Obama's Iraq War

"The worst case has become true," Jeffrey Record told Sidney Blumenthal back in 2004. He was talking about the Cheney-Bush Iraq War.

Somehow our policymakers and Presidents seem to convince themselves that no one will have to say that about their wars.

Now Obama joins his predecessors Old Man Bush, Bill Clinton (Operation Desert Fox) and Dick Cheney in taking up his own Iraq War.

As part of the ritual, he's already declaring his glorious successes from the first new rounds of bombing. Our glorious generals, as we've learned over and over, never fail. They win every battle. The first reports are about all the enemy soldiers and/or "terrorists" killed. Later, they occasionally have to admit that some of those gloriously killed "terrorists" were actually just civilians in the wrong place at the wrong time. "Collateral damage," gee, we're sorry about that.

And despite all those victories, our glorious generals always seem to leave a godawful mess behind - Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq twice (or three times?). That's become part of the American war ritual, as well.

Yes, I'm being cynical. War is a cynical business. Which is why we shouldn't get involved in them without extremely good reasons.

(Obligatory disclaimer required from all respectable war critics: Yes, the "Islamic State" is evil and they're terrorists. Yes, humanitarian aid to people being starved on a mountain is a good thing. And our troops are all wonderful and the best of the best.)

Since President Obama isn't putting any time limits on our latest blessed showers of freedom bombs on Iraq, this is probably only one of many declarations of progress and victory, President Obama Gives an Update on the Situation in Iraq 08/09/2014:

Tommy Christopher, writing for the generally hawkish and pro-Obama Daily Beast (President Obama Destroys 'Bogus' Beltway Narrative on Iraq 08/09/2014) summarizes some of the major points:

The President talked about the humanitarian and military campaigns underway in Iraq, generally leaving as much wiggle-room as possible on the US engagement there. He refused to set a timetable for the current operation, set forth the goals of securing nd relocating the Yazidis trapped on Mount Sinjar, protecting American personnel, and leaving the door open to wider action against ISIS.

Asked if "your goal there to contain ISIS or to destroy it?", the President continued to urge a more politically inclusive government in Iraq. “We’re going to be pushing very hard to encourage Iraqis to get their government together,” President Obama said adding "Until we do that, it is going to be hard to get the unity of effort that allows us to not just play defense, but also engage in some offense."

So, after all the war effort and American and Iraqi lives lost in our last glorious war, the pro-Iranian elected government that was the result of that effort now isn't good enough.

So we need more "regime change." Maybe we need a new Iraq Liberation Act, like the one President Clinton signed in 1998, describing it this way:

The United States wants Iraq to rejoin the family of nations as a freedom-loving and lawabiding [sic] member. This is in our interest and that of our allies within the region.

The United States favors an Iraq that offers its people freedom at home. I categorically reject arguments that this is unattainable due to Iraq's history or its ethnic or sectarian makeup. Iraqis deserve and desire freedom like everyone else.

The United States looks forward to a democratically supported regime that would permit us to enter into a dialogue leading to the reintegration of Iraq into normal international life. ...

The United States is providing support to opposition groups from all sectors of the Iraqi community that could lead to a popularly supported government.

On October 21, 1998, I signed into law the Omnibus Consolidated and Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act, 1999, which made $8 million available for assistance to the Iraqi democratic opposition. This assistance is intended to help the democratic opposition unify, work together more effectively, and articulate the aspirations of the Iraqi people for a pluralistic, participatory political system that will include all of Iraq's diverse ethnic and religious groups.

It was just a few weeks later that Clinton launched the bizarrely named Operation Desert Fox. The Air Force Historical Studies Office fact sheet on it explains:

With nearly 200 U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy carrier-based aircraft, as well as one dozen British aircraft, planners identified nearly 100 targets in seven categories: air defense systems, command and control, WMD security, WMD industry and production, Republican Guard units, airfields, and "economic" targets. The initial strikes consisted of approximately 250 Tomahawk cruise missiles as well as 40 sorties launched from the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise. On the second night, Air Force B-52s stationed on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean employed air launched cruise missiles (ALCMs), while the B-1 bomber made its combat debut by striking at Republican Guard targets. Also on December 17, USAF aircraft based in Kuwait participated, as did British Tornado aircraft.

