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★阿修羅♪
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現在地 HOME > 掲示板
> 戦争３０ > 562.html
★阿修羅♪
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この他にも２日ほど前の記事で「共和国防衛隊の気配が感じられない」と云うのがあったと記憶している。
GuardianかIndependentだと思ったのだが…。
デコイか、ありもしない幻相手に壊滅壊滅と騒いでいた可能性は充分ある。
（なにしろメディナ機甲師団など殆ど毎日壊滅していたような…）
戦力の差は充分承知してるし、最初から長期戦に持ち込むつもりなら尚更。
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Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,929452,00.html
Unravelling the mysteries of war
Where have the guards gone and will Saddam use chemical weapons?
Julian Borger in Washington, Richard Norton-Taylor and Stuart Millar
Friday April 4, 2003
The Guardian
The last few days have been a cause of great bemusement to military experts. Three divisions of the much-feared Republican Guard were said to be lined up south of Baghdad, itching for a fight; and yet when US forces arrived the Iraqi troops largely vanished in front of their eyes.
The war plan was alleged to have become bogged down; and yet in recent days the push north towards Baghdad has been quicker than anyone imagined.
Saddam's regime, it was claimed, was poised to launch chemical and/or biological weapons as soon as the forces crossed the "red line" around Baghdad. That line has been crossed but there is no sign of such weapons being deployed. Here Guardian writers explore some of the deepening mysteries.
What happened to the Republican Guard?
"They didn't show up," Lieutenant-Colonel Terry Ferrell, a squadron commander in the US 7th Cavalry Regiment told the Army Times. He and other officers of the 3rd Infantry Division had expected a major confrontation with the Republican Guard's 10,000-strong Medina Division at the Kerbala Gap 70 miles south-west of Baghdad.
The most serious skirmish came when the 3rd Division crossed the Euphrates at Musayib, but it involved only about a dozen Iraqi armoured cars, all destroyed. "Where are they all hiding?" asked one soldier. "Something's got to be up," muttered another.
The 1st Marine Division encountered the same spooky lack of resistance when it crossed the Tigris near Kut, where it had expected to confront the Baghdad Infantry Division.
From the reports from journalists and the accounts of coalition military officials, there is no one explanation of the guards' evaporation.
First of all, it does look as if this was the part of the war the military planners got right. They did not foresee the ambivalence of the people and the tenacity of the Fedayeen, but they did believe the Republican Guard was not the elite it was purported to be. Furthermore, the Soviet-era T-72 tanks were hobbled by neglect and a lack of spare parts. Even dug among the palms and villages of the Euphrates valley they were easy targets for thousands of coalition bombing sorties. Two-thirds of the roughly 800 strike sorties a day were aimed at the six Republican Guard divisions. In the ring around Baghdad, they were devastated.
The rout was all the more comprehensive because the back-up divisions were ordered into the open. The Hammurabi were sent to the west of the city, the Nebuchadnezzar to the south, alongside the Medina, and the Nida to the south-east, in support of the Baghdad. Their tanks and armoured vehicles were destroyed as they moved. They are now thought to have splintered.
The question now is whether the soldiers have slipped back into Baghdad, and whether they are still willing to fight from there. Surrendering officers from the Medina Division have said many of their troops fled to Kerbala, while the marines have tried to cut off the Baghdad Division troops from pulling back into the city. Whether they are willing to fight in the streets will not be known until the first US columns enter.
Are US troops being lured into the city?
From the very beginning US and British military planners said that Saddam Hussein would try and suck the invading troops into his capital. Iraq's military doctrine, noted Air Marshal Brian Burridge, commander of the British forces in Iraq, was based on the Soviet model of defence in depth. Saddam, he said, "is going for a Stalingrad siege. He wants to entice us into urban warfare".
On the face of it, that kind of asymmetric, guerrilla warfare is the only way to fight a modern, well-equipped army. Street-by-street fighting could lead to heavy casualties on both sides.
It is a prospect US commanders and their soldiers cannot relish. Unexpected resistance in other Iraqi towns, including Basra and Nassiriya, does not augur well.
There were reports yesterday of forces loyal to President Saddam - an estimated 15,000 Special Republican Guard, Fedayeen, and Ba'ath party officials - setting up gun positions in Baghdad, many hidden or underground. Yet the loyalty even of his special security forces may not last for ever.
US military commanders say they have plans to avoid bloody streetfighting. They could adopt classic urban warfare tactics, taking control of the city of some 5 million people section by section.
How great is the threat of Saddam using chemical or biological weapons?
