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It has just come to light that US air war commanders carried out a broad strategy to disrupt Iraq's military command and control system way before the Iraq conflict actually began. The disclosure of the plan was part of an assessment prepared by Lt. General T. Michael Moseley (chief allied air-war commander) on the lessons of the war with Iraq. The General and a senior aide presented their assessments at an internal briefing for American and allied military officers at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada this past Thursday.
Although, there were signals that the US was trying to weaken Iraqi air defenses in expectation of a potential war with Saddam in the months leading up to the conflict, the extent and thorough planning that lay behind the effort were not really known publicly. The plan titled Southern Focus, called for strikes on the vast fiber-optic network the Iraqi regime used to broadcast military communications, as well as other attacks on key command structures, radar systems and other important military targets.
The strikes were carried out from the middle of 2002 up until March 2003, and were publicly warranted at the time as a reaction to the Iraqi government's violation of no-fly zones that the US and British forces created in Iraq after the first Gulf War. However, General Moseley stated the attacks were really designed to pave the way for the military campaign against the Saddam regime, and that targets in many instances were actually located well beyond the boundaries of these areas where the flight of Iraqi aircrafts were restricted.
Furthermore, he said one of reasons it was possible for the coalition to begin the ground war in Iraq without preceding it with a broad assortment of air strikes was that 606 bombs had already been dropped on 391 carefully selected targets under the plan. Bombings that began taking place well before the President's speech to the U.N. last September, resolution 1441, or the sending of Blix's inspection team to Iraq.
Ultimately, I think the information released in this briefing raises a serious question. Was President Bush really genuine in pursuing diplomacy through the United Nations, or was his mind made up the entire time in sticking to the military time-table and eventually going to war with Iraq? I mean, even before resolution 1441 was adopted or weapons inspectors were on the ground, the US military according to General Mosley was deliberately attacking targets in Iraq that had little or nothing to do with violations of the no-fly zones.
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It has just come to light that US air war commanders carried out a broad strategy to disrupt Iraq's military command and control system way before the Iraq conflict actually began. The disclosure of the plan was part of an assessment prepared by Lt. General T. Michael Moseley (chief allied air-war commander) on the lessons of the war with Iraq. The General and a senior aide presented their assessments at an internal briefing for American and allied military officers at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada this past Thursday.
Although, there were signals that the US was trying to weaken Iraqi air defenses in expectation of a potential war with Saddam in the months leading up to the conflict, the extent and thorough planning that lay behind the effort were not really known publicly. The plan titled Southern Focus, called for strikes on the vast fiber-optic network the Iraqi regime used to broadcast military communications, as well as other attacks on key command structures, radar systems and other important military targets.
The strikes were carried out from the middle of 2002 up until March 2003, and were publicly warranted at the time as a reaction to the Iraqi government's violation of no-fly zones that the US and British forces created in Iraq after the first Gulf War. However, General Moseley stated the attacks were really designed to pave the way for the military campaign against the Saddam regime, and that targets in many instances were actually located well beyond the boundaries of these areas where the flight of Iraqi aircrafts were restricted.
Furthermore, he said one of reasons it was possible for the coalition to begin the ground war in Iraq without preceding it with a broad assortment of air strikes was that 606 bombs had already been dropped on 391 carefully selected targets under the plan. Bombings that began taking place well before the President's speech to the U.N. last September, resolution 1441, or the sending of Blix's inspection team to Iraq.
Ultimately, I think the information released in this briefing raises a serious question. Was President Bush really genuine in pursuing diplomacy through the United Nations, or was his mind made up the entire time in sticking to the military time-table and eventually going to war with Iraq? I mean, even before resolution 1441 was adopted or weapons inspectors were on the ground, the US military according to General Mosley was deliberately attacking targets in Iraq that had little or nothing to do with violations of the no-fly zones.
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Indeed.
U.S. Attacked Iraqi Defenses Starting in 2002
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
07/20/03: (New York Times) LAS VEGAS, July 19 - American air war commanders carried out a comprehensive plan to disrupt Iraq's military command and control system before the Iraq war, according to an internal briefing on the conflict by the senior allied air war commander.
Known as Southern Focus, the plan called for attacks on the network of fiber-optic cable that Saddam Hussein's government used to transmit military communications, as well as airstrikes on key command centers, radars and other important military assets.
The strikes, which were conducted from mid-2002 into the first few months of 2003, were justified publicly at the time as a reaction to Iraqi violations of a no-flight zone that the United States and Britain established in southern Iraq. But Lt. Gen. T. Michael Moseley, the chief allied war commander, said the attacks also laid the foundations for the military campaign against the Baghdad government.
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But your concerns are unfounded V3. Saddam's mighty army and enormous arsenal of fearsome weapons of mass destruction was a threat to western civilization and needed to be stopped before he reached the gates of the White House.
