[LGM]

I found a nice terrian map or Iraq a couple weeks ago in my Newsweek magazine. It appears, the Coalition forces used the basically uninhabited areas south and south weest of the Euphrates to bypass the more heavily populated areas between the Euphrates and the Tigris rives. This open desert area allowed them to advance quickly toward Bagdad. This would explain why they used light forces like Marines, 3rd Infantry, and Airborne units. It was natural to use all U.S forces with this manuever so they would not have to coordinate with the UK forces as much. That is probably why the UK forces got the hard role of attacking the port city on the Gulf.

As the US forces spread out south of the Euphrates, they appear to have been seizing key bridges in varous places. They have some units now between the Tigris and Euphrtaes, but most of those units appear to have gotten where they are by pushing north at one of the Euphrates crossing points.

Between the Tigris and Euphrates is agriculuture and marsh land. Moving through that terrain is not as easy as Desert, even though the Desert sand tends to cause problems of its own. In the desert there are no good places for Iraqis to hide and few towns.

Amazing is the fact that they launched this attack ahead of schedule, to prevent the burning of Oil fields, which Iraq started torching before the troops crossed over from Kuwait. They are attacking with about a fourth or fifth of the forces they used for Desert Storm. Iraq probably thought they would have several more weeks before the US/UK would launched a ground attack. Using fewer forces, coalition forces probably caught them off guard a bit. Iraq expected them to build up to many more troops before they came in.

Catching them off guard is the only way I can explain that they did not blow all the Euphrates bridges to make crossing more difficult or they were really deluded on how well they could keep the US/UK out of their country.

The checkpoint suicide attacks make nice news stories, but acheive little militarily. The fact is their military stands up to coalition forces about as well as Persion light cavalry and infantry did against Alexander's Heavy Cavalry and Phananx units.