Seymour Hersh- The Secret Air War in Iraq

I saw Seymour Hersh on CSPAN last night. He said, "I call it the secret air war in Iraq."

Information clearinghouse has his New Yorker article addressing the subject and also a shorter piece by Norman Soloman following up on the Hersh article. These articles how effective censorhip is by mainstream media in maintaining the myth of war.

Hidden in Plane Sight: U.S. Media Dodging Air War in Iraq

By Norman Solomon

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11258.htm

12/09/05 "ICH" -- -- The U.S. government is waging an air war in Iraq. “In recent months, the tempo of American bombing seems to have increased,” Seymour Hersh reported in the Dec. 5 edition of The New Yorker...

...So, according to the LexisNexis media database, how often has the phrase “air war” appeared in The New York Times this year with reference to the current U.S. military effort in Iraq?

As of early December, the answer is: Zero.

And how often has the phrase “air war” appeared in The Washington Post in 2005?

The answer: Zero.

And how often has “air war” been printed in Time, the nation’s largest-circulation news magazine, this year?

Zero.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11162.htm

Where is the Iraq war headed next?

By Seymour M. Hersh


The American air war inside Iraq today is perhaps the most significant—and underreported—aspect of the fight against the insurgency. The military authorities in Baghdad and Washington do not provide the press with a daily accounting of missions that Air Force, Navy, and Marine units fly or of the tonnage they drop, as was routinely done during the Vietnam War. One insight into the scope of the bombing in Iraq was supplied by the Marine Corps during the height of the siege of Falluja in the fall of 2004. “With a massive Marine air and ground offensive under way,” a Marine press release said, “Marine close air support continues to put high-tech steel on target. . . . Flying missions day and night for weeks, the fixed wing aircraft of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing are ensuring battlefield success on the front line.” Since the beginning of the war, the press release said, the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing alone had dropped more than five hundred thousand tons of ordnance. “This number is likely to be much higher by the end of operations,” Major Mike Sexton said. In the battle for the city, more than seven hundred Americans were killed or wounded; U.S. officials did not release estimates of civilian dead, but press reports at the time told of women and children killed in the bombardments.

Much more. Hersh's article lays out the untenable plan for transferring the war to Iraqi forces. American air forces will be subject to Iraqi ground controllers. This is a scary prospect for all concerned and Hersh examines it in some detail.

I spent 3 years in 3rdMAW back in the '60s. Anybody who thinks that pilots fret about where they drop their bombs is living in never-never land.

Because they won't be sure where the Iraqi Army (and the militiamen within it) are targeting these bombs until it's too late. Potentially, anyway. That's what has them bouncing off walls.

"More civilians will be killed, which means more insurgents will be created.”

Even American bombing on behalf of an improved, well-trained Iraqi Army would not necessarily be any more successful against the insurgency. “It’s not going to work,” said Andrew Brookes, the former director of airpower studies at the Royal Air Force’s advanced staff college, who is now at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, in London.

On CSpan yesterday , Hersh said these were 500 pound bombs, so one marine air wing has dropped about 2,000,000 bombs. The air-force and navy are also participating in the air war. It's disgraceful that the bush admin is carryong on this type of war without informing the American public.

But, what is more disgraceful is that the American public doesn't seem to care.

But, what is more disgraceful is that the American public doesn't seem to care.