Baghdad = arab Stalingrad

[keyDet79]

When the Germans bombed the living shit out of Stalingrad untill almost nothing was left but a huge black cloud of smoke covering the city, they decided to send some infantry to occupy it.

They stumbled on Russian snipers which were hidden in the ruins of the buildings that were still kind of standing. The ones that did get through and managed to enter those buildings got machine gunned down by Russian urban troops that were waiting for them in the cellars and on roofs.

After a long battle that lasted for months the Germans never occupied the entire city, by the time winter fell Stalin sent their cavalery to Stalingrad and into the already occupied west and that was the beginning of the end for Hitler.

Since Saddam is a huge fan of Stalin and actually wants to be him (which is a known fact), I have a strong feeling this is what's going to happen in Iraq.

[Seaz]

Hmmmm originaly i would have agreed but with this strange new US strat there could be even more defections then ever imagined

[stanton]

It is the worst war, when army comes in to the city.

it is gonna be fucking ruins, and its gonna be lots of blood on both sides...!!!

[Rochard]

Alot has changed in over sixty years.....

We can surroud the city and and starve them out.... In the mean time bring in some of that high tech stuff that senses heat and take them out one at a time........

So far seems as if taking over Iraq has been a joke.

[iroc409]

ahahahah!!!


M.O.A.B.

[Candyman69]

http://www.msnbc.com/news/879020.asp?0cb=-311140396

click the urban warfare slide show

[keyDet79]

Originally posted by Candyman69
http://www.msnbc.com/news/879020.asp?0cb=-311140396

click the urban warfare slide show

Indeed, the Americans are in for a big surprise in Baghdad.

[Serge_Oprano]

Originally posted by keyDet79


Indeed, the Americans are in for a big surprise in Baghdad.

we ARE...how EASY it's been so far and we just started really pounding them 1 hour ago...

Saddam is not Stalin and iraquies are not ready to die for him and Bush is not Hitler

..but if those analogies make you feel better,
so be it...
learn some new slogans:

We support Saddam's peaceful regime!

The Iraqi people don't deserve liberation!

Saddam's "victims" are not "innocent" -- they voted against him!

Saddam is only trying to prevent overpopulation!

My parents work so I can protest!

Saddam only kills poor people!

The Iraqi people should just suffer quietly!

I haven't showered or bathed since the 60's!

If you kick Saddam out, you'll have to kick all of us out too!

We may be pro-tyranny, but at least we hate America!

What did you expect? Our parents were hippies!

I have nothing better to do with my life than whine and protest!

I don't even know what I'm protesting, but this looked like fun!

I'm a chip off the old block -- my parents were idiots too!

I'm just killing time until the next IMF and WTO meetings!

[Mr. Jim]

you are forgetting one very important key factor with regard to Stalingrad.


Uhhhhhhh.........the freezing cold

Hitler did not resupply

The German morale was extremely low


not even close on this one slick

[directfiesta]

Originally posted by keyDet79


Indeed, the Americans are in for a big surprise in Baghdad.

and afterwards at home . 100,000 new terrorist created in Egypt, Yemen, Lebanon ....


The USA will win the battle in Iraq, but not the war.

[Serge_Oprano]

Originally posted by directfiesta


and afterwards at home . 100,000 new terrorist created in Egypt, Yemen, Lebanon ....


The USA will win the battle in Iraq, but not the war.

yeah, and they all attack French Canada, because they are pussies....

[Thrawn$]

Originally posted by Serge_Oprano


yeah, and they all attack French Canada, because they are pussies....

that not true, there is some fatty girls here that can kick your ass out

[Serge_Oprano]

Originally posted by Thrawn$




that not true, there is some fatty girls here that can kick your ass out

hahahhahahaahahahhaah,
seems like they are the ONLY men left in Quebec
;-)))

[res]

Baghdad = arab Stalingrad ? Geniusly

[tornell]

NO WAR ... NO PAIN .... HOW EASY ...

[Serge_Oprano]

Originally posted by tornell
NO WAR ... NO PAIN .... HOW EASY ...

being slave is easy too

[czarkazm]

USA = Israel's Bitch

[dangerous]

Originally posted by czarkazm
USA = Israel's Bitch

rofl very true.

