He’s having a go at Blair here but there’s some shocking stuff in this article; and seeing as how it’s first-hand eyewitness accounts all the more disturbing. A long read but well worth it:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12582143&method=full&siteid=50143
That is just way too much Pilger for one sitting,besides i just ate lunch.But really judge what would you expect from the Mirror and Pilger they hate Blair and Bush and co.It is sort of like asking Sharon what his opinion of suicide bombers is.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Braveheart: *
That is just way too much Pilger for one sitting,besides i just ate lunch.But really judge what would you expect from the Mirror and Pilger they hate Blair and Bush and co.It is sort of like asking Sharon what his opinion of suicide bombers is.
[/QUOTE]
Not exactly. As a Brit can you deny the following FACTS that Pilger has stated in his article?:-
1 ) Using the archaic "royal prerogative" he did not consult parliament or the people when he dispatched 35,000 troops and ships and aircraft to the Gulf; he consulted a foreign power, the Washington regime.
2) When you next hear Blair or Straw or Bush talk about "bringing democracy to the people of Iraq", remember that it was the CIA that installed the Ba'ath Party in Baghdad from which emerged Saddam Hussein.
3) When you next hear Blair and Bush talking about a "smoking gun" in Iraq, ask why the US government last December confiscated the 12,000 pages of Iraq's weapons declaration, saying they contained "sensitive information" which needed "a little editing".
4) Waves of B52 bombers will be used in the attack on Iraq. In Vietnam, where more than a million people were killed in the American invasion of the 1960s...
5) SOME years later I often came upon terribly deformed Vietnamese children in villages where American aircraft had sprayed a herbicide called Agent Orange. It was banned in the United States, not surprisingly for it contained Dioxin, the deadliest known poison. This terrible chemical weapon, which the cliche-mongers would now call a weapon of mass destruction, was dumped on almost half of South Vietnam.
6) More than 300 tons of depleted uranium, another weapon of mass destruction, were fired by American aircraft and tanks and possibly by the British.
And more and more. All FACTS, not mere opinions...
Thanks for posting, JM. A very interesting read.
The “shock and awe” part that Pilger refers to, is the following - note the almost cavalier use of technology, as though the Pentagon officials being interviewed are discussing a video game, not a war.
“There will not be a safe place in Baghdad,” said one Pentagon official who has been briefed on the plan. “The sheer size of this has never been seen before, never been contemplated before,” the official said.
…] “We want them to quit. We want them not to fight,” says Harlan Ullman, one of the authors of the Shock and Awe concept which relies on large numbers of precision guided weapons. “So that you have this simultaneous effect, rather like the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, not taking days or weeks but in minutes,” says Ullman.
…] “You’re sitting in Baghdad and all of a sudden you’re the general and 30 of your division headquarters have been wiped out. You also take the city down. By that I mean you get rid of their power, water. In 2,3,4,5 days they are physically, emotionally and psychologically exhausted,” Ullman tells Martin.
Iraq Faces Massive U.S. Missile Barrage, CBS News
Nadia: Thanks for the link. Imagine that. A battle plan designed to "shock and awe" the enemy and not to kill. The article even states that the battle plan is to avoid destroying Iraqi regular army divisions.
"This time, the target is not the Iraqi army but the Iraqi leadership, and the battle plan is designed to bypass Iraqi divisions whenever possible. "
If this battle plan is used, we should all hope for its success. Although I am not a military strategist, I sort of think like the senior official who called it a "bunch of bull."
A battle plan designed to "shock and awe" the enemy and not to kill.
MyVoice, Did we just read the same article?
It specifically states that the end result will be physical, emotional, and psychological exhaustion. Deliberate targeting of Iraq's water and power infrastructures, just as occurred during the '91 'Gulf War'. We are not talking about Saddam's palaces here, we are talking about a city with genuine, living civilians. Including children. Do you believe this to be legal? "Taking a city down" - do you believe this particular act to be justifiable under any grounds? God Forbid, replace Baghdad with New York - now is it justified?
Read Karen Armstrong's writings regarding Islam - a cardinal principle for situations of conflict: civilians may never be targeted. Please educate me as to why we should ever hope for the success of this "battle plan"?
