The Pre-War Show

We're already working, "like termites" as this article from next week's Time Magaznie says, to undermine Hussein, within Iraq:

America's recent combat experiences in the Balkans and Afghanistan have confirmed for the Pentagon the virtues of psychological warfare and political initiatives in weakening the enemy before battle. These days the U.S. Army likes to say it is committed to "softening up the battlefield." Iraq is being softened up in many different ways. For one, following a Presidential Decision Directive on Oct. 3, the U.S. started a program to train up to 5,000 Iraqi exiles for possible missions in Iraq that could assist American combat troops. There is action inside Iraq too. A senior intelligence official tells Time that the U.S. has contacted groups that may be capable of sabotage before full-scale hostilities start. The U.S., says this official, is opening up lines to "people who can do World War II-style resistance, breaking up the infrastructure of communications and command." In a program that links intelligence, diplomacy, psychological warfare and military action, Saddam is being squeezed. "I see it as poking," says a State Department official. "Let's poke this pressure point and see what happens; let's see what reaction we get."

Remember a few weeks ago - we discussed the left's odd trope that toppling Hussein without a shot would be a defeat for the Administration?

To hear U.S. officials tell it, this war before the war brings a double benefit. On the one hand, it prepares the ground if a full-blown invasion proves necessary. On the other hand, it just may be enough to topple Saddam without having to bomb Iraq and march into Baghdad. "We've embarked on steps that help us prepare for a military option inside Iraq," says the State Department official, "but that don't constitute a crossing of the Rubicon. None of these steps are irreversible, and all of them could help promote the longer-term destabilization of Saddam's government."

In the meantime, the pace of operations is picking up:

Already, U.S. and British warplanes have moved to a more aggressive posture while enforcing Iraq's no-fly zones, the northern and southern regions from which Iraqi planes are banned. In the past, when Iraqi forces fired on allied planes, the reply came in attacks on guns and missile batteries. That has changed. Now the allied planes are attacking command-and-control centers, communications nodes and the fiber-optic network that links Iraq's air-defense system. "We're responding differently," says a Pentagon official, "hitting multiple targets when we're fired upon—and they're tending to be more important targets."

A big issue, not only for the left for for anyone that follows the history of the region, is "what about the Kurds?"

What's more, the U.S., safe in the northern no-fly zone over which Baghdad has no control, is beginning to work more closely with the Iraqi Kurds, who are starting to get their often tangled act together. A few weeks ago, the two leading Iraqi Kurdish political groups, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (K.D.P..) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (P.U.K.), started to carry out a historic accord designed to end their years of often violent rivalry and to launch a period of working together.

And that "period of working together" may only last until Hussein is at room temperature, or cooling his heels in the Sudan. But the job'll get done.

Posted by Mitch at November 24, 2002 06:39 PM