Dear killer Clown:
May I borrow what you wrote, it's good. The people who want war, indeed, have gotten it and may God help us all.: I will stay awake and smell and drink my coffee with a clear concience Mr.
You,however, must now wake up and smell the stench of burning flesh.
Yep, and when I posted info about it, the liars knowing full well Bush's intentions posted their lies to keep people from knowing the truth:
:Karen Lawrence who wrote (76749)
From: Nadine Carroll Sunday, Feb 23, 2003 12:06 PM
View Replies (2) | Respond to of 83336
I'm worried about Bush will make good on his threat to bomb Baghdad into oblivion
Bush has never made any such threat. Don't be absurd.
Yeah, right. THat piece of .....work
May your God Forgive you.
Anyway, I briefly caught the History/Discovery CBS something about how the Pentagon is trying not to hit ancient artifacts in Baghdad...civilians are expendable in this precision non-stop bombing. So, if it's so precise why do they have to use 3,000 bombs.
Washington -- When war against Iraq finally begins, as seems certain in the next few days, the Pentagon's plan is to hit Saddam Hussein's outgunned forces with powerful blows from every direction and get the war over within a few days.
The Defense Department has made little secret of its vision for the war's opening. The plan calls for an unprecedented 3,000 air strikes by bombers and missiles and possibly new weapons such as high-energy microwave bombs that short out power lines without destroying them.
Key targets in a country roughly the size of California would include what's left of Iraq's air force and air defenses, Scud missiles, command and communications facilities and Hussein's palaces. The bombs would also seek to destroy or disorient any Iraqi forces that Hussein sends into the open or to dug-in forward positions along the Kuwaiti or Saudi Arabian borders.
The military believes two or three days of such heavy bombing should stun Iraqi forces, which, except for a few elite units of Hussein's Republican Guard and his clansmen from the city of Tikrit, are thought to be poorly fed and trained and consist mainly of conscripts who just want to go home. These troops already have been subjected to U.S. psychological warfare, including air-dropped leaflets that encourage them not to resist when U.S. and British forces arrive.
In fact, the BBC reported Monday, a small contingent of bedraggled Iraqi soldiers -- their worn-out shoes held together with duct tape -- already tried to surrender to British marines. The marines fed them, and sent the Iraqis on their way, for now.
It isn't clear yet whether the ground war will start simultaneously with the air war or wait for a large number of Iraqi targets to be destroyed. But U. S. and British forces in Kuwait have left their bases and are waiting in forward staging areas to attack.
"It would be my guess that this war under these conditions would basically be decided in less than a week," said Anthony Cordesman, military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Unforeseen circumstances, however, may make Cordesman's optimism seem misplaced once the battle begins. Variables from the weather to Hussein's potential use of chemical weapons could alter the U.S. military's timetable.
But, if all goes as planners envision, U.S. and British forces will try to to seize the southern Iraqi city of Basra and its surrounding oil fields within hours and advance less than 300 miles north toward Baghdad. Because Turkey has so far refused to allow any of the 235,000 U.S. or 45,000 British forces or more than 1,000 combat planes and helicopters to use its territory, ground assaults from the north will be limited at the outset.
After the first day or two of the ground war, airborne forces from the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions will be deployed in a leap-frog fashion further north along the road to Baghdad. The first target for U.S. ground forces in the north will probably be the oil fields around Kirkut and Mosul, cities near the Kurdish-controlled part of northern Iraq.
ROLLING START TO THE WAR
The Pentagon plans a so-called rolling start to the war because Turkey's refusal to allow troops has left much of the equipment for the Army's 4th Infantry Division aboard ships in the Mediterranean Sea. The Navy has started to move the freighters carrying the equipment through the Suez Canal to the Red Sea so the gear can be unloaded after reaching the Persian Gulf.
The division's soldiers, however, largely remain at Fort Hood in Texas, and will be airlifted to the region over the next several days.
While some commanders would prefer to have all the U.S. forces in place before starting the war, Pentagon planners have decided to go ahead, in part because the highly mechanized, airborne dominance of the forces means northern Iraq isn't out of the reach of units that will attack from the south.
Also, it was reported Monday from Ankara that Turkey's parliament may reconsider its refusal to allow U.S. forces on its land.
The plans for an attack from the south forecast reaching Baghdad's outer defenses within three or four days, when the war would enter its climactic phase, which could drag on for several more days if Hussein mounts a house-to- house urban defense.
The outlines of the powerful U.S. attack are clear, but Hussein's plan for defending against such an assault remains shadowy. Recent unverified reports suggest he has dispersed forces toward the southern front, which would place them in peril of being quickly destroyed, that he has opened the tap on oil pipelines to try to set fire to vast swaths of his country and that he might blow up dams to flood parts of the country.
The main speculation centers on whether Hussein will use chemical or biological weapons.
A chemical attack is considered much more likely than a biological attack, mainly because the American and British forces have been vaccinated against anthrax and smallpox, the two main agents reportedly in Hussein's arsenal.
Attacks by such chemical weapons as sarin, VX nerve gas or mustard gas are thought more likely. The invaders are equipped with detection equipment for such gases and have been trained to use chemical weapons suits.
With his back to the wall, "Saddam Hussein would be incredibly stupid if he didn't use them," said Patrick Garrett, an analyst at Globalsecurity.org. "He has only a few tricks or cards to use and chemical weapons are one of them."
Hussein could delay or frighten his enemy by using such weapons, which would most likely be delivered by artillery shells, but they are unlikely to stop the invasion.
"He still has a limited capability, but his weapons aren't highly lethal," said Cordesman. However, he said that if Hussein uses chemical weapons, there will be some American casualties. |
