Don’t Panic August 07 2002
What’s the latest on our planned war with Iraq?
Among my many qualifications for this job is the ability to unearth highly classified information and present it to readers. Well, I have recently discovered an amazing source that, over the past month or so, has revealed some of our double-secret battle plans to topple Saddam Hussein.
I’ll tell you the name of source, but I have to put it in code so that Iraq won’t find out. Ready? Good. It’s: “ew-Nay ork-Yay imes-Tay.” Pretty ucking-Fay ool-Cay, don’t you think?
Yeah, for some reason, our plans for invading Iraq keep showing up on the front page of the New York Times. Before you get angry at the Times for giving Saddam a heads-up, note that the main sources for the stories were senior administration and Pentagon officials, and that revealing them doesn’t endanger American soldiers one bit. It’s not as though Iraq can preemptively invade North Carolina to stop the Marines from assaulting Baghdad.
The first leaked plan, which should be codenamed “Operation and the Kitchen Sink,” is the biggest. It calls for a 250,000-person force, invading from the north, south and west, via air, land and sea. For all we know, it also may include robots from outer space and special subterranean forces digging from Nebraska through the center of the Earth, clear through to downtown Baghdad.
The second leaked plan says that Jordan will be used as the main staging point for air and commando raids into Iraq. Jordan is probably our best non- oil-producing Arab friend, and its king, Abdullah, is so pro-Western he speaks with a British accent. In 1996, he even had a cameo role in an episode of “Star Trek Voyager.” Nevertheless, King Abdullah is so vocally opposed to a U.S. attack that allowing our forces to operate from Jordan could fatally damage his credibility with his own people.
The third leaked plan is smaller in scale, but no less ambitious than the first plan. It calls for a concentrated air and land strike on Baghdad and other key locations in the Iraqi military command structure in order to decapitate — figuratively and (hopefully) literally — Iraq’s military capabilities.
One popular explanation for the multiple contradictory leaks is that they’re meant to confuse Iraq. The real reason for the leaks may even be more cunning: U.S. military planners may be hoping to tempt Saddam Hussein into subscribing to the New York Times, thus revealing his mailing address to us.
There is a fourth option being tossed around — one that the Bush/Rumsfeld/ Cheney Axis of Invasion doesn’t like very much. Senior U.S. military officials have told the press (specifically the “ashinton-Way ost-Pay”) that they don’t think Iraq is threatening enough to warrant an invasion. They propose continuing our current containment policy, which has successfully kept Saddam from attacking his neighbors. They note that a war with Iraq would be bloodier than the first Gulf War, and that “victory” would result in a long and expensive military occupation to rebuild Iraq. Not only that, but it would turn the Muslim and European nations against us in our campaign to get elected Most Popular Country.
The military’s fears have emboldened those in Congress trying to temper Bush’s “invade now, ask questions later” policy. While the President is able to dismiss foreign leaders with his “you’re either with us or against us” doctrine, he can’t do the same to Congress and the Pentagon. They’re not with us or against us — they are us.