Military involvement has a way of escalating. Operating Desert Fox forms part of an historical chain of events leading from the Gulf War to the no-fly zones to the 2003 invasion to Obama's resumption of direct American war this week.

So it's worth paying attention to what Presidents say at the start of one of their wars. Obama's statement today declares that we are preventing "an act of genocide." And we're defending civilization against barbarism: "All Iraqi communities are ultimately threatened by these barbaric terrorists and all Iraqi communities need to unite to defend their country."

And regime change is there, too, though not by that phrase: "Once an inclusive government is in place, I’m confident it will be easier to mobilize all Iraqis against ISIL, and to mobilize greater support from our friends and allies. Ultimately, only Iraqis can ensure the security and stability of Iraq. The United States can’t do it for them, but we can and will be partners in that effort." (From the White House transcript, Statement by the President on Iraq 08/09/2014)

He does say, "I've been very clear that we're not going to have U.S. combat troops in Iraq again." But Obama declared his willingness to have the current direct military involvement be open-ended:

Q Mr. President, for how long a period of time do you see these airstrikes continuing for? And is your goal there to contain ISIS or to destroy it?

THE PRESIDENT: I’m not going to give a particular timetable, because as I've said from the start, wherever and whenever U.S. personnel and facilities are threatened, it’s my obligation, my responsibility as Commander-in-Chief, to make sure that they are protected. And we’re not moving our embassy anytime soon. We’re not moving our consulate anytime soon. And that means that, given the challenging security environment, we're going to maintain vigilance and ensure that our people are safe. ...

Just to give people a sense, though, of a timetable -- that the most important timetable that I’m focused on right now is the Iraqi government getting formed and finalized. Because in the absence of an Iraqi government, it is very hard to get a unified effort by Iraqis against ISIL. We can conduct airstrikes, but ultimately there’s not going to be an American military solution to this problem. There’s going to have to be an Iraqi solution that America and other countries and allies support. And that can’t happen effectively until you have a legitimate Iraqi government.

So right now we have a president, we have a speaker. What we don’t yet have is a prime minister and a cabinet that is formed that can go ahead and move forward, and then start reaching out to all the various groups and factions inside of Iraq, and can give confidence to populations in the Sunni areas that ISIL is not the only game in town. It also then allows us to take those Iraqi security forces that are able and functional, and they understand who they’re reporting to and what they’re fighting for, and what the chain of command is. And it provides a structure in which better cooperation is taking place between the Kurdish region and Baghdad.

So we’re going to be pushing very hard to encourage Iraqis to get their government together. Until we do that, it is going to be hard to get the unity of effort that allows us to not just play defense, but also engage in some offense. [my emphasis]

His reassurance about combat troops doesn't mean much to me. With a declared goal of regime change in Baghdad and stopping ISIL/ISIS/the Islamic State, he may find it hard to resist pressure from the neocons and humanitarian hawks to escalate, including ground troops.

And the President isn't even trying to make this sounds short and limited. Clinton's Operation Desert Fox was four days long. It won't take long for Obama's Iraq War to exceed that time frame. Obama:

Q You just expressed confidence that the Iraqi government can eventually prevent a safe haven. But you’ve also just described the complications with the Iraqi government and the sophistication of ISIL. So is it possible that what you’ve described and your ambitions there could take years, not months?

THE PRESIDENT: I don’t think we’re going to solve this problem in weeks, if that’s what you mean. I think this is going to take some time. The Iraqi security forces, in order to mount an offensive and be able to operate effectively with the support of populations in Sunni areas, are going to have to revamp, get resupplied -- have a clearer strategy. That’s all going to be dependent on a government that the Iraqi people and the Iraqi military have confidence in. We can help in all those efforts.

I think part of what we’re able to do right now is to preserve a space for them to do the hard work that's necessary. If they do that, the one thing that I also think has changed is that many of the Sunni countries in the region who have been generally suspicious or wary of the Iraqi government are more likely to join in, in the fight against ISIS, and that can be extremely helpful. But this is going to be a long-term project.

