It’s Almost Iraqi Time: There

16 Jul, 2002 by John Hawkins

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It’s Almost Iraqi Time: There are a lot of different opinions floating around about when and even if we’re going to hit Iraq. Conventional wisdom says we’re going to go after them in early 2003 although some of the more cynical people believe we will wait unitl early 2004 so Bush can hopefully give himself a little war boost during an election year. However, many people thought we were planning to hit Iraq in late summer/early fall. I still believe that this time frame is correct. Of course, I could be 100% off with this but I’m guessing that some time in either August, September, or October we’re going to hit Hussein and company like a ton of bricks.

Now there were several stories that came out a few months ago saying the US military wasn’t ready, that we weren’t sure if we were going to hit Iraq at all, and if we went at all, we were going in 2003. In my opinion, that’s pure disinformation designed to throw Saddam off track. Why do I think that? Obviously Saddam has absolutely no hope of dealing with us using conventional weapons. That means Saddam is essentially powerless…except for his scuds armed with WMD. It is also thought that if US forces start to build up in the area, Hussein will launch chemical or biological tipped weapons at our forces. This means we really can’t afford to let him know we’re coming.

That’s why I think we’ll see the first showing of Bush’s “preemptive strike” policy with Iraq. I think you’ll see us hit Iraq from multiple directions and I think we’ll catch Hussein largely by surprise. I think we’ll take his oil fields, obliterate a lot of key targets, and we’ll turn some of his own people against him. Hopefully, using spy planes and a fast aggressive attack, we can stop Hussein being able to get off his WMD tipped scuds or at least minimize the number he’s able to fire.

I think a lot of things are happening right now that give credence to this theory. Bush introduced his new “preemptive strike” doctrine, steps have been taken to calm things down between the Israelis and the Palestinians, British forces have left Afghanistan and we’re down to almost nothing but special forces there, the word is that Jordan is going to let us use bases in their nation, and we’ve heard various leaks about different battle plans. Furthermore, the last real action in Afghanistan was in December of 2001. How much momentum would be lost if went an entire year without any real military action in the war on terrorism? When you add all of these things up, I see an invasion coming…soon.