In military strength and strategy, no they cannot be compared. What is most damaging to the Iraqi soldiers is not their lack of sophisticated weapons but their lack of military strategy, leadership, and cohesiveness. Air strikes can only knock out centralized targets, not dispersed organized ones. If the Iraqi soldiers were better organized they could present a greater force and do serious damage to the coalition troops--even with their small arms weapons that they carry. Remember, a rocket propelled grenade launcher can do serious damage, even to a helicopter or tank--that is why they are called anti-tank weapons. Also, snipers can do serious damage and are very hard to eliminate and use only small arms. Keep in mind that the air strikes may weaken the regime leadership command and control, but they cannot eliminate the troops. We cannot bomb weapons bunkers without good intelligence telling us the coordinates of where they are located. And in some cases, we have not bombed weapons bunkers because the stockpile was so intense that bombing it would have created a blast so large it would have damaged nearby residential neighborhoods. With a well-organized military, the fighting could go on for months with the Iraqi soldiers inflicting serious damage. Our soldiers are fighting with rocket propelled grenades, artillery, and small arms on the battlefield. That is why the coalition is trying so hard to avoid urban conflict.

Iraqi soldiers are indeed doing quite a bit of damage, but they are not organized and are presenting only isolated skirmishes which can go on for hours or even days. Their resolve tends to weaken over time and they leave the fight before they have even lost it and those left in place have eventually been killed or surrendered. Our soldiers are better trained and better equiped but soldiers on the ground do not carry high-tech weapons.

With all of the airstrikes that have transpired, in comparison to any other war in the past, they are indeed surgical. Remember the mass civilian bombings in Berlin that indiscriminately killed thousands of civilians? There is no comparison. That is not to say that each and every casualty that occurs in war is not tragic and horrific, but it is not even on a scale with past conflicts.


>>Hmmmm, light guns and very old tanks are killing our soldiers then. Even a stone can be deadly. Come on Fernando, they have a RANGE of very new highspeed weapons to extremely old not-maintained weapons depending on the unit. Our troops have already uncovered all types of weapons from the new still-in-the-box to the old and not maintained. By the way, the newest weapons they located were manufactured in France within the last year.
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>What killed most your soldiers was YOUR soldiers's friendly fire. (sorry could miss this one)
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>Come on Tracy, their weapons are something that can be compared to the HUGE US power?
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>Fernando