THE WISDOM FUND: News & Views
The Observer (UK)
March 30, 2003

The Reality of War

by The Observer Reporting Team

. . . 'They can enter the cities, but they cannot stay,' he said. 'They will destroy much in Iraq. But we are preparing thousands of people as suicide bombers like the Palestinians. Many Iraqis will be willing to to kill Americans and sacrifice themselves.'

He also predicted that 'for the first two or three days the Americans will feel they are in control. But we have a lot of experience in this. The Americans taught us a lot in 1991 and we fought Iran for eight years.'

Speaking of the Iraqi elite's plan to go into hiding, he added: 'The US thinks it will come and find a general surrounded by bodyguards but we are not stupid. We can work alone or in small groups like Che Guevara or Osama bin Laden. There are hundreds, even thousands of places to hide in Iraq.' . . .

If they had read more carefully the words of senior Iraqi officials, they might have had a clue. For Iraqi tactics were declared before the event by no less a figure than Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz in an interview with the International Institute of Strategic Studies. 'People say to me you are not the Vietnamese, you have no jungles and swamps to hide in,' he said then. 'I reply, "Let our cities be our swamps and our buildings be our jungles".'. . .

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