US gets ‘pretty good feedback’ on breakdown of Iraqi military; Iraqi-Americans back Bush

Creatively combining old psychological warfare principles with new information technologies, the US has been making contact with individual Iraqi commanders – and receiving ‘pretty good feedback’ that many will either not fight or will surrender.

The US military has been contacting Iraqi military commanders by e-mail, cell phone and other means, sowing uncertainty among the ranks and letting Saddam’s forces know that they need not be destroyed if they send the proper signals. Thousands are expected to capitulate or surrender in the first hours of the war.

Iraq’s regular army and Republican Guard are not expected to offer much resistance, according to Vice President Richard Cheney. The elite Special Republican Guard and the Special Security Organization are likely to fight hard. Americans should be expected to sustain casualties, however, especially if Iraqi forces use chemical or biological weapons.

Meanwhile, Iraqi resistance fighters have begun blowing up railways, accompanied by civic acts of defiance. People are tearing down and defacing pro-Saddam propaganda across the country in unprecedented civil resistance that carries the death penalty. Iraqi leaders are responding harshly, in once case arresting a local official suspected of preparing to leave the country, tying him to a pole, cutting out his tongue, and leaving him to bleed to death.

In the US, Iraqi-Americans are cheering President Bush, and pitting themselves against ‘mainline’ Arab-American and Muslim political groups that sympathize with Saddam-backed terror groups and oppose an American-led liberation of Iraq.