[JeremySF]

Saddam?s Stalingrad strategy

Edward N Luttwack

Ousting Saddam will not be easy. The main offensive from Kuwait must advance for 500 kms to reach Baghdad. It is for this reason that the 101st Airborne division and the British 16th Air Assault brigade will fly directly into the Baghdad area, linking up with armoured columns racing up from Kuwait

Expert in internal repression but utterly incompetent in military strategy, Saddam Hussein thinks that he can fight and win. His strategy seems to be to defend Baghdad as another Stalingrad, street by street, house by house.

A war strategy that deliberately begins the way that most wars end, with a street-fighting defence of the capital city, is certainly original. It is also realistic in not even trying to defend Iraq?s borders against American air power.

But it is fantasy to think that the people of Baghdad will defend Saddam?s regime. A sullen passivity is the most that Saddam can expect from Iraqis. Street-fighting will need to be done by those targeted by air bombardment: Saddam?s elite troops.

Whether they will fight after heavy bombing depends on the success of the air campaign. It is unlikely that Saddam?s elite forces will be caught in well-identified barracks. They might be caught in encampments, however, even if frequently moved. Of course, the troops may be made invulnerable to bombing by being billeted among the civilian population, but armoured vehicles and artillery cannot be hidden in apartment houses.

Saddam?s security system for Baghdad includes the Special Republican Guard, whose 16,000 men are Iraq?s most disciplined, best equipped troops. It is not clear how many street-fighters Saddam can obtain from his five competing security forces (the 5000-man Al Amn al-Khas Special Security Service, the 4,000-man, al-Mukhabarat al-Amma General Intelligence Directorate, the 5,000-man Al-Istikhbarat al-Askariyya Military Intelligence, the 5,000 man Al Amn al-Askariyya Military Security Service, and the 8,000-man Mudiriyat al-Amn al-Amma General Security Service) whose 25,000-30,000 men are distributed throughout Iraq.

If it is numbers Saddam wants, he can get them from the ?Fedayeen Saddam,? which contains 15,000 men recruited from trusted tribes. For really big numbers, there is the Jaysh al-Sha?abi Popular Army, a party militia with 150,000 men and women in Baghdad alone.

But street-fighting requires even more training, cohesion and leadership than open-field combat. Even in ?heroic? Stalingrad, the workers? militia collapsed at the battle?s beginning. Saddam?s numerous secret police contain many clerks, executioners, and torturers, but not many trained soldiers. As for the Fedayeen Saddam, they are village ruffians unfamiliar with Baghdad?s urban landscape.

The men of the Special Republican Guard are supposed to be loyal because they are recruited largely from Saddam?s own al-Bu Nasir tribe around Tikrit. But they are also a true praetorian guard, like their Roman predecessors. They have better uniforms and higher pay than ordinary soldiers ? and officers too close to the intrigues of Iraq?s palace politics to remain blindly devoted to Saddam. Quite a few have been executed over the years for plotting against Saddam. Not all of them were innocent.

Recently, Saddam moved the ?non-special? Republican Guard into Baghdad. Its ten divisions, with at least 100,000 men, are better trained and armed than the regular army, which is now weaker than in the first Gulf War of 1991, when it scarcely resisted before surrendering. By contrast, the Guard?s 1st Hammurabi, 2nd Al Medina, 3rd Tawakalna, and 6th Nebuchadnezzar divisions all fought back against US forces in 1991.

Despite their elite status, the Guard lacked the skill to hold their ground or inflict casualties. Of course, US forces had better equipment, but well-trained forces can sometimes offset technical disadvantages to score kills if not to win. Half of the Guard?s divisions are lighter forces with more foot soldiers for street-fighting, but the rest are armoured or mechanized and thus depend on tanks and combat carriers that can be easily targeted with precision weapons.

Baghdad?s long suffering population, with its majority of alienated Shi?ites and a million disaffected Kurds, is unlikely to remain unmoved by the imminent arrival of US and British troops. An uprising that would give the allies the city without a fight, however, is too much to expect so long as they fear that Saddam might survive to punish them. But neighbourhood manhunts for torturers and informers might create a hostile climate that discourages Saddam loyalists.

