the epitome of well-oiled. In speeches he sounds like an undertaker who's had his adenoids removed. I wouldn't follow him into a diner, let alone a Brave New World of Evesism. It's actually a historical law I believe: no successful dictator was ever named Ernie...

Oh, and nice touch personally attacking the Speaker of the House: if you still had anyone with a brain onside after that first bit, you just lost them. Of course he was going to object to you shutting down the Legislature. What did you think he would do? Start hosting weddings to fill up the time? Not to mention you obviously didn't bother to tell him in advance. Did you lose his phone number? Here's a hint: he's the guy in the big chair at the front of the room. Just in case you need to find him in future.

And what are you going to replace the legislature with? You're going to announce new tax changes through WEBCASTING? Oh, Christ, you people are stupid. Could anything BE more Orwellian? The scary face of Fuhrer Eves comes on my laptop and tells me how my taxes just went up, to support the unaccountable expenditures of The Leader? Are you TRYING to spark a resurgence of communism? Idiots.

SCORECARD, PART SIX: MAYBE A

SCORECARD, PART SIX: MAYBE A LITTLE REJIGGING'S IN ORDER

(Scroll down March 10-12 to see the previous entries in this series.) I've been thinking about the Amir Taheri piece on possible Iraqi strategy, to my mind the best stab at what it could be I've read so far.

One answer to that, if mass human movements are seen as a slowing factor for the Americans would be to make an even longer left hook than I was predicting, crossing the Euphrates from the West around Habbaniyah (again, this map may be helpful). In this scenario, the 101st still lands in strength along the Euphrates, but this time as a screening force as V Corps (3rd Infantry and possibly an additional ACR) take a longer way around, coming at Baghdad from the West.

This is actually looking so attractive an approach now that it's competitive with my earlier "Market Garden 2" musings (which saw the airmobile deployment instead as a carpet over which V Corps would roll). I can't see any advantage in the Americans coming in somewhere between the two extremes. So I'd say either they're going to going to cross the Euphrates around Samawah and head north, or they will go as far around as Habbaniyah. But certainly, if only in order to keep the deception plan alive, the obvious potential means you're going to see some kind of airmobile force, perhaps brigade-size, dropped in near Habbaniyah early on (the long punt in the left-flanking play).

It also occurs to me that, assuming there is any chemical capability left to the Iraqis, it will now be concentrated around likely LZs in the center and north of the country. The Iraqi dream scenario now is that the 101st plops a brigade down on a targeted major airstrip in the north, which they then can cover using artillery with something like a mustard munition, throwing at least the airborne part of the plan into some disarray. I don't expect to see chem used much if at all in the south, as it would largely be wasted on a fast moving tank advance. As a consequence, while I'm still sure there's some kind of "northern option," if only to discourage the Turks now, main force airmobile formations probably won't be seen headed up there for at least two or three days after the ground thrust begins, after the Iraqis have begun to fall back their good units in the north to a Baghdad perimeter.

So here's the prediction for the ground moves, with less than 8 hours to go:
*101st Airborne Div along Euphrates from Hillah to Samawah.
*another airmobile brigade somewhere near Habbaniyah.
*V Corps (3rd Mech Infantry Division plus attachments) crosses the Euphrates at Samawah (plan A) and heads north, or at Habbaniyah (plan B) and heads west for Baghdad.
*1 UK Div (in fact, nearly half Marines) heads for Amarah by way of Nasariyah.
*1 Marine Division heads due north from Kuwait City, supported from the sea.
*3-4 days in, at least one airmobile brigade lands in the north (Mosul? Irbil?) as the Iraqis evacuate south to the Baghdad perimeter, to stabilize that part of the country.

If the Americans are assuming all this talk about the Iraqis only fighting in Baghdad is true, and that they don't expect to be really challenged by organized resistance south of the Baghdad city limits, then the long left flank of plan B makes the most sense. If their intel tells them, however, that at least some of the Republican Guard is massing to face them farther south of the city, they may yet still go