From: sdr57@cas.org ()
Subject: Re: Avoidance of Civilan Casualties (Re: SAM ultimatum )
Organization: Chemical Abstracts Service, Columbus, Ohio
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 15:23:24 GMT

In article <726830907.27640@minster.york.ac.uk> aaron@minster.york.ac.uk writes:
>
>jac54@cas.org wrote:
>:      The military and the civilian community use the same power generating
>:      stations, water purification plants and so on.  By forcing the military
>:      back on its independent short term systems and wearing them out, its
>:      ability to sustain battle is greatly eroded.
>
>  The question is one of emphasis. Water purification plants are less likely
>  to affect the military effort in the short term than bombing bunkers and
>  radars. The destruction of such apparently civillian structures would have
>  been very unlikely to have directly weakened the Iraqis in Kuwait or on the
>  borders during the conflict (admittedly it may eventually have had an effect
>  but that would suggest that the allies we rather less confident in expelling
>  the Iraqis from Kuwait within the 100 hours allotted for the ground war).
>
You seem to have confused the time line here.

The decision to stop the ground war after 100 hours was made *after*
it was clear how much success we had achieved. There was no time limit
put on completion of the ground phase before the troops went in, although
there was a timetable indicating when we expected certain objectives to
be reached - a timetable that become completely obsolete within hours of
the beginning of the ground war.

People who I talked to in the period immediately before the ground offensive
began were talking in terms of weeks to secure Kuwait, and months if the
decision was taken to go up north and take the capital. Resistance was
much lighter than expected (despite intelligence that morale was bad,
we expected stiffer resistance than was actually offered - among
other things, the Iraqis had been told a number of stories about
the consequences of capture by US/UK/French troops that they turned
out not to have believed), thus things in Kuwait went much better
than expected, and the decision was taken to stop at 100 hours because
the essential object (getting Iraq out of Kuwait) had been achieved
(and possibly because 100 was a nice round number).

In short, we expected a longer war than we got, and acted on the
expectations we had. It would have been nice if we would have
known beforehand how things were going to happen, but we didn't.
To a certain extent, we were guilty of believing Mr. Hussein when
he spoke of the "Mother of all battles," and we acted accordingly.

Of course, we haven't been allowed to do a comprehensive bomb damage
survey in Iraq, nor have we been given access to the reports of the
Iraqi military on how effective our bombing was. This means we really
don't know what was useful in giving us that 100 hour war, and what
we could have forgone. It may be that the cumulative effect of the
bombing was what produced the short war, and that if we had done
anything less we would have faced a 100 day war rather than a 100
hour war. It might be that the effect on morale of our pinpoint raids
anywhere in Iraq was what did things in, or it might have been the
B-52 strikes, or it might be that the whole thing was a waste, and we
could have gone in with no air war phase and had the same results.
(I think this last is impossible, but I include it to emphasize the
point that we still don't have all the information we need to decide
what we did right (to make the war short) and what we didn't need to
do at all.)
******************************************************************************
Renegade academician. They're a dangerous breed when they go feral,
academics are...a chemist, too.
		    -(James P. Blaylock in "Lord Kelvin's Machine")

My organization hasn't agreed with any of my opinions so far, and
I doubt they'll start now.

Stanley Roberts