Saddam turned out to be a real wuss, didn't he?

Post-9/11 Era Forum

Not the big, bad threat you all thought he was. Actually he was pretty **** lame. If I was in his position, out of pure spite and rage, I would have torched every oil well, blew every bridge, laid a scud or 10 on Israel and used chemical weopons on US troops. This just proves he was really no threat at all...Hitler would have eaten this puss for lunch!

Hmmm...not sure where you are going with this. I'll refrain from making any comments at this point.

well, Hitler didn't have 10 Tomahac missles land on his house while he was there the first day of world war 2, nor did he have a few more very close misses in just a few days. Otherwise that war would have been done very quickly.

I'm not really going anywhere...it's just odd to me, that it was very clear he had no hope of surviving this and his response was very mild, that's all? All the expected "horrors" never materialized. And, I'll be honest, in his shoes, I would have burned the place down trying to take as many "invaders" as I could with me.

I think overconfidence was his downfall. I think somewhere deep down he actually thought he could defeat the coallition. He didn't feel he needed to resort to any extreme action like that. It's like with Hitler in WWII. He made some stupid mistakes near the end of the campaign that saw him loose. I honestly think that had he played things differently, Hitler would have conquered all of Europe, and the state of the world today would look quite a bit different.

The thing about dictators like Saddam is they have all this power at thier disposal, and all these people that see them as a god, and slowly, bit by bit, they start to believe that maybe they are. If you have ever seen Saddam, he is one very cool and calm individual. Very sure of himself. I don't think he let the thought of failure cross his mind, so I don't think he planned well enough what he would do if things did not go the way he thought they would.

Exactly, he probably thought that he could win somehow. He's lost every single major war he fought in yet he claimed victory in every single one. In that interview with Dan Rather, he stated that he won the Gulf War and that Iraqi army units "voluntarily" withdrew from Kuwait after losing only "10%" of their fighting strength.

For him, victory is remaining in power and he thought that somehow the US/UK would simply stop and let him stay. Well, he's been proven wrong. The fact that he hasn't done much damage to the infrastructure of Iraq or the coalition forces simply shows how little effect his orders probably had on the Iraqi military. The military knew that they would suffer had they carried out his orders to unleash chemical weapons/burn oil wells.

NothingScared, It sounds like to me me you were hoping for a blood bath of our troops and civilians, may-be you sould have e-mailed saddam before the war started and gave him some advise.

Here's another wacky thought Mike and Enigma...maybe, just maybe he didn't have any WMDs. Maybe this had butt all to do with overconfidence. Maybe this had something to do with the fact that he was fighting two countries both with overwhelmingly superior military might to his own. Maybe it was because he was forced to destroy his biggest ballistic missiles by the weapons inspectors then had to face two aggressors, the same two who had made him disarm in the first place. Maybe it was because his military hardware could not be repaired or modernised in the last twelve yeras chiefly because of these two aggressors even though these parts were not the banned WMDs.

It's not a matter of hardware, it's a matter of tactics. I don't care how piddly the force he had was, Sadam had the advantage. There are many ways to win a war, and only one of them is through destroying your opponent. The tactics employed by Saddam were of direct confrontation. Unless he planned to loose, he should have known there was no way he could win through such a method. Not against the force he was facing. Saddam had the political advantage, in that support for the war was very shaky, and he had the advantage of placement, in that he was defending his own territory with a wide and controlled area in which to act. Had he realised this, he would have setup a trap for the collition.

We all know how the US operates. They go in full force. You find something you know they want (eg, a major city) and you let them roll straight in. Then, you attack on foot from all directions using elevated positions, such as buildings, and simultaneously attack with some kind of mobile heavy yield weaponry on both the front, and the rear. Very shortly afterwards (maybe 1 minute or less), you pull back, and let the attack force keep on pounding.

Now, let's look at the results shall we? You loose a considerable number of forces, and in the process take out at least two enemy vehicles (though most likely more) and pick off many, many more individuals in exposed positions on the vechices (eg, gunners). A fair tally. Not one you could win a war by, but that's not the point. With such a coordinated attack from both sides of the street, in buildings, the enemy will panic. They will spray the buildings you were firing from with tank and heavy machine gun fire (hence why you withdraw so quickly). Now, when those images of an entire street of civilian houses leveled reach the media, imagine the outrage from opponents of the war. The civilians may well have left the buildings long before, so there may have been no civilian casualties, but that only helps you more. If the US said "no civilians were harmed in this action" people will think they are lying, and then distrust later reports from them, thinking they are covering up the true number of casualties. If you repeat similar raids such as this one in man areas, support for the war will drop dramatically. Whatsmore, if you can lure out the enemy to come in on foot in an urban environment, you could easily inflict considerable casualties.

That is the way Saddam would have been fighting if he did not think he could win. Instead, he setup solid defence lines at the outskirts of the cities. What the US didn't anniahlate from the air, they picked off as soon as they engaged them on the ground, as these forces were shooting at the coallition on sight. They were trying to prevent the coallition from getting into the city in the first place, and what's the point if you know you cannot win in direct confrantation?

