if the majority had ruled

Cast your mind back to 1991, the Soviet Union was on verge of collapse, Germany was reunited after nearly half a century, Bush Senior announced a New World Order was coming upon us, also there was a war going on in the Gulf, in January 15th the infamous Operation Desert Storm begun, the power structure in the Middle East was about to change drastically.

By the time the ground offensive begun against Kuwait the Iraqi military had suffered major damage, the Iraqi fighter jets that weren't destroyed in their concrete bunkers had flown to Iran, Iraq's long time enemy, the Iraqi Army were bombed on its retreat, the highway was hit with everything they had from the air, F-15's, B-52's, AV-8B Harriers, A-6's and A-10's, with so many casualties inflicted it became known as the Highway of Death.



Iraq was virtually defeated, Kuwait was liberated, and in the south of Iraq the Shia majority that had been oppressed for Saddam for so long led an anti government uprising, this was led by the perception that the power of President Saddam Hussein was weak at the time; as well as by heavily fueled anger at government repression.

The rise of Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian revolution disbanding the Iranian military led Saddam in one way in an attempt to launch a large scale invasion of Iran, in one way this solidified Khomeini's revolution and led to thousands joining the Iranian military and launching an offensive war by 1982 against Iraq, his main ideal was to export the revolution to Saddam's oppressed Shia majority.

Having the majority of people is one of the basic fundamentals of democracy, if the Americans had seen eye to eye with those attempting a rebellion history for both of the countries could have been drastically different.

Saddam managed to suppress the rebellions with massive and indiscriminate force and maintained power. They were ruthlessly crushed by the loyalist forces spearheaded by the Iraqi Republican Guard and the population was successfully terrorized. During the few weeks of unrest tens of thousands of people were killed. Many more died during the following months, while nearly two million Iraqis fled for their lives.

George HW. Bush later had this to say:

"I have not misled anybody about the intentions of the United States of America. I don't think the Shias in the south, those who are unhappy with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad or the Kurds in the north, ever felt that the United States would come to their assistance to overthrow this man. (...) I made clear from the very beginning that it was not an objective of the coalition or the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein."

We all know the history of the Iraq war that started in 2003 twelve years after all of this, it had been admitted by Colin Powell that if they had taken out Saddam the Iraqi military in the aftermath may have been too weak and Iran and Syria would have had a good chance at gaining more power and dominance in the region.

If these rebellions had been successful Iran would have surely had some input around the holy city of Basra which they had made several unsuccessful attempts to capture in the 1980s in human wave attacks Iraq may have been split into two states, Basra to the south, and the region of Mosul to the north (which was mainly inhabited by Sunni Muslims).

Regardless what these states would have done afterwords what was admitted by Colin Powell begs the question that even if one of the main roles in today's occupation of Iraq is really to promote democracy and the ideals of the majority.

On the other hand



The idea of bringing a war to a dramatic end by taking out the leader was in fact tested in the opening salvo of the 2003 invasion, known as the Dora Farms strike, it involved two F-117 Nighthawk stealth bombers dropping four enhanced, satellite-guided 2,000-pound Bunker Busters GBU-27 on the compound, complementing this attack was a further four Tomahawk missiles fired from destroyers in the the Persian Gulf and Red Sea.

Saddam Hussein was not present nor were any members of the Iraqi leadership or Hussein family. The attack killed one civilian and injured fourteen others, including nine women and one child.

It was later discovered that Saddam hadn't even visited the area since 1995!

does Shock and Awe actually work?

During World War II Nazi Germany crushed Western Europe in the early days using their Blitzkrieg tactics that was basically working their military of airplanes, tanks and infantry to correct precision to get the best results.

They failed to crush England in this way and nearly had the Russians defeated after they arrived at the gates of Moscow in 1941!

There have been no wars as big as the Second World War since, but the modern day Blitzkrieg (or lightning war whatever you want to call it) is very similar to the Shock and Awe thesis written by Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade in 1996.

