by The Observer Reporting Team
. . . 'They can enter the cities, but they cannot stay,' he said. 'They
will destroy much in Iraq. But we are preparing thousands of people
as suicide bombers like the Palestinians. Many Iraqis will be
willing to to kill Americans and sacrifice themselves.'
He also predicted that 'for the first two or three days the
Americans will feel they are in control. But we have a lot of
experience in this. The Americans taught us a lot in 1991 and we
fought Iran for eight years.'
Speaking of the Iraqi elite's plan to go into hiding, he added: 'The
US thinks it will come and find a general surrounded by bodyguards
but we are not stupid. We can work alone or in small groups like Che
Guevara or Osama bin Laden. There are hundreds, even thousands of
places to hide in Iraq.' . . .
If they had read more carefully the words of senior Iraqi officials,
they might have had a clue. For Iraqi tactics were declared before
the event by no less a figure than Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz
in an interview with the International Institute of Strategic
Studies. 'People say to me you are not the Vietnamese, you have no
jungles and swamps to hide in,' he said then. 'I reply, "Let our
cities be our swamps and our buildings be our jungles".'. . .
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