WAR? WHAT WAR? While the press, pundits and politicians in the United States debate going to war with Iraq, Mark Erikson, writing in the
Asia Times, notes an interesting development: the war started months ago.
This report, first noted by
Instapundit, makes a strongly persuasive case that the United States, Britain, Turkey and Germany have been waging war on Iraq since President Bush's intelligence directive last March ordering Saddam's removal.
Erikson points out that at the time of Bush's March directive, the combined American/British force around Iraq numbered about 50,000. "This number," Erikson reports, "has grown to over 100,000, not counting soldiers of and on naval units in the vicinity. It's been a build-up without much fanfare, accelerating since March and accelerating further since June. And these troops are not just sitting on their hands or twiddling their thumbs while waiting for orders to act out some type of D-Day drama. Several thousand are already in Iraq. They are gradually closing in and rattling Saddam's cage. In effect, the war has begun." Providing logistical assistance in this effort are Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and Jordan.
Three details Erikson reports are particularly interesting and, of course, went largely unreported (if reported at all) in the United States. In Kuwait, there's "a 250-man, highly-specialized German NBC (nuclear-biological-chemical) warfare battalion equipped with 'Fuchs' (fox) armored vehicles"; on August 9, a Turkish force of 5,000 invaded Iraq and took "over the Bamerni air base north of Mosul"; and in June, CIA director George Tenet visited the 1,800 American special forces already inside Iraq.
Given the evidence assembled by Erickson, it's difficult to disagree with his conclusion that the American-Iraqi war has been underway since spring. The question is, why is most of the American press oblivious to it or ignoring it? A combination of several factors answers that question. Some news outlets, such as the Howell Raines' New York Times, are rabidly opposed to war with Iraq and would rather not acknowledge that they've failed to stop it. Others, particularly the electronic press, don't consider it an official war until they see live video feeds of bombs exploding and enemy tracer fire filling the night skies. And many in the American fourth estate are just too damned lazy to bother doing any investigative reporting beyond determining the proper pronunciation of "Iraq."
