Posted on 04/20/2002 10:22:00 AM PDT by galt-jw
Report: U.S. has completed 'basics' of plan to attack Iraq
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM Friday, April 19, 2002 WASHINGTON — The U.S. military has completed the framework for a military campaign against Iraq, defense sources say.
"U.S. Central Command already has the basics of a major campaign put together," a report by the Washington-based Center for Defense Information said. "Component commanders of each service are now at their forward headquarters in the region with more than 1,000 war planners, logistics experts and support specialists. This operations plan is being refined regularly and the target list is being validated and updated daily."
Defense sources said that amid an intense debate within the Bush administration the U.S. Central Command has established a framework to conduct major military operations against Iraq from neighboring Kuwait and other areas of the Persian Gulf, according to Middle East Newsline. The center said in its report that the United States will probably launch an offensive against Iraq in the spring of 2003. The earliest the U.S. military would be ready for an attack would be the "mid-fall of 2002."
The sources said the opposition by Arab countries to a U.S. military campaign would require more time for any operation. They said the Arab and Islamic opposition appears to have delayed plans to begin operations by the end of the summer.
The report — authored by [Ret.] Rear Adm. Stephen Baker, former chief of staff for naval forces in U.S. Central Command in Bahrain, and research analyst Michael Donovan — said some of the requirements of a military operation would include the deployment of up to 100,000 U.S. troops and 25,000 support personnel in Turkey and Gulf Cooperation Council countries.
Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Turkey would be the most likely staging grounds for an offensive, the chief aim of which would be to locate and destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
"The general expectation among U.S. military planners — but not a given — is that Iraqi air defenses, command and control facilities, the Iraqi army and Republican Guard would be rapidly overwhelmed and defeated swiftly," the report said. "The threat of biological or chemical weapons targeting Israel, neighboring countries, or U.S. troops will be a major concern. Handling this threat will be one of the hardest, most challenging missions in Iraq."
This is not one of those loose lips senarios. You can't very well hide movement in a treeless desert. The whole Middle East knows what's going down and the U.S. population is kept in the dark for obvious reasons. It doesn't take a CIA analyst to figure out what is going on. Spring time is the time to hit them, demand for oil will be down and conditions perfect for Air Strikes to begin.
CDI might be a mouthpiece for the US Military to spread the words they can't say directly. This could be serious information or deliberate misinformation.
Which is exactly what Debka is with respect to the IDF.
DEATH TO WAHHABISM!
Ariel Sharon must be tried for war crimes in the Hague for the exact same alledged crime as Milosovik. the only difference between what Sharon and Milosovik did is that at least Milosivik did it in his own country. The IDF in massacreing old people, women and children in Jenin had envaded Palistine.Good for the Goose!
The US military can destroy them in much less than 2 months. The trick is winning the peace. The last time round we bombed them for 6 months and then destroyed the world's 4th largest army in 100 hours (slightly over 4 days). We didn't finish the job. In fact, we are still in Saudi playing games with Saddam.
This time we need to make Iraq cease to exist. The Kurds of Iran, Iraq, and Syria would become independent Kurdistan. Syria and Iran would receive the Arab Sunni and Arab Shii land respectively in exchange for the creation of Kurdistan.
Ethnic majority Kurd areas. Orange color represents oil fields.
Arab Shii, Arab Sunni, and Kurd Sunni divisions in Iraq.
As in much of the third world, many of the national boundaries of the Middle East and North Africa are artificial creations of the colonial era.
Too late, but it's not part of my job description to decide. Let us hope those in charge are successful. The lives of millions are at stake.
However, we bombed far more Taliban/al Qaeda than "rocks".
The only reason we didn't kill Saddam durng the Gulf war was because we listened to our "allies". We certainly tried hard enough to ACCIDENTALLY drop a bomb on Saddam, but he had this nasty habit of dividing up his family members and putting them in all of his palaces to use as human shields. A fact we learned to our horror and sorrow.
Hopefully, we've learned from our mistakes.
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