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Intelligence Guidance
found this on Stratfore- No link- need memborship, but found it interestingIntelligence Guidance - April 4, 2003 Apr 04, 2003 - 0530 GMT 1. On the surface, everything appears clear. We've laid out the Battle of Budapest scenario and that seems to be that. But when we start to dwell on things, the clarity fades. The more we look at it, the more it appears that we are missing something very important, something that should be obvious but we don't quite get. 2. There is something odd about the order of battle and operations south of Baghdad. Three divisions are being used. All three have been moving and fighting for about two weeks. It is really hard to believe that these three divisions, along with the Brits and the part of the 4th Infantry that is in country, are all the force that CENTCOM is going to use to take Baghdad. Even a perimeter around the city needs more force, and it is hard to imagine a dynamic war plan culminating in a static constriction. CENTCOM has riveted every eye on the southern approaches to Baghdad -- including Iraqi eyes. There is something here we are missing -- if not a dazzling political coup, then some other units that haven't shown up on any of our maps. There is something more at work here, some other axis of attack we haven't considered. 3. The action in Mosul is equally baffling. The U.S. seems to have nothing up there but Special Forces and the 173rd Airborne brigade that either came from Jordan or Italy, either delivered to the airfield in C-17s or had 1,000 of them do a night drop on an airfield that was in friendly hands. News from up there is both sporadic and contradictory. Nobody seems to be doing anything up there or even to be interested in doing anything up there, but the Air Force is pounding the place. There are a bunch of Iraqi army divisions up around Kirkuk. Is this the Iraqis' last stand? Is Saddam holed up with those troops? Nothing can be as pointless as the northern front appears to be. 4. Syria's behavior and the electric U.S. response are not easily explained. But there appears to be a lot of attention being paid to the Iraqi-Syrian frontier and some unexplained action up in the al Jazeera Desert involving British troops. We need to deepen our understanding of the dynamics with Syria. 5. Remember Rumsfeld saying that we will see a war unlike anything seen before. Ok, Rumsfeld says a lot of things, but this wasn't a throw-away line. It may be far-fetched, but there almost has to be more to this war plan than we are seeing. Posted by: Scott Ross 2003-04-04 |
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