August 14, 2002

OK, given the fact that most of us have experienced recently (if not before) a severe credibility gap with former bastions of truth in journalism like the NYT with their "leaked" Iraq invasion plans and puff pieces on Colin Powell, why not believe a previously "iffy" news source such as Debkafiles when they say that the Iraq Attack is already ON?
According to their information (which is somehow tied in with Israeli intelligence), the U.S. has already begun the Iraq attack.
Read the whole post US Iraq Campaign Has Its First Engagement and check out the rest of the page--all worthy of rapt attention, in my book.
Here are some salient points in their report on the Sit Rep:

...the Americans threw a ring of bases – using existing facilities and adding new ones  – around Iraq. They have since been pouring into those bases US armored ground units, tanks, air, navy and missile forces, as well as combat medical units and special contingents for anti-nuclear, biological and chemical warfare. According to our sources, the noose around Iraq extends from Georgia and Turkey in the north, Israel, Egypt and Jordan to the west, Eritrea and Kenya in the southwest, and Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Bahrain to the south.
Furthermore, a large US armada, including aircraft carriers, has assembled at three points: the eastern Mediterranean, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.

[I've been hearing about this "noose" more and more frequently in my warblogger travels and have picked up bits and pieces of the story in the news, too.
Someone, Daily Pundit Bill Quick, I think, asked rhetorically just last week, "Where is our USN carrier U.S.S. Carl Vinson?" I went to the ship's and the Navy's website to see and the basic answer was "Classified."
Works for me!]
There's more about a special raid that took place just last week:

On Tuesday August 6, at 0800 hours Middle East time, US and British air bombers went into action and destroyed the Iraqi air command and control center at al-Nukhaib in the desert between Iraq and Saudi Arabia. The center contained advanced fiber optic networks recently installed by Chinese companies.

Calling this a raid that "made military history," Debkafile's military analyst continues,

For the first time, the US air force used new precision-guided bombs capable of locating and destroying fiber optic systems. The existence of such weaponry was hitherto unknown.

[Whoa! Does this mean that maybe these weapons could someday take out the ChiComs own technology--you know, the stuff Billy Jeff sold 'em?]
But that was only the opening act, next...

Following the destruction of the facility, about 260 miles (415 kilometers), southwest of Baghdad, waves of US warplanes swept in from the Prince Sultan air base in Saudi Arabia and from US aircraft carriers in the Gulf and flew over the Iraqi capital.
The Iraqi air force and anti-aircraft system held their fire on orders from above. This deep air penetration told the Americans that the early warning radar system protecting Baghdad and its environs from intrusion by enemy aircraft and missiles was inactive.

Two days' later came a U.S.-backed Turkish attack on the airport in Bamerni:

Two days later, on Wednesday night, August 8, Turkey executed its first major military assault inside Iraq. DEBKAfile’s military sources learn from Turkish and Kurdish informants that helicopters under US, British and Turkish warplane escort flew Turkish commandos to an operation for seizing the critical Bamerni airport in northern Iraq. This airport, just outside the Kurdish region, lies 50 miles north of the big Iraqi oil cities of the north, Kirkuk and Mosul.

But there's still more control of strategic assets to be taken:

...with Bamerni airport and the two additional airfields  the Americans have acquired full control of the skies over the two oil cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, as well as over the Syrian-Iraqi railroad, which they can now cut off by aerial bombardment. A prime strategic asset, this railroad is Saddam’s back door for taking delivery of his illegal overseas arms purchases, which are ferried from Syrian ports to Baghdad by the Syrian-Iraqi railway. On the return journey, the same railway carries illegal Iraqi oil exports, over and above the quantities allowed under UN sanctions, out to market. The Iraqi war effort and the Syrian treasury depend heavily on the revenues accruing from these smuggled oil sales.

Look for Syria to get upset,too.
[My fears for Israel are doubled, if such is possible. I'll bet that they will be the first to get the receiving end of joint Syrian-Iraqi ire.
But this is something that must be done.]
Debkafiles then notes:

The battle over this airfield was in fact the first important face-to-face engagement between a US-led invasion force and Iraqi troops. It was carried out seven hours before the Iraqi ruler delivered his televised speech to the nation, on the 14th anniversary of the bloody eight-year Iraq-Iran war.

I got the link to this from everyone's fave blogging guru Instapundit, who in turn got if from Radio Free Mike who adds this to his entry:"I happen to be a hawk on Iraq, but it bugs me that I have to learn about my own country's military maneuvers from a news service in Israel. No wonder Iraq closed down any hope of arms inspections over the weekend. They know the idea is a sham."
Thanks for the heads up, Mike and Glenn.
I don't know if it "bugs me" to hear the war news this way, but would you really want to hear the way it would be "reported" on a "normal" TV news channel like MSNBC? I wouldn't.
(You can bet any real information about the war would become hopelessly lost in a sea of whining, moaning and bitching from various peacenik Dimocrats, Liberals, EUro-small sausages, and crazed Islamist apologists.)
Who knew that the Internet would become the 21st Century equivalent of the old Bakelite radio in WWII?
We warbloggers did, methinks.