NEWS
Monday, March 24, 2003
Iraq news ...The Times of London: Iraq Section
"How a walkover turned into a three-day battle"
"... If the display of firepower had not been so devastating, the whole operation might have been comical.
"If the Americans are like this when they have one building to deal with, what are they going to be like when they get to Baghdad?" a British officer asked."
"Dawning of war's harshs reality"
... The images were not shown on American television, but word of the Iraqi broadcast brought home to the American public the fact that the conflict would be neither quick nor bloodless. President Bush braced the nation for worse to come, saying the coalition forces were "at the beginning of a tough fight". Answering questions for the first time since hostilities began, he said: "It's important to realise that this war has just begun."
...
US officials played down the significance of such resistance, saying it was to be expected, but it was sharply different from the widespread surrenders in the early stages of the 1991 Gulf War.
The pattern pointed to an Iraqi battle plan that was prepared to cede large swaths of desert to advancing coalition columns while reserving resistance for urban areas. "We let them go for a walk in the desert, but all our towns will resist," the Iraqi Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan said. ..."
Posted by Rob at 12:51 AM