Part of what we’ve seen is that a minority Sunni population in Iraq, as well as a majority Sunni population in Syria, has felt dissatisfied and detached and alienated from their respective governments. And that has been a ripe territory for these jihadists and extremists to operate. And rebuilding governance in those areas, and legitimacy for stable, moderate governing in those areas is going to take time.

Now, there are some immediate concerns that we have to worry about. We have to make sure that ISIL is not engaging in the actions that could cripple a country permanently. There’s key infrastructure inside of Iraq that we have to be concerned about. My team has been vigilant, even before ISIL went into Mosul, about foreign fighters and jihadists gathering in Syria, and now in Iraq, who might potentially launch attacks outside the region against Western targets and U.S. targets. So there’s going to be a counterterrorism element that we are already preparing for and have been working diligently on for a long time now.

There is going to be a military element in protecting our people, but the long-term campaign of changing that environment so that the millions of Sunnis who live in these areas feel connected to and well-served by a national government, that’s a long-term process. And that’s something that the United States cannot do, only the Iraqi people themselves can do. We can help, we can advise, but we can’t do it for them. And the U.S. military cannot do it for them.

And so this goes back to the earlier question about U.S. military involvement. The nature of this problem is not one that a U.S. military can solve. We can assist and our military obviously can play an extraordinarily important role in bolstering efforts of an Iraqi partner as they make the right steps to keep their country together, but we can’t do it for them. [my emphasis]

This sounds really bad to me. He's also clearly expressing regret that he couldn't persuade the Iraqi government to let him leave ground combat troops there in the first place. And he draws a conclusion for Afghanistan:

Going forward with respect to Afghanistan, we are leaving the follow-on force there. I think the lesson for Afghanistan is not the fact that we’ve got a follow-on force that will be capable of training and supporting Afghan security efforts. I think the real lesson in Afghanistan is that if factions in a country after a long period of civil war do not find a way to come up with a political accommodation; if they take maximalist positions and their attitude is, I want 100 percent of what I want and the other side gets nothing, then the center doesn't hold.

Great. He thinks we need to stay there to insure we have Afghan bipartisanship.

And for his trouble, his Republican bipartisan friends at home will blast him for being a wimp for not bombing and killing even more in Iraq.

He really should give back the Nobel Peace Prize.

Tags: barack obama, iraq war, jeffrey record, operation desert fox

What the great progress of The Surge (aka, the McCain esclation) looks like

Despite Maverick McCain's unbounded faith in his Surge plan and the claims of brilliant success from our Savior-General Petraeus, the Iraq War goes on. Juan Cole comments on the horrific double-suicide bombings on Friday in Baghdad (91 Dead in 2 Baghdad Blasts Informed Comment blog 02/02/08):

Two women set off separate suicide bombs in two markets in Baghdad on Friday, killing at least 91 persons and wounding a similar number. Contrary to what this AP squib implies, the bombings suggest neither that "al-Qaeda" is running out of men nor that it is desperate. Women were used because they would be less likely to be closely searched, in a society where gender segregation and female honor and chastity are important values. The story that the women had Downs syndrome seems unlikely to be true; you wouldn't trust a sensitive terror plot to someone without their full faculties. Rather, the bombings show that the Sunni Arab guerrillas seeking to destabilize Iraq have not been defeated and are still capable of making a big strike right under the noses of the surge troops. And that is how guerrilla war is-- large conventional forces find it difficult to curb it.

McClatchy News (formerly Knight-Ridder) is still doing a good job on reporting on the war as they have since the buildup to the invasion, making them nearly unique among major American journalistic enterprises: Iraqi insurgents find female bombers can skirt security by Leila Fadel and Hussein Kadhim 02/01/08. Fadel and Kadhim note in their report, "As is frequently the case in accounts of violence, U.S. officials offered a death toll that was only half that of Iraqi authorities'."

