Huge Battle To Occur

March 27 � About 1,000 Iraqi Republican Guards were moving out of Baghdad early Thursday, apparently to reinforce forward units of the Iraqi forces bracing for an onslaught by U.S. forces, military officials told NBC News. The shift sets the stage for the first encounter between Saddam Hussein�s elite fighting force and heavily armed U.S. troops supported by a robust air attack. Later Thursday, about 1,000 U.S. paratroopers landed in northern Iraq, a U.S. military spokesman said, to open a new front against Saddam....

www.msnbc.com...

Anyone else nervous tonight or is it just me......

Sounds like its about to get really ugly. The article says 1000 Republican Guard troops and I heard on tv that they were facing a convoy of 1000 vehicles so I figured they had more troops, seems odd that they would travel one to a vehicle. Regardless, sounds like the casualty numbers will grow on both sides substantially with a standoff of this size. I hope that our troops get the air support that they need, we hold such a big advantage in that dept. From what I read, Iraq has 35 planes in their Air Force compared to our 1600+.

I don't see why everyone is so worried....Iraq's military cannot possibly hang with ours. Sure, they might be able to kill a cool little amount of ours...but they will have a damn hard time defeating us completely. lol

paratroops given as 600 strong (00.30 GMT) - but with the media in the state that they are in, who knows? Apparently there to secure an airfield. It's pretty clear that perhaps the main obstacle to progress has been the lack of pressure from the North so it may be that the US intends to remedy this once it has the reinforcements.
I cannot say that 1,000 Rep. G. sounds like the Somme or Kursk: a skirmish at most. Apparently, Iraqi armour was forced to flee earlier to-day after a coalition bomb-and-strafe attack.
I'll be amazed if the Iraqis venture out in force: their tactic appears to be to let the coalition come to them. I think they learnt rather more from their defeat in 92 than the coalition learnt from its victory.

So they will only kill a "cool little amount" of ours, are you happy to see your brother die in a foreign land for a corrupt govt?

Originally posted by BLAH
I don't see why everyone is so worried....Iraq's military cannot possibly hang with ours. Sure, they might be able to kill a cool little amount of ours...but they will have a damn hard time defeating us completely. lol

There is something that bothers me about this... I have been hearing all day about this column moving south, directly into the 7th Cav. Granted, it is moving in the midst of a bad sandstorm, and that would at least screen it from the bulk of US airpower, but I think the Iraqis would still remember very clearly what happened to thier forces when they tried to bug out down the highway from Kuwait back into Iraq, and 90% of thier forces were decimated on the highway by US A-10s.

I dont know that these are really armored vehicals coming at the 7th Cav (CNN says they are PROBABLY tanks, APCs, ect).... I am wondering if they close on the 7th, and are totally destroyed with point blank artillery fire, only to have the smoke clear and find 1000 civilian buses bearing down, with scores of dead civilians on the road.... or, alternatively, maybe they are tanker trucks, loaded with VX????

captured an airfield. This of course, will allow them to fly in tanks and artillery, and start to form a solid northern front, Turkey or no Turkey...

The Pentagon has denied reports of the 1000 convoy, or the Republican Guard forces moving south. Personally, the Pentagon hasn't exactly been the most "reliable" source as of late....*cough, cough* The sand may keep many Apaches from flying, but the A-10s and artillery will certainly be used to turn it into a convoy of slag metal....

The sand may keep many Apaches from flying, but the A-10s and artillery will certainly be used to turn it into a convoy of slag metal Posted by Gazrok

I agree, the sandstorm wouldnt keep us from hitting it, if it is there, but it would obscure our identification, which is why I have a very bad feeling that if we went in and bombed this column "blind" we would find that it was a civilian bus convoy or something...

Besides, sandstorm or not, it will be pretty easy to tell a tank convoy from a civilian one... What kind of civilians would be travelling in a convoy heading towards their enemy anyhow? Iraqi military in civilian garb...that's who... Fire in the hole!!!

KingPin....NO i am not happy to see my brothers die in a foreign place...but in case you didn't know...there is no draft going on right now. Everyone in the military joined for a reason, and they knew DAMN well what they were getting into. War is part of life...and if your goverment, whether corrupt or not, starts a war...then you gotta go if you for some reason felt you had to join the military. So of course I don't want to see our fellow Americans die, but I'm just being real, and yes, a "cool little amount" of ours will probably die compared to theirs. It is easy to talk about their deaths so lightly because it doesn't matter, they chose to be in the military and they are out there and going to possibly die regardless of me typing this right now or not.

There is always one thing certain in war...Death. It's never a good thing but it doesn't have to bad neither. A human life is a human life regardless. The event's that will take place will not be pretty, but these men do know what they have gotten themselves into, otherwise they wouldn't be out there. I'm sure the 7th Cav will do a good job, they're Cav. Scouts..It's their job, "shoot to kill drive on, ooah".

[Edited on 27-3-2003 by Solisorcasus]

[Edited on 27-3-2003 by Solisorcasus]