In other words, the brave men in the trenches were undefeated, but were betrayed by a stab in the back. Hence their honor is intact, and they have no reason not to try again under some more glorious leader. Stop me if you've heard this before.

D-heads.

I guess the deal included running away, dressed only in your underwear, and leaping into the Tigris river too.

Orion

Frank,

I suppose that D-head is short for delusional-head.

Specify type (the following types are assigned based on the predominant delusional theme):

Erotomanic Type: delusions that another person, usually of higher status, is in love with the individual

Grandiose Type: delusions of inflated worth, power, knowledge, identity, or special relationship to a deity or famous person

Jealous Type: delusions that the individual's sexual partner is unfaithful

Persecutory Type: delusions that the person (or someone to whom the person is close) is being malevolently treated in some way

Somatic Type: delusions that the person has some physical defect or general medical condition

Typical Arab posturing...

They can't defeat us, so they claim that the "fix" was in to try and save face. They can't seem to fathom that Sadaam wasn't the Arab-Warrior-Savior-Mastermind that they thought so NOW they try to explain his illogical tactics and strategies by making it seems as if he and his generals made shrewd deals for their safety.

I don't think that the US has been secret about the fact that we had been securing these arrangements before any shots were fired... but this "fierce fighting engaged in...as they were RETREATING" B.S. is getting very tired.

Yeah, yeah... you guys were SOOOOO mucho macho deadly fighters as you stormed our tanks with AK47s and RPGs riding in your Toyota Tundra chariots of Islamic power. Puh-leeze.

Arab media fails to report that PsyOps would go close to Iraqi entrenched positions with thier loudspeakers saying, they are are cowards and stuff about thier manhood. They knew atleast Saddams Fedeyeen would react and try and attack forward.

Too bad when they attacked forward they were just cut down by M1a1's and Bradleys. Thiers a diffrence between being brave and being a complete moron. And Saddams army is far from being brave.

I think I have to call Bravo Sierra on this one. If US forces had negotiated the surrender of Baghdad, it would have been announced so that troops would know to not fight. Just trying to reason through it, I think you would have to assume that both the US and the Iraqi forces, having come to an agreement, would find it beneficial to communicate to the city, and the rest of the theater, that the fight for Baghdad was over.

I'm thinking I'll have to wait until CENTCOM starts the historical writeup and the memiors. I'm really hoping that some Iraqi generals do the same. I'm interested to see how much they didn't know about what was happening, either because of bad intelligence or because of a fear on the part of intel officers of being the bearers of bad news.

-BF

Yeah, let's make a deal...

Door #1 (shush... chain gun)
Door #2 (quiet... frag bombs from B52)
Door #3 (Howitzer 155)

I bet it's really starting to stink over there with 100,000+ Iraqi "deal maker's" bodies laying in the hot sand 'n sun.

Does it occure to these idiots that even if they are 100% correct, there was a *reason* that their general cut this deal?

Hmmmmm

I also love the fact that the "foreign" soldiers got screwed.

This is a possible explanation for the defeat of Baghdad. An equally plausible explanantion is that space aliens rendered all Iraqi weapons non-functional, so they had to surrender. Or that Saddam's Republican Guard were actually US troops, all along.

Hey, at least the didn't mention the Jews, that's a big step.

It is probably true.

Think back. Remember we kept bragging that we had cell phone numbers for all the big dogs and we were trying to get them to defect???

Remember for the 3 days before Baghdad fell the Pentagon brass kept saying "Baghdad will fall from the inside out, not the outside in."

Now consider this. The General in question... (General Al Tikriti- Not to be confused with Col Al Tikriti, Major Al Tikriti, Governor Al Tikriti, Minister Al Tikriti or Jim Bob Al Tikriti.)

The General was fighting for a while and HE HAD THE BRIDGES WIRED TO BLOW. Suddenly he called everything off and did not even blow the bridges. Clearly he did not want to fight that long.

Whether you call it a "deal" or a "victroy" depends more on where you sit. To me, it is a victory for our intell folks and our Psyops folks.

But if I were an Arab fighter it would be a sell out.

