- While most of the world waits anxiously for a final,
formal decision from President George W. Bush as to if and when the United
States will attack Iraq to rid the country not only of its weapons of mass
destruction, but also of Saddam Hussein, what most people don,t know is
that the war has ALREADY in fact begun.
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- The opening salvo was launched by the United States
on September 5th with a decisive attack on Iraq's main radar command and
control center some 240 miles west of Baghdad. Nearly 100 U.S. and British
military aircraft took part in the operation, with 12 jets dropping precision
guided bombs that have now all but destroyed the Iraqi dictator's ability
to have advance warning of any future attacks.
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- The composition of this assault group is most revealing,
since most of the aircraft involved were NOT actual combat vehicles, but
logistical support and refueling sorties. It is safe to say that this is
a "dry run," a small preview of things to come, should Saddam
Hussein refuse to step down AND let UN inspectors re-enter his country
unconditionally.
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- It was also a good training exercise for British and
American pilots, who are expected to bear the brunt of the hostile forces
over Iraq when they return for the official invasion.
-
- In this year alone, Iraq has tried to shoot down coalition
aircraft enforcing the 'no-fly zones' more than 130 times. This latest
effort, like all previous ones, failed miserably.
-
- Pity the poor Iraqi soldiers ordered to shoot down approaching
fighters. The moment they turn on their radar dishes to track approaching
aircraft, American and British radar-hunting bombs and missiles immediately
take them out. Clearly, if you're an Iraqi trooper assigned to one of these
units, your days are numbered, it's a one way ticket. If you refuse the
order to fire, so you won't be bombed, Saddam will have you killed.
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- The war with Iraq that has begun is different this time
around. What many people are calling 'Desert Storm 2' will bear only a
casual resemblance to its predecessor of 1991. This time around, there
won't be nearly 30 countries united intent on punishing Iraq, nor will
there be a six month build up of some 500,000 troops.
-
- For Saddam Hussein, this is truly his last stand. He
has now become the George Armstrong Custer of the middle east, with the
United States playing the role of the Sioux Indians.
-
- Custer fought defiantly, if not bravely, to the bitter
end. But in the end there were too many Sioux indians.
-
- Barring a miracle, Saddam knows he is toast. Accordingly,
he has begun to disperse his weapons of mass destruction and won't hesitate
to use them when the official war begins. His most likely targets will
be Saudi Arabia, the northern Kurdish area of Iraq, whom he has brutally
victimized before; Israel, Kuwait and perhaps even Turkey.
-
- With nothing to lose, except his life, Hussein hopes
to take as many down with him as he can, or to provoke the rest of the
arab world into conflict, much like he tried so hard to do in 1991 during
the original Desert Storm invasion.
-
- While Israel has already said they will not stand by
idly this time if Hussein attacks them, there is one potentially huge and
troublesome card that the Iraqi dictator could play this time around that
was not available to him the last time he was attacked.
-
- Iraq today possesses much more quantities of dangerous
biological and chemical agents compared to when it last deployed them (but
thankfully never used them because of threatened nuclear retaliation by
the United States) in Desert Storm.
-
- The Bush administration worries that Hussein will give
some of this material to various members of al Qaeda and other terrorists
that he is harboring and training. This is a legitimate concern that cannot
be underestimated. It's a safe bet to say that Saddam has not spent the
time and money, millions of dollars, to train these fanatics on how to
use these weapons for no reason.
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- That's why the very composition of the aircraft that
participated in the September 5th attack by the U.S. and Britain is very
revealing. The sorties launched included both British and American reconnaissance
aircraft, designed to sniff out and locate as many SCUDS and other potential
weapons of mass destruction sites as possible.
-
- Now having blinded Saddam, American and British super-secret
special operations forces can now be flown in almost at will by low cruising
helicopters to suspected sites and begin to take them out in advance of
the official attack.
-
- The war with Iraq has now begun. It's only a question
now of how far and long it will be fought, and when it will formally end.
- ___
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- Kal K. Korff is a terrorism and counter-terrorism analyst
and expert who has consulted for various agencies (Federal and private)
since 1995. He is a former Senior Systems Analyst, Level III, at Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory who did work on the original Star Wars program
under Presidents Reagan and Bush Sr. and is also a former employee of The
Boeing Company and Apple Computer. An internationally-known journalist,
he was the first person to break open the story of how Saudi al Qaeda terrorist
Mohamad Atta met secretly with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague shortly
before the attacks of September 11th. Korff writes a newspaper column called
"Kal,s Korner for The Prague Post and has appeared on such television
programs as CNN's Larry King Live! and on various TV networks such as ABC,
NBC, Fox, and The Discovery Channel. The author of five books, including
the critically-acclaimed Spaceships of the Pleiades: The Billy Meier Story
(Prometheus Books, 1995) and the best-selling The Roswell UFO Crash: What
They Don't Want You to Know (Dell/Random House, 2000). His upcoming book
is titled The SECRET Wars Against Terrorism and will be published in the
Spring of 2003.
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