Flit

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.