KR leads the way again:
A review of military data shows that daily bombing runs and jet-missile launches have increased by more than 50 percent in the past five months, compared with the same period last year.…The numbers also show that U.S. forces dropped bombs on more cities during the last five months than they did during the same period a year ago. Airstrikes hit at least 11 cities between Oct. 1, 2004, and Feb. 28, 2005, but were mostly concentrated in and around the western city of Fallujah. A year later, U.S. warplanes struck at least 22 cities during the same months.
If you had any doubt that our adventure in Iraq is spinning badly out of control.
To paraphrase the Robert Duvall character in Apocalypse Now who stands on the beach and revels in the smell of the napalm after leading a dawn helipcopter gunship assault on a seaside village, “I love the smell of progress in Iraq in the morning. … Smelled like … victory.”
"Operation Swarmer" is well under way by now, the biggest air offensive in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, involving more than 50 aircraft and 1,500 Iraqi and US troops as well as 200 tactical vehicles targeting suspected insurgents somewhere north of Baghdad.
Things are getting bigger and better all the time.
But the hotter the battle may be, the sweeter the victory (Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said that, after supposedly having been killed by American bombers somewhere north of Baghdad, some time ago during another very successful operation).
Out of control, I agree. But not unplanned, as Seymour Hersh told us in November that this was coming up.
A key element of the drawdown plans, not mentioned in the President’s public statements, is that the departing American troops will be replaced by American airpower. Quick, deadly strikes by U.S. warplanes are seen as a way to improve dramatically the combat capability of even the weakest Iraqi combat units. The danger, military experts have told me, is that, while the number of American casualties would decrease as ground troops are withdrawn, the over-all level of violence and the number of Iraqi fatalities would increase unless there are stringent controls over who bombs what.“We’re not planning to diminish the war,” Patrick Clawson, the deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told me. Clawson’s views often mirror the thinking of the men and women around Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. “We just want to change the mix of the forces doing the fighting—Iraqi infantry with American support and greater use of airpower. The rule now is to commit Iraqi forces into combat only in places where they are sure to win. The pace of commitment, and withdrawal, depends on their success in the battlefield.”
Posted by: Chuck Dupree (Belisarius) on March 18, 2006 3:32 AM