BTW, it may be a load of bull but the same official you quoted also "confirmed it is the concept on which the war plan is based."
[QUOTE]
Originally posted by Nadia_H: *
**A battle plan designed to "shock and awe" the enemy and not to kill.*
MyVoice, Did we just read the same article?
It specifically states that the end result will be physical, emotional, and psychological exhaustion. Deliberate targeting of Iraq's water and power infrastructures, just as occurred during the '91 'Gulf War'. We are not talking about Saddam's palaces here, we are talking about a city with genuine, living civilians. Including children. Do you believe this to be legal? "Taking a city down" - do you believe this particular act to be justifiable under any grounds? God Forbid, replace Baghdad with New York - now is it justified?
Read Karen Armstrong's writings regarding Islam - a cardinal principle for situations of conflict: civilians may never be targeted. Please educate me as to why we should ever hope for the success of this "battle plan"?
[/QUOTE]
I think I just read it closer than you did. Driving troops to "physical, emotional and psychological exhaustion" is different than killing them, RIGHT????
And yes, I think that disrupting power and water supplies for a few days (defined as 2 to 5 under the battle plan) so that all command and control facilities are cut off and under stress is imminently justifiable. Seems a lot more humane than carpet bombing, fire bombing, house to house street fighting and a lot of other possibilities don't you think? First one to get thirsty loses.
And while you're reading Karen Armstrong's writings regarding Islam and the prohibitions against targeting civilians, I'll watch re-runs of the planes slamming into the twin towers, Israelis picking up body parts of women and children in the streets of Tel Aviv, and the Mullahs issuing fatwahs about the religious duty of Muslims to kill Americans and Jews wherever and whenever they can. If all I had to worry about was a few al-qaeda operatives shutting off power and water to my house for a few days, I'd be a happy camper.
Driving troops to "physical, emotional and psychological exhaustion" is different than killing them, RIGHT????
i just love the insertion of the word "troops" there. Who lives in Baghdad, MyVoice? Only soldiers? Only troops? Only generals? What about civilians? 22 million in the entire country. Do you justfiy driving civilian children into "physical, emotional and psychological exhaustion"? Is that truly what Bush wants a country such as the US to represent - are these the values that he wants his country to uphold? Killing children?
And yes, I think that disrupting power and water supplies for a few days (defined as 2 to 5 under the battle plan) so that all command and control facilities are cut off and under stress is imminently justifiable. Seems a lot more humane than carpet bombing, fire bombing, house to house street fighting and a lot of other possibilities don't you think? First one to get thirsty loses.
i cannot believe what i am reading. This is not a video game we are talking about, for goodness' sake - these are children, these are women. How can you talk so cavalierly about the destruction of an entire society? "Disrupting power and water supplies" - that means contaminated water as a result of the targeting of water salination plants; chlorine, used to disinfect water, has regularly been one of the banned items by the Security Council. How are the civilians supposed to drink water? For God's sake - they are not Americans but they're human beings first and foremost aren't they.
*CBS) They're calling it "A-Day," A as in airstrikes so devastating they would leave Saddam's soldiers unable or unwilling to fight.
If the Pentagon sticks to its current war plan, one day in March the Air Force and Navy will launch between 300 and 400 cruise missiles at targets in Iraq. As CBS News Correspondent David Martin reports, this is more than number that were launched during the entire 40 days of the first Gulf War.
On the second day, the plan calls for launching another 300 to 400 cruise missiles. *
*"There will not be a safe place in Baghdad," said one Pentagon official who has been briefed on the plan. *
===========================================
800 cruise missiles rained down on one city hardly sounds like it's going to be casualty free except maybe when it's relayed back in the carefully controlled war-briefings which will be fed to the press.
Anyway, I would recommend reading Pilger's original article because here we are talking about a reporter who has reported first-hand from the scene of the action rather than rely on military briefings.
Nadia,
How many bombs and missles hit Baghdad in the 1991 Gulf War?
[QUOTE]
Originally posted by Nadia_H: *
**Driving troops to "physical, emotional and psychological exhaustion" is different than killing them, RIGHT????*
i just love the insertion of the word "troops" there. Who lives in Baghdad, MyVoice? Only soldiers? Only troops? Only generals? What about civilians? 22 million in the entire country. Do you justfiy driving civilian children into "physical, emotional and psychological exhaustion"? Is that truly what Bush wants a country such as the US to represent - are these the values that he wants his country to uphold? Killing children?
