The people who got caught in there were the US Marines who were trying to clear Nasiriyahand, and then later on they were trying to move toward Al Kut, because they were in built up areas and the army just went around them and ended up in Karbala. It was only when the Iraqis chose to make a stand with armored forces that they were going to be defeated. They did not have any capacity to operate on the land against the extraordinarily effective US airpower capabilities.

There was also a certain degree of anxiety surrounding the possibility of a seige of the Iraqi capital; some commentators feared more intense street fighting than in other Iraqi cities. Did you expect a more difficult battle for Baghdad?

If the Iraqis had been well organized and prepared, and had they had control over the population, it might have been a tougher battle. But the US forces had technology and training advantages that no other force in history has ever had. They had a continuous overhead view of Baghdad; they could see everything. They had the M1N1 tank, which is damn near impossible to knock out except by first-line Soviet armor, and the United States was using mobility against the Iraqi’s built up area.

When the Iraqis tried to put up obstacles, they did a poor job of it. The tank units quickly bypassed the obstacles and kept moving. The US tank groups were moving far more effectively than the Iraqi attempts at counter-maneuvers against them. The US tanks had the advantage on the thunder runs when they broke down the resistance and then let the Iraqis come to them.

The war began with strikes against “targets of opportunity.” Are these the same surgical strikes tried against Saddam Hussein in 1991, and how likely are they to have succeeded?

Only time will tell if they were successful. In general, the United States has capacities now that it did not have in 1991. First, the military has the ability to go through cloud cover, at night, and in conditions of poor visibility with precision-guided bombs. In 1991, they were using laser-guided bombs, but today they are using bombs guided by Global Positioning Satellites. The bombs are highly accurate, and it is not possible for clouds over a city to obscure the targets. The bombs will go right where they are supposed to go, whether there is a cloud there or not. Also, they are designed to go deeper and hit bunkers, so they are much more effective then they were in 1991.

At the beginning of the war, there was worry about Saddam Hussein using weapons of mass destruction. Are there military reasons for why they were not used, or does it indicate that the Iraqi weapons were not capable of being used?

There are three possibilities. Possibility number one is that Saddam Hussein could not use them. The US forces did not stay long enough in Kuwait to give him a really good target. Once the war started, they moved. Once they entered the so-called “Red Zone” around Baghdad, the troops were not bunched up as targets, and Hussein did not have much of his combat potential left, nor really any opportunity. Possibility number two is that he may have decided all along not to use them, simply to say that realistically he could not beat the United States. If the United States had to fight against weapons of mass destruction, it probably would not have made that much of a difference, so he might have decided not to use them. The third possibility is that he did not really have those weapons. He might have had some, but they were not fully or properly weaponized.

Even more than Kosovo, the war against Iraq has been recognized as a turning point in international affairs. What lessons should be taken from the war in Iraq, and what effect will alliances have on the reconstruction period?

The first lesson is that coalition forces have to be able to have a plan that is flexible and integrated with diplomacy. This plan was. The second lesson is that the war is won not by the plan, but by the execution of the plan, which should be adaptable. There are key elements in the execution, such as the skill of the individual soldiers and the pilots. The United States had very good and strong unit skills. The United States is scrambling right now to get other states to go into Iraq and bear some of the burdens. But some of these countries will resist unless they get a say in what policies will be implemented.