A Proposal Worth Considering
Nick Denton has an interesting idea: partition Iraq into three parts - northern Iraq becomes liberated Kurdistan, southern Iraq becomes liberated Shiastan and central Iraq, including Baghdad, stays in the hands of Saddam Hussein - with Kurdistan and Shiastan under the welcome protection of allied forces. Notes Denton, if Kurdistan includes the oil-rich city of Kirkuk (and, I should add, Mosul), then virtually all of Iraq's oil resources will be in the hands of liberated Iraqis allied with the U.S., while Saddamistan (Denton calls it Saddistan) will have few resources with which to prop up the facist Baath Party regime.

I had a similar thought the other day: there's no need to invade Baghdad to defeat Saddam's regime in brutal, bloody block-by-block and house-to-house urban combat. Just encircle the city and isolate it. Cut all the roads into Baghdad. Impose a no-fly-zone over the city, including commercial traffic, by destroying Baghdad's airports. blockade the rivers that might provide routes of commerce into the city. Shut down the city's contact with the outside world - cut the phone and Internet lines and knock Iraqi state TV and radio off the air with Tomahawk missile strikes and electronic jamming as needed. Replace their broadcasts with coalition programming.

And - most important - cut off the flow of oil revenue to Saddam's regime - which should be easy given most of the oil fields would be in allied hands. Use the oil revenue to fund rapid reconstruction of the liberated areas.

With Baghdad cut off, use covert ops and aid to rebel factions inside the city to undermine the regime, and to pick off targets of opportunity - Republican Guard troops, fedayeen militia, Baath Party officials and Saddam Hussein regime officials - as opportunites present themselves. The real question is whether the right approach would be to squeeze the city - a real seige in which the inhabitants are cut off from food and other necessities from the outside world and the city's power and water are cut off - or whether we leave the lights of Baghdad on and the water flowing, and even air-drop food aid to the civilians. My suggestion would be the latter - let the inhabitants of Baghdad know we are on their side, and that our seige of Baghdad is merely about starving the regime, not the people.