And yes, I think that disrupting power and water supplies for a few days (defined as 2 to 5 under the battle plan) so that all command and control facilities are cut off and under stress is imminently justifiable. Seems a lot more humane than carpet bombing, fire bombing, house to house street fighting and a lot of other possibilities don't you think? First one to get thirsty loses.
i cannot believe what i am reading. This is not a video game we are talking about, for goodness' sake - these are children, these are women. How can you talk so cavalierly about the destruction of an entire society? "Disrupting power and water supplies" - that means contaminated water as a result of the targeting of water salination plants; chlorine, used to disinfect water, has regularly been one of the banned items by the Security Council. How are the civilians supposed to drink water? For God's sake - they are not Americans but they're human beings first and foremost aren't they.
[/QUOTE]
Nadia:
The battle plan involves driving troops to "physical, emotional and psychological exhaustion". Your average Joe Iraqi is not worried about maintaining communication with the military command and control centers. Nor is the average Iraqi concerned about how the order of battle is going. The average Iraqi isn't wondering when and how he is supposed to jump out of his bunker to attack American troops and/or avoid the precision guided bombs picking off one military installation after another. The average Iraqi isn't worried that his little group of soldiers might just be the last little group of soldiers expected to confront the forces of the great satan. To the contrary, the average Iraqi will be huddled up in the safest place he can find hoping that Saddam's end will come quickly and that maybe, just maybe, he will be able to live in a society with a benevelent government where he can think, talk, and live freely from the terror and torture imposed upon him by Saddam and his gang of thugs. The range of emotions of and the psychological effect upon Iraqi citizens is quite different than those of the Iraqi military.
If you think IRaqi's living in Bagdad not having power and running water delivered to their homes for 2 to 5 days is worse than how they're living now, I'd say you're wrong. Your hue and cry sounds an awful lot like the arguments about the millions of Afghan civilian refugees who would starve and die in the cold of winter during the US military campaign in Afghanistan. It didn't happen there and you're not going to see millions of Iraqis in Bagdad die of thirst because of our military action in Iraq. Give it a rest.
As I have said before, if you truly believe sanctions are killing so many Iraqis now and if you cared about the quality of life of Iraqis and lessening the number of deaths annually, you'd be in favor of US military action and pray for a swift end to Saddam and the battle.
i am not certain at the moment, OG. Let me check that and then give you an accurate answer.
(errrrm while we are on the subject - 200,000 Iraqis were killed during the first ‘Gulf War’. Those are civilians, not soldiers. Source: War by numbers, The Guardian).
Nadia,
Absolutely not. Those are not Civilians, and as far as I know, no one has truely made an estimate of Iraqi soldier casualties.
Here is what Human Rights Watch says:
"Middle East Watch believes that the truth about civilian casualties may lie somewhere between the high-end statistics provided by Iraqi government officials in February and the modest figures noted by Baghdad doctors after the war ended. Clearly, Baghdad’s civilian population was not as hard-hit during the air war as the residents of cities and towns in other parts of the country, especially Basra and other areas of southern Iraq, so the dead and injured in Iraq’s largest city are not necessarily indicative of the civilian toll nationwide. Testimony collected at random by Middle East Watch from former residents of Iraq reveals numerous allied attacks in which scores of civilians were killed. In each of six incidents described in this report, the civilian death toll was put at 100 or more.
As noted, these accounts provide only a partial view, not a comprehensive survey, of the civilian casualties during the air war. Middle East Watch concludes that the number of Iraqi civilians killed as a direct result of injury from allied bombs and missiles will ultimately be calculated in the thousands, not the hundreds. At the same time, we are reasonably confident that the total number of civilians killed directly by allied attacks did not exceed several thousand, with an upper limit of perhaps between 2,500 and 3,000 Iraqi dead. These numbers, we note, do not include the substantially larger number of deaths that can be attributed to malnutrition, disease and lack of medical care caused by a combination of the U.N.-mandated embargo and the allies’ destruction of Iraq’s electrical system, with its severe secondary effects (see Chapter Four)."
