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3/25/2003

Decisive Battle Looms
From today's WaPo:

The battle now beginning between U.S. forces and the Republican Guard's Medina Division to the southwest of Baghdad promises to be a decisive engagement that signals whether the new Gulf War will be over in a week or two or drag on for a month or more. Until now, U.S. forces have fought regular Iraqi units and militias in small-unit skirmishes. Now they will face the Iraqi army's best troops for the first time, not in the wide-open desert but in the heavily populated and vegetated Euphrates Valley. Perhaps 40,000 troops and aircrews all told from both sides are poised to clash just a few miles west of the ancient city of Babylon. If Iraq chooses to use chemical weapons during this war, analysts think it will be in this battle.

"This engagement will determine if this is a long or short war," an Army officer at the Pentagon predicted.

The impending battle confronts U.S. forces with a dilemma that goes to the heart of the complex mission in which they are engaged: They can maximize the advantages of their overwhelming firepower and bomb a wily adversary hiding heavy weapons in built-up areas, which would inflict civilian casualties and set back the U.S. campaign for public opinion. Or they can try to attack precisely with low-flying helicopters and ground forces, which could mean losing more U.S. troops. If the fight against the Medina Division ends in just a day or two, or if parts of the unit even surrender without a fight, that will send a powerful signal that the climactic battle for Baghdad won't be as difficult as some have predicted, or won't occur at all. But if the 10,000-man Medina division manages to undercut U.S. momentum, and especially if it inflicts heavy casualties in the process, or if it just retreats from a battlefield strewn with dead civilians, then the tone of the war probably will change. A bitter fight that takes a week might even persuade the U.S. military to alter its strategy and dig in to wait for reinforcements from the Army's tank-heavy 4th Infantry Division - which probably would take at least two or three weeks.

Iraq's goal will be to maximize civilian deaths. I expect that means chemical weapons - and such will be met with U.S. forces finally taking the gloves off.