Fisk - Iraqi Army's Defenses Seem Impenetrable

["Steven" <mailinglist@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Robert Fisk, The Independent

In Al-Mussayib, central Iraq - The road to the front in central Iraq is
a place of fast-moving vehicles, blazing Iraqi anti-aircraft guns, tanks
and trucks hidden in palm groves, a train of armored vehicles bombed
from the air and hundreds of artillery positions dug into revetments to
defend the capital. Anyone who doubts that the Iraqi Army is prepared to
defend its capital should take the highway south of Baghdad.

How, I kept asking myself, could the Americans batter their way through
these defenses? For mile after mile they go on, slit trenches, ditches,
earthen underground bunkers, palm groves of heavy artillery and truck
loads of combat troops in battle fatigues and steel helmets. Not since
the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War have I seen the Iraqi Army deployed like this;
the Americans may say they are "degrading" the country's defenses but
there was little sign of that here

<snip>

Was there a lesson in all this? I had perhaps two hours to take it all
in, to wonder how the Americans could batter their way up this long, hot
highway - you can feel the temperature rising as you drive south - with
its dug-in tanks and APCs and its endless waterlogged fields and palm
plantations. The black-uniformed men of the Saddam Fedayeen with red and
black "kuffiah" scarves rounds their heads, whom I saw a hundred miles
south of Baghdad, were kitted out with ammunition pouches and
rocket-propelled grenades. And they did not look to me like a "degraded"
army on the verge of surrender.

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http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=24653