To be sure. the psyops folks used what is called "appeal to practical consequences." ie: "General Al Tikriti you can give up and live or we can kill you and everyone you know with the 3rd ID."

It is sorta like bluffing in poker.... Except we had all the Aces.

Paul

It's apparent that the Iraqi military had little or no
stomach to fight. The late Iraqi regime sure talked a mean game.
Some can't accept that Saddam Hussein or his administration was not a"Pillar of Arab strenght" as he projected.
Superior troops in every manner will win out versus those that are forced to fight.

It became 'apparent that a deal was reached'? How did that work then? Divine Revelation? Did the General drop by and give them an update? Or is it what they need to believe to avoid embarassment?

I agree with Paul's comments. I think that we were able to get to one or more of the key generals and show him the futility in fighting.

However, the comment in the article that

"The alleged agreement led to the staged ‘defeat’ of Baghdad by coalition forces in return for the commander’s safety, after he was ‘sure’ that his cousin - Saddam Hussein - had concluded a much larger one guaranteeing his safety as well."

imply's that the allied forces let Saddam go is completly bogus.

Also the references to the staged defeat show that the Arab press is just trying to justify loosing to a more powerful army. I'm sure those Jordianian volunteers still think that they could have defeated us ... if only they were given the chance. Yeah right.

History tends to repeat itself and in this particular instance it may portend bad things for the future of Iraq.

After WWI in Weimar Germany the conventional wisdom concerning Germany's defeat was cystalized in the "Dolchstosslegende" or the myth of the stab in the back. This common belief which many German citizens chose to believe held that Germany never really lost the war but rather that it was betrayed or stabbed in the back. This myth of a " deal" which betrayed the Germans expressed the bitterness of many Germans and was one of the keystones on which Hitler built his Third Reich.

It's a bad portent and does not auger well for the politics of the new Iraq.

"To win without fighting is best." - Sun Tzu, The art of war.

If this rumor is true, I can see how it could upset people who want to picture us as having blasted the helpless Iraqi Republican Guard into oblivion until they ran like scared little bastards into Bhagdad. But look at it this way..

We still scared the helpless Iraqi Republican Guard into running awaly like scared little bastards into Bhagdad, we just did it by saying "Boo."

"Hey, at least the didn't mention the Jews, that's a big step."

[*laughing*]

In any case, fine-- we'll take Syria and Iran by a "deal" as well.

And as somebody said, why do the Jordanians think the guy _made_ this deal even if it were true? It obviously wasn't made in late March, back when the Arabs convinced themselves we were in a quagmire in the South.

And as somebody else said, notice the study on contrasts here... The Israeli Defense Forces openly admit their jealousy of American prowess in this war, and state that they have much to learn frm a lengthy study of our tactics. The Arabs, meanwhile, whine about a backstabbing deal, and will learn nothing from this, just as they learned nothing from European culture during the Crusades, while the Europeans learned most of the best things the Arab world had to offer.

At this stage in history, the Arab world would rather hang on to a bit of delusonal self-esteem than smell the coffee and get their act together. This is not an enemy that frightens me, frankly.

History tends to repeat itself and in this particular instance it may portend bad things for the future of Iraq.

While this might hold for the (say) Syrian irregulars (all 1000 of them), it is not necessarily true of the Iraqis. You have to remember that the Iraqi army was bombed so terribly that (according to some anecdotal accounts), people started leaving two days into it. They saw on the field that their tank rounds couldn't penetrate US armor. The citizens saw targets destroyed with little or no warning.

It's an outside possibility. Certainly there will be an Iraqi Arabist core that will believe this, but they will be in the minority. Like I said, the main people who will feel this way are the extra-national irregulars (who, after all, weren't going to lose their families and homes if they turned Baghdad into a battleground and thus were shocked when Iraqi troops shot at them). As for me, if a bunch of people who think that driving a pickup truck full of AK-47 wielding young men at an Abrams tank constitutes a sound tactical approach, hell, let them think what they want.

