WAR ON IRAK

From the Wilderness: Rolling Start -- The Idiot Prince Will Have His War

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(FTW asked retired U.S. Army Special Forces Master Sergeant Stan Goff to re-examine what we can expect on the battlefield when the United States begins its invasion. The former instructor of military science at West Point describes a scenario that is vastly different from what was expected last September before the Bush administration encountered effective economic and political opposition. Now denied the luxuries of a multi-front invasion from Turkey and Saudi Arabia the U.S. war strategy has changed. The bottom line is that a great many more innocent civilians are going to be killed. And the first and possibly crippling breakdown of U.S. plans will happen in Kurdestan. - MCR)



(FTW) -- The full-scale, unilateral US invasion of Iraq appears - to many - to be imminent as this is written. In just hours President Bush is expected to give Saddam Hussein a 72-hour ultimatum to leave the country or else the bombs start falling. I have a reservation or two left about that, based partly on hope, but partly on the even riskier assumption that this administration realizes that it has miscalculated and that the consequences of invasion may now outweigh the risks - from their standpoint - of no invasion.

The Bush regime seems to have a clear understanding of what desperate straits they were in well before 9-11. The empire is in decline, and this means Americans will have to reconcile themselves to a new world in which their profligate lifestyle becomes a thing of the past. Americans do not understand that this is an irremediable situation. That is why we are witnessing the beginning of what is possibly the most dangerous period in human history.

If the administration decides miraculously in the next few days not to invade, the most unthinkable risks will recede significantly. But this Junta has repeatedly displayed a reckless adventurist streak that alarms even their own political allies, and it appears that the hotter heads will prevail.....

Last September retired Marine General Paul Van Riper was selected to play the Opposing Forces (OPFOR) Commander named Saddam Hussein for a 3-week-long, computer simulated invasion of Iraq, called Operation Millennium Challenge.

He defeated the entire multi-billion-dollar US electronic warfare intelligence apparatus by sending messages via motorcycle-mounted couriers to organize the preemptive destruction of sixteen US ships, using pleasure vessels. At that point, the exercise controllers repeatedly intervened and told him what to do; move these defenders off the beach. Stop giving out commands from mosque loudspeakers. Turn on your radar so our planes can see you. Because every time Van Riper was left to his own devices, he was defeating the US.

While all this is surely amusing, does it really mean the Iraqis will defeat the US during an invasion?

Certainly not. It will, however, make it far more expensive, slow, difficult, and deadly for Iraqis.....

We have had our course charted now, and the military option is all the US ruling class really has to maintain its dominance. After Iraq, there will certainly be increased asymmetric warfare, "terrorism," if you will, directed at Americans, American institutions, American targets. And when the rest of the world recognizes how thinly spread the US military is, thinly spread physically, but also economically because it is not a sustainable institution in its current incarnation, rebellions will occur. They have already started. Then the response of the weakening US will be to lash out, often with totally unforeseeable consequences, just as the consequences of this impending invasion are unforeseeable.