Reading the Enemy

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“We will use any means to kill our enemy in our land…” Those were the words of Iraqi Vice President Taha Yasin Ramadan, after four American soldiers were killed this weekend by a suicide bomber at a military checkpoint.

The guerilla tactic is one more example of what General William Wallace, (the man commanding U.S. forces in the Gulf,) described last Friday when he said: “The enemy we’re fighting is different from the one we’d war-gamed against.” It’s also clear that the Iraqi forces are simply more determined to resist the U.S. than most of the senior planners predicted. It points to some failed assumptions, or some missed intelligence as to just why the Iraqi military stands and fights.

Guests:

Owen Cote, Associate Director of MIT’s Security Studies Program and Co-Editor of International Security and adjunct Lecturer at the JFK School of Governement at Harvard University

Thomas Houlahan, Director of the Miltiary Assessment Program of the William R. Nelson Institute at James Madison University and author of “Gulf War: The Complete History,” and a regular contributor to UPI

Keith Richberg, correspondent with the Washington Post, located in Basra.