U.S. Plans Massive Attack on Iraq - Report

X-Reaper · Jan 25, 2003, 01:52 AM

Wow, those are a lot of missles! I fear civilian casualties will be high.

http://dailynews.attbi.com/cgi-bin/n...raqusareportdc

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. war plan calls for the launch in March of three or four hundred cruise missiles a day at the start of a war on Iraq, more than were fired during the entire first Gulf War, according to a televised report on Friday.

U.S. officials and analysts have predicted for months that an attack on Iraq would be swift, massive and designed to catch Baghdad by surprise.

But the report by CBS Television, quoting Pentagon sources, offers new details of Pentagon thinking at a time when the Bush administration is undergoing a military buildup and trying to persuade President Saddam Hussein force will be used if he does not disarm.

A Pentagon spokesman declined comment.

CBS said the battle plan, called "shock and awe," focuses on the "psychological destruction of the enemy's will to fight rather than the physical destruction of his military forces."

"If the Pentagon sticks to its current war plan, one day in March, the Air Force and Navy will launch between three and four hundred cruise missiles at targets in Iraq -- more than were launched during the entire 40 days of the first Gulf War. On the second day, the plan calls for launching another three to four hundred cruise missiles," the network reported. During the 1991 Gulf War, a U.S. led armored column swept into Kuwait and destroyed Saddam's elite Republican Guard divisions in the largest tank battle since World War II.

But this time the target is the Iraqi leadership and the battle plan is designed to "bypass Iraqi divisions whenever possible," the network reported. ((Reporting by Carol Giacomo, editing by Sandra Maler; Reuters messaging: carol.giacomo.reuters.com@reuters.net)

mbeeston · Jan 25, 2003, 02:08 AM

presonally me thinks it's stupid.. but suddam is also stupid...

kinetic · Jan 25, 2003, 04:32 AM

I think the term is 'Blitzkrieg'

jp306 · Jan 25, 2003, 04:42 AM

Let's just hope Iraq is not stupid enough to use chemical weapons. That way we don't have to nuke um Cause we will

ToshiroOC · Jan 25, 2003, 07:57 AM

Keyword == PLANS Damn, I saw this and rocketed off to news.google.com to get a good link for the front page... and then I saw a link to Powell going and looking around for more Iraq-attack-support...

digitalwanderer · Jan 25, 2003, 09:07 AM

Well, it sounds AWFULLY expensive! A lot cheaper than losing one soldier true, but still a god-awful expensive way for a country in a depression to fight a war! (I know, I should be worried about the human casualties more than the missile's price tag...I know there's going to be a lot of human casualties either way, I'm just being picky/critical on how we go about making 'em.)

That being said, I sure as hell wouldn't want to be anywhere near Baghdad when it starts raining cruise missiles.

kinetic · Jan 25, 2003, 09:19 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by digitalwanderer

That being said, I sure as hell wouldn't want to be anywhere near Baghdad when it starts raining cruise missiles.

I remember well the awesome sight of a cruise missile flying overhead at about 100 feet at 500mph in the Gulf War. If I was a correspondent over there I would get my bags packed pretty smartish

digitalwanderer · Jan 25, 2003, 09:32 AM

...I keep remembering how the Gulf War just seemed totally one-sided and a walk in the park for US troops, but when I talked to me brudder-in-law a few x-mas' after that he schooled me different. He's a marine captain who flew an F-18D during the war, and he told me the story of one of his bombing runs where someone actually tagged him with a shoulder-mounted missile and he had to do a power-climb with full-afterburners to outrun it.

No matter what the news media says, war is hard on both sides and it's a scary as hell proposition! I really think the hawks in Washington just don't get that or the scale of human suffering they're about to invoke.

kinetic · Jan 25, 2003, 09:38 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by digitalwanderer
...I keep remembering how the Gulf War just seemed totally one-sided and a walk in the park for US troops,

We were there too you know!

digitalwanderer · Jan 25, 2003, 09:55 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by kinetic
We were there too you know!

MY BAD! My most sincere apologies, you are correct! I should have said the Coalition Forces and it was an idiotic slip on my behalf.

