War Strategy

[Cyrus]

I understand that the U.S. doesn't expect in Iraq, as it did in Yugoslavia, to have the country's leadership resign from power through pressure applied by air bombings. No, the U.S. intends to conquer the cities of Iraq to the last. And bombing is used in its standard way, to break the opponent's will to resist and to destroy some worthy targets in the bargain. This implies that most of the cities will have to be taken by fights conducted inside them, ground soldiers facing ground soldiers. In other words, street fighting, like what we see in Nassiryah.

Bombing however creates ruins and ruins are a defending street fighter's best friend! The longer the bombings last and the stronger they are, the more ruins will be there. With enough bombs, most cities can be turned into something resembling late Stalingrad.

Is there nothing wrong with this picture?

[Cyrus]

. . . to need a gun and not have it."

"True Romance", Donald Rumsfeld's favorite family movie.

[brad]

'Even then, the bombing has been much more limited than what was originally threatened. '

yeah i was wondering about this. your explanation seems pretty good.

[The_Baron]

While the entry of Syria and/or Iran would complicate things to an incredible degree in terms of the current deployment of forces. In some ways, it would simplify things as it would open up two new locations from which the theater could be accessed. Also, Syria entering the melee would very likely push Jordan into active support on our side. Abudullah is not fond of the idea of fighting fellow Muslim nations but the unbelievable risk of having his frontiers exposed to an active aggressor would most likely put him in a position where he had to act. He's a Special Forces officer with real world experience before his coronation, he, of all of the mid-east leaders, truly does understand the overall strategic concerns.
Iran is a bit dicier. They've got a fairly large but thoroughly incompetent military. There's essentially no way to limit casualties should they join in. Their basic tactics would lead to political and social concerns about what would be described as a, "massacre."
The Russian factor is a concern. They've made no bones about the fact they're willing to support Iran. But I sincerely doubt they're willing to commit to a nuclear intervention. Not only would that effectively remove them from any consideration towards international advancement or trade, the unfortunate fact is that their technology is likely degraded to the point that they can't afford to deploy it.
The Russian people have a tremendous stake in maintaining their appearance of being a global power. To fire off an SS-20 and have one or more of the warheads fail to generate full yield, fizzle or fail completely would be a psychological blow that I don't think they're willing to risk. I can picture them deploying entire battalions of Spetznazniki to assist but those soldiers are deniable. A nuke that duds at deplolyment is a big piece of malfunctioning technology sitting in a crater in the desert. It simply can't be denied.
This is not to say that I don't think there's a possibility of Kazakhstan pitching a nuke over the Tamils and trying to take out a US Brigade. Fortunately, the state of maintenance and ongoing support in Kazakhstan is even worse than in Russia.
I'm not discounting it by any means. But I also understand that the existing active stockpile of nuclear systems in the US is able to match all of the existing weapons in all of the CIS nations as well as China, Korea and Pakistan if they flip out.
Of course, the Pakistani weapons aren't what you'd honestly call, "state of the art." They claimed 35kt yield on one shot and seismological data indicated somewhere between four and nine actual kt. Their bombs aren't very good.
Given the centralization of governmental and religious leadership functions in Iran and the Syrian insistence on following 60s and 70s Soviet doctrine for combat, they're basically toast if the war went nuclear. Damascus is a city almost perfectly designed to be nuked. Tehran was actually one of the cities used as a notional target when developing the modern, "Near Simultaneous, Blast Limit Overlap MIRV deployment." Take a pair of MIRV equipped missiles, target them so as to drop in a grid over the target in such a way that all of the 5-PSI zones overlap. It's not actually simultaneous because of neutron flux considerations. It actually takes on the order of 25 to 45 minutes to deploy and detonate the entire MIRV payload of a pair of D5 Tridents or Minuteman-III missiles.
I honestly don't think any of the CIS nations would risk going nuclear. The repercussions are simply too horrific. They don't have the economic stability to survive the loss of the majority, if not the entirety, of their industrial and military support base.