Stardate 20020121.2234

(On Screen): Actually starting the shooting in a war is a tricky thing to do politically. What you want to do is to make it look like a defensive move or response of some kind, even if your goal is conquest, if you can possibly pull it off. Ideally, you come up with some sort of provocation by the other side, real or imagined, and go from there.

A lot of people speculate that we will eventually end up invading Iraq with intent to truly take out the Hussein government. I think there's a substantial chance of that. But how to actually get started?

One possibility is to escalate the actual combat which is already taking place there now, and which has been taking place there for years. Ever since the Gulf War, jets belonging to the US and UK have been patrolling the no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq, and for the last several years, Iraqi anti-air defenses have been half-heartedly trying to knock them down. It is far from a full-scale war, but it's also not peace, and there have been casualties (theirs). Occasionally they take a shot at one of our planes, or "paint" it with their radar, and occasionally one of our jets will go in and plaster a radar site with a HARM or take out a gun emplacement. We took out a battery today, in fact.

That could be increased in easy stages, with progressively more and more flights, and more and more actual ground attacks against radars, guns and missile batteries. That would be a good thing anyway, if the intent were to really fight there, because it is US doctrine to achieve air supremacy and neutralize enemy air defenses. But this could serve a dual purpose of eventually goading Hussein into doing something stupid, like moving troops into forward positions, or telling his gunners to fire at will, or actually contesting the no-fly zone with such aircraft as he still has (helicopters, mostly). Then our government could announce, "See! He's gone too far; we no longer have any choice."

Keep an eye on this; it will be interesting to see if attacks against Iraqi air defenses get more frequent in the next few weeks.