In 281 the Tarentines approached Pyrrhus, the king of Epirus (an area of northwestern Greece), to help them maintain their independence against the Romans. He was a relative of Alexander the Great, and wished to engage in some adventure comparable to that of his famous relative. He agreed to the Tarentine offer, and in 280 arrived in south Italy with 35,000 men and 20 elephants. The Romans promptly led an army against him and were heavily defeated at Heraclea (they had never seen elephants before, and the unfamiliar are terrified by them, though elephants are easy enough to deal with if you know what you are doing). Though victorious against the Roman Legions, Pyrrhus lost 4,000 men, and when congratulated for his victory, he commented bitterly that another such victory would cost him the war (hence the expression "Pyrrhic victory").

The little George battle plan for the invasion of Iraq battle is revealed as Saddam prepares for his Pyrrhic Victory

It really seems interesting to me that little George thinks that he can control 22 million Iraqis with 150,000 American troops.  Fighting Saddam's troop in the desert is one thing, taking over a city one building at a time is another.  America is going to become nothing more than an army of occupation.

The insanity of the invasion of Iraq is so great that I cannot understand why Americans cannot see it.  

I believe that Saddam may well try to be the first person to win a war against the United States.  I believe that Saddam learned a lot from the Gulf War.  I believe that he has prepared to fight a battle aimed not keeping him in power but aimed at inflicting the maximum casualties on the invading forces.

America was able to control Japan and Germany after World War II because there had been a long war.  The people were tired.  And the world community had no doubt that Japan and Germany were responsible for the death of millions of human beings.  There was no doubt but that they were the aggressors and that they started World War II.

But now it is America who is starting this war.  It is America who is the aggressor.  No one in America is afraid of being attacked by Saddam Hussein.  Yet we are going to invade Iraq.

I believe that as we move closer to this invasion there are going to be people from all over the world who will travel to Iraq to lay down in front of the American invasion force and give their lives to stop this insanity.  If Saddam were smart he would open his borders to all those who protest against this American aggression.  He would let these anti-war advocates station themselves in every town and city.  Then as the Americans began to kill their way to Baghdad they would be forced to kill people from all over the world who demand that the United States stay out of Iraq.

Napoleon and Hitler both thought they were invincible.  They thought they could do anything.  But Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo and Hitler was turned back in Russia.  

With great power goes great responsibility.  And the United States has determined to use its great power to invade Iraq and confiscate their vast oil reserves.  Everything that the America Revolution stood for is about to be turned into the most unbelievable hypocrisy.  For the first time, the self touted good guy is going to become the villain.

Yet Americans have lost their ability to think.  They have lost their way.  They have subordinated their dedication to truth and justice and equality to the insanity of raw aggression against Iraq.  The great hope of the world, the United States of America, is intent on becoming the great Satan. And the American Eagle is about to be forever associated with the Nazi Swastika.  And Americans who have traveled the world in great pride are about to travel the world with the permanent shame of invading Iraq.

John WorldPeace
November 10,  2002

Iraq attack plans are set

Saddam expected to fall from power

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has settled on a plan for a possible invasion of Iraq that envisions seizing most of the country quickly and encircling Baghdad, but assumes that Saddam Hussein will probably fall from power before U.S. forces enter the capital, senior U.S. military officials said.

Hedging its bets, the Pentagon also is preparing for the possibility of prolonged fighting in and around Baghdad. Administration war planners expect that, even if the Iraqi leader is deposed, there could be messy skirmishes there and in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, the military officials said.

The war plan, sometimes the subject of bitter arguments between senior civilian and military officials, has been refined in recent weeks even as the Bush administration pursued a successful diplomatic effort to secure a new U.N. weapons inspection system for Iraq.

Officials said the plan could still change in some important ways, such as the precise number of troops required, but that the broad outlines are now agreed upon within the administration. Military officials said they will be prepared to go to war if Iraq flouts the new resolution, approved Friday by the U.N. Security Council.

Most notably, the emerging U.S. approach tries to take into account regional sensitivities by attempting to inflict the minimum amount of damage deemed necessary to achieve the U.S. goals in a war. The plan aims to do that mainly by attacking quickly but with a relatively small force conducting focused attacks.

