Since war now appears inevitable, we can only hope that it’s short and relatively bloodless, and hence must hope that the US military planners have got it right. The only way this can be true, it seems to me, is if the much-leaked “shock and awe” strategy, involving the largest bombardment in history, directed in Baghdad in the opening days of war, turns out to be one of those pieces of misinformation of which military planners are so fond. Such a strategy must surely cause massive casualties, both among civilians and among the Iraqi conscripts who are just as much victims of Saddam as anybody else.

Of course, if this strategy is adopted, we’ll probably never know. Saddam’s government will claim massive civilian casualties, the US will deny it, and when they reach Baghdad they’ll conduct an inquiry which will report that Saddam was lying. Unless there’s a repeat of the incident last time, when hundreds of people were killed in an air-raid shelter, it will be impossible to determine who, if anyone, was telling the truth.

But regardless of the number of casualties, the ‘shock and awe’ approach seems guaranteed to lead to disaster in the long run. The idea that, entering Baghdad after a bombardment of this kind, the US (or perhaps Anglo Alliance would be a better term) troops will be greeted as liberators seems nonsensical to me. I’m not saying they can’t arrange crowds with flowers – Saddam has no trouble doing this and neither will an occupying army – but the chance of any real popular support will be lost on the first day.