THE TERRORIST WAY OF WAR (via Lucianne):

Iraqi Soldiers Say It Was Fight or Die (New York Times, 3/27/2003)

[T]he Iraqi private with a bullet wound in the back of his head suggested something unusually grim. Up and down the 200-mile stretch of desert where the American and British forces have advanced, one Iraqi prisoner after another has told captors a similar tale: that many Iraqi soldiers were fighting at gunpoint, threatened with death by tough loyalists of President Saddam Hussein.

Here, according to American doctors and Iraqi prisoners, appeared to be one confirmation. The wounded Iraqi, whose life was ebbing away outside an American field hospital, had been shot during the firefight Tuesday night with American troops. It was a small-caliber bullet, most likely from a pistol, fired at close range. Iraqi prisoners taken after the battle said their officers had been firing at them, pushing them into battle.

"The officers threatened to shoot us unless we fought," said a wounded Iraqi from his bed in the American field hospital here. "They took out their guns and pointed them and told us to fight."

If we could communicate enough with the Iraqi soldiers, we might be able to persuade them to fight their officers rather than us. Fighting us is certain death, and they greatly outnumber their officers. As Orrin suggests in TURN 'EM LOOSE, the length of this war is going to depend on how long it takes Iraqis to turn on their terror masters. Posted by Paul Jaminet at March 27, 2003 7:23 AM