[TUC]

www.reuters.de reports that US soldiers are diging into the dirt near bagdad and are expected to not go anywhere for 30-50 days. this step was taken to ware down iraqi forces who are eledgedly cutof from any supplies.

Equity markets are said to slump to new lows as hope for a swift end gets wiped out. Hail those short in the market.

[KurtFF8]

30-50 days? uhhhh no

[Berkut]

And the longer they wait, the hotted the enviroment become, and with their chemical weapons attack paranoia, soldiers will die in their anti chem weapons suits! Poor soldiers!

[ahab]

The US troops can wait out in the open as long as they like. Iraq has no way of reaching them (they have good balisic missile defences, artillery has too short of range, Iraqi airforce is prettymuch nonexistant)

The 4th Infantry Division was planned to go through Turkey and come at Baghdad from the north. That didn't happen. They waited in Turkish ports until right before hostilities started. It will take them two weeks to get from Turkey to Kuwait, and then another few to get close to Baghdad. Expect them to show up near Baghdad later this week. (they also have THE most advanced tanks the US has, a lot of special electronic blinky stuff)

speculation -
the troops near Baghdad are waiting for the 4th Infantry before they move

[Berkut]

US technological supperiority will be seriously reduced. Baghdad is an entien city, it has very thin roads. Tanks will have to pass one by one. Imagine Iraqi destroyes the first and the last of the colomne.........the rest will be blocked in between! And Kornet-E will tost them! (just a supposition)

[ahab]

How to Take Baghdad NYTimes

Narrow streets make some cities more difficult to assault. Simply disabling the lead and rear vehicles of a convoy can trap the entire column, setting it up for an ambush. When a Russian armored column got caught in the narrow streets of Grozny in 1994, 122 of 146 armored vehicles were destroyed. The Americans had similar problems in Mogadishu; roadblocks in the tight streets hampered the movement of American convoys, delaying the rescue of United States forces. The old city in Baghdad does have narrow roads, but most of the city, especially the parts around many of Mr. Hussein's compounds, is crisscrossed with wide boulevards that would be harder to block.

The commanders better know to avoid this, expecially about Mogadishu, since Black Hawk Down was supposed to have been reccomended viewing materiel for the Iraqi commanders. I'll raise a shitstorm if that sort of thing happens.

In addition, coalition ground forces will benefit from superior equipment. It is true that urban terrain erases some of the coalition's technological advantages — for example, because buildings interrupt lines of sight, there aren't many long-range shots for United States forces to take using highly accurate sensors and weapons. But the technological playing field will be anything but level. Night vision goggles and night scopes are widely distributed among American and British infantry; some Iraqi troops have night vision equipment, but most will be blind in the dark.

There's more in there. I know that it'll be bloody, but it won't be a slaughter either.

[CasX]

The US troops can wait out in the open as long as they like. Iraq has no way of reaching them.

That may be so. But if the war drags out, who is the real enemy? The Iraqi military or public opinion / the economy?

Bush doesn't want to be a one-term president like his old man.

30-50 days? uhhhh no

Haven't you seen the poor posting thread?