Air and ground double whammy to be unleashed
By Thomas Ricks in Washington
March 3 2003
The Bush Administration's plan for an assault on Iraq is essentially in place, based on an unusual approach that envisages simultaneous air and ground operations, according to several people familiar with the strategy.
General Tommy Franks, the chief of United States military operations in the Middle East, reviewed the plan with his army, navy, air force and special operations commanders in Qatar last week.
The broad outlines of the war plan are now apparent.
It aims to combine the armoured fist of the tank-heavy 1991 Persian Gulf War with the speed of the overnight 1989 US takeover of Panama and the precision bombing of the 2001 US campaign in Afghanistan.
US and British warplanes, ostensibly enforcing the flight exclusion zones in northern and southern Iraq, have increased the number and intensity of airstrikes, and recently expanded their list of targets to include Iraqi surface-to-surface missiles.
They were attacked, defence officials said, not because they were in the "no-fly" zones and threatened US aircraft, but because they were in range of US troops mustering just over the border in Kuwait.
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