- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The
Pentagon on Friday dismissed a British newspaper report that 100 U.S. and
British warplanes conducted a major air raid against an airfield in western
Iraq that could be a prelude to war.
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- "When I read that article, I thought maybe we had
another strike that I didn't know about," Air Force Brig. Gen. John
Rosa told reporters in response to questions at a Pentagon briefing about
a report in the London Daily Telegraph.
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- "There were 12 airplanes -- (they) dropped 25 weapons,"
he said of the attack by U.S. strike jets against a command-and-control
post at a military airfield 240 miles west of Baghdad.
-
- The report gained special attention because of speculation
that President Bush is preparing an attack to oust President Saddam Hussein,
whom Washington accuses of developing weapons of mass destruction and supporting
international terrorism.
-
- Thursday's attack, the most recent in an increasing series
of exchanges, was reported by Reuters and other agencies on Thursday.
-
- Rosa was not clear on the number of British and U.S.
radar and other support aircraft which were in the air during the strike.
But he questioned that 100 aircraft reported by the Telegraph were involved.
-
- Another Pentagon official, who asked not to be identified,
said fewer than two dozen aircraft -- including those which dropped precision-guided
weapons -- were involved.
-
- Both Rosa, a senior officer on the U.S. military's Joint
Staff, and Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke suggested that the report
and other media reports in Britain had blown the raid out of proportion.
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- "People are trying to connect dots and patch things
together to come to a conclusion. Don't read more into things that you've
seen than you should," Clarke told reporters.
-
- The U.S. military said on Thursday that the attack was
the 35th of the year by U.S. and British jets against air defense targets
in "no-fly" zones in northern and southern Iraq.
-
- Iraq does not recognize the zones, set up after the 1991
Gulf War, to protect minority Kurds and Shiite Muslims from attack by Saddam's
military.
-
- While Iraqi attempts to shoot down western warplanes
and attacks against ground targets have ebbed and flowed over the years,
they have increased sharply in recent weeks with 10 air strikes in August,
eight of them in the south.
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- The Daily Telegraph said 100 U.S. and British warplanes
had taken part in the strike and that it was the largest raid in four years.
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- In its front-page report, the newspaper said the raid
appeared to be a prelude to the type of special forces operation that would
have to begin weeks before a possible American-led war.
-
- "It (the raid) was bigger than the ones we had done
in the last, probably, two weeks. But we have done strikes of that size
several times over the last 10 or 11 years," said Rosa.
-
- "And it was a strike on a critical command and control
node, part of their air defense -- their integrated air defense system
-- which is a pretty complex, sophisticated system."
-
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