From: Andrew Clough (aclough@mit.edu)
Date: Tue Feb 18 2003 - 09:17:55 MST
At 09:55 AM 2/18/2003 +0100, you wrote:
>Oh, by the way: According to a news report in german TV on Sunday
>(Weltspiegel), the Iraqi military has parked tanks in civilian housing
>areas near the turkish border. Mainily to keep the local kurds and
>relocated Iraqis[1] under control, as one kurd militia man said, but
>every invasion army will have to "neutralize" these. I would be more than
>surprised, if this will not cause a mass murder of civilians. And these
>civilians mostly can not leave the area, becuase the iraqi troops won't
>let them.
>
> Kai
I wouldn't be too worried about this. First of all, urban areas are not
the natural environment of a tank; the tanks long-range weapons are useless
and it can't take advantage of cover very well. Any tanks parked in
places we know about, concentrated in towns won't be able to stop our tanks
from driving to Baghdad in the wilderness around them. Or we could just so
round the towns and ask them to surrender. If there are large casualties
in the war, it will probably be in Baghdad. We've seen Saddam use scorched
earth tactics before, and he might (the army war college and popular wisdom
disagree on this point) have used chemical weapons on his own people before.
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