See also Women suicide bombers kill 72 in attacks on Baghdad markets by Patrick Cockburn The Independent 01/02/08. Cockburn is still doing reporting from Iraq despite the not-inconsiderable dangers. He also speaks Arabic, which many of the US reporters who have done Iraq War reporting do not. He writes:

Al-Qa'ida has mounted a series of attacks in the past week, mostly targeting leaders of the Sunni tribal militia, al-Sahwah, which opposes al-Qa'ida. The bombing of Ghazil, in a predominantly Shia part of the city, will also have been aimed at provoking Shia retaliation against Sunni Muslims, who might then look again to al-Qa'ida for protection. ...

Al-Qa'ida has increasingly been using women as suicide bombers because they are never searched by male police officers men or soldiers, and there is a shortage of women to do the job in Iraq's overwhelmingly male security forces.

The atrocities show that al-Qa'ida is still a powerful force with many recruits willing to kill themselves, and is backed by an organisation with intelligence, explosives and the means to detonate them. In recent weeks, it has been targeting al-Sahwah leaders and has often succeeded in penetrating their security. Last week, a car bomb exploded next to the house of Abu Marouf, an al-Sahwah leader commanding 13,000 men, in the village of Khan Dari, between Baghdad and Fallujah.

When I met him four days earlier, he was surrounded by guards and chose which of his many vehicles to travel in at the last moment to prevent assassination. Even so, al-Qa'ida was able to get a bomb close to his home and wounded four of his guards.

Despite improving security, Baghdad was a very fearful city even before yesterday's attacks and will now be more so.

Hasn't Cockburn heard from Savior-General Petraeus and Maverick McCain that things are going great in Iraq?


And, whatever the mix of motivations that produced the 2003 invasion, oil revenues are very much part of what is at stake in Iraq. The Information Clearing House in reports on a 01/31/08 item in on Akhbar Alkhaleej newspaper (Iraqi sister paper to Bahrain's Gulf Daily News):

An Iraqi MP preferred to remain anonymous told the newspaper that highly confidential negotiations took place by representatives from American oil companies, offering $5 million to each MP who votes in favor of the Oil and Gas law.

Juan Cole also corrects the record that Hillary Clinton misstated about the 1998 end of weapons inspections in Iraq which was used as the justification of the Operation Desert Fox bombing in 1998. (Probably not the most inspired name for an American military operation in light of the fact that the Second World War German Gen. Ernst Rommel was famously known as the "Desert Fox".) Our crack "press corps" manages to pretty much ignore the periodic bombing that the US conducted against Iraq throughout the 1990s, of which Operation Desert Fox was the most significant. Cole writes (Iraq and Iran in the Democratic Debate 02/01/08):

It is worth noting that Clinton misstated the 1998 events. The US did not bomb Iraq because Saddam "kicked out" the UN weapons inspectors. The US decided to bomb Iraq for other reasons and therefore ordered the inspectors out of the country. The myth that Saddam "kicked out" the inspectors just won't die.

For more of the details, see the links above and also Fairness and Accuracy in Media (FAIR): Common Myths in Iraq Coverage 11/27/02; USA Today Repeats Myths on Iraq Inspectors 08/12/02.

Additional Iraq War news and commentary:

Bomb takes death toll of journalists in Iraq war to 126 by Patrick Cockburn The Independent 01/31/08.

Torture does not work, as history shows by Robert Fisk The Independent 02/01/08:

"Torture works," an American special forces major – now, needless to say, a colonel – boasted to a colleague of mine a couple of years ago. It seems that the CIA and its hired thugs in Afghanistan and Iraq still believe this. There is no evidence that rendition and beatings and waterboarding and the insertion of metal pipes into men's anuses – and, of course, the occasional torturing to death of detainees – has ended. Why else would the CIA admit in January that it had destroyed videotapes of prisoners being almost drowned – the "waterboarding" technique – before they could be seen by US investigators?

Yet only a few days ago, I came across a medieval print in which a prisoner has been strapped to a wooden chair, a leather hosepipe pushed down his throat and a primitive pump fitted at the top of the hose where an ill-clad torturer is hard at work squirting water down the hose. The prisoner's eyes bulge with terror as he feels himself drowning, all the while watched by Spanish inquisitors who betray not the slightest feelings of sympathy with the prisoner. Who said "waterboarding" was new? The Americans are just apeing their predecessors in the inquisition. ...

