Anything suprise you so far?

[epicstruggle]

pax, Im also suprised that there have only been about 10k surrenders. However, Im not sure whether thats any indication about the Iraqi armies willingness to fight. I think/hope the reason for so few surrenders is that the soldies are just leaving to go home, instead of waiting to get picked up by the coalition.

later,

 

[Heathen]

I expected about half the iraqi to drop its guns by now.

Resistance is pretty much as I expected really, I think it's the fault of the press for pushing the line so hard that the Iraqis were a pushover. Ok some comments by the military didn't help overly, but only a fool would honestly believe the Iraqis would lay down and surrender

Practically the bulk of the opposition is from the SRG and Saddam Fedayeen, from the look of general civvies they seem rather relieved that we're going in..

 

[Gunhead]

For example, post D-Day in WW2 the bulk of German armour was destroyed by aircraft, not by Allied armour. The rules haven't changed that drastically since then (certainly not since Gulf War 1, where that was the case too).

Well, in the Western front it was also because the Allied tanks of the day simply couldn't beat the far superior German tanks in face to face encounters. (In the Eastern front it was more even.) But of course air superiority was and is important in tank warfare. Except when you have a sandstorm, I guess.

 

[covermye]

How bout the effectiveness of the newer generation Patriots? I know there have been some hateful arguments about Patriot accuracy in the past, but it looks like they're 6/6 on the Kuwait border so far...

 

[pascal]

yes, people are going about their lives, they have realized that the US has only bombed at night in certain locations. Watch the news, youll see people in the streets in bhagdad doing what ever they do in their normal lives. Ill take your and put down which always beats one

Hey, I am not here to beat anyone because it is not a competition.
This is a WAR with nasty effects. See this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2881491.stm

Salam has written that Baghdad has almost come to a halt with many shops closed, some foodstuffs in short supply and prices are rising steeply.

"I have never seen Baghdad like this", he writes.

Again, this is a war with mass bombing, not a picnic. Maybe you would like to think that it is not too bad but human beings are dieing there everyday.

 

[nutball]

How bout the effectiveness of the newer generation Patriots? I know there have been some hateful arguments about Patriot accuracy in the past, but it looks like they're 6/6 on the Kuwait border so far...

Are you counting an RAF Tornado as one of those six, or is that bonus points?

 

[epicstruggle]

cnn has reported that baghdad still operates much as it usually does, the bus service still runs, people shop, do whatever people there do. Yes some stores are closed, many people did leave the city. The way you talk it sounds like every other person is either dead or dying. This is clearly not the case, and if you take a look at the day shots of bhagdad youll see people going about their business.

later,

 

[Sxotty]

I saw an Iraqi who stated that the Fedayeen were going around towns and forcing people over the age of 15 to fight for them, so they are not exactly human sheilds because they arm them with ak47's and then tell them they will shoot them if they don't fight the coalition, or kill their family. He has family in Basara and Baghdad he had been talking to.

Of course you don't have to believe it as there is little verification, but it seems like it would work to confuse the coalition, and it would preserve the number of Saddam's loyalists for as long as possible.

 

[nutball]

As I said in a previous thread, people get very loyal very quickly if you point a gun at their head.

 

[volkodav]

2 Heathen, Vince:

I have no doubt that M1 is generations ahead of T-72, I was talking about a very specific conditions: low visibility (no more than 100 meters) and without air support. And about IR systems, I have a very fun article of serbians as they effectively masked real tanks and create models which your aircafts with IR systems accepted as aims. I post it if you want lately, cause I'm not eager to translate a big text.

2 vince:

"The troops made a rapid advance under heavy allied air protection that wiped out a column of charging Iraqi armor and sent some of Saddam's outer defenses withdrawing toward the capital..."

"To get here, the troops drove north through flat, desert terrain, passing bombed trucks that had anti-aircraft guns mounted on them, empty foxholes and berms dug for tanks that had been abandoned by Iraqi forces. Cabs of the anti-aircraft trucks were peeled back missile blasts, which scorched the ground around the trucks. Some had bodies still inside, burned beyond recognition."

I was talking about effectivness of bombing Baghdad and Basra.

It would appear that Russian mass-media doesn't report alot. Not that this is anything new.. I love how so many Russians (and Europeans in general) are against the war, yet they're listning to total BS and have so little substantive information.

Ignorance is Bliss indeed.

Russian mass-media report all, from Al-Jazeera to CNN, and almost each channel have reporters in Iraq, both on argessors and defenders side. It is not our war, so there is no a any necessity to lie. Can't sayl the same about american Gebels's style propaganda.

About Iraq's missile it was my mistake, IRNA message counted evrywhere.

Just for experiment, did you here these facts:

1. 2 correspondents of aljazeera lost there journalist's badges (? "accreditation" on russian) in USA for "not right describing of war".
The specially opened english site
http://english.aljazeera.net
is shutted down (at least right now).


2. Over 5000 Iraq's people went into there motherland from Iordaniya to fight against agressors during last weak. (About 350 000 Iraqis left Iraq in 1991 after 1st war. What is intresting, that though some of them were persecuted by Saddam's regime, they despite of this "must take part in jihad against agressors")

3. As witnesses assert, american pilot intentionally shot into bus with Siries civillians. (In our media it presented with reference to IRNA).

p.s. Europeans and Russians against war simply because we understand that the real reasons for war is economical interests of USA. With such kind of wars you support your currency, and we understand that the day when the Dollar fail to Euro in a competition for being a standard currency for international deals, will be the last they of America's hegemony.

Of cource I can't say for Europeans, but in Russia majority think in such way.

p.s. At least europeans now are not so stupid as they were in Serbia's war when they paid for operation, which result became weakening of Euro

 

[volkodav]

Well, http://english.aljazeera.net/ is alive again, start reading.

 

[epicstruggle]

I laugh sometimes when i see what other medias state their point of view. What happened to the Aljazeera reports that no longer have accredidation(sp?) is that the NYSE (stock exchange) decided to cut back on the number of reporters, and so they cut, now that was the decision of NYSE not the US government. Why they cut is their business, if they said they have too many reporters thats their right to cut. It was said that about a dozen reporters where cut, including us reporters too.

I guess because the decision came after the showing of the dead americans it looked like the two things looked like they were related. Might or might not be related. But again its their right to do that.

later,