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<style="Verdana">"The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception." - Mark Twain, 1917<font color="red"><font size="2" style="Verdana"><center><marquee>
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Aaaah Good old Blighty!!!
How Britain Exports Weapons of Mass Destruction
by John Pilger
July 19, 2003: The conscious nature of Tony Blair's lies and distortions over Iraq is now clear. Collectors will have their favourites. Mine is his statement in parliament on 29 January that "we do know of links between al-Qaeda and Iraq". As the intelligence agencies have repeatedly confirmed, there were no links, and Blair would have known this. Looking back, this lie sought to justify his statement, in October 2001, that there would be "a wider war" against Iraq only if there was "absolute evidence" of its complicity in 11 September. Of course, there was no evidence, and Blair must have known that, too.
On 12 March, he told parliament that France "is saying, whatever the circumstances, it will veto a resolution" to invade Iraq. Two days earlier, President Jacques Chirac had said the very opposite: that if Iraq failed to co-operate with the UN inspectors, "it will be for the Security Council and it alone to decide the right thing [and] war would become inevitable". It was this deception that disillusioned even Clare Short.
Blair's festival of lies has shocked some people: those who still believe that their elected representatives tell the truth. Perhaps they are prepared to tolerate some "fudge", but not deliberate lies, especially those, such as Blair's, that lead to the criminal killing of thousands of people.
Is he unusual? The great American muckraker I F Stone said: "All governments are liars and nothing they say should be believed." To which the great Irish muckraker Claud Cockburn added: "Never believe anything until it is officially denied."
They were referring to governments that could not be called to account for their actions, regardless of their democratic gloss. The Blair government exemplifies this corruption, which is the "democratic totalitarianism" that Orwell described. It has many institutional forms; the most enduring is the Foreign Office where, as the Scott inquiry into the arms-to-Iraq scandal was told, there is "a culture of lying".
For almost 20 years, the Foreign Office denied that the Suharto regime in Indonesia was using British-supplied Hawk fighter-bombers (and armoured cars and machine-guns) against defenceless people in illegally occupied East Timor, where a third of the population was wiped out by the Indonesian occupation. These lies were faithfully echoed by journalists. I remember the BBC's Jeremy Paxman saying that even if Blair's new "ethical" foreign policy had stopped the sale of Hawk aircraft, the presence of the aircraft in East Timor was "not proved", which was precisely the line.
The truth was the opposite; the use of Hawks in East Timor had been proved, over and again, and the Foreign Office knew this, as Robin Cook was forced to admit in 1999 when a Hawk flew low over the East Timorese capital in full view of the foreign media.
Most of the lying is conducted at a routine "low level", in letters signed by officials and junior ministers. I have filled half a filing cabinet with them.
A recent example: two New Statesman readers wrote to their MP following a reference of mine in January to Britain selling chemical weapons to Israel. Nigel Griffiths, minister at the Department of Trade and Industry, replied that the allegation was "entirely without foundation" and claimed that Britain had destroyed all its chemical weapons.
What he omitted to say was that chemical weapons technology and capability are still being manufactured in Britain and sold to some 26 countries, including Israel. These are toxic chemical precursors, or TCPs, the sale of which is banned under the Chemical Weapons Convention. British sales of TCPs are recorded in the government's Strategic Export Control Annual Report, which is a model of obscurantism. In effect, it hides them and other banned or borderline weapons technology.
This was revealed a year ago in the Glasgow Sunday Herald by the investigative journalist Neil Mackay ("Britain's chemical bazaar", 9 June 2002). The DTI had admitted to Mackay that the sales of TCPs had been authorised by the government, even though it was not known what they would be used for. As Mackay pointed out, the Chemical Weapons Convention says the export of TCPs can go ahead only when it is clear that their ultimate use is not prohibited under the convention. In other words, the British government can license TCPs only when it is 100 per cent certain that they will not be weaponised. In any case, Griffiths's officials told Mackay that promises about them being for use in agriculture could easily be broken. "It is impossible to know what happens to them in the stages that come after they leave Britain," said one official.
Professor Julian Perry Robinson of the Science and Technology Policy Research Unit at Sussex University, an expert on the Chemical Weapons Convention, said a TCP such as dimethyl methylphosphonate could easily be turned into sarin nerve gas. Sarin was the agent used in the 1995 attack on the Tokyo Underground, which killed 12 people. "Every single chemical warfare agent can be made from toxic chemical precursors," he said.
The Blair government has approved the sale of these toxic precursors to regimes that have not even signed the Chemical Weapons Convention, such as Israel, Libya, Taiwan and Syria. Moreover, it has carried on this trade while Blair has lied about the "threat" of Iraq's chemical weapons.