Shock and Awe is a designated doctrine to completely paralyze the enemy and destroy their will to fight, a bit like the Blitzkrieg invasion of Poland except with late 20th and early 21st century weapons.

The idea for a country like Iraq would be to incapacitate its command and destroy its infrastructure and physically and emotionally break the enemy having him surrender or his remaining forces being crushed.

Ullman said this before Operation Iraqi Freedom:

""You're sitting in Baghdad and all of a sudden you're the general and 30 of your division headquarters have been wiped out. You also take the city down. By that I mean you get rid of their power, water. In 2,3,4,5 days they are physically, emotionally and psychologically exhausted."

During the buildup before the Iraqi invasion it was repeated that they would be employing Shock and Awe, Iraq was to be an easy test for the US military applying Shock and Awe, the Iraqi's had barely any air power, gaining air superiority would be very easy, defeating ground forces would be challenging but hitting high command and points of communication across the country would divide enemy forces and convince them resisting wouldn't be fighting but be suicide.

Following the theory the invasion begun:



Limited bombing to try and instantly take out Saddam Hussein commenced, these failed however, one area the Dora Farms was hit with two F-117's backed by four Tomahawk cruise missiles, this resulted in one civilian killed and another four wounded and it was then revealed Saddam had never visited the area since 1995!

On the 21st of March 2003, the main bombing campaign by the US and their allies began. Its forces launched approximately 1700 air sorties (504 using cruise missiles). Coalition ground forces had begun a "running start" offensive towards Baghdad on the previous day. Coalition ground forces seized Baghdad on 5 April, and the United States declared victory on 14 April.

So in comparison it took shorter than the invasion of Poland by the Nazi's, a lot less people were killed in the invasion to ratio than the invasion of Poland.

The shock and awe air bombing campaign didn't seem to break the Iraqi people, many continued with their daily lives, working and shopping, as the bombs and missiles continued to fall around them. According to some analysts, the military's attack was perhaps too precise. It did not trigger shock and awe in the Iraqis and, in the end, the city was only captured after close combat on the outskirts of Baghdad.

Ullman was one to criticize the way the invasion was carried out, the initial invasion did not instantly crush the Iraqis will to fight like the theory, the coalition having to seize the city of Fallujah in April of 2004 is a perfect example of how the rapid dominance theory failed in that war!

tanks becoming hopelessly obsolete?

The invention of the British Mark IV tank in World War I along with its little brothers gave soldiers on the battlefield something they long desired, these tanks were bulletproof and able to crash through infantry on the trenches, it for a time revolutionized battlefield thinking.

For a time that is, but how relevant are tanks to winning these days wars, wars aren't as nearly conventional as they were back in the war years, the latter World War II posed a new threat to the tank.



New anti tank weapons were developed on the Eastern Front around 1943 and 1944, (such as Panzerfaust, the Bazooka, Panzerschreck and Piat). These proved that tanks wouldn't be able to run over infantry easily without a large amount of losses.

During the Cold War (around the 1970's, early 1980's) the Soviets depended on a vast amount of armour to crush Europe if it was going to be taken over conventionally, aircraft such as the MiG-23 Flogger were made so in theory they would cause a lot of damage in large number while supporting even a larger number of tanks.



The IrAF (Iraqi Air Force) in the 1980's used these against the Iranians and lost dozens of them at the hand of American made Iranian F-4's and F-14's, the MiG-23 concept was never proven in its lifetime, and for the tanks on the ground a new American plane was made that would be the biggest development and threat to tank warfare since the development of anti-tank weapons in the 1940's.



The A-10 Warthog is one of my favorite planes if not my favorite (and I very seldom say that), it may not look as sleek as its fellow fighter jets but it kicks a lot more ass on the ground then any of them, the A-10 was put forward in Bitsburg AFB in West Germany during the height of the Cold War in the 1980's.
Just to give some background information, the plane is built around a massive Avenger gattling gun which spews out more up to 70 amour piercing bullets a second!

