News that you don't hear from the mainstream media..

Why is it that you can get good analysis on debka.com, this site below but NOT the mainstream media?

Reading this below and from other articles I have seen America is in trouble, they might not be able to win this war as resistance is growing quickly, this war could be the end of the american influence in the Middle east. Its failure would turn all of the middle east away from democracy and the west.

The war is bleaker than the media makes out... welcome to Chechnia....
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The coalition command is extremely concerned with growing resistance movement in the rear of the advancing forces. During a meeting at the coalition command headquarters it was reported that up to 20 Iraqi reconnaissance units are active behind the coalition rear.

The Iraqis attack lightly armed supply units; they deploy landmines and conduct reconnaissance. Additionally, captured villages have active armed resistance that is conducting reconnaissance in the interests of the Iraqi command and is organizing attacks against coalition troops. During the past 24 hours more than 30 coalition wheeled and armored vehicles have been lost to such attacks. Some 7 coalition servicemen are missing, 3 soldiers are dead and 10 are wounded.

The coalition commander Gen. Tommy Franks ordered his forces to clear coalition rears from Iraqi diversionary units and partisans in the shortest possible time. The British side will be responsible for fulfilling these orders.

A unit from the 22nd SAS regiment supported by the US 1st, 5th and 10th Special Operations Groups will carry out this operation. Each of these groups has up to 12 units numbering 12-15 troops each. All of these units have some Asian or Arabic Americans. The groups also have guides and translators from among local Iraqi collaborators, who went through rapid training at specialized centers in the Czech Republic and in the UK.

The sand storms turned out to be the main enemy of the American military equipment. Just the 3rd Motorized Infantry Division had more than 100 vehicles disabled. This is causing serious concern on the part of the coalition command. The repair crews are working around the clock to return all the disabled equipment back into service. The M1A2 Abrams tanks are not known for the their reliable engines as it is, but in the sand storm conditions multiple breakdowns became a real problem for the tank crews.

All attempts by the US paratroopers to capture the town of Kirkuk have yielded no result. The Americans counted on the support of the Kurds but the latter refused to take a direct part in the attack and demanded guarantees from the US command that it will prevent a Turkish invasion. The Turkish themselves are avoiding making any promises.

Additionally, the situation [at Kirkuk] is affected by the lack of heavy weapons on the part of the US paratroopers. The aviation support alone is clearly not sufficient. The northern group of forces commander Marine Brig. Gen. Osman has requested artillery and armored vehicles.

All indications are that so far the US is unable to form a combat-capable strike force in this area.

According to satellite reconnaissance it seems likely that the Iraqis had time to remove the captured Apache Longbow attack helicopter of the 11th Aviation Regiment. The pieces remaining at the landing site following a US bombing strike indicate that the bombs hit a crudely constructed mockup.

Aerial bombardment of Baghdad has so far failed to produce the expected results. All targets designated before the war have been hit 3 to 7 times, but this had almost no effect on the combat readiness of the Iraqi army, their air defenses or the command and control structures.

It seems that during preparation for the war the Iraqis were able to create new, well- protected communication lines and control centers. There is plenty of intelligence information indicating that so far the US electronic reconnaissance was unable to locate and to penetrate the Iraqi command's communication network, which is an indication of the network's high technological sophistication.

A particular point of concern for the US command is the huge overuse of precision- guided munitions and cruise missiles. Already the supply of heavy cruise missiles like the "Tomahawk" has been reduced by a third and, at the current rate of use, in three weeks the US will be left only with the untouchable strategic supply of these missiles.

A similar situation exists with other types of precision-guided munitions. "The rate of their use is incompatible with the obtained results. We are literally dropping gold into the mud!" said Gen. Richard Mayers during a meeting in Pentagon yesterday morning. [reverse translation from Russian]

The US experts already call this war a "crisis". "It was enough for the enemy to show a little resistance and some creative thinking as our technological superiority begun to quickly lose all its meaning. Our expenses are not justified by the obtained results.

The enemy is using an order of magnitude cheaper weapons to reach the same goals for which we spend billions on technological whims of the defense industry!" said Gen. Stanley McCrystal during the same Pentagon meeting. [reverse translation from Russian]

Since the early morning today the coalition high command and the Joint Chiefs of Staff are in an online conference joined by the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. This meeting immediately follows an earlier meeting last night at the White House.

During the night meeting with President Bush emergency actions were outlined to resolve the standstill in Iraq. The existing course of actions is viewed as "ineffective and leading to a crisis". The Secretary of State Collin Powell warned that, if the war in Iraq continues for more than a month, it might lead to unpredictable consequences in international politics.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Mayers reported on the proposed actions and corrections to the plan of the operation in Iraq. George Bush demanded that the military breaks the standstill in Iraq and within a week achieves significant military progress.

A particular attention, according to Bush, should be paid to finding and eliminating the top Iraqi political and military leadership. Bush believes that Saddam Hussein and his closest aides are the cornerstone of the Iraqi defense.

During today's online meeting at the coalition headquarters Gen. Franks was criticized for inefficient command of his troops and for his inability to concentrate available forces on the main tasks.