Even so, ousting Saddam will not be easy. The main offensive from Kuwait must advance for 500 kilometres to reach Baghdad. It is for this reason that the lighter forces centred on the 101st Airborne division and the British 16th Air Assault brigade will fly directly into the Baghdad area, linking up with armoured columns racing up from Kuwait.

The offensive into and around Iraq?s second city of Basra will be no easier. Its implicit mission is to discourage Iran from venturing across the Shatt river border, contested territory and scene of the most intense fighting of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. For that, units will have to be thinly spread from the southern tip of Iraq at Faw up to Amara, some 150 miles from Kuwait.

With US/UK ground forces outnumbered in most fights, and with many terrain obstacles to overcome, this dual offensives would be highly risky were it not for air power. Fighter bombers and attack helicopters would be employed to intercept any counter-attacks against the flanks of the advancing columns, and to break up blocking forces.

It will take that and more to reach Baghdad quickly. Before that, the initial ?strategic? bombing will be of unprecedented dimensions, but not because there will be more strike aircraft than in the Gulf War. On the contrary, there will be less than half as many, not more than 700 in total. But in 1991, less than 150 aircraft were equipped to launch the precision weapons that did 90% of the useful bombing. Now all US and British strike aircraft use precision weapons. The number of separate targets that can be attacked in the first 48 hours should be five times as great as in 1991. More than 900 ship-launched cruise missiles ? triple the number in 1991 ? will double the impact of the initial air strikes.

In addition to air defences, command centres and communications, key targets will be the offices, barracks, depots, bunkers, and any known evacuation lodgings and tented camps of Saddam?s Special and regular Republican Guards, and of his five different security organizations. Whatever else happens, the war will bring an all-out attack against the executioners and torturers of Iraq?s peoples. ?DT-PS

Edward N. Luttwak is one of America?s leading military strategists. He is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default...1-3-2003_pg3_5

[foreverjason]

Alot has changed in over sixty years.....

We can surroud the city and and starve them out.... In the mean time bring in some of that high tech stuff that senses heat and take them out one at a time........

So far seems as if taking over Iraq has been a joke.

Exactly. They could also take over the television wave lengths and the US could spread there message. I dont think you will see major fighting within the city.

[Antonio]

Baghdad = arab Stalingrad ? Geniusly

Indeed

[JeremySF]

Originally posted by Antonio


Indeed

another article on Saddamigrad....


Iraq may favor a city war, Stalingrad-style

Hussein's strategy has US soldiers armed with medieval-era tools to storm Baghdad

By Brad Knickerbocker | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON ? In the war zone today, some American soldiers are armed with battle-axes, battering rams, and grappling hooks. No, it's not a time-warped trip to the Middle Ages or Monty Python play acting, but recognition that war with Iraq - before it's over - could well involve the kind of fighting that has to deal with Saddam Hussein's own battle plan.

Driven more by necessity than boldness, the Iraqi dictator's strategy is a kind of throwback, experts say. It involves static warfare - what some call a "hedgehog defense" - rather than the "maneuver warfare" preached and practiced since World War II. And it relies on what could be Iraqi advantages in city fighting - hence the medieval weapons to break down doors and scale walls to get on rooftops in order to root out enemy soldiers in close combat.


The idea is not to defeat the American-led forces on the battlefield, but to make the fight so costly for them - in terms of publicly abhorrent civilian losses as well as military casualties - that a negotiated cease-fire either preserves the regime or gives Mr. Hussein the opportunity to declare "victory" and leave Iraq with his life and his liberty.

To succeed, Hussein has to accomplish three things, says George Friedman, head of Strategic Forecasting Inc. in Austin. He will have to maintain sufficient troop morale to get through the first days of withering aerial bombardment; resist US ground forces in those first days by inflicting enough casualties to at least slow down those attacks; and thereby be able to claim that the US is not invincible so that he can inspire further resistance as troops surround Baghdad.

