Although air strikes and the rapid coalition advance demoralized segments of the Iraqi military, widespread capitulations did not occur.
This is odd given that the Iraqi army simply dissolved during the invasion despite claims that we mistakenly "disbanded" the army after the war.
Perhaps this lack of capitulation is referring to surrenders of entire units. Which did not happen and which at the time did surprise me given the 1991 experience.
But I thought that was exactly our plan to avoid the need to guard and feed enemy POWs as we lunged for Baghdad. That is, we didn't want to be slowed down by taking prisoners. We simply wanted the Iraqi troops to go home and get our of our way.
I can't find a post directly on that, but it was something I learned after the invasion so it might be in my dead Yahoo Geocities site and thus beyond searching. I did say in this 2007 post, "Recall that we urged the Iraqi army to go home during the war so we wouldn't be tied down taking their surrender." So I've long thought this.
But perhaps I'll run across this issue again as I read further. Already I've noticed that the Army said it expected no large Iraqi units to be able to maneuver and fight yet later read that the lack of massed tank battles during the invasion was a surprise.
UPDATE: And reflecting a little more, it is surprising to read that the Army expected mass tank battles. Recall that the Army led with a single heavy division (3rd Infantry Division) out of Kuwait.
Before the war--and even after it started--I full expected to see another heavy division and an armored cavalry regiment come out of Jordan to link up with 3rd ID to form a full corps. We did not have that full heavy corps. How many tanks did the Army expect to face with just a single heavy division?
Note that the activity in Jordan that I noted at the time reflected special forces and separate National Guard infantry battalions (I don't remember how many) that then operated in western Iraq during the invasion.
