General admits to secret air war (The Sunday Times Britain)

[doublethink]

June 26, 2005

General admits to secret air war
Michael Smith
THE American general who commanded allied air forces during the Iraq war appears to have admitted in a briefing to American and British officers that coalition aircraft waged a secret air war against Iraq from the middle of 2002, nine months before the invasion began.

Addressing a briefing on lessons learnt from the Iraq war Lieutenant-General Michael Moseley said that in 2002 and early 2003 allied aircraft flew 21,736 sorties, dropping more than 600 bombs on 391 “carefully selected targets” before the war officially started.

The nine months of allied raids “laid the foundations” for the allied victory, Moseley said. They ensured that allied forces did not have to start the war with a protracted bombardment of Iraqi positions.

If those raids exceeded the need to maintain security in the no-fly zones of southern and northern Iraq, they would leave President George W Bush and Tony Blair vulnerable to allegations that they had acted illegally. -snip-

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1669640,00.html

[Spazito]

1. Another piece of evidence to be added to growing collection

on the illegality of the actions of bush and blair:

"If those raids exceeded the need to maintain security in the no-fly zones of southern and northern Iraq, they would leave President George W Bush and Tony Blair vulnerable to allegations that they had acted illegally."

Thanks, doublethink, for posting this in LBN.

[dArKeR]

2. Take a close look at your "victory" you dirty bastards! Warning Graphic

[1monster]

3. Four words

INTERNATIONAL WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL

Addressing a briefing on lessons learnt from the Iraq war Lieutenant-General Michael Moseley said that in 2002 and early 2003 allied aircraft flew 21,736 sorties, dropping more than 600 bombs on 391 “carefully selected targets” before the war officially started.

[doublethink]

4. Your Four Words Says It All. n/t

[Sydnie]

5. Please oh please let it be so!!!!

I smell it in the air. Can you?

[Marnieworld]

6. 4 More words

Impeach. Indict. Convict. Imprison.

[cascadiance]

8. And once this is done, have Tina Turner sing "Thunderdome"...

as we put both Bush and Saddam in to a "Thunderdome" (globally telecast), with the old saying "Two men in... One Man Out!" The revenues from that telecast would help bring down our debt some!

[XemaSab]

15. One word:

AMEN!!!!!!

[mom cat]

19. Bingo! You've pegged that one right! I'm just wondering if the powers

that be are trying to pull the rug out from under the Bush/Blair duet. There sure are a lot of leaks coming from Murdoch's paper.

[NashVegas]

20. Three Words

Hague Invasion Act.

Honorable mention: all those treaties we got signed, taking us out of it.

[driver8]

84. Amen!! How much longer can the people of this country look away

from what these criminals are doing?? How can anyone with any sense of decency support these lying chicken hawks? How much more evidence is needed? Will there ever be enough evidence to convince the shrub supporters that he is a lying, cowardly, chickenshit?

It boggles the mind that these fuckers still have people in America that support what they are doing.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

7. Illegality kick.

:kick:

[MrScorpio]

9. This was no secret IN the Air Force

But somehow, an absentee Congress was all too clueless about it.

[VegasWolf]

13. Yes, but Congress was preoccupied with bribes and free golf trips. nt

[lovuian]

10. Congress is to Blame just as much as Bush!!! They knew!!!

they just are responsible and thats why Impeachment isn't going to happen cause the Republicans knew also but the World is going to expect these men and women to be tried!!!

This is what I'm saying

Time is a long patient entity!!!

What is going on here will be looked back in history as some very dark days in America!!!

[Laughing Mirror]

11. This too was reported at the time, but nobody cared

Dilip Hiro went into quite a bit of detail about this pre-war war in at least one of his Iraq books while it was underway, and here's a reprint from a John Filger article at the time.

http://www.vicpeace.org/stories/03/1075.html

The secret war on Iraq

by John Pilger (Daily Mirror, December 18, 2002)

The American and British attack on Iraq has already begun. While the Blair government continues to claim in Parliament that "no final decision has been taken", Royal Air Force and US fighter bombers have secretly changed tactics and escalated their "patrols" over Iraq to an all-out assault on both military and civilian targets. American and British bombing of Iraq has increased by 300 per cent. Between March and November, according to Ministry of Defence replies to MPs, the RAF dropped more than 124 tonnes of bombs. From August to December, there were 62 attacks by American F-16 aircraft and RAF Tornadoes - an average of one bombing raid every two days. These are said to have been aimed at Iraqi "air defences", but many have fallen on mostly populated areas, where civilian deaths are unavoidable.


Under the United Nations Charter and the conventions of war and international law, the attacks amount to acts of piracy: no different, in principle, from the German Luftwaffe's bombing in Spain in the 1930s as precursor to its invasion of Europe. The bombing is a "secret war" that has seldom been news. Since 1991, and especially in the last four years, it has been unrelenting and is now deemed the longest Anglo-American campaign of aerial bombardment since World War Two. The US and British governments justify it by claiming they have a UN mandate to police so-called "no-fly zones" which they declared following the Gulf War. They say these "zones", which give them control of most of Iraq's airspace, are legal and supported by UN Security Council Resolution 688. This is false. There are no references to no fly zones in any Security Council resolution. To be sure about this, I asked Dr Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who was Secretary General of the United Nations in 1992 when Resolution 688 was passed. "The issue of no fly zones was not raised and therefore not debated: not a word," he said. "They offer no legitimacy to countries sending their aircraft to attack Iraq." In 1999, Tony Blair claimed the no fly zones allowed the US and Britain to perform "a vital humanitarian task" in protecting the Kurds in the north of Iraq and the ethnic Marsh Arabs in the south. In fact, British and American aircraft have actually provided cover for neighbouring Turkey's repeated invasions of northern, Kurdish Iraq.

