¿Dónde están el ejército iraquí y los paramilitares?

Es una pregunta muy interesante y que, por lo que veo, nadie se está haciendo estos días. Dale que te pego con la munición inteligente (al parecer, es un truco de la 2ª guerra del golfo que ahora sigue funcionando), dale que te pego con las carreras por el desierto... pero de los iraquíes no se dice nada. Sí, bueno, se dicen cosas tan espantosas como que el sábado pasado mataron a 1000 iraquíes (y nadie dijo ni pío ante esa matanza), pero sea verdad o sea mentira hay una cuestión clave que pone sobre el tapete este artículo de DailyKos

Any claims of military victories without concrete evidence of Iraqi units surrendering en masse, cannot be trusted. We're not fighting the Japanese Imperial Army.
As I sit here, I'm watching A Bridge Too Far. In the summer and fall of 1944, it was believed the German Army had collasped. Everything was fine until the two SS Panzer Divisions popped up.
And that leads to my final point. Until there is a logical explaination as to the dissappearance of the Iraqi Army from the field, assume it is in hiding. US commanders are claiming they are destroying divisions and they don't have the scale of prisoners they should. The math doesn't add up.

La cuestión queda abierta. Abusando de lo trivial, "la primera víctima de la guerra es la verdad". Vale. Pero o han aniquilado a las divisiones de la guardia republicana, del ejército regular, de los fedayyin, a las tribus... o las cosas pueden dar un vuelco acojonante en unos meses.

De hecho, Arab News recoge un artículo muy interesante de The Guardian, titulado A Vietnam-Like Situation Possible. Para abrir boca, me limito a citar un párrafo especialmente cañero:

?Let our cities be our swamps and our buildings our jungles,? Tariq Aziz told the Institute of Strategic Studies before war began. On Friday Iraq’s Information Minister Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf talked of turning Iraq into ?another Indochina?. Has Baghdad become a mini Ho Chi Minh trail of hidden tunnels and arsenals?
George C Scott, as Gen. Patton in the eponymous film, hisses: ?Rommel, you sonofabitch, I read your book?. The key book for the Iraqis was written by Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, the brilliant architect of the war against the French and the Americans. It was published in English in 1961, under the title People’s War, People’s Army, long before the US war in Vietnam hotted up. Though full of partyspeak, it shows how easy it is to hold up and demoralise a hugely superior army that has a long supply convoy. Giap exploited what he called ?the contradictions of the aggressive colonial war?. The invaders have to fan out and operate far from their bases. When they deploy, said Giap, ?their broken-up units become easy prey?. First harass the enemy, ?rotting? away his rear and reserves, forcing him to deploy troops to defend bases and perimeters.
?Is the enemy strong?? wrote Giap. ?One avoids him. Is he weak? One attacks him.? There will never be enough troops to hold down the scattered guerrilla forces. Gen. William Westmoreland, commander of US forces in Vietnam, estimated that he would have needed 2 million troops to ?pacify? the country. At the peak of the war he had half that number. You can apply the principle to Baghdad or the country beyond ? the topography matters less than the principle. Commanders talk of their puzzlement at Republican Guard units ?melting away? after the onslaught of last week. Are they preparing a trap?
It was astonishing to read of the surprise on the part of the military at the Iraqis’ methods. The commander of the Desert Rats said that their ?terror tactics? were ?outside the rules of war?, although anyone who has attended a war knows there aren’t any rules. Hue was the last pitched battle fought by the Americans during the 1968 Tet offensive. In that battle, 5,000 Vietcong infiltrators climbed out of their civilian clothes in the city to reveal their North Vietnamese uniforms. Gen. Westmoreland complained that Tet ?was characterized by treachery and deceitfulness? ? the same outrageous methods Bush speaks about today.

Si sumamos el primer artículo al segundo, tenemos un panorama inquietante. Me equivoqué, Saddam no podía repartir armas entre su población por un aquél de que tras el americano cayera su cuello. Pero si repartes el número suficiente de armas entre tus leales (y haberlos, haylos), y te quedas a esperar como el amigo americano entra en un país convertido en una trampa, te puede salir una jugada difícil pero posible. Si además los gringos vencen la batalla y se quedan, tus posibilidades aumentan.