My thanks and appreciation to all the men and women who were involved in that action on the good guys side, it was most definately not just the US who were involved in that one.

SEE what happens, do you SEE?!?! This stinking President and his stinking White House have brainwashed me into thinking like an American again!

I'd like to think I'm a little better than that.

kinetic · Jan 25, 2003, 10:05 AM

Just teasin' Dig!

It looks like it may be down to just us two this time around.

I'm not an overly religious person but I pray to God that everything works out ok with the minimum of casualties on both sides.

Matth · Jan 25, 2003, 12:01 PM

Battleships firing "shells the weight of a car" would be a lot cheaper than cruise missiles - trouble is, the idiots decomissioned their last real battleship.

Cruise missiles have one BIG advantage - they can be fired from relative safety without endangering crew or equipment.
And on monster disadvantage - the price per shot!

If all ground to air retalition can be suppressed, bombers can deliver a lot more bang for their buck.
And big guns on a ship are probably the cheapest of all.

On the other hand, if Saddam and his henchmen could be quietly (or even noisily) assasinated, either by covert strike or supporting a dissident force, no more problem.

We should have had his head on a plate after Gulf war (1), then there would have been no need for Gulf war (2).

X-Reaper · Jan 25, 2003, 03:56 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Matth
Cruise missiles have one BIG advantage - they can be fired from relative safety without endangering crew or equipment.
And on monster disadvantage - the price per shot!

We should have had his head on a plate after Gulf war (1), then there would have been no need for Gulf war (2).

Yeah, I think it's about 1.5 million per cruise missile. This is going to be one expensive war.

I agree on the 2nd quote, why did Bush senior not do it??

UberLord · Jan 25, 2003, 05:10 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by X-Reaper
I agree on the 2nd quote, why did Bush senior not do it??

He wasn't called the Wimp President for nothing

ToshiroOC · Jan 25, 2003, 05:33 PM

Y'all should take a look at this:

http://www.asu.net/bsh/union.mov

It's appropriate for all ages - its a... er... modified version of Bush's State of the Union speech.. very well done doctoring, only one visible thing was off throughout... extremely funny...

ToshiroOC

reno · Jan 25, 2003, 06:49 PM

Bush Sr. didn't kill Saddam because it's international law that you can't assassinate a head of a nation...for that matter, you also can't "force a regime change," unless your country itself has been attacked...but then who is going to stand up to the most powerful nation in the world?

I find this even more funny because our "intelligence" has no actual proof that Saddam has weapons...no weapons spotted by satillites, no weapons bought from other countries...no storage facilities...

It reminds me of the south park episode where Bush wanted to bomb heaven because certain clouds looked "suspiciously like missle factories"... le sigh...

Don_1 · Jan 25, 2003, 06:53 PM

Quote:

It reminds me of the south park episode where Bush wanted to bomb heaven because certain clouds looked "suspiciously like missle factories"... le sigh...

LMAO

JavaFox · Jan 25, 2003, 10:15 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by digitalwanderer
A lot cheaper than losing one soldier true, but still a god-awful expensive way for a country in a depression to fight a war!:

We aren't in a depression. Someone made a good point on an investment TV show yesterday. If we weren't recovering, why would StarBucks (SBUX) be posting "surprisingly strong quarterly profits?" This is a company that sells $4 coffees!

No, but, that observation aside, we are not in a depression in any economic sense. An depression is defined as two quarters of negative economic (GDP) growth. We aren't experiencing that. We may be sluggish, and you might doubt that we are recovering quickly, but we aren't depressed.

ToshiroOC · Jan 25, 2003, 10:19 PM

Er, JF, read this article: Stock Market hits 3 month low (from today)...

JavaFox · Jan 25, 2003, 10:41 PM

Toshiro, that doesn't matter. Depressions and recessions have nothing to do with what the DJIA is at.

ToshiroOC · Jan 25, 2003, 10:55 PM

I'm not saying that you are wrong, but the way you phrased things you made it sound like we WERE recovering quickly, when we are doing anything but...