Torture does not obtain truth. It will make most ordinary people say anything the torturer wants. Why, who knows if the men under the CIA's "waterboarding" did not confess that they could fly to meet the devil. And who knows if the CIA did not end up believing him. (my emphasis)

Tags: iraq war, juan cole, operation desert fox, patrick cockburn, robert fisk, torture

Inspecting Iraq for WMDs and Clinton's Desert Fox operation

Doing a bit of review, I see that I have drafts scattered here and there that I haven't posted yet. So I'm going to do a bit of catch-up.

Scott Ritter is providing a fresh account of his experience with the end of the Iraqi WMD inspections in 1998 as part of this article, A Farewell to Arms Control Truthdig.com 07/05/07.

I should mention that former UN weapons inspector Ritter was one of the informed people who turned out to be right about the wrongheadedness of invading Iraq. And so therefore our "press corps" doesn't consider him one of the people to be taken seriously. No, our press barons haven't learned very much from the Iraq War experience.

I haven't read Ritter's book on the inspections or combed through the details of the 1998 end of the inspections to know if he's providing new information here. I do know that Saddam's government blocked UN inspectors at some point that year on the grounds that American intelligence had infiltrated the inspection teams. This was true, and the US government admitted that later. It became common in the runup to the 2003 invasion for Bush and others to say that "Saddam kicked out the inspectors" in 1998 but that was also not true. The inspectors decided on their own to withdraw, although I'm unclear whether the UN ordered it or whether Ritter as the head of the team ordered it on his own authority. According to this account, it was President Clinton who order the UN team out:

President Bill Clinton had the gall to claim that Saddam Hussein had refused to cooperate with weapons inspectors in December 1998, evicting the WMD sleuths from Iraq on the eve of the 72-hour bombing campaign known as Desert Fox. Clinton knew full well that his administration had deliberately created a provocation against the Iraqis, seeking to inspect a Baath Party headquarters, and once it became clear the Iraqis would accede to this outrageous demand, it was Clinton, not Saddam, who ordered the inspectors out of Iraq, seeking to cover his tracks with a bombing campaign that ostensibly targeted "WMD sites," but which in reality was a thinly disguised assassination attempt against the Iraqi president. A leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for president, Hillary Clinton, continues to uphold the fiction of her husband’s policy in Iraq, much to the detriment of truth. (my emphasis)

We don't hear that much any more about Operation Desert Fox, although it was a significant military operation. And it's a significant part of the story of the ongoing US conflict with Iraq. I'm not sure how they managed to pick the name "Desert Fox", which is the well-known nickname of the German Field Marshal Ernest Rommel in the Second World War. (Rommel did late in the war join the July 23, 1944, anti-Hitler plot and was allowed to commit suicide rather than be executed for his role in it.)

Tags: iraq, operation desert fox, scott ritter

The secret and not-so-secret air war against Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion

John Prados looks at a new aspect of A War Conspiracy Documented TomPaine.com 02/21/07. Prados explains why he sees a "smoking gun" in the correlation in the pre-invasion months between secret air war plans presented to the President in 2002-3 and the actual air war in Iraq:

A January 31, 2003 meeting between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair clearly shows the two leaders discussing ways to provoke Saddam Hussein so as to justify war, indicating premeditation. Last week the National Security Archive in Washington posted the U. S. war plan - the set of briefing slides used by Central Command (CENTCOM) chief General Tommy Franks to brief President Bush on "Polo Step," CENTCOM’s Iraq invasion scheme. The PowerPoint slides were prepared for a series of presidential meetings held from December 2001 to August 2002. The slides summarized CENTCOM’s buildup and maneuver concepts for Bush’s deliberations. Bush backed Franks’ concept of “adjusting” Iraqi defenses by executing what amounted to a covert offensive air campaign. They would use forces already in the Persian Gulf region for the ostensible purpose of enforcing no-fly zones created after the first Gulf War. TomPaine.com has previously covered this operation (“The War Before the War ,” June 24, 2005), but the new evidence establishes an explicit link between the aerial offensive and the Iraq war plans.

