| theking |
04-20-2003 11:50 PM |
U.S. Victory Highlights Russian Weakness
MOSCOW (AP) - There's a message to the Russians in the swift defeat of Saddam Hussein's military, which was modeled on the rigid Soviet war machine.
The triumph of a high-tech adversary has spotlighted the weakness of Russia's own crumbling armed forces and strengthened the hand of radical reform advocates.
``The Iraqi war has proven once again that a volunteer contract force equipped with state-of-the art weapons and using modern tactics can fulfill any task ... and do it with minimal casualties among civilians,'' said liberal lawmaker Alexei Arbatov, a leading advocate of a Russian volunteer army.
When the war began, Russian generals forecast a long and fierce battle and expected the United States to suffer massive casualties if it stormed Iraqi cities. Just a week before Baghdad fell, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov extolled the strength of the Iraqi army and said a U.S. victory was ``far from certain.''
``There were expectations of a new Vietnam,'' said Yuri Fyodorov, a deputy director of the PIR-Center, an independent Russian think-tank.
Russian generals and diplomats, who also predicted an all-out battle for Baghdad, drew on Russia's own botched experience in the storming and virtual destruction of Grozny, the Chechen capital.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlates...588119,00.html
They are slow learners as they should have taken the lesson from the 1st Gulf Conflict. |
