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Thanks Salwa for letting us know about Al Jazeera being up. We hear only a little bit here in the UK about the lack of Iraqi support for the 'liberators'. TV likes to show UK soldiers playing football with Iraqis and things like that. We also get lots of UK government misinformation eg Iraqis reticent after 1991, militia ready to shoot them, no experience of freedom. We need to expose this to try and get a halt to this war: 1) a long war will quickly lead to civilian deaths 2) resistance will lead to more casualties. http://english.aljazeera.net/topics/article.asp?cu_no=1&item_no=1641&v ersion=1&template_id=277&parent_id=258 Iraq tackles coalition superiority with unorthodox tactics Iason Athanasiadis The Iraqi army has abandoned conventional stratagems and is hitting coalition forces with a range of stratagems that are proving more effective than traditional methods of warfare. US war planners have been instituting stringent new measures to better respond to changed tactics from an Iraqi side that is utilising guerrilla-style attacks to considerable effect. In addition to hitting Anglo-American troops with a human bomb on Saturday, Iraqi irregulars are increasingly seeking to sidestep the main advance and hit the coalition’s frail supply lines. Since Saturday, when a man driving a taxi killed four US soldiers by setting off a bomb at a key military checkpoint outside the southern city of Najaf, Anglo-American forces have stepped up their vigilance. New security measures include razing trees at checkpoints to improve visibility and stopping cars some distance away to reduce the possibility of being hit by a blast. US soldiers deployed at the checkpoint hit by the human bomb outside Najaf are now turning back all cars coming from the north, not just those suspected of containing fighters, as was the case before the attack. "They have five seconds to turn around and get out of here," said an angry Lieutenant Colonel Scott Rutter, commander of the Third Infantry Division batallion which lost the four men. Iraq’s army rapidly came to terms with the realisation that stationary battles of the type fought in the 1991 Gulf War are hopeless against a technologically superior opponent. Volunteers to fight in Iraq set off from Lebanon. The shift from static, Soviet-style warfare to highly mobile guerrilla, counter-insurgency tactics has led US commanders to the conclusion that occupying Baghdad in one swift thrust may not lead to the swift surrender of other cities. "The easiest solution hasn't worked but that doesn't mean the plan was a failure," he said Michael Codner of Britain's Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies. "It's worth trying a high-risk high-payoff strategy provided you've got a plan B to fall back on. The problem is if you have no plan B. That's what we saw in Kosovo when there was no armed invasion force in place right at the beginning," Codner said. As more Iraqis head back to their country from Jordan, bypassing the tents set up by international organisations for the expected refugee outflow, commentators are coming to the conclusion that they are motivated more by hatred of the invaders than love for President Hussein. Robert Baer, a former CIA Middle East operative, has corroborated reports that Iraqis are crossing into Iraq by car and bus from Jordan and Syria in order to fight on the side of the Iraqi government. “Everybody wants to fight. The whole nation of Iraq is fighting to defend Iraq. Not Saddam. They’ve been given the high sign, and we are courting disaster. If we take fifty or sixty casualties a day and they die by the thousands, they’re still winning. It’s a jihad, and it’s a good thing to die. This is no longer a secular war.” The challenge of limiting contact between soldiers in the field and Iraqi civilians, even as they try to win over their ‘hearts and minds’, is becoming increasingly apparent even as British troops conduct often violent house-to-house searches in Basra. "The unexpected thing has been the lack of support for the invasion," Hopkinson said. "An awful lot was posited on the idea of cheering maidens throwing flowers at the invading troops, and that's not happened, even in the south." “It's certainly not going to happen near Baghdad," he added. So far, the United States has shied away from using all its destructive capabilities in a bid to preserve Iraq's infrastructure. No one has yet suggested it may be necessary to destroy Baghdad in order to save it, in the inimitable language of the 1965-75 Vietnam war. To do so would put Iraqi "hearts and minds" forever beyond Washington's reach. --- Al Jazeera with agency inputs Mark Parkinson Bodmin Cornwall _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk