It strikes me that an effective tactic against the Fedayeen who are taking up residence in sacred sites and hospitals is to simply cut them off. We don’t want to lay siege to the city of Baghdad as a whole, because that would be too hard on the civilian population, but there’s no reason that we can’t lay siege to a mosque.

If we can’t get the regime to capitulate quickly, I think the strategy should, and will be the same as in Basra. Go through and disinfect neighborhoods, relying on locals to finger the enemy, and gradually expand liberated areas. If we find enemy holed up and shooting at us, just keep our distance, and starve them out. Eventually they’ll run out of food, water, ammunition, or all of the above, unless they have an extensive tunnelling system with which to resupply from other hideouts. I doubt if they do, but even then, they still have finite supplies. We can maintain the high moral ground as long as we don’t fire back, even in the face of hostile press, at least with the American people.

We may risk whatever hostages they have inside, just as the Palestinians held hostages in the takeover of the Church of the Nativity last year, but at least it’s not the entire civilian population of Baghdad.

In short, I think that the current rules of engagement that restrict us from firing on sacred sites can work, at least over the long run. As long as the monsters are holed up, they have no control over the country or the populace. We can start to rebuild the country, even as we gradually starve out the vermin that have infested it for so long, just as we rebuilt Japan while continuing to find holdouts on Pacific islands for months and years, though I don’t think it will take that long.

Read this piece from the Scotsman for an explanation of why Basra hasn’t revolted yet, and what life is like in a brutal totalitarian state.

Read this piece from the Scotsman for an explanation of why Basra hasn’t revolted yet, and what life is like in a brutal totalitarian state.

Read this piece from the Scotsman for an explanation of why Basra hasn’t revolted yet, and what life is like in a brutal totalitarian state.

Anyone who’s ever butchered chickens will tell tales of how the body will continue to run around the yard, comically (if you’re not a PETA member or a chicken) flapping its wings, after its head has been removed. The body doesn’t die immediately. Similarly, after a snake is beheaded, the body will continue to thrash around for a while.

I think that’s what we’re seeing in Iraq. In other words, the hit on the first night probably was successful, but it’s just taking a while for the regime to quit thrashing.

There’s no evidence that the military is coordinated in any way–most of the action, particularly in the south, seems to be a freelance rearguard thing to keep hope alive as long as possible that somehow the regime will survive. It’s also designed to keep the Ba’athists, cut off from their headquarters in Baghdad and Tikrit, alive as long as possible, because they know they won’t survive the end of the regime. Even if the Americans let them live, there will be lynchings.

This regime is dead, but hasn’t figured it out yet.

Pavel Felgenhauer says, in the Moscow Times, of all places, that the “quagmire” and “food shortage” were deliberate Coalition misinformation, to keep the Republican Guard on the field.

He may be right. Of course, the campaign was greatly aided by the fact that there was a huge market demand among reporters for gloom and doom.

…for the first idiotarian to ask if we rescued Private Lynch, and haven’t retrieved Spc. Johnson, because the former is white, and latter black.

[Update at 3:45 PM PST]

We already have a couple instances, as reported in the comments section.

Also, Dan Dickinson emails:

I will offer that Lynch was rescued because she was
kept alive, while I will privately wager that Johnson
was not. Americans do not know the first thing about
racism and barbarism.

I pray that I am wrong about the fate of SPEC Johnson.

God bless them all

Yes, I hope you’re wrong, but fear you’re right.

Saddam reportedly just sent out the message that “Victory is at hand.”

Professor De Genova, he of a “million Mogadishus,” is afraid to go to class.

The Newsday journalists, who were arrested by the regime for several days and recently got out of Iraq, have first-hand accounts of torture in the prison in which they were held.

The two said they were never abused physically, although conditions in the prison were harsh. They often heard and felt bombs exploding in and around Baghdad. ”At times it was extremely close,” Saman said. ”The cells would kind of rumble.”

They said they often heard the screams of other prisoners being tortured and saw some with their eyes and faces bloodied and swollen.

”There were beatings and torture going on outside our cells, in the corridor, literally,” McAllester said. Other inmates hobbled around, apparently because the soles of their feet had been burned or otherwise injured.

Also,

She also told her sister that the Iraqi prison officials would not let the Red Cross see them there.

She must be lying. Ramsey Clark himself says that talk like this is just propaganda.