It also has fire and forget AGM-65 missiles that will turn any tank into a great big fireball;
In West Germany (and in South Korea today) the pilots of the plane often worked in groups of two to attack enemy tanks that would be crossing the border in minutes, after each attack run when returning to base the A-10 only takes minutes to rearm and refuel before getting back out to engage more tanks on the battlefield.

So the Soviets weren't going to have a very good chance being covered by armour if they were going to invade Western Europe, but with this kind of weapon why are tanks still being reconfigured by the west in wars?

Well simply because tanks are good to have in a conventional war!

Although modern tanks such as the British Challenger 2 and the American M1 Abrams are still used today in wars, (most notably the two wars in Iraq), the Republican Guard took out a handful of these tanks in the Battle for Baghdad in 2003 but not many.



Finally on the invasion of Iraq once again, the Iraqi Army then still had several tanks, US soldiers during the invasion used the FGM-148 Javelin missile, the first anti tank weapons that allowed soldiers in combat to destroy a tank from any angle.



The missile even though it was fat and heavy once fired could stay locked on to destroy enemy tanks head on; after that the launcher can be reloaded in a mere 30 seconds to be used again!

With this kind of whoop ass technology available to infantry on today's battlefield its a wonder if tanks are really needed in war.

Saddam inspired by Stalin?

Saddam, the dictator of Iraq from the late 1970's all the way up to 2003, during his time the Iraqi people suffered, but Saddam didn't care less, he loved war and thrived to be victorious, but we all know that story, his massive army and Republican Guard and his propaganda movies always making his army looking brilliant and him looking like the tough leader.



But this propaganda couldn't be further from the truth, when he attacked Iran he vowed to crush it and the Ayatollah in less than a year, the truth was his army suffered badly on the front line and he executed several army generals who tried to retreat, he did just that in 1982 and offered to make peace, but the Ayatollah refused and the Iranians pushed forward, what resulted was another six years of horrible trench fighting, the worse since World War I, Saddam even used chemicals daily on the Iranians and at one stage in 1988 killed 5,000 Kurds in a single gas attack.

Like Stalin Saddam didn't want an uprising and was suspicious of everyone, like Stalin he thought everybody was out to get them and killed close friends and even family members for the littlest of offences, people in Iraq under Saddam had to keep their head down and not question their government.

When he invaded Kuwait in August 1990 he achieved outstanding victory, having starting at 2 in the morning he had the country occupied by nightfall and would remain in his hands for nearly a year.
Speaking of Kuwait it is an interesting country because it used to be part of the Ottoman empire of Basra, when Iraq was unified into one country in the 1920's Kuwait was separated from the rest of Iraq because of the large quantity of oil that's there, so maybe Saddam was justified on this one.

However George HW. Bush continually called Saddam a Hitler and launched Operation Desert Shield to protect Saudi Arabia from an invasion from Iraq and then Operation Desert Storm, the war was a fireworks show for the American media showing their superior weapons as they flew thousands of sorties and bombarded Iraqi defences driving them out of Kuwait and back into Iraq and continually attacking them, Daddy Bush's ground war lasted a hundred hours before withdrawing and a cease fire put in place, but here's the thing, even though his "elite" Republican Guard was crippled, his air force destroyed Saddam was still in power.


Saddams worst enemies

Bush called for the Iraqi citizens to overthrow his leader when it was already established like Stalin he instantly murdered anyone who questioned him, I'm sure there were many unheard heroes who tried to take down Saddam Hussein after the Americans had blown their country to the stone age and left Saddam in power.

However George W. Bush had his own agenda regarding Saddam when he entered office in 2001, in 2003 he initiated his shock and awe invasion of Iraq, Saddam was found hiding in a hole, his fate had finally caught up with him after all those years of knowing it.