OG, the Guardian explicitly states: "200,000 Iraqis killed in the first Gulf war in 1990-91."
At any rate, your HRW source itself states: "...Baghdad's civilian population was not as hard-hit during the air war as the residents of cities and towns in other parts of the country, especially Basra and other areas of southern Iraq, so the dead and injured in Iraq's largest city are not necessarily indicative of the civilian toll nationwide. ...] we are reasonably confident that the total number of civilians killed directly by allied attacks did not exceed several thousand, with an upper limit of perhaps between 2,500 and 3,000 Iraqi dead. These numbers, we note, do not include the substantially larger number of deaths that can be attributed to malnutrition, disease and lack of medical care caused by a combination of the U.N.-mandated embargo and the allies' destruction of Iraq's electrical system, with its severe secondary effects...
i know you will be extremely frustrated to read this, but IMO, those so-called "secondary" deaths comprise the primary responsibility of the US-led coalition. In no Geneva Convention protocol does it permit the targeting of electrical (and water infrastructures) - which is precisely what occurred during the 'Gulf War', leading to the massively high civilian death toll.
This is indeed where we differ. I agree with you that the way the sanctions were implemeted the Iraqi people suffered. However I place the existence of the sanctions completely and totally at the feet of Saddam. Had he stepped down with his henchmen the sanctions would have been over in an instant. He is the only man on the face of the earth who by himself could have ended the suffering of the Iraqi people. What's more, he has set the standard for every other evil tyrant that sanctions do not work, as long as you are heartless enough to repress your people.
We will always have a different view, so we ought to let this one pass for now.
The question that had been posed is exactly how many bombs fell on Baghdad.
Just did a very haphazard search for right now, OG:
"Only 244 laser-guided bombs and 88 cruise missiles hit Iraq, out of a total of some 250,000 bombs dropped during the war. But while the venerable B-52 dropped tons of old-fashioned explosives on troop concentrations in northern and southern Iraq, the strikes on Baghdad were relatively few and tightly targeted. The rise of smart weapons led to a new military theory - “surgical strikes.”
…] “Of the 85,000 tons of bombs used in the Gulf War, only 8,000 tons (less than 10 percent) were PGMs [precision-guided munitions], yet they accounted for 75 percent of the damage.”" [According to General Buster C. Glosson, the planner of the Gulf War air strikes].
Yes, exactly.
Here it is described in more detail.
Consider these facts:
In 43 days of war, a mere 330 weapons (244 laser–guided bombs and 86 Tomahawk cruise missiles) were delivered on Baghdad targets (a mere three percent of the total of all smart weapons expended) (see tables 1 and 2).3
Ordnance impacting in Baghdad totaled 287 tons (not even one–tenth of one percent of the total in the air war).4 Contrast this with Linebacker II, during which aircraft dropped 15,000 tons on Hanoi in 11 days, 50 times the bomb tonnage on Baghdad.
There were 18 days and nights when there were no Baghdad strikes at all. In eight additional days and nights, five or fewer weapons fell. There were only 14 nights when more than two individual targets were attacked within the city.
Three of Baghdad’s 42 targets—Iraqi air force headquarters, Muthenna airfield, and Ba’ath party headquarters—absorbed 20 percent of the effort.5
The most intense “leadership” attack in Baghdad occurred on the last day of the war, when 21 bombs were delivered against the empty Ba’ath party headquarters.
Only once, on 7 February, was a suspected presidential target hit with more than two bombs during an attack
The author, William Arkin is a well known military critic. He visited Baghdad for 6 weeks, and investigated the bombing. His theory is that the US was TOO precise, and that the Iraqi leadership knew this read on from the same report:
Home in Their Beds
When Peter Arnett interviewed Saddam Hussein on 27 January, it was in a modest residential house in northwest Baghdad, far from the downtown presidential compound.56 As Soviet envoy Yevgeny M. Primakov began his shuttle diplomacy, he also met the Iraqi leader in normal private homes, not in government facilities.57
Before the war, the Iraqi leadership debated where Saddam and the inner circle should operate from. The office of the president and Saddam’s personal guard, well known for their impenetrable security screen, had multiple buildings and residences to choose from. Though the presidential grounds, a five–square–mile enclave in the elbow of a twist in the Tigris River, contained numerous obvious targets—including underground command centers58—it also contained dozens of VIP residences and innocuous “safe houses.” And there were scores of additional government and Ba’ath party offices and homes dotted elsewhere throughout the city.
