A fast read of Mr William S Lind’s ‘On War 211’ opinion/history piece published a couple of weeks ago should send chills up the spines of all Americans and especially our troops in Iraq.

Mr Lind points out that any disruption of our road supply line from Quwait will be a disaster for our widely dispersed troops in Iraq. Any disruption of supplies from the port of Basra would be equally disasterous.

Our troops will quickly run out of water, food and ammo because they cannot be supplied in sufficient quantity from the air any more than Field Marshall Paulus could be supplied by the Luftwaffe during his siege of Stalingrad. Paulus eventually ran out of everything and surrendered an entire German Army to the Russians.

The Brits have turned over control of three of their bases in Basra to the Iraqis in the last month and they have announced the beginning of troop withdrawals from Iraq. I believe the Brits see what is coming. Frankly, I was surprised that Blair commited troops to Iraq since the Brits took a shellacking from the Iraqis after WW1. They eventually installed Price Fiasal to lead Iraq, Fiasal had never been to Iraq. It didnt work out well but at least the Brits got out.

Al Sadr has been putting off unleashing his Madhi army on us only because we have been killing off primarily the Sunni. Now that we have started a two front initative against the Sunni and Shia insrugents he is coming after our troops. We do not know the total strength of his forces, how many ‘Iraqi Army and Police’ will go over to fight with the Mahdi army, nor do we know what weapons that they have been holding back from the fighting thus far. Al Sadr has been waiting for our troops to be worn down by redeployments and constant insurgency tactics while our equipment is worn out from lack of maintence and the sand that takes a terrific toll on machinery. 70% off all military supply tonnage is fuel to run our military vehicles. Where are we going to get fuel?

The Shia are very strong in the south of Iraq and will probably try to cut the road to Quwait. Iran has several very powerful forces in the region as well. How will the port of Basra be closed? Mines? Destruction of docks? Who knows?

I believe its time we started getting our troops out of Iraq before we have a very embarassing and costly situation on our hands. What will bushco do if our army is bottled up in Iraq and he cant get them out?