The nightmare explanation for President Saddam's bizarre tactics is that he is laying an elaborate trap to lure coalition troops into the streets of Baghdad, where he will unleash a cataclysmic biological or chemical weapons attack. "Once he knows his number is up, he may not give a damn about anything else," Garth Whitty, a defence analyst at the Royal United Services Institute, said. "That will be at the back of the mind of every soldier going into Baghdad."
A bio-chemical attack in the close confines of a city street would cause huge casualties, both civilian and military, and would force troops to fight in full bio-chemical suits, not easy in the Baghdad heat.
But military analysts agree that such a bio-chemical weapons attack is unlikely. "If it's difficult for the attackers, it's just as difficult for the defenders," said a senior British military trainer.
Weapons experts said that even if President Saddam wanted to mount a bio-chemical attack, he would face considerable practical problems. "There are a couple of chemicals that would act quickly enough, sarin and mustard gas," said Bhupendra Jasani, visting professor at King's College department of war studies. "But sarin is very unstable so the components cannot be put together until the time of use, while mustard gas must be used in massive quantities."
Will US forces stop at the edge of the city?
Everything US military officials have said up to now about the endgame struggle for Baghdad suggests that there will be no headlong rush into the Iraqi capital.
That might change if signs emerge of an imminent collapse of the regime. It may also change if there were an attempt to use chemical weapons - prompting a charge into the city centre to take control of missile launchers and artillery.
But in the absence of such an implosion, the plan is built on "tactical caution", to take over the capital one bite at a time, while sending in special forces squads to take over command posts and try to snatch Iraqi leaders.
US military officials have praised the British approach in Basra for its caution and selective targeting. But Baghdad is not Basra. It is, in Pentagon parlance, the "head of the snake" and there is a widespread belief in Washington, rightly or wrongly, that once the top levels of the regime have been removed or isolated, the Fedayeen resistance in the rest of the country will wither.
There will also be a greater political imperative to hasten the fall of Baghdad and avoid the development of a humanitarian disaster in the city.
It now appears unlikely that General Tommy Franks is going to wait for the 4th Infantry Division to arrive and deploy in its entirety before taking on the core of the regime.
That would involve a pause until May. The 101st Airborne Division will be freed from duties further south soon for helicopter-borne assaults on selected targets in Baghdad. The probing attacks into the city could start in the next few days, partly in the hope that the appearance of US troops would nudge the situation to the "tipping point," turning the regime's forces against it and prompting its collapse.
Has the Iraqi command and control been disrupted?
The Bush administration made the mistake of claiming that the Iraqi leadership had lost control of its forces from the first day of the war.
Saddam Hussein and his aides had stopped using radios which could be intercepted, but orders were getting through, using older forms of field communication, including carrying messages by hand to the units.
Someone was clearly orchestrating the movement of the six Republican Guard divisions as they wheeled to defend the southern reaches of the capital.
In the last 24 hours, Pentagon officials have tentatively repeated the claim that the regime's nervous system had been seriously damaged. One said there was "no longer any coherence" in the moves made by the Republican Guard, whose divisions have crumbled into small units, and either melted into the countryside or pulled back into Baghdad. As the roads in or out of the city fall under US control, it is far more difficult to send notes to guerrilla units beyond.
Within Baghdad, it will be far easier to coordinate a defence, even without radio communications. Runners can mingle with the civilian population, taking orders and messages from bunker to bunker, as demonstrated in famous sieges such as Stalingrad and Algiers. The only limiting factor is the troops' readiness to carry out orders.
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The Age Company
http://www.theage.com.au/
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/04/03/1048962880127.html
Iraqis fighting a mysterious war
April 4 2003
By John Keegan
The vanguard of the American forces in Iraq is closing on Baghdad. The question for Saddam Hussein - if he is still alive and able to command - is what options he now possesses to retain control of his capital and, ultimately, his country.
That depends chiefly on the combat status of the Republican Guard divisions. The Medina Division, operating to the south-west, is reported to have been heavily mauled by American air power.
The Nebuchadnezzar is said to be coming forward from positions to the north of the city. It may attempt to fight the advancing Americans (though that is most unlikely), or to take up defensive positions or to withdraw inside the built-up area of the city.
But the truth of the matter is that none of the Iraqi divisions, Republican Guard or regular army, are up to fighting a large American formation.
If the Iraqi army moves, its vehicles and other equipment will be devastated by waiting American aircraft. If it stays in static defensive position, it will be shot out of them by superior American tank gunnery. If it retires into the city, it largely loses its military usefulness.
Saddam, or whoever is in charge, is fighting the strangest war. Indeed, it is tempting to wonder, on the evidence so far presented, whether the Iraqis have been fighting a war at all.
Admittedly there has been a certain amount of sniping and loose shooting. Iraqis in civilian clothes have been firing at American and British soldiers. However, that seems about the extent of enemy activity.