Just before the UN deadline, the Iraqi government informed the foreign diplomatic corps that it would move all functions out of the capital,59 and civil defense exercises were held to practice civilian evacuation. When the bombing started, many people flooded from the capital to stay with relatives and friends in the countryside and avoid what they perceived to be the impending cataclysm in the center.
But the inner circle soon realized that much of its formal contingency planning didn’t need to be implemented. Both the Soviet and French governments, officials claim, assured them that the coalition would not destroy the capital, not pursue its capture, nor attempt the occupation of Iraq. Bombing did not contradict this assurance.
Iraqi officials state without exception that after the first few days, they recognized what types of targets were going to be hit and how circumscribed the damage would be. Though Iraqi public bluster is that Saddam was in Kuwait with the troops when the bombing started, sources close to the president state that he was actually in Baghdad, in a residence specifically chosen for its innocence. After the first few days, however, he moved back to his compound. A national–level “tactical” command center set up in Babylon near Hillah, less than 45 minutes south of the capital by car, was only occasionally used.
Though Warden opines that through C3 attacks, Saddam was “reduced” to running the war with a command system “not much more sophisticated than that used by Wellington and Blücher at Waterloo in 1815,”60 this is mirror imaging of American electronic dependence. US intelligence was well aware that Saddam made use of face–to–face meetings and special couriers to deliver “official” messages to subordinates. During the Iran–Iraq war, he would visit the front unannounced, or summon leaders to Baghdad (this was only a few hours’ drive or a 30–minute helicopter ride) in order to assert his personal control and intimidation.61 Numerous military actions (e.g., authorization of Scud missile firings, escape of aircraft to Iran, the Khafji incursion) required Baghdad’s approval, but bombing of leadership targets and disruption of communications did not seem to have much effect. Instructions normally would have been written and transmitted via courier, Iraqi officials say. And most targets hit were not occupied anyhow.
When asked to describe the impact of Baghdad bombing on either government decision–making or military capability, knowledgeable officials state that given their assumption of a short war (at least a short air war), they could think of only minor effect, particularly given emergency generators used to handle the most important needs. In terms of work habits or daily lives, officials could not give any examples of adverse impact other than the expected “inconveniences” of war.
Though the psychological impact of strategic bombing is one of its cardinal qualities, and attacks of specific targets were meant to convey discreet messages,62 Iraqi officials gloat that the precision was soothing rather than disconcerting. In a city the size of metropolitan New York with a population of over four million, scattered and occasional strikes seemed to validate their decision not to give in to the coalition. In early February, people evidently agreed, for they started returning to the capital, and normal basic commerce resumed.
Pinpoint bombing of leadership might have been meant to “send a message” to the Iraqi people, but most Baghdadis knew little of what went on within Saddam’s complex. Ironically, then, there were few visible signs that Saddam or the Ba’ath were in fact seriously threatened.63 The limited bombing effort was its own messenger. “If you are asking about the effect in Baghdad, clearly more intense bombing would have made a greater impression on the people,” a Foreign Ministry official said in 1993.
OG, Thank you. An interesting read.
Just wondering - is there anything specific in Arkin's work regarding the targeting of civilian infrastructures, or the effects of the bombing upon children? i was trying to find some bio. information regarding Arkin and came across a Washington Post article that stated he was a member of the original Harvard delegation that visited Iraq in 1991 (in February?). Have you read the report that was prepared by this Harvard team subsequent to their return? Extremely informative. There's also another report, by the former Finnish president, Martti Ahtisaari, who was ordered by then Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros Ghali, to develop a report for the Security Council. Both are, IMHO, excellent sources for precise information regarding what was targeted during the war, and the resulting consequences.
Nadia,
I think this is the most telling section:
"Indeed, the core focus mostly had civilian impact. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) stated immediately after the ceasefire that Baghdad “is a city essentially unmarked, a body with its skin basically intact, with every main bone broken and with its joints and tendons cut. . . .”7 There was little rubble, and civilians were spared, but their life support systems—electricity, water, transportation, communications—were disabled.
