Sucker punched!
Defining the Resistance in Iraq - It's not Foreign and It's Well Prepared
Scott Ritter turned on lights for me here. (See above story in the Christian Science Monitor.) Suddenly I had an image of a screen pass in football. You know – the basic strategy is for the blockers to act like they are blocking, but letting themselves be defeated – be pushed back. The basic idea is to get the attackers to over commit. Then you burn them by setting up a play behind their back where you gently toss the ball over their heads.
Well, think about it. Did we really think Saddam Hussein was so stupid that he thought he could defeat us in open battle? Did we think his ego was so huge that he couldn’t see that there was no way for his battered forces – with no air support – to defeat the most powerful, most modern Army on earth.
Unless. . .
Unless he threw a screen pass. Unless he suckered us in, putting up just enough resistance to make it look like a fight? Then once we were committed and in unfamiliar territory, he could attack – he could loop a pass over our head.
Remember what it was like last spring? Shock and awe and tanks rolling quickly into Baghdad. Sure, on the way there we ran into some reistance from unexpected forces. But these weren’t his best soldiers and we knew it. They were supposed to be protecting Baghdad. That’s where the fight would be. But these vaunted troops folder more quickly than the ones in the outlying region had.
Worse yet, they just melted away. We didn’t capture them. Or if we did, we disarmed them and set them free.
Free to slowly reorganize into guerilla fighters and tap into arms and munitions they have stashed all over Iraq. Meanwhile, we still don’t have our eye on the ball. We are spending all our time and money searching for weapons of mass destruction that don’t exist. We are running around all over Iraq – and actually ignoring huge stockpiles of stingers, those deadly surface to air missiles – and many other hidden munitions.
Now comes Scott Ritter with evidence that this was indeed the plan all along. That when he was a UN weapons inspector looking for WMD he found plenty of evidence that the elite Iraqi forces were training for just the kind of urban guerilla warfare that we are seeing now.
Make no mistake about it – I am not claiming special knowledge or foresight here. I didn’t anticipate this. Hindsight is wonderful. I had thought we would get bogged down in a guerilla action. But I thought that would mainly be with Islamic extremist and other Iraqis. No one likes an occupying force. And in the final analysis, as a matter of pride they don’t even like to be rescued. There are Iraqis opposing us now for no better reason than their pride is hurt – we overthrew Hussein when they know they should have done it themselves. But I suspect Ridder is right – the majority of opposition is coming from Hussein’s forces and tthis was their plan from the start.
Bottom line: We underestimated Saddam and his forces and they are now sucker punching us.