-BF

No one can really be surprised to hear reports of how the overwhelming ease to the fall of Baghdad was a result of deal-making. After all, we're talking about the "Land of Delusion",where the popular culture within the Arab world is intriniscally immersed in all sorts ofself-deluding conspiracies,blame and scape-goating for the abject failure of the Arab Nation.These are the same people who are mired in a past glory that some historians say was never even as glorious to begin with.These are the same people who have a conspiracy story for everything and anything. The UN released a report on the state of the Arab world last year which revealed the backward,primitive state of their existence in every single aspect and category of social, economic, scientific and technological development mired in poverty,illiteracy and little hope for the future of their burgeoning populations.And that's INCLUDING the bounty of the overwhelmingly largest reserves of the greatest most valuable resource of all, oil.These are just delusional people living in a land of delusion who must seek and accept delusion as the only means in which to seek refuge from the agony and shame of their pathetic reality and existence. Let them sulk in the only means in which they can attain any semblance of self-respect and dignity.

Can we all say 'extreme anal retention' ?

So the US tried with great effort to secure a deal that would preserve infrastructure and reduce, troop and civilian casualites. The suggestion that that happened is met with almost complete disbelief.

It may be Arab trying to save face. But it certainly can be somewhat true.

Did anyone find it surprising how quickly Baghdad fell?

America had agreed prioir to the war to let Saddam go into exile, to preserve infrastructure and reduce, troop and civilian casualites.

I think for many of you this is a testosterone thing.

mmmm, Anthony--I am pretty low on testosterone and I seem to recall the US bunker bombing Sadaam on at least two occasions (one of which started the war a couple days earlier than planned). You think those were pretend bombings?

I liked Bagdad Bob's explanation, that it was all filmed on a Hollywood set, so it really didn't happen at all...

1) Countless cell phone calls and emails to members of the Iraqi regime

2) Millions of propaganda leaflets

3) Relentless precision bombing

5) CIA, special forces, and who knows what else operating all over Iraq for months.

6) Well-executed blitzkrieg on the ground

7) The Iraqi army melts into the landscape

Of course there were deals. Dozens of them.

Bobby V, they always mention the Jews, LOL

they even print this crap in childrens books as you can see here:

Hamas kids' magazine: 'Destroy rapist Jews'
Periodical claims Iraqi children being 'torn to shreds' by U.S.

© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
A monthly children's magazine published by the Hamas terrorist organization urges Palestinian and Iraqi children to pray for Allah to "destroy the cruel, rapist Jews" and bring victory to the Palestinian and Iraqi causes.

Pleas for violence against Jews, contained in the magazine's editorial, is preceded by descriptions of alleged suffering by Iraqi children as a result of the U.S.-led war to oust Saddam Hussein. It says the children are suffering due to cruelty being committed against them by coalition forces.
More here:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31943

Suzie:
"I seem to recall the US bunker bombing Sadaam on at least two occasions (one of which started the war a couple days earlier than planned). You think those were pretend bombings?"

I don't know. Maybe yes, maybe no. US bunker bombs on two occasions hit buildings that he was alledgedly in.

Did anyone mention when a deal was struck. My understanding was that the US was in contact with Iraqi officials trying to broker a deal well after the war began.

Of course the Iraqi generals would clue in Jordanian volunteers on their plan

idiots

>Did anyone mention when a deal was struck.

IMHO... Late in the game... A few days before.

We were talking to General Al Tikriti (and his brother Specific Al Tikriti) long before the war started. We got no such deal until the airport fell. Remember....

That is when they started making statements about Baghdad falling from the inside out. When we took the airport, Al Tikriti realized the gig was up. We blew threw the whole country in 11 days, he was not going to stop us.

We launched a foray into Baghdad (3rd ID) and we killed a few thousand Syrians etc but no RG fight. We did it the next night and took the Palace. (again no RG)

That is when we knew the deal was legit. The next day we sealed it.

Speculation on my part, no inside knowledge, but if you think back and remember the timeline, it adds up.

You can call it a "deal" or a "silent surrender" either way, the statue came down.

Paul

And, no the Arabs learned nothing and we learned tons. Not being racist or anythign just a fact of life.

And And, NO we did not trade Saddam for an easy march into Baghdad.