" The total losses of Iraqi army since the beginning of the war have not exceeded 5-8% of their defensive potential."

Well, yes. Maybe. Reading all this stuff makes you wonder how the Americans can have advanced so far by losing so many battles.

The Americans have advanced a long way into Iraq, but they have only taken Um Qasar and Al-Nasirya. All other towns and cities have been circled around.

The Iraqi strategy has been to retreat to the cities and try to draw axis forces into street fighting.

If you're looking at these reports as some kind of scoreboard for how the war is going, you really are missing the point. The real revelation is how these reports differ from BBC, CNN et al. So far, mainstream media have been confirming the russian reports, albeit with a delay.

In any case, 5-8% losses are pretty bloody high. 5-8% losses to the axis troops would be in the region of 10 to 20 thousand.

The level of detail in these Russian reports is eye opening ! I'm coming to you from the States, California to be exact. Nothing in broadcast media is reporting resembles remotely anything in these reports. Your man on the ground Robert Fisk's reporting is closer to the Russians than what's coming out of CNN which leads me to believe Centcom is adding much more Propaganda Help than Baghdad.

Well, you get the feeling that the Iraqis are waiting for the sandstorms to come. If, or rather, when they do, the main strength of the "coalition", i.e. the air force becomes inoperative, and then it's just the ground force, man to man, tank to tank, etc., with the Iraqis on their own terrain, and highly motivated to fight for their country. You get the feeling that should the weather get nasty before the coalition breaks the Iraqi spirit, all hell is going to break out.

I feel sorry for those men out there fighting for Bush, Sharon, and Exxon.

the women too