Yonatan Zunger’s Blog

Well, it looks like my earlier post may have been right after all. Now the NY Times is reporting that we have, indeed, been carrying out bombing raids in Iraq lately. Although they don’t refer specifically to the figure of 100 aircraft, it seems like the rumors in the mideast may be fairly close to the truth.

(For those of you who didn’t hear about it – there’s been a rumor going around the mideast lately, which made the front page of Israel’s largest newspaper as well as military intelligence rumor-mills like debka, that on 6 Sep there was a joint US/UK strike on Iraq involving about 100 aircraft, which took out antiaircraft radar and guns, missile sites and airfields in the western part of Iraq. This was interpreted as opening a path for a special-forces-driven invasion with air support coming in from Turkey; the AA being cleared out lets our bombers through, and taking out missile sites in the west reduces the odds of Iraq being able to hit Israeli targets with Scuds. The airfields are because those were his aircraft most capable of carrying nonconventional weapons.)

Other rel news – Iraq allows weapons inspectors, Saudis to allow US to use bases for war.

After reading a bit more of the rumor mill about the purported joint American/British strikes on Iraq in the past few days, two thoughts come to mind.

First, these rumors are fairly believable. The scale of the strikes is something which reads like an escalation of the usual defense of the no-fly zones, which has always included hitting anti-aircraft targets, only this time the targetting was chosen as prep for an invasion. Estimate probability that there has been some escalation as about 98%; multiple reliable sources (inc. CNN) say that. Probability that the attacks were as extensive as rumor had it (100 planes and so on) is maybe 70%.

Second, if these rumors are true, it seems to be militarily well-thought-out. (Surprisingly…) The target list seems to have been not just AA but missile bases and air bases which have planes capable of deploying bio and chemical weapons, all in western Iraq. Because of the fairly short range of their Scuds, this could seriously hamper their ability to fire on Jordanian, Israeli and Turkish targets — the things which Hussein could use as threats most effectively to hold off Americans — as well as being pretty much just the right cover both for special forces troops and for air support. Furthermore, the timing — relative to forcing Hussein to put his resources into war preparation and not giving him time to actually do so — is right as well. Since the timing is also so right with respect to the upcoming elections, I’m really suspicious that this was planned very carefully for this exact effect, but that’s another issue entirely.

Very interesting…

OK, enough random political analysis for now.