According to [Russian military] intelligence Pentagon made a decision to significantly reinforce the coalition. During the next two weeks up to 50,000 troops and no less than 500 tanks will arrive to the combat area from the US military bases in Germany and Albania. By the end of April 120,000 more troops and up to 1,200 additional tanks will be sent to support the war against Iraq.

A decision was made to change the way aviation is used in this war. The use of precision-guided munitions will be scaled down and these weapons will be reserved for attacking only known, confirmed targets.

There will be an increase in the use of conventional high-yield aviation bombs, volume-detonation bombs and incendiary munitions. The USAF command is ordered to deliver to airbases used against Iraq a two-week supply of aviation bombs of 1-tonn caliber and higher as well as volume- detonation and incendiary bombs. This means that Washington is resorting to the "scorched earth" tactics and carpet-bombing campaign.


[Edited on 26-3-2003 by Netchicken]

If we can't do it "playing nice", and they're intent on their citizens dying...then we'll just have to do it the old-fashioned way.... Strangely, I have no problem with that, in light of their recent atrocities....

Gazrock, I think people are starting to lose the plot.

This was meant to be a war of liberation, it appears that it has become a war of conquest.

While the media trumpets the army as "freeing" the people, increasingly the people are taking up arms and trying to kill them. What seems to be a walkover with few losess is turning into a Cechneya

So what is the purpose? The US/BR army will conqour 20 million people, who will be supported by the countries around them?

Not likely....

What may happen is the army runs out of resources and is beaten, unless thy have a quick breakthough .... a tragedy for the entire Middle East.

However the die has been cast, we cant turn back now and save face, the genie is out of the bottle. The war must continue and the result will not be the freedom trumpeted for the people but a bloody mess that will cripple countries.

The IRAQWAR.RU analytical center was created recently by a group of journalists and military experts from Russia to provide accurate and up-to-date news and analysis of the war against Iraq. The following is the English translation of the IRAQWAR.RU report based on the Russian military intelligence reports.

Take the article with a grain of salt.The Russians have their own agenda.

[Edited on 03/26/03 by nyeff]

[Edited on 03/26/03 by nyeff]

"While the media trumpets the army as "freeing" the people, increasingly the people are taking up arms and trying to kill them. What seems to be a walkover with few losess is turning into a Cechneya"

However, it's not so much that the Iraqi "people" are taking up arms against us, but that the Iraqi military was dispersed amongst the population instead prior to the war. It is a clever tactic (for Saddam) when you have no problem with civilian casualties which will result from such a tactic (which Saddam obviously has no such problem).

We have done everything and then some, to minimize civilian casualties (numbers of which, I might add, would be unheard of prior to this war), but that cannot be avoided when the enemy employs such tactics. We will not be to blame for these deaths...it is Saddam who put them in harm's way...but of course, politics are all about perception, and we WILL be blamed for them.

For that reason, we will still "play nice" I am sure...but the gloves will have to come off to counter this tactic eventually. That is unless of course, the primary tactic we are employing starts to work.

The Iraqi military will have to come to believe that Saddam is no longer in power. Once convinced of this reality, we will then see the surrenders we expect, and avoid a lot of collateral damage. Lets just hope this is the case, shall we?

" the coalition high command and the Joint Chiefs of Staff are in an online conference joined by the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld."

why did no one invite me to this online conference? I would have enjoyed listening to it. I also have many questions to ask. If any one know how to get invited to these online coferences let me know.

I would love to know where the info. came from for that article.

It's either a very well written fraud built around the facts we know (like US reinforcements, trouble with supply lines, etc.) OR it's a very serious breach of security for the US administration.

Gazrok - Seriously, the Iraqi generals have been on TV for about a month now, talking about how they're going to fight in the cities this time round. For the US/UK not to have predicted it shows a total lack of forethought. The fact we went in anyway shows overconfidence. The problem I guess is that politically this was going to get very messy unless the war was quick and surgical. Well, we've had the quick and surgical bit, but the war isn't over. So now we're entering dangerous political ground.

Civilian casualties will be a disaster in the region, as we saw from the total blanket media coverage in the region of the 15 dead in Baghdad the other night. That means we'll be forced to go into the cities and fight street by street, and then things get very messy at home when the body bags start coming back.

This war is not going the way it was meant to...

a "disaster". We are doing everything we can to ensure that they are kept at a "minimum" but nobody ever claimed that there wouldn't be some civilian casualties and collateral damage. My point was, that the Iraqi military will kill far more civilians than we will, whether it's through human shield tactics, or just outright killing them so they can blame it on us (which is a prime point in their strategy I might add.)

No, I wouldn't call 15 dead civilians a "disaster". But pictures of a few hundred who were killed in street to street fighting might well be called a disaster. Particularly if a couple of hundred thousand starve to death aswell.

Nope, the Iraqi tactic seems to be about putting military targets near civilians to stop the US attacking them with precision munitions. However, if the US bomb those targets anyway, then the civilians are killed by US bombs. That's how it'll be seen in the region, and that could really fan the flames in the middle east. This tactic was entirely predictable.

You got any evidence that the Iraqi's are killing their own civilians to make it look like the US did it? Any at all?