"Hussein appears to reason that if he can create strongholds that cannot be reduced from a distance and which must be seized by US ground forces - even if the casualty ratio is tilted heavily against Iraq - then Iraq can reach a threshold that will force a cease-fire," observes Dr. Friedman in a recent analysis in STRATFOR Weekly, one of his company's publications.

The main tactics in such a strategy are concealment (which worked to a certain extent for Serb forces in Kosovo), hardening of key targets (command bunkers and chemical weapons sites), and mixing military forces with the civilian population.

All of this depends on morale - the willingness to die for cause or country. Conventional wisdom has been that many Iraqi forces would either desert or surrender. But, says Friedman, "History is littered with false assumptions about the enemy's morale."

While military officials and most observers predict a fairly quick defeat of Iraqi forces, there could well be surprises along the way.

"We have no business underestimating this enemy," Lt. Gen. William Wallace, commander of Army forces, told his troops in a prewar briefing this week.

Among the possible surprises:

? The toughness of Iraqi antiaircraft fire, particularly since it's now concentrated in and around Baghdad - described recently by one US Air Force general as a "hornet's nest."

? Belief that the "shock and awe" of an initial attack by Cruise missiles and aircraft "can only do so much," as military analyst Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution in Washington puts it, after which the effort will rely on ground troops who've never seen combat before.

? That the late arrival of the Army's 101st Airborne Division and the nonarrival of the 4th Infantry Division (due to Turkey's lack of cooperation) could make even regular Iraqi troops more than simply "speed bumps," as some US officers had predicted.

Retired Navy Captain and Pentagon strategist Larry Seaquist says allied commanders will have to watch out for other things as well: "A strategically significant failure of the US military to operate on the humanitarian side. Remember how the first day of 'bombing' Afghan villages with food packets was never followed up. And a major attempt, with Al Qaeda and Saudi Wahabbi backing, to establish fundamentalist Islamic leadership, said 'democratic' leadership to invite us out."

Some experts warn that Hussein's focus on an urban defense could undercut US advantages.

"As the Germans found at Stalingrad, city fighting reduces advantages in long-range gunnery, maneuver, armored warfare, and air power - all advantages we could have over the Iraqis but that would be diminished in their urban areas," writes Kenneth Pollack in his recent book "The Threatening Storm."

"Cities are great 'levelers' in that sense," warns Mr. Pollack, a former CIA analyst who focused on the Persian Gulf. "The great question mark will be Baghdad."

[Shoplifter]

Originally posted by Serge_Oprano


we ARE...how EASY it's been so far and we just started really pounding them 1 hour ago...

Saddam is not Stalin and iraquies are not ready to die for him and Bush is not Hitler

The Soviets were not fighting for Stalin, but rather against the Germans.

This whole thing hinges on how the Iraqi people will react. If they are of the mindset that the Americans are Zionist aggressors then this could be a touchy thing. If they all want to join the Mc Pepsi generation then this will only last a few days.

A big concern is if the Iraqi's will begin to get moral support and aid through Syria and Iran. I think that watching this pounding on TV is going to move a lot of Arabs to outrage. The US will have to
win before this becomes a factor.

Comparisons to Stalingrad are irrelevant...the USSR was the more powerful nation and probably would have beat the Germans eventually in any event.

[keyDet79]

Originally posted by RocHard
Alot has changed in over sixty years.....

We can surroud the city and and starve them out.... In the mean time bring in some of that high tech stuff that senses heat and take them out one at a time........

So far seems as if taking over Iraq has been a joke.

You can't take those chances, there might still be civilians there.

[Tex Willer]

[Serge_Oprano]

Originally posted by Shoplifter


The Soviets were not fighting for Stalin, but rather against the Germans.

.

incorrect....but I love when foreignors teach me Russian history
;-))))

are you french?

would you mind me teaching you the history of France?
;-))))

[keyDet79]

Originally posted by Serge_Oprano


incorrect....but I love when foreignors teach me Russian history
;-))))

are you french?

would you mind me teaching you the history of France?
;-))))

He's right, I'm also Russian and trust me, the red army loved Stalin A lot of soldiers had his face as a tatoo.