Five options for ousting Saddam

Five options for ousting Saddam

Tuesday July 30, 2002
The Guardian

1 The coup
President Bush has ordered the CIA to pursue the "dirty tricks" route to getting rid of Saddam, of which the most plausible is fomenting a coup within the dictator\'s inner circle. But the last significant CIA-inspired coup attempt, in 1996, was a bloody disaster. The plot was compromised from the start by Iraqi government infiltrators and untold numbers of plotters and hapless suspects were executed. Even the CIA director, George Tenet, reckons a coup has only a 15% chance of success.

2 The Afghan model
Let Iraqi opposition groups do the fighting with heavy US air support and a few thousand special forces troops on the ground. This was the plan promoted by General Wayne Downing, Mr Bush\'s counter-terrorism adviser, but it has fallen out of favour in Washington due to misgivings over the unity and military strength of the rebels. Mr Downing himself has since resigned.

3 The Gulf war option
Using up to 250,000 troops supported by devastating air power and technology that is far more sophisticated and deadly than Gulf war-era equipment. The attack would be mounted from Kuwait and Qatar, but would also need access to Iraq\'s long land borders with Jordan or Saudi Arabia. No one doubts that the Iraqi army would crumble in the face of the onslaught, but such a large force would take months to amass and would make an easy target for a chemical or biological weapon.

4 The surprise attack
This would use between 50,000 and 80,000 troops which could be moved into the region gradually and surreptitiously, under guise of exercises and troop rotations. It would advance speedily towards Baghdad, seizing cities in the south that would become bases for an internal revolt. That revolt would theoretically trigger a nationwide army mutiny. But it could still give Saddam time to unleash weapons of mass destruction in a last desperate throw of the dice.

5 The inside-out attack
Strike at Baghdad and Iraq\'s other command centres first to "decapitate" Saddam\'s forces and minimise the possibility of a biological or chemical response against US forces or Israel. A high-risk strategy that would expose US troops to fierce street fighting against Saddam\'s best troops.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,765353,00.html

[videoholic]

First two could never work.  The people of Iraq don\'t have the ability to come together to even talk about a revolt.  They can\'t organize, they can\'t do shit for fear of being killed.

Originally posted by videoholic
First two could never work.  The people of Iraq don\'t have the ability to come together to even talk about a revolt.  They can\'t organize, they can\'t do shit for fear of being killed.

/me taps vid and says.

look at the date of the article buddy.. thats the real reason why i posted it

July 2002.

[videoholic]

Scratches his head and does his best James Dean...  Whaaaaa?

Me confused.