I agree totally with you Blayke, the Coalition has all means to beat the crap
out of Iraq. The question is though whether the Coalition losses will become
unacceptable enough for the countries concerned. As it happened in Vietnam,
USA had opportunities to win, but the opposition was too strong inside the
States themselves. Whether or not they actually win depends not on the
strength of the forces, but on whether they'll go on with the war or stop in
the middle. As for equipment differences, I agree that M1 is vastly superior,
and in all probability any American tank losses were due more to artillery
fire than to the old soviet vehicles. However, the Iraq army shows good
knowledge and use of simple tactics, whereas the Coalition are in several
cases leaving their troops without the simplest means of support: hence the
losses. A member of the intelligence service i mentioned made a supposition
that USA were perhaps organizing a coup inside the Saddam government and that
way hoping for swift capitulation (that would explain the optimistic news of
the first days, then they gave out desirable results for fact and stated that
Saddam has been killed with the very first missile launched at his bunker). If
there indeed was a coup or some other kind of secret plan to depose Saddam, it
had obviouly went wrong. As you read news from the fronlines it's clear to see
that different elements of the Coalition army arent very well organized among
themselves and what's more, they definitely didnt expect the kind of
resistance they encounter now. For example, the intelligence has badly fumbled
on target locations, otherwise you'd have destroyed anti-aircraft systems in
the first attack waves. Instead, the systems function quite well, considering
the situation. I understand that this is just conjecture on my part, but it
seems logical enough given the facts.