Consider what the Iraqis have not done. They did not defend their frontier with Kuwait. The coalition forces passed through unopposed.
They scarcely defended Umm Qasr, Iraq's only and vital port. It fell after three days.
They have not fought any large-scale or even small-scale battles, though the territory of their country is being eaten up day by day.
More mysteriously, they have neither demolished nor seriously defended any of the bridges over the Tigris or the Euphrates, which are essential to the coalition's movements into the country.
If Saddam had some great counter-attack force preparing a trap for the coalition in the national heartland, one might fear that the abandonment of the bridges intact was a devilish plot, designed to make all come right for him in one sudden reversal of fortune.
But because he does not possess such a force, Iraq's defensive strategy, if it can be so called, appears casual to the point of carelessness.
Moreover, looking through the other end of the telescope, what Iraq has failed to do amounts also to an inexplicable abdication of advantage. Blown bridges are strong defences, as long as blown in time.
What is Saddam up to? Does he believe he can inflict such casualties on the Americans outside Baghdad that they will lose heart and go home? Does he believe he can fight and win a battle of Baghdad? Did he so much underestimate his enemies that he made no proper preparations? Did he so much overestimate the importance of Franco-German protest against this war that he was persuaded he did not need to? Or is it simply that Saddam is disabled or dead and that no one of his megalomaniac determination is running the Iraqi war effort?
Some explanation is necessary. Strategic analysis does not work. This is a deeply mysterious war.
Perhaps there will be a big battle over the next few days, through which the Iraqi hand will be revealed. But that seems improbable.
Unless and until there is some serious fighting, observers will be left with the eerie impression that the Second Gulf War is not really taking place.
Military historian and author Sir John Keegan is defence editor of The Daily Telegraph, London.
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Sify.com
http://news.sify.com/
http://news.sify.com/cgi-bin/sifynews/news/content/news_fullstory_v2.jsp?article_oid=12986890&page_no=1
Republican Guard down, but is it out?
Baghdad, April 4
US commanders say they inflicted major damage on the Iraqi Republican Guard south of Baghdad, but nobody seems to know the whereabouts or intentions of Saddam Hussein's elite troops.
US troops reported on Thursday pushing to within 15 kilometers south of downtown Baghdad a day after claiming the virtual destruction of at least two crack divisions of the Republican Guard.
But commanders spoke of no major tank battles; nor was there any word on significant Iraqi surrenders or losses other than 500 reported dead at a bridge 30 kilometers southwest of Baghdad.
If the US Central Command (Centcom) has rolled out videos of some of their air strikes every day since the war began two weeks ago, they have produced none of any major hits on the Republican Guard.
So what happened to the tens of thousands of Republican Guard, the hardiest and most loyal of Saddam's fighters equipped with Baghdad's most advanced equipment such as T-72 tanks?
US officials say they just don't know.
"Time will have to tell as to exactly the level of damage that has been inflicted," said Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, deputy head of operations for the US Central Command.
Guard units have taken hits and some have pulled out of their positions and tried to maneuver elsewhere, Brooks told reporters at Centcom's forward command post in Qatar.
But he added: "We know there are a number of forces on the battlefield that have not been engaged in battle. We don't want to be overconfident with what we're seeing. There will still, we believe, be fighting ahead."
Analysts said the quick American advance could mean the Iraqis were drawing them in to the capital for the house-to-house fighting US officials have been determined to avoid.
The New York Times, citing a senior US officer in Washington, said "the enemy is taking what forces he can muster and is ordering them back into the city ... for a last stand."
Other senior brass were sceptical. They said small pockets of troops could make their way back into Baghdad but it would be difficult to infiltrate an entire division of the Republican Guard.
US officials were brimming with confidence on Wednesday after reporting significant progress by US army troops toward Baghdad from the southwest and by US marines from the southeast.
They said the Guard's armored Medina division around the city of Karbala and the Baghdad division around Kut to the east were "no longer credible forces" but were reinforced with regular Iraqi army troops.
The Americans positioned themselves at a key intersection and claimed control of all access to the southern approaches of Baghdad, possibly settling in for a siege. They were clearly moving cautiously.
"As to what is inside of Baghdad -- we'll see," Brooks said. "Has the regime extended all of its capability in other areas? Did they use too much of what they had against us? One would have to speculate on that."
The wild card was whether Saddam's forces could be setting a trap for the Americans that they would close with chemical weapons inside a "red line" drawn at some point inside the capital.
Major General Stanley McChrystal, vice director of operations of the Joint Staff, said that as US forces move closer to Baghdad and Saddam's home base of Tikrit to the north, "the likelihood of them using those weapons goes up."
"And so, the posture of our force is prepared for that," he said.
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