First strike policy

International Herald Tribune: Bush team drafts first-strike policy By Washington Post writers.
This story is going to pop up more and more. It's real. We may not even hear what happens. I know US and UK forces have attacked Iraq over the no fly zone so many times, perhaps it became non news.
I wouldn't be surprised to wake up one morning soon to hear that Bagdad has been erased. There is a surprise policy with "new weapons and capabilities to give Bush options different than those he may have had in the past."

Steve Hooker's Radio: Steve Hooker's Radio: "None of the American moves have been lost on Saddam Hussein. DEBKAfile's military sources report he has responded by relocating around six elite divisions of his Republican guard in the north and west, unwillingly tipping his hand on the Iraqi defense plan against a potential US-Kurdish-Turkish offensive coming from the north." (copied, because debka don't do archives.)

 

Debka does it again, looks like September would be a good time for war, what with it looking like the Kurds starting it, and all the US is doing is helping them out.

I've always wondered why the US is playing the situation so close to its chest, and not doing much on the diplomatic front, only looking as though it was trying.

 

"All these maneuvers are still in progress. DEBKAfile's military sources predict their accompaniment by escalating Palestinian terrorist assaults against Israel. Yasser Arafat will do all he can to back up Saddam's military moves and impede American efforts to unseat him. He knows that if the Iraqi ruler is weakened or finished, the Arafat regime will go the same way. His Baghda-Tehran-Riyadh-Damascus-Hizballah support-and-supply group is a vital element for his survival."

 

My personal opinion is that Saddam should be nuked. I'm sure he will be. It's the only demonstration of one-up-manship in this war. Then, if the Muslim separatists in Kashmir don't wise up, they'll be for the chop too. I had hoped the world would be able to sort itself out, but it ain't old enough, it needs a dominating force, it need to be led, and the leaders in the Middle East, particularly the Muslim ones, are leading their people to war, not peace and success.