Stalingrad on the Tigris:

Titus_Pullo

Banned
In the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, The Iraqi Army decides to make the US fight for every street corner, ever alley and every building. Sadam is detirmined to make the eventual fight for Baghdad a costly one both militarily and politically. How could the Iraqi Army turn Baghdad into a Stalingrad in which US ground forces enter but never come out again or come out of it in pieces? Sort of like a Harry Turtledove Pittsburgh in The Grapple?
 

wolfstar

Lots of people mistake the former Iraqi Army as a military force. It was not. It was a keep Saddam's ass in power force. It was not bulit to fight trained troops and they were not going to die in the scale needed to slow down US troops.

Honestly given the people in charge I can't see anyway to create an Iraqi army that could pull this off. Maybe have the Israelis secretly train them in urban warfare after the US cuts them over not making peace with the Palestinians?

Al Qaeda did turn several towns into mini Stalingrads. US troops where able to clear them without massive losses.
 

burmafrd

Banned
The Iraqi army had neither the training nor the leadership to even come close. Its easy to forget now, but you do remember the celebrations after Baghdad fell. One other factor in making a city a modern stalingrad is needing a LOT of troops to make it happen. You would have needed more then 100,000 dedicated and well led soldiers to make it happen. There is no way the Iraqi army of 2003 had anything like either.
 

aktarian

burmafrd said:
One other factor in making a city a modern stalingrad is needing a LOT of troops to make it happen. You would have needed more then 100,000 dedicated and well led soldiers to make it happen.
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somebody forgot to tell Chechens that.... (granted Grozny is smaller then Baghdad but still....)
 

Berra

The main question is weather the troops decides to fight on. Given that the US troops can cut them of, take other Iraqi cities and do pretty much whatever they wanted outside Bagdad anyway. There would have been very little use anyway.
 
NHBL

NHBL

Strategy...

You can't make a Stalingrad type situation if the other side doesn't come into your prepared positions.
I can't see the US Army moving into a prepared kill zone like that, or if it did try, I thnk it would pull back, and play it smart, unless an idiot politician told the army, "Go in, take the city NOW, regardless of cost."
 

Vextra

I think it might have been possible to create the scenario you describe in the First Gulf War. Had the US not spent weeks-months beforehand softening both Iraq and Iraqi-held Kuwait with massive aerial firepower, it is entirely possible that the Iraqis would have been able to hold a defensive position, stalingrad-style, around Kuwait.

Its unlikely they'd have withdrawn to Baghdad, however. The way i see it, any conflict between the US and the Iraqi Republican Army, be it in 1991 or 2003, would have been won by the US well before they reach Baghdad. Essentially, once the "Lion of Babylon" is revealed to be the shoddy jury-rigged export-crap it was, the US Armour Corps could Blitzkrieg Iraqi Fortified Positions, no matter how well stalingradized. And all this is without factoring the enormous and decisive influence of Air Power in Both Conflicts.

Either way, your not getting a Meatgrinder on the Tigris in which the US or any members of either Coalition get chewed into oblivion. Not with modern methods of warfare, and not with any halfway non-ASB configuration of the then Iraqi Armed Forces.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
1st - Import 2,000,000 Soviet soldiers. Men immune to misery, because it it their daily bread. Men who will willingly fight to the last breath to defend their Motherland (Rodina). Men who actually perfer to fight in basements in the pitch dark, because its warm. Make them think they are in Russia.

2nd - Import the NKVD. No, the sorry bunch of thugs that Saddam had on hand is worthless, Soviet soldiers wopuld have kept them as pets.

3rd - import Russian weather.

4th - Eliminate PMGs, all the way back to the early TV guided bomb.

5th - Eliminate the Heavy Bomber (from B-29 forward)

6th - Eliminate the Jet fighter-bomber

7th - Eliminate the M1A1, TOW missile, Bradly Fighting Vehicle, and Humvee with 40mm grenade launcher

8th - Eliminate the Assault rifle

9th - Eliminate every person who graduated from a U.S. or UK Service Academy since 1925 (just to be sure you got them all). every person who ever attended any staff college, VMI, and most military boarding schools.

10th - Replace the civilian leadership of the U.S. and UK with week old kittens.

Baghdad can now hold like Stalingrad, at least until the Israelis, Iranians, Italians, Indonesians, or Indians (just to use the "I" countries) show up with two mechanized brigades and a fighter bomber wing. The defenders will then be blown to hell with rapidity and massed firepower.
 

King Thomas

Banned
ASBs let the Iraqi soldiers know how bad things will be once the USA takes over Iraq. Then it's possible that they will be motivated enough to fight hard enough.
 

Cheever

the thing about modern Urban warfare is that the US army was trained to fight in urban warfare after Stalingrad. it would take an incredibly incompetent US General to force his troops into a city and weaken his flankes.

at least i hope they wouldn't be so stupid.
 

Billi the Axe

God you mean fort up instead of running away ASB for any Iraqi Army in recent memory. I've fought them twice 1st as a CPT in the 101st and second as a LTC in CENTCOM Ops section. I could only hope they IRG would be that dumb, Modern firepower and modern tactics negate any Stalingradesque operational engagements with NATO level forces.

As for the current situation quit watching the doomsayers at CNN/MSNBC And look at the reality. Casualties are way down and Iraqi Security Forces are coming along nicely. Mistakes where made early on despite the advice of JCS J-3 and CENTCOM and no plan were made for the peace. Things that the politicians caused not the Military. But the Surge is solving the problem nicely but like most modern wars the press has an agenda and wants you to believe anyone not in uniform cause god forbid we actually kill people and must be evil.
 

burmafrd

Banned
Very SMALL defence of Rummy here: he was right that we could take Iraq with less forces then the Generals said we would need. Of course he was wrong about everything else.....
 

wolfstar

burmafrd said:
Very SMALL defence of Rummy here: he was right that we could take Iraq with less forces then the Generals said we would need. Of course he was wrong about everything else.....
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Lol yep:
Right about the battle to take it, wrong about the war to hold it.
 

aktarian

Cheever said:
the thing about modern Urban warfare is that the US army was trained to fight in urban warfare after Stalingrad. it would take an incredibly incompetent US General to force his troops into a city and weaken his flankes.

at least i hope they wouldn't be so stupid.
Click to expand...

or get caught with his black hawk down.....
 

backstab

Banned
It comes down to a reason to fight ... If the Iraqi's had high enough moral and were given a good reason to deny the US Baghdad then the US would have taken a hell of a lot more losses than OTL. They will eventally win , of course , but this would make the occupation a lot more harder than it has been. And since the US has a habit of taking the bolt when things get hard, then I would see them pulling out.
 
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