The Unseen War in Iraq

[Clara T]

Press Clips
The Unseen War in Iraq
When troops are cut, we'll still be bombing the hell out of the place
by Sydney H. Schanberg
January 24th, 2006 11:14 AM

In every war, some things are seen more clearly than others and are therefore reported more fully. The air war in Iraq is not one of them. American air power has been dominant in most of the modern wars, but bombing and strafing take place either completely out of sight or in areas not accessible to close observation by the press. Rarely does the military allow reporters to go along on combat sorties.
In the Vietnam War, some of the bombing was kept secret, such as the heavy raids in 1969–70 on North Vietnamese sanctuaries inside Cambodia, before that country was drawn full-bore into the war by the Nixon "incursion" in the spring of 1970. Military records were altered to make it appear that all this carpet bombing was carried out inside Vietnam.
Little is known or seen of the air part of the American war of today, in Iraq. One of the reasons is that the press, with less mobility because of security risks, has to be focused on what's happening on the ground, where the damage, human and material, is taking place. A more crucial reason is that the Pentagon and the CIA prefer to tell us as little as possible about air war operations.
Recently, but only in bits and pieces, military officials in Washington have acknowledged that after the U.S. and Britain withdraw the bulk of their ground troops, the American air component will be kept in the region to support the American-trained Iraqi ground forces who will be taking over the ground war. While the Pentagon doesn't say anything about increasing air power in Iraq, other military sources—speaking anonymously because the information is classified—confirm that the plans call for the air war to be beefed up and kept that way for years to come. These sources also point to Iran and its nuclear ambitions as a reason for keeping air power at a high-alert level in the region.

http://villagevoice.com/news/0604,schanberg,71897,6.html

[Village Idiot]

1. Some of the reports I have been reading are horrendous.

Reports of ONE SINGLE AIR WING dropping more DU ordinance than was dropped on Dresden in WWII, etc...