Photo cour­tesy of the BBC

First off, my apolo­gies for the delay in updat­ing the site. This past week, I got snowed under by a com­bi­na­tion of out­side assign­ments and a mater­nal visit. I’m not a slacker. Really. Also, to who­ever just donated $5, thanks very much! You pushed me over the $100 mark for dona­tions.
Oddly enough, it’s been a bit of a quiet week on the Iraqi front, with any news mostly pushed to the side by Trent Lott wink­ing at the seg­re­ga­tion­ists and then say­ing, in effect, “I wasn’t wink­ing, I had some­thing in my eye.” As they say in the movies, “It’s quiet … too quiet.“
But the war machine moves on, although per­haps with more hes­i­ta­tion than many peo­ple think. Chief of the Army, Gen. Eric Shin­seki, and the com­man­dant of the Marine Corps, Gen. James L. Jones, worry that the cur­rent war plans are too risky. The plans, as reported by the Wash­ing­ton Post call for “a fast-moving ground attack with­out an over­whelm­ing num­ber of rein­force­ments on hand.” Instead, the war would get off to a “rolling start” with more troops being flown in. Also, the armored units, instead of trav­el­ing a pre­de­ter­mined dis­tance and paus­ing to allow slower units to catch up, would charge across the desert until they run into oppo­si­tion. They would then blow things up real good.
That’s the cur­rent plan, any­way, and it’s giv­ing Shin­seki and Jones, who sit on the Joint Chiefs, the heebie-jeebies. They argue that Paul Wolfowitz’s rosy “house of cards” the­ory of the life span of Saddam’s reign is overly opti­mistic. The gen­er­als argue that worst-case plan­ning is nec­es­sary, espe­cially in the case of a “Fortress Bagh­dad” sce­nario that involves heavy street fight­ing with the Iraqis using chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal agents. (Hm. Have Shin­seki and Jones been read­ing this entry in which the Ba’ath party has a con­tin­gency plan to ring Bagh­dad with the Repub­li­can Guard? The details of the Iraqi defense plan, first reported in the London-based Ara­bic daily paper, Al-Quds Al-Arabi are thus:

“First, deploy­ment of the Repub­li­can Guard forces at the periph­ery of the cities, pri­mar­ily Bagh­dad, to resist any Amer­i­can ground offen­sive that seeks to take them. The mis­sion of the Repub­li­can [Guard] forces will also be to resist any attempt at inter­nal Iraqi rebel­lion, such as the one that fol­lowed the Amer­i­can offen­sive in Jan­u­ary 1991 in the South and the North.“
“Sec­ond, deploy­ment of spe­cial forces that will include the ‘elite of the elite’ – in his words – inside the cap­i­tal Bagh­dad, so that they can par­tic­i­pate in street com­bat if the Amer­i­can forces or their allies enter. Then, will begin fierce resis­tance oper­a­tions, such as those car­ried out in occu­pied Pales­tine.“
“Third, deploy­ment of groups of ‘Saddam’s Feday­een’ within the cap­i­tal and in other cities, to con­trol the inter­nal sit­u­a­tion and par­tic­i­pate in the resis­tance oper­a­tions.” (Trans­la­tion pro­vided cour­tesy of MEMRI)

The “good” news, I guess, is that if it does come down to hor­ri­ble fight­ing, block by city block, and Sad­dam strikes back with chem­i­cal or bio­log­i­cal weapons, a major­ity of Amer­i­cas are fully pre­pared to nuke him.
Six in 10 Amer­i­cans would sup­port a nuclear response, accord­ing to the Wash­ing­ton Post-ABC News poll. Yipes! More encour­ag­ingly, how­ever, 58 per­cent of respon­dents said Pres­i­dent George W. Bush had not pre­sented enough evi­dence to war­rant attack­ing Iraq, up from 50 per­cent in Sep­tem­ber. There seems to be some con­cern over Bush’s motives for attack­ing Iraq and the pub­lic wor­ries he’s mov­ing too quickly for their taste. Fifty-eight per­cent also want to see the United Nations as a sup­port­ing cast mem­ber. Per­haps in the Gulf War II movie, it will be cred­ited as “sec­ond inter­na­tional orga­ni­za­tion on the left.“
(As an aside, U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Colin Pow­ell told Al-Quds Al-Arabi that the United States had no plans to remove Sad­dam from power. “If he coop­er­ates, then the basis of changed-regime pol­icy has shifted because his regime has, in fact, changed its pol­icy to one of coop­er­a­tion,” Pow­ell said. Note it’s no longer “regime change” but “changed regime” as the goal. Orwell must be proud.)
Oh, and in case any­one thought a war might be averted, the United States will give Iraq’s dossier it turned in last week­end an “F.” With the news that the United States would not be accept­ing Iraq’s excuse that the dog ate its chem­i­cal weapons, the price of gold rose and the dol­lar fell, indi­cat­ing that mar­kets feel war is now inevitable. I’ve been say­ing it since July: It’s not a mat­ter of will the United States go to war, but when. And it’s still look­ing like Feb­ru­ary or March. Strat­for agrees, say­ing that Aus­tralia has been advised to be ready to gear up in March. The British mil­i­tary has also begun leak­ing to the press say­ing the sum­mer heat would not be a “cru­cial fac­tor” in an attack on Iraq.
In other news, the Asso­ci­ated Press is now report­ing that Turkey is prepar­ing to deploy 65,000 to 75,000 troops in north­ern Iraq in the event of a U.S. inva­sion. I reported on this back in Octo­ber. Radio Aus­tralia is report­ing that Turkey has already put 10,000 to 15,000 troops on the Turkish-Iraqi bor­der in order to counter Kur­dish rebels oper­at­ing cross bor­der. The goal of the Turks is to pre­vent the Kurds from form­ing a state in the fog of war result­ing from a dust-up to the south. The Turks would also be in a posi­tion to seize the oil fields of Kirkuk and Mosul, some­thing they’ve wanted to do since 1923 when they were denied to Ataturk. Ankara is not going to miss out on the spoils of this war, espe­cially since the first one and the decade of sanc­tions demol­ished Turkey’s econ­omy. It’s pay­back time.