Either Saddam thought he could win, or Saddam has no mind for tactics. Seeing as he was able to overthrow a government, contol a population of millions, and manipluate the international community, and stall the UN for 12 years (and even then, the UN isn't leading this are they?), I think he knows a thing or two about tactics.

Enigma are you for real: "Saddam had the advantage." He was out gunned, out manned, hadn't been permitted to repair his conventional armoury for twelve years because of sanctions, up against the most sophisticated technology in the world, facing tomahawk missiles that can be launched 600 miles from their target, had no air force to defend against cowardly air strikes, had no navy to protect his Fao peninsular. But because he was fighting on home turf that was his big advantage.
I think you're right that he was probably not a great strategic mind but even so the gap between US military hardware and Iraqi military hardware is unbridgable. He my have put up moe of a fight but he would have never ever won.

You missed the point I was trying to make. If you look at statistics, the US was winning Vietnam. They didn't loose the war on the battleground, they lost it in the livingrooms of millions of Americans back home. This was where the real battle was poised to be fought in this war. There was never any doubt whatsoever that in the end, the coallition would kick Saddams ***. Saddam did not have to defeat the coallition on the battleground however to win this war, he merely had to make the already wavering public support crumble.

These embeddd reporters, and all the realtime broadcasts from the battlefield were the way to do it. If something happened that was not in the coallitions favour, people knew about it within no time at all. The US had been pushing the image of a clean war to the public. Minimal civilian casualties and minimum property damage. If the Iraqi forces had taken on the coallition forces from within the city, rather than creating defensive lines on its outskirts, I guarantee you that the war would still be raging very strong right now, and it could have lasted indefinately, until the US eventually pulled back from a lack of public support.

An urban war would have made all those cruise missiles and sophisticated satellite and laser guided bombs pretty much redundant. The tanks would be sitting ducks from guys in buildings with RPG's, and the marines would be gunned down by snipers.

Most of the US army is trained and oriented around a hard and fast direct assault on a large target or targets. All of that goes to hell when you're fighting on the streets. If a guy shoots at you from an eleveated position with cover, such as a window from the second story of a house, you would have to either get a lucky shot on him, blow the hell out of the entire room he is in, or go in after him. A lucky shot is unlikely, and you can't wait for one if you're being atacked from multiple positions. Going in after him would incur a high rate of casualties from your own forces. Blowing the hell out of the room would give lots of lovely pictures to be broadcast back home, about how this war is devistating the civilian areas. If this situation is repeated all over the city, and even all over the country, the war would drag on for months, or even years, depending on how bold the US forces are. In that time, the city would be devistated, the number of casualties on both sides, and from the civilians would go through the roof, and there would be so much international outrage, and outrage at home that the coallition would have no choice but to withdraw.

People were saying this was going to be another Vietnam, and there is no doubt that it could have easily gone that way. If Saddam had realised he had no chance in a direct confrontation, he would have fought an urban war. It is obvious he overestimated his own abilities though. Look at the Gulf War. He moved his forces into the desert to take the US forces head on. He got the snot beaten out of him. This time he sat in waiting in bunkered positions on the outskirts of the city, with the intent to hold off the advance of US forces. He got the snot beaten out of him once again. Why confront the enemy directly when you know you cannot win? If the enemy has the military advantage, you have to fight through other means. Hide in waiting and let the enemy show themselves, strike, then disappear again. Guerrilla warfare. That is what you resort to when you know you cannot win. Saddam did not, which indicates to me he either wanted to go down in a blase of glory, was completely inept, or felt he could win through a direct faceoff.

NothingSacred clearly this is ridiculous.

Of course we beat Saddam, we didn't really have a problem with him in 1991 either. because we were fighting him at a time and place of our choosing. Saddam never possesed the military capability that threated America. What he does posses are chemical and biological weapons.

We fought with our soldiers so that the battle didn't need to be fought by firefighters, police, and doctors on our city streets (paraphrased from Bush's statement to the nation 3/19/2003). This was the entire point of attacking Saddam's regime, because this was the easiest way to fight him. Also it wasn't that he was a wuss or that his soldiers were cowards, it was the overwhelming ability of coalition forces that made Saddam look like a wuss...also, in week 2 of the war wasn't everyone talking about how Saddam's forces were doing much better than expected and that this was going to be Vietnam 2? It appears as though the Iraqis put up a fight (even if it was short lived).

I see your point Enigma. From a military point of view you may indded be right. Though if Saddam did embed all his troops within the city limits amongst the civilians wouldn't it be equally fair to say that the media would round on him saying that he was fighting a cowardly battle. In fact that is exactly what did happen in the cases where Iraqi troops fouight in civilian areas. There are even posts here that curse Saddam for doing so. Embedding a huge segment of his army would have produced the most vitriolic of media coverage.
In fact though Saddam may have won the war of reason anyway when the WMDs do not materialise. Already in Britain, dark murmurings can e haerd against those politicians and voices that supported the war and it looks as if there will be some considerable xplaining to be done.

I wasn't hoping for anything! All I'm saying, is that if I was backed into a corner and told that no matter what I say or do - I'M DEAD! Out of pure bitterness, I'd make it as much of a living hell for my opponent as I possibly could.