The air war in Iraq has been severely underreported. And that was the case long before 2002. After the end of the Gulf War, the US and Britain established "free-fly" zones in Iraq, zones always of questionable status in international law. As Prados explains, there was one in northern Iraq to protect humanitarian assistance going to the Kurds. Though in practice it led to a considerable amount of autonomy for the Kurds, creating a much stronger basis for them to see further autonomy or independence. And there was a free-fly zone in the south to deter repressive measures against the Shi'a - though the US had allowed Saddam's regime to send helicopters against Shi'a rebels in the south immediately after Iraq was pushed out of Kuwait in 1991. The rebels had wrongly assumed they had American support based on public encouragement from Old Man Bush and from American broadcasts. into Iraq. This left the Iraqi Shi'a intensely suspicious of American intentions and promises in the wake of the 2003 invasion.

Essentially, the US bombed Iraq off-and-on from the end of the Gulf War in 1991 until today, actually. Prados writes of the pre-2003 bombing:

Until 2001, it had been standard practice for U.S. and British aircraft participating in these missions to retaliate against Iraqi anti-aircraft guns, missiles, and radars that had fired at the planes. CENTCOM had a plan it called "Desert Badger" that established standard operating procedures for such strikes.

Gen. Tommy Franks developed a set of revised procedures for the bombing of Iraq in early 2002, part of a plan called Polo Step that included the plans for invasion. The National Security Archive of George Washington University (Top Secret Polo Step) has posted the declassified documents.

What Prados focuses on in his article is not simply the existence of war plans; it's not at all surprising that war plans would be available for Iraq and that they would be periodically updated, given the fact that the US and Britain (along with France until December 1998) were maintaining the "free-fly zones". Instead, he looks at the correlations between actions on the ground and the evolution of the war plan and its discussion at senior levels of the government.

The pre-2002 air campaign against Iraq is critically important background. The national press tended to treat repeated bombings of Iraq in those days as routine items, when it covered them at all. But some of those actions were substantial. GlobalSecurity.org presents a detailed order of battle for one series of air attacks called Operation Desert Fox (1998-99). Whoever came up with the code name apparently wasn't bothered by the fact that German Field Erwin Rommel had been widely known as "the Desert Fox". GlobalSecurity.org summarizes:

There are currently [12/23/1998] over 34,500 military personnel in the area, including 2,600 soldiers, 20,300 sailors and Marines [of whom about 2,500 are ashore and the rest afloat], and joint headquarters and other joint units comprised of 1,000 people. The Air Force total, which was some 7,500 last week, increased by about 70 aircraft and 2,500 Air Combat Command personnel, reflecting deployments in mid-December. Forces in the region include land and carrier-based aircraft, surface warships, a Marine expeditionary unit, a Patriot missile battalion, a mechanized battalion task force, and a mix of special operations forces deployed in support of US Central Command operations. To enhance force protection throughout the region, additional military security personnel are also deployed. Currently, there appear to be slighly over 250 aircraft in the area, which total includes air to air, air to ground, dual role, support, and attack helicopters. The cruise missile force is twice the pre-December 1998 level and can be augmented significantly within days. (my emphasis)

The occasion for Operation Desert Fox was Saddam Hussein's decision to block access for UN weapons inspectors. Scott Ritter was a lead inspector on the UN team at the time and has given numerous accounts of those events. The official Iraqi justification for blocking their access was that the US was using it for espionage against the rules of the inspection. Ritter and the US government itself has since confirmed that it was indeed the case. As a matter of historical fact, the frequently-repeated assertion that in 1998 Iraq "kicked out the inspectors" is not true. The Iraqi government did block access. Chief UN inspector Richard Butler decided to pull out the team after the Clinton administration recommended they leave prior to the Desert Fox aerial bombardment. Ritter himself said at the time:

I think that it's inevitable that there will be military action tonight. [12/16/1998] ..Iraq failed to live up to its obligations and the US feels that it's time to strike...I'm dead set against this military strike. I think Iraq must be held accountable but I think a military strike even of a three-day nature, a massive strike that will inflict grievous harm on Iraq, will not solve the disarmament issue, will only make innocent Iraqi people suffer more and in the end will backfire and allow Saddam Hussein to generate international support and eventually he'll get sanctions lifted and keep the weapons. This is a bad idea, it's a bad time and I don't think we should do this at this point in time.

