Russian Expert: USA to Find Itself in a Difficult Political Situation in Iraq - 28 March, 2003

In Iraq, the USA will find itself in a difficult political situation, said director of the Institute of the US and Canadian Studies Sergei Rogov at a press conference in Moscow on Friday.

According to him, "it is already clear that the Americans' short victorious war ambition has failed". The reason is that "the people of Iraq do not recognise Americans as liberators, and Iraqi cities are preparing a kind of intifada for them", he believes. Also, the USA committed serious mistakes when planning the operation, Rogov said. Thus, they mistakenly staked upon the technology and overestimated the role of precision weapons, he explained. "These weapons are of no help in town", the expert added.

At the same time, he believes the forces of the US military machine are definitely "very significant". In this connection, he has no doubts that the USA will achieve "a military victory". "Yet this will not be a political victory," Rogov pointed out.

He recalled that with the current intensity of precision weapons' use, Americans could soon run out of them. In a week of military action, the USA used 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles and about 4,000 high accuracy bombs, according to Rogov's information. The US total arsenal of these bombs numbers 20,000.

"Meanwhile, prospects of a humanitarian catastrophe are quite real," the expert concluded.