Badgering Iraq

There is reason enough to believe that the Bush administration was looking to find a way to invade Iraq from day one, as the saying goes. (This is without considering the role of the old cold warriors whose desire to impose US will on the region long predated Shrub and his Shrubberies.)

Recently, however, something new has been added: a plan to provoke Iraq into an action that would be used to justify "going in," a plan known as Desert Badger.

After the first Gulf War, the US and the UK imposed on Iraq so-called "no-fly zones." Those zones were actually illegal as they were created and enforced without UN authorization. Over time, the "no-fly" zones became what could be called "no defend" zones: If Iraqi antiaircraft fired at American planes, "self-defense" was used as an excuse to bomb the site. Indeed, if Iraqi radar even locked onto a plane - necessary even just to follow where the plane was going - it brought the same reaction. (Pre-emptive strikes did not originate with Bush.) The military was known to try to provoke Iraq into taking potshots in order to justify more bombing. It got to the point where one Pentagon representative referred to a bombing raid in northern Iraq as "routine."

However, Bush ordered a plan that went well beyond that. US pilots would continue their provocative "patrols" of the illegal no-fly zone. If by chance the Iraqis shot one down, it would trigger a massive retaliation within four to eight hours. According to a CNN-TV news account from March 31,

Pentagon sources say a long list of targets across the country would be hit, crippling Iraqi air defenses and command and control. The plan went far beyond the Clinton administration's 1998 Operation Desert Fox, which hit 100 targets in four days. ...

One defense official familiar with the plan says if a plane got shot down, that was the trigger. We were going in. Over time, the source said, Operation Desert Badger evolved into a more robust plan for attacking the regime.

The president would have quickly decided whether to take the next step, approving sending a small number of ground troops to secure key areas.

Because of the small numbers of US forces in the region at the time, the plan apparently was not one to overthrow Saddam Hussein. However, it was intended to be an attack on a scale not seen since the first Gulf War and the reference to "securing key areas" raises some interesting questions since the US forces on the ground at the time were in Kuwait.

Now let's see, just what areas in Iraq that we might have wanted to "secure" are within easy reach of Kuwait? Hmm....

Footnote: The same broadcast quoted Donald Rumsfeld as saying the plans were "packaged, pre-cleared with the president. And we were cocked and ready...." I'll ignore the obvious lines about the Bush crew being concerned if they were cocked or not in favor of noting that if the plans were fully cocked, that about double the cocking of the thought processes behind them.