Word: dug
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These forces are deeply dug in behind layers of defensive barriers 40 miles wide. Bulldozers have piled sand walls up to 40 ft. high. Behind them is a network of ditches, some rigged with pipes to deliver oil that will be set on fire, and concrete tank traps. Behind those are miles of razor wire and at least 500,000 mines...
Some U.S. commanders say there will be no attack on the ground until the fighting power of the Republican Guards has been reduced 30% to 50%. So far, allied air attacks have made only limited progress toward that goal. A senior U.S. official says the Iraqis are well dug in and so far seem to be riding out the bombing. "These are first-rate troops," he says. "We're seeing that they know how to disperse and protect themselves." Adds Michael Dewar, deputy director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London: "There is a massive amount of Iraqi...
Allied engineers will then begin cutting roads through the minefields. At that point, the Republican Guards will have to concentrate their dispersed, dug-in forces and counterattack. The day and night bombardment by B-52s and missile attacks from planes and helicopters will continue. The international forces will quickly be free to roll across Kuwait. "The Iraqis have never faced major maneuver operations," says Cordesman...
...biggest questions were how many more battles Saddam Hussein might initiate and on what scale -- and why he had ever gone on the attack at all. The Iraqi army fights most effectively from behind barbed wire, minefields and trenches like those it has dug in Kuwait. Why pull any troops and tanks out of the bunkers and holes in the sand, in which they had been fairly effectively hiding from air attack, and expose them to the full fury of allied air and artillery bombardment...
...allies want to hold off as long as possible on any bloody ground assault against the more than half a million Iraqi troops deeply dug into Kuwait. First the coalition will try to isolate those forces by incessant bombing of their supply lines, hoping that Saddam's soldiers, cut off from food, water and reinforcements, will pull out or surrender. If not, plans call for massive bombing of key points in the heavily fortified Iraqi front line before the tanks and infantry go into the breach. That probably means several additional weeks of aerial war before any serious ground fighting...