Iraqis put pressure on as battle takes to the streets
With these words, Iraqi Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan seems to have summed up Iraq's military tactics. And they appear to be working quite effectively.
In the build-up to war, Iraqi newspapers carried editorials about the US military's experience in Vietnam and more recently in 1993 in Somalia when 18 US servicemen were killed in Mogadishu's labyrinth of alleys. The aim of the editorials was probably to raise the morale of Iraqi soldiers. But with US-led forces meeting stiff resistance and suffering casualties as they try to take even small Iraqi towns, the analogy now seems prescient.