The fact it took two presidents of the United States to go to war with Saddam until finally taking him out shows how powerful and unwilling he was to stand down, even when it meant that thousands of his people had to die and continually suffer under his regime, today the Iraqi people like the Soviet Union after World War II would rather forget about the horrid dictator that ruined Iraq!

Rebuilding in Iraq after both the 1991 and 2003 war is going slowly today but after Hussein was hanged in 2006 it is now slowly starting the beginning of a new and better Iraq.

the PlayStation Generation

Back in 1991 during the buildup to Operation Desert Storm against Iraq there were several video games released relating to the event (the one below F-19).



Saying that video games and war have a close relationship is a pretty obvious statement and if your not instantly familiar with games like Call of Duty, Battlefield, Arma Assault then you obviously don't play games (at all).

But what's interesting is when you send your Grand Theft Auto or ace shooter at BF-2 into a real war, Evan Wright a journalist calls these guys the PlayStation Generation.

He even penned a book Generation Kill about them and his experiences when he was embedded with them (the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion of the USMC) during Operation Iraqi Freedom in mid 2003, he describes how in Iraq they "killed very well" unlike US personnel in other wars where they lost their innocence first.

This theory is backed up by the George Gittoes movie Soundtrack to War in which soldiers listen to heavy metal music and rock and roll songs during the heat of combat (again in Iraq in 2003), one of them even mentioning listening to 2Pac driving over the border when the shock and awe invasion begun.



Other soldiers describe how its not really like a video game one guy exclaiming how "you see in the movies, bang your dead you fall down, here its bang, you should be dead, your guts are hanging out, but your walking and talking swinging in a swing set swingin'like your half crazy. They just don't die!"

After watching that documentary a few times I have no idea what he was exactly talking about, but the truth is video games still have a bit to go before they authentically simulate realism in combat.



But not much further...

when can 'operation unification' begin?

Ah North Korea, dictated by a movie buff who represents a dead guy who keeps his people isolated from the real world, and who is attempting to build and may acquire (one or two) nuclear weapons.

Okay before I even start check out the satellite image of North Korea at night compared to South Korea;



That's where the problem starts, the North Korean people need to see the light, they're a traditional old fashioned dictatorship divided by the 38th Parallel by the extremely wealthy South Korea, both countries (South Korea backed by the United States) never officially ended the Korean war, they are currently in cease fire mode since 1953!

And North Korea recently ended agreements to end its nuclear program, yes they're continuing their nuclear program, isn't it time we ended the 1953 war and take down North Korea.

I mean they have no good political stance like Iran does and is basically an evil dictatorship, where does that fit in Obama's new world order?

So what am I suggesting?

Breaking the cease fire, some 40,000 US troops are stationed near the Parallel while the North Korean army have something like 1,000,000 troops, I know they are not matching them man for man, remember the North Korean army look like this;



Think the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq (specifically Operation Desert Storm), the US had superior firepower not superior man power, the same would work against North Korea, analysis of its air force show mostly 1950's era Soviet aircraft with the exception of the 20 or so MiG-29 Fulcrums that are used to defend Pyongyang, that air force could be destroyed in round about a day with some help from the South Korean air force.



Followed by strategic bombing (which the Americans get to practice exactly what they have to do every single day), of troop concentrations and ground forces followed by an invasion by large forces of US troops and South Korean soldiers, Operation Unification would be a good name for it don't you think?

For instance Saddam Hussein was a bastard (no matter what way you look at it), and out of date documents showed that he was trying to acquire nuclear weapons, the UN Security Council was sure it was not, but there was a risk so the US launched Operation Iraqi Freedom and overthrew the horrible dictator, he had no WMD's however, but there was oil in Iraq.

10% of the worlds resources that is.

I know that must have been the coincidence of the century right?

However when North Korea tests a nuclear ballistic missile that could actually pose a threat its downplayed!