How The War Is Going
Following Fred Kaplan’s guide to tell how the war is going, it seems to be going very well indeed. Here are the signs:
First, ignore all first-night (and most first-morning-after) commentary. Most first day commentary has been a mish-mash of speculation and questions about whether “Shock and Awe” has already started.
Fireworks will fill the skies over Baghdad, but what about Tel Aviv? If Saddam were to fire scuds loaded with chemical weapons on Tel Aviv, there’s no telling what might happen. Fortunately, he’s only sent a few conventional scuds thudding into the Kuwaiti desert.
The battle of Basra. What happens in southern Iraq will prove a guide to what might happen elsewhere because Saddam is loathed in the south. Fortunately, large numbers of Iraqi regular army conscripts seem to be surrendering in the south to the Marines.
Are Iraqi planes going up? Are U.S. aircraft going down? No Iraqi planes have gone up and no US planes have gone down. One US helicopter made a “hard landing” (not due to enemy fire) and everyone was safely evacuated.
When is the ground war starting? Ted Koppel is embedded with the 3rd Infantry Division, which is supposedly spearheading the drive to Baghdad. He wasn’t heard from for a few hours, but later appeared on ABC. Still, we couldn’t see what was behind him, which means that the 3ID might already be on the move.
UPDATE: Kaplan has a similar analysis in Slate today.
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