This is hardly surprising. Under Blair, Britain has reclaimed its place as the world's second biggest weapons dealer. Britain sells to 50 countries engaged in conflict, including both sides in the India/Pakistan conflict. Last year, when Blair was in the subcontinent playing "peacemaker", he was secretly tying up a deal with India for the same Hawk fighters that devastated East Timor. He has backed Britain's biggest ever and most corrupt arms deal - with the unstable and repressive dictatorship in Saudi Arabia, a birthplace of al-Qaeda.
Lying about these matters, about war and peace, is not new. Addressing the French public in 1767, Voltaire wrote: "Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices." It is time we denied them that power.
John Pilger is a renowned investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker. This year, Pilger was named the winner of the Sophie Prize, one of the world's most distinguished environmental and development prizes. He was also named Media Personality of the Year, at this year's EMMA awards. His latest book is The New Rulers of the World (Verso, 2002). Visit John Pilger's website at: http://www.johnpilger.com
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<style="Verdana">"The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception." - Mark Twain, 1917<font color="red"><font size="2" style="Verdana"><center><marquee>
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MisterNiceGuy wrote:
- But your concerns are unfounded V3. Saddam's mighty
- army and enormous arsenal of fearsome weapons of
- mass destruction was a threat to western
- civilization and needed to be stopped before he
- reached the gates of the White House.
You are totally right MNG. After all, I did not stock the bunker under my house with a year's supply of beer and pretzels for nothing. I just figured it was better to be safe then sorry, especially considering Saddam's Elite Republican Guard could have landed on our shores and attack America at any given time.
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A very informative article you posted there MNG. It sort of reminds of all the chemical/biological weapons we provided Saddam with in the 80's. You know the same WMD he used against the Iranians and felt necessary to gas his own Kurdish citizens with. Oh I forgot, back then he was the best kind of friend any US government could ask for, so these were not evil acts at all. At any rate, the US not only played a major role in Saddam's rise to power as the leader of the Baath regime in Iraq, they were in fact the chief supplier of WMD to that country, the same WMD it now claims Iraq has not destroyed and is still in possession of.
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V3-Dev wrote:
- A very informative article you posted there MNG. It
- sort of reminds of all the chemical/biological
- weapons we provided Saddam with in the 80's. You
- know the same WMD he used against the Iranians and
- felt necessary to gas his own Kurdish citizens with.
- Oh I forgot, back then he was the best kind of
- friend any US government could ask for, so these
- were not evil acts at all. At any rate, the US not
- only played a major role in Saddam's rise to power
- as the leader of the Baath regime in Iraq, they were
- in fact the chief supplier of WMD to that country,
- the same WMD it now claims Iraq has not destroyed
- and is still in possession of.
This thread deserves to be bumped since Hornet has not yet annointed it with his wisdom.
Yes good ol Saddam "our kind of guy" Hussein.
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<style="Verdana">"The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception." - Mark Twain, 1917<font color="red"><font size="2" style="Verdana"><center><marquee>
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But that was a different administration; more important it were different people who made those silly deals with Saddam, right now the current US admin members don't have anything to be blame of those old issues... What you said it's totally irrational. It's like saying the US has something to be blamed for, regarding the regime in Afghanistan prior 9/11... nonsense!
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Guayo wrote:
- But that was a different administration; more
- important it were different people who made those
- silly deals with Saddam, right now the current US
- admin members don't have anything to be blame of
- those old issues... What you said it's totally
- irrational. It's like saying the US has something to
- be blamed for, regarding the regime in Afghanistan
- prior 9/11... nonsense!
Actually er ahem, it was Rumsfeld who brokered the deal with Saddam back in the Eighties...
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<style="Verdana">"The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception." - Mark Twain, 1917<font color="red"><font size="2" style="Verdana"><center><marquee>
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MisterNiceGuy wrote:
- Actually er ahem, it was Rumsfeld who brokered the
- deal with Saddam back in the Eighties...
Yes, how quickly we all forget:
At any rate Guayo, I was not specifically blaming the current President (as for many of his advisors who served under former administrations that is a whole different story) for past US dealings with Saddam and the Baath Regime.
However, I was making a reference to how failed American policies have brought us to the point we are at today in Iraq. As far as Afghanistan goes, you can simply place the blame for that one on Presidents Carter, Reagan, and Bush Sr., as well as the Russians.
On the whole, my comments were simply reflective of a pattern where since the 1950's a fairly large amount of US military interventions whether they are covert or overt always seem to come back and haunt us. I mean you have Vietnam, Chile, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Guatemala, Cuba, Somalia, Lebanon, Nicaragua, Panama, Afghanistan, and the list goes on.
Regardless, of our Cold War doctrines at the time, every one of these countries we interfered with either went through some form of brutal dictatorship as a result, or are still under the rule of an existing totalitarian regime. Most are definitely much worse off then when we deemed it necessary to intercede in the name of national security to begin with that is for sure.
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