But it also hedges by putting enough combat force in the area -- including around 150,000 U.S. and allied ground troops -- to engage in close combat with the Special Republican Guard if Iraqi resistance is stiffer than expected.

"The point is that if things don't go as we hope, there will be enough forces on hand to deal with it," said one Defense Department official who was briefed on the plan late last month.

The dual nature of the U.S. war plan is designed to encourage Iraqis to revolt against Saddam. As an administration official put it in a recent interview: "I think ultimately this is more of a revolution that's going to happen, rather than something brought about by U.S. military power."

To create those conditions, the U.S. invasion would begin with a series of simultaneous air and ground actions and psychological warfare operations, all aimed at destroying the security police and other institutions that help Saddam hold on to power.

Under the concept of operations briefed this fall to President Bush, rather than begin with a lengthy air campaign, as in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, an invasion would begin with the U.S. military swiftly seizing the northern, western and southern sectors of Iraq while launching airstrikes and other attacks on "regime targets" -- mainly security forces and suspected repositories of chemical and biological weapons -- in the remaining part of the country around Baghdad, military officials said.

Simultaneously, a nationwide "psychological operations" campaign that is already under way would use leaflets and radio broadcasts to try to persuade the Iraqi military to change sides and to tell the Iraqi population that they aren't being targeted. Also, troops and civilian officials would be warned against carrying out orders to use chemical or biological weapons.

If Saddam falls quickly, U.S. ground forces wouldn't need to assault Baghdad.

"The feeling is, they'll be successful in the first phase, and then the next phase won't be necessary, because the regime will fall and a new regime will take over," said a military planner.

At the request of Defense Department officials, several aspects of the plan are being withheld from publication. Those aspects include the timing of certain military actions, the trigger points for other moves, some of the tactics being contemplated and the units that would execute some of the tactics.

The plan is designed to avoid having to engage in debilitating urban combat in the streets of the capital, where U.S. technological advantages would be degraded and civilian casualties would be inevitable.

In phase one, the U.S. military would move into the nearly empty western desert bordering Jordan, to keep Israel from being attacked by missiles or unmanned drone aircraft laden with chemical or biological weapons. U.S. troops would look for airstrips and stretches of highway where drones could be launched. They also would keep a watch for Scud missiles, though U.S. military intelligence analysts consider it unlikely that Iraq has operational Scuds that it could deploy to the west.

At roughly about the same time, the 101st Airborne Division and a similar helicopter-heavy British unit would move from bases in Germany and Turkey into northern Iraq. This is expected to be a largely unopposed movement because northern Iraq is Kurdish and has been largely autonomous since the end of the 1991 Gulf War. The CIA is believed to already be operating there.

Once in northern Iraq, U.S. forces could establish operating bases through which "follow-on" U.S. units could fly in from Turkey to refuel and then launch attacks farther south. In particular, this would position U.S. troops for attacks on Tikrit, a city of 50,000 that lies on the Tigris River, 100 miles north of Baghdad.

In the south, British forces and the U.S. Marines likely would be assigned to seize airstrips and other key facilities in the heavily Shiite section around the port city of Basra, just north of Kuwait. This aspect of the plan "gives the Shiites a chance to get organized," said a former Central Command official. The Shiites adhere to a form of Islam that is different from that of Saddam and most of the people around him, who are Sunni Muslims.

Then, if Saddam were still in power, U.S. tanks would spearhead a multipronged attack on Baghdad and Tikrit, the source of his strongest support. That part of central Iraq is considered to pose a far more difficult military problem than the rest of the country, in part because antiaircraft weaponry has been concentrated there, according to U.S. military intelligence analysts.

The plan resembles the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama more than it does the 1991 Gulf War, people familiar with it noted.

"This is looking more and more like a Panama-style take-down, a Special Operation writ large, but with significant follow-on forces ... to pacify any bypassed pockets, prevent too many reprisal killings of the Baathists and reduce any holdouts," said Tom Donnelly, a defense analyst at the American Enterprise Institute.

How can we manifest peace on earth if we do not include everyone (all races, all nations, all religions, both sexes) in our vision of Peace?

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