The core of the action was four days of intensive bombing. George Robertson, British Secretary of State for Defence, described the operation on 12/19/1998 after the third night of the operation:

Targets that were attacked by the RAF [Royal Air Force] aircraft last night included Republican Guard headquarters which are the lynchpin of Saddam's regime. ... If the Republican Guard ceases to support Saddam his brutal regime is under immediate threat. We want the Republican Guard to know that the cosy life that they have led under Saddam is under attack and we think they have got that message very clearly.

Last night, we also struck at key elements of Saddam's air defence system and at tank facilities. Air defence is a key element of Saddam Hussein's war machine and his tank force is a substantial element of his ability to conduct offensive military operations against his neighbours. Other coalition [US and Britain] targets overnight have included command-and-control facilities which allow Saddam to use his chemical and biological weapons. So far in this campaign coalition aircraft have flown several hundred manned-aircraft sorties including over 100 bombing raids, some 300 Tomahawk cruise missiles have been fired and around 100 air-launched cruise missiles have been used.

Coalition forces have attacked about 100 separate, precise military targets; some of these sites are very large military complexes which have required a significant number of attacks, others are single buildings which house key facilities. Around a third of these sites are related to Saddam's chemical and biological weapons, another third of the targets were part of Iraq's air defence system, either missile sites or command facilities; 20 targets are related to the overall control of Saddam's military machine and the balance are Republican Guard or other military sites such as airfields. We are still assessing the full impact of the damage we have inflicted and we hope to have a better picture later in the day. However, it is already clear that we have inflicted substantial damage on Saddam's chemical and biological war machine and set back his ambitions to threaten his neighbours. (my emphasis)

This series of attacks, involving as he himself said 100 bombing raids and 400 cruise missile strikes against around100 targets, Robertson describes as a "precise, limited operation."

A later evaluation examines the Desert Fox operation: Operation DESERT FOX: Effectiveness With Unintended Effects by Mark Conversino of the Air War College Air & Space Power Journal 07/13/05. He writes of the results of the 4-day bombardment, which he describes as a "major armed confrontation" between the US/Britain and Iraq:

In the end, DESERT FOX was a militarily effective use of airpower. Terminating the already very brief operation short of a change in either Iraqi behavior or leadership, and limiting targets to a relative handful, however, was a political decision. Yet the lure of achieving a bloodless yet devastating military victory while making a rapid exit possible, if necessary - what Eliot Cohen called "gratification without commitment" - ultimately, perhaps inevitably, led to the misapplication and abuse of airpower. Many airpower theorists had long cautioned against using airpower in penny-packets or in hyper-constrained political environments. "When presidents use it," Cohen wrote, "they should either hurl it with devastating lethality against a few targets (say, a full-scale meeting of an enemy war cabinet or senior-level military staff) or extensively enough to cause sharp and lasting pain to a military and a society." The 70-hour operation became what Cohen cautioned against: an attack on Saddam with a "sprinkling" of air strikes that would merely "harden him without hurting him and deprive the United States of an intangible strategic asset", an asset that Cohen called the post-Gulf War "mystique of American airpower."

