- The U.S. military, citing repeated Iraqi attempts to
shoot down U.S. and British warplanes, said American jets attacked a radar
site in northern Iraq and an air defense command facility in southern Iraq.
-
- Hundreds of such tit-for-tat exchanges have occurred
since the 1991 Gulf War, but they have increased sharply in recent months
as speculation has grown that President Bush will order the U.S. military
to invade Iraq and remove Saddam, who Washington accuses of developing
weapons of mass destruction.
-
- According to the Pentagon, Tuesday's raids against air
defenses in the two zones were the sixth and seventh in just over a week
with the total number reaching 32 this year.
-
- In a tough speech on Monday, Cheney called for a liberated
Iraq, saying that now, not later, is the time for a pre-emptive strike
against Saddam. He noted that many U.S. allies, former senior U.S. officials
and even congressional leaders in his own Republican Party were cautioning
against military action now.
-
- "Some concede that Saddam is evil, power-hungry
and a menace, but that until he crosses the threshold of actually possessing
nuclear weapons we should rule out any pre-emptive action," Cheney
told a veterans group in Nashville, Tennessee.
-
- "That logic seems to me to be deeply flawed. The
argument comes down to this: Yes, Saddam is as dangerous as we say he is,
we just need to let him get stronger before we do anything about it,"
he said. "Yet if we did wait until that moment, Saddam would simply
be emboldened and it would become even harder for us to gather friends
and allies to oppose him."
-
- PATROLS CONDUCTED SINCE GULF WAR
-
- U.S. and British aircraft police no-fly zones in northern
and southern Iraq set up after the Gulf War. Baghdad does not recognize
the zones, which were imposed to protect a Kurdish enclave in the north
and Shi'ite Muslims in the south from possible attacks by Iraqi forces.
-
- U.S. military officials said Western warplanes left the
areas of Tuesday's attacks safely and that damage was being assessed.
-
- The U.S. European Command in Germany, responsible for
military operations in northern Iraq, said jets attacked a radar site near
Mosul.
-
- The U.S. Central Command, which heads military operations
in the Gulf, said warplanes used precision-guided weapons to strike an
air defense command and control facility near An Nukhayb in the southern
no-fly zone at about 2:30 a.m. EDT.
-
- Earlier Iraq said U.S. and British warplanes had attacked
civilian targets in the south of the country on Monday. But U.S. and British
officials said they were unaware of any attacks on Monday, although raids
were conducted on targets in the southern zone on Sunday.
-
- Iraq said on Sunday eight people were killed and nine
wounded when Western coalition planes bombed targets in Basra province,
340 miles south of Baghdad.
-
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