Tonight . . .
. . . I'll be live-blogging again for at least 3 hours, covering what I can glean from TV news, which is faster updated than print news.
I'll cover:
The long-promised insurgent strategy post
Comparison with the Battle of Hue
Address reader comments
and offer insight on news, unit movements, unit actions, and sadly, casualties.
UPDATE: SecDef about to speak at press conference.
posted by Chester at 11/08/2004 11:57:00 AM
7 Comments:
Comments within the UK 24 hour News Stations seem to think the insurgents tactics will be drawn directly from the Battles for Grozny, Chechyna in 1994 & 2000.
Personally, I can’t see that things will get this bad, but I’m sure the insurgents will be using this battle as a template for success…
See links:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/461041.stm
http://www.specialoperations.com/mout/chechnya.html
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2000/01/000129-chechen1.htm
WSJ reports that many Iraqi have deserted their units over the weekend. One unit of 500 lost 255 to desertion. Any thoughts or confirmation of this?
The article quotes an unnamed NPR embed with the Marines as the source on that. It sounds suspiciously like a description of what happened in April to an undertrained, overstressed Iraqi battalion which got thrown in the deep end without proper preparation during last April's fighting. I'm willing to bet, barring other confirmation, that some sort of "telephone game" error has caused a conditional "last April" to get stripped out of the NPR embed's statement, making a historical reference sound like a report of a new, phantasmic mass-desertion.
3rd/2nd is out of theatre; if it's Strykers in the theatre, I'd look for the 1st Brigade of the 25th Infantry Division, which was their replacement unit. I wouldn't expect them to use the Strykers in an assault like Fallujah - they aren't heavily armored enough, and would be put to better use in controlling LoC and using their superior mobility to cover for the displaced units in the rest of the Triangle. They've got enough of a tangle of units in there already - at least two different Marine regiments, 1st Cav armor, some sort of element from the 1st Infantry, the Iraqi units, the Black Watch - their command structure must look like spagetti as it is.
Do you have a link on that 1MEF quote on the desertion story?
peterargus: well, no, that would mean that I'm wrong, and that she *was* reporting fresh news. That's disturbing. It means that the Iraqi units are just as soft, or even softer, than they were in April.
That unit apparently has a history of losing several hundred effectives every time they send it into battle. Supposedly the 450 which went into action in Sammarah did well, and sustained respectable casualties in the fighting there; one could hope that means that the remaining 250 or 300 will also hang on in Fallujah.
But at the rate they lose people, I have to wonder if the battalion would survive another commitment.
back in April the Kurdish battalion did very well. The Shi'a are not up to the same level. Both will be battle tested. I am surprised they do not act to avenge the 49 murdered recruits.
i hope our troops do not rely too much on the iraqi tactically.
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