Perhaps a longer, more punishing air campaign would have upended the regime. It is unclear, however, why anyone could imagine that such a brief air campaign had the slightest potential of driving from power a ruthless tyrant - and notorious "survivor" - like Saddam Hussein. In fact, post-OIF [Operation Iraqi Freedom] interviews conducted by the ISG [Iraq Survey Group] with high-ranking members of Saddam’s fallen regime revealed that the Iraqis were "satisfied" with the results of DESERT FOX. "They said, given a choice of sanctions with inspections or sanctions without inspections, they would prefer without." Likewise, the 2004 ISG report stated that in 2003 Saddam discounted the threat of an American-led invasion and considered the air attacks associated with DESERT FOX as the "worst he could expect from Western military pressure." This is hardly the attitude of a leader who was confronting the possible collapse of his regime in December 1998 in the wake of those air attacks. It seems clear that both American and British leaders considered the regime’s fall a possible result of this air campaign, though they apparently did not intend to sustain the attack in a manner sufficient to bring about that collapse. That they also were not prepared to either exploit or contain the results of a potential airpower-induced regime implosion revealed political short-sightedness. (my emphasis)

I've included some of that history as a framework for understanding the way in which the Cheney-Bush administration could make the aereal strikes that Prados describes in 2002-3 prior to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq without attracting a great deal of attention or debate. Although the two paragraphs just quoted emphasize the insufficiency of Operation Desert Fox to bring down Saddam's regime, it was clear a signficant set of military strikes. Congress, the press and the public had come to view even a "major armed confrontation" with Iraq like Operation Desert Fox as a routine occurrence that demanded no particular attention.

In 2002, the name for the enforcement of the free-fly zone in southern Iraq was changed from Operation Southern Watch to Operation Southern Focus. As Prados explains:

Southern Watch air attacks resumed in May 2002, coincident with one of the Polo Step briefings, following a six-month period in which there had been virtually no air action. In August, when Franks presented near-final versions of his war plan, Rumsfeld changed the rules of engagement for the air forces and Southern Watch became Southern Focus. Suddenly, in early September, there followed a four-day series of sustained strikes hitting Iraqi military communications, headquarters, anti-ship missile and air defense communications facilities, all considered key targets in "adjusting" Saddam’s defenses. Two-thirds of more than 21,000 attack sorties, or flights counted by single aircraft, that took place before the invasion occurred in the Southern Focus timeframe beginning in August.

The September strikes corresponded to the White level that General Franks described in May and August slides. That was described as an air operation of five to seven days’ duration involving about 1,000 flights by coalition aircraft. This effort was supposed to have been triggered by the shootdown of a U.S. aircraft, an Iraqi link to a terrorist act, or confirmed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) within Iraq. After that strikes concentrated overwhelmingly upon shaping the battlefield rather than their supposed purpose of countering interference with the no-fly zones. In January 2003, it was reported that there had been almost two attacks on higher echelon Iraqi military targets for every one aimed at air defense or radar sites.

We know from history that Saddam’s air defenses never did destroy an aircraft in the no-fly zones—not even a Predator drone. Nor were there Iraqi terrorist attacks or prewar confirmations of WMDs. Saddam refused to supply the provocation that Bush wanted. Not to be put off, Bush simply dispensed with the triggers and moved ahead on his aerial offensive. When, at the height of the 2004 electoral season, President Bush told reporters that before the war his administration had been dealing only with Desert Badger [the procedures for attacking targets in enforcement of the free-fly zones], he was being disingenuous. This decoupling of the air attacks from any relation to actual Iraqi activity is the smoking gun that makes plain Bush's aggressive intent. (my emphasis)

Because the press commentary rarely explains the significance of some things, Prados' use of the word "aggressive" in that last sentence implies an illegal action. It certainly provides another piece of the picture showing that the Cheney-Bush administration and their loyal servant Tony Blair intended to go to war against Iraq well before the new weapons inspections began that were called to a halt when the invasion was launched.

Bush has been known to say on more than one occasion that Iraq refused to let those inspectors in prior to the invasion, which is simply not true. The UN inspectors were doing their work and were asking for more time to search for evidence of the (non-existent) WMDs.

In the following interview, we see Rummy in an interview with court historian Bob Woodward with Rummy, with Rummy ducking questions about the sort of air war plans developed prior to the March 2003 invasion (censored transcript of 10/23/03 interview at GlobalSecurity.org):

What Rummy refers to as "Desert Badger Plus and a Desert Badger Plus Plus" is apparently the evolving set of plans released as Polo Step which Prados discusses.

Tags: iraq war, john prados, operation desert fox, polo step