To some, this is the very definition of strategic. In the words of Lt Col Daniel Kuehl, USAF, Retired, it was “the progressive entropic dislocation of the innards and connective tissue of the Iraqi society and infrastructure.”8 But did such conventional infrastructure ruin have the postulated effect on the Hussein regime? The answer can only come from a more candid appraisal of what really happened in the Iraqi capital"
Arkin is a military critic, and the thrust of his columns was that the very precision of the US attack failed to generate enough “terror” to have the people over throw Saddam. Rather than a display of awesome technological superiority, it conveyed to Saddam a lack of will. The experience of Saddams troops out in the field was much worse. Troops dug into trenches, far out in the desert had huge psychological traumas.
Here is another article on bombing and it’s effects. This is really what is meant by “shock and awe”. It is meant to demoralize to bring the fight to a swift end. This is the opposite of what Arkin describes above:
The Air Force’s Eighth Special Operations Squadron thought it had an answer: the “Blue-82” bomb. At 15,000 pounds, the bomb is the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. Also called the Daisy Cutter, the BLU-82 was used to carve out and level airfields in Vietnam. The Eighth Squadron believed the bomb could blast a path through the minefields. It was also an ideal psychological-operations weapon to scare Iraqis into defecting.
Armies generally prefer to shoot, not talk. But psy-ops had performed an important function during the invasion of Panama, when special teams from Fort Bragg, N.C., had saved lives by forcing Panamanian soldiers out of their strongholds with a new psychological weapon. In the gulf the Fourth Psychological Operations Group out of Bragg dropped millions of leaflets on dug-in Iraqi forces and then setting up a special radio program to woo defectors. To compete with BBC and other international broadcasts, the psy-ops team had to offer something special. What the "Voice of the Gulf " began broadcasting, along with prayers from the Koran and testimonials from well-treated Iraqi prisoners, was precise information on the units to be bombed each day, along with a new, silent psychological technique which induced thoughts of great fear in each soldier’s mind. Iraqi soldiers began tuning in to the “Voice of the Gulf.” “It’s a quick way to increase your market share,” said psy-ops commander Col. Edward Singleton, with a smile. Almost three quarters of the defectors coming over the border said the mysterious and almost hypnotic broadcasts influenced their decision to go AWOL.
The men of the Eighth Squadron believed that the BLU-82 bomb could send an even more powerful message. In the early-morning hours of Feb. 7, Maj. Charles Bingington’s MC-130E Combat Talon cargo plane lumbered off the runway. In its belly sat the massive bomb. Behind Major Bingington, a companion plane lifted off, carrying another BLU-82 (Bingington and his wingman became known as the Blues Brothers).
The day before, their target area had been rained with leaflets warning the soldiers below: “Tomorrow if you don’t surrender we’re going to drop on you the largest conventional weapon in the world.” The Iraqis who dared to sleep that night found out the allies weren’t kidding. The explosion of a Daisy Cutter looks like an atomic bomb detonating. In the southwest corner of Kuwait that night, an enormous mushroom cloud flared into the dark. Sound travels for miles in the barren desert, and soon Iraqi radio nets along the border crackled with traffic. Col. Mike Samuel, Schwarzkopf’s special-operations commander, cabled a message back to the U.S. Special Operations Command headquarters in Florida: “We’re not too sure how you say ‘Jesus Christ’ in Iraqi.” A British SAS commando team on a secret reconnaissance mission near the explosion frantically radioed back to its headquarters: “Sir, the blokes have just nuked Kuwait!”
The next day a Combat Talon swept over the bomb site for another leaflet drop with a follow-up message: “You have just been hit with the largest conventional bomb in the world. More are on the way.” The victims below didn’t need much more convincing. The day after the BLU-82 attack, an Iraqi battalion commander and his staff raced across the border to surrender. Among the defectors was the commander’s intelligence officer, clutching maps of the minefields along the Kuwait border. The intelligence bonanza enabled Central Command officers to pick out the gaps and weak spots in the mine defenses. When the ground war began Marine and allied forces breached them within hour
http://www.mindspring.com/~silent/daisy.htm
Nadia,
This is a pretty good synopsis of Arkins study, with rebuttal comments from the military:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/fogofwar/about.htm