...
After eight years of enforcing a no fly zone in northern (and southern) Iraq, few targets remain. "We're down to the last outhouse," one US official protested. I have seen the result of these attacks. When I drove from the northern city of Mosul three years ago, I saw the remains of an agricultural water tanker and truck, riddled with bullet holes, shrapnel from a missile, a shoe and the wool and skeletons of about 150 sheep. A family of six, a shepherd, his father and his wife and four children, were blown to pieces here. It was treeless, open country: a moonscape. The shepherd, his family and his sheep would have been clearly visible from the air. The shepherd's brother, Hussain Jarsis, agreed to meet me at the cemetery where the family is buried. He arrived in an old Toyota van with the widow, who was hunched with grief, her face covered. She held the hand of her one remaining child, and they sat beside the mounds of earth that are the four children's graves. "I want to see the pilot who killed my children," she shouted across to us. The shepherd's brother told me, "I heard explosions, and when I arrived to look for my brother and family, the planes were circling overhead. I hadn't reached the causeway when the fourth bombardment took place. The last two rockets hit them. "At the time I couldn't grasp what was going on. The truck was burning. It was a big truck, but it was ripped to pieces. Nothing remained except the tyres and the numberplate. "We saw three corpses, but the rest were just body parts. With the last rocket, I could see the sheep blasted into the air." It was not known if American or British aircraft had done this. When details of the attack were put to the Ministry of Defence in London, an official said, "We reserve the right to take robust action when threatened." This attack was significant, because it was investigated and verified by the senior United Nations official in Iraq at the time, Hans Von Sponeck, who drove there specially from Baghdad. He confirmed that nothing nearby resembled a military installation.

[Straight Shooter]

12. The nine months of allied raids “laid the foundations”

You don't lay a foundation unless you're planning on building a house. In this case, it's a house of cards called War Against Iraq.

[rucky]

14. pay attention to this one...

bookmarked and recommended

[Roland99]

16. Morning of Sept. 11th, this is what I remember hearing on the way to work

U.S. spy drone missing over Iraq
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/meast/09/11/iraq.shootdown/

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The official Iraqi News Agency reported on Tuesday that Iraq's anti-aircraft forces shot down a U.S. spy plane near the southern port city of Basra.

The Pentagon confirmed it had lost contact with a $3.2 million RQ-1B Predator unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).

Pentagon officials said it would take them some time to determine whether the drone had malfunctioned or had been shot down, but they confirmed it was overdue for return.

Iraq claimed to have shot down the same kind of craft in the Basra area on August 27, and the Pentagon acknowledged losing a plane in that area.

FWIW

[MellowOne]

17. I knew about the bombings before the war

In a conversation with my aunt before the war, she was telling me about my cousin who was at the time in training as a Marine. We talked about the possibility of war with Iraq and she said, "The US is already bombing Iraq." I don't recall how many months in advance of the invasion but I do remember wondering why we were already bombing Iraq. So I know for a fact that this is true.

[Captain Hilts]

18. After this they thought we'd be "greeted as liberators?"

I would not treat as liberators someone who'd been bombing the crap out of me for months.

[jsamuel]

21. geez, why?

[reprobate]

22. Something is wrong with this story. Only one plane in 37 had a bomb?

600 bombs in 21,736 missions is one bomb for every thirty nine flights. I guess the rest went as tourists, right?

Damnit you media whores, get the stories right. You give us little enough of the truth anyway.

[Toots]

24. I believe it was supposed to be 600 tons of bombs

:shrug: Makes it hard to trust anything or anybody this day and age.

[lala_rawraw]

57. Firstly...

There are two of us... two!!! AND we do not have the resources to follow this web of crap.

As for 600 bombs, that is an error that was made at editing. I have notified for correction and I do apologize for confusion.

But we are hardly media whores. Thank you.

[dbt]

23. Kick.

Reckon we know who Jesus would bomb now.

[maddezmom]

26. and another

:D

[alarcojon]

25. Check out the closing sentence

A new poll shows 60% of Americans now believe it was a mistake.

Personally, I do start to hear the "I" word in the air.

[doublethink]

87. ............

[LTRS]

27. Wasn't this obvious at the time?

I remember having a chance to speak to Sen Maria Cantwell in the fall, prior to the vote in Congress and asking her "Aren't they already waging war with all the extra bombing they are doing? Why isn't Congress insisting on being consulted on that?"

She gave me a bullshit answer and later voted in favor of the invasion, chiefly, I think, because she does whatever Hillary tells her to do.

[Disturbed]

28. What is going to be done about it?

Will this be ignored like everything else?

[LTRS]

29. It was ignored then, and that will be the excuse

... for ignoring it now. Sure the press never directly said this is what they were doing, but they covered it enough to be able to now say, "this is old news" which is exactly what the corporate media has used as an excuse for ignoring the DSM.

[Roland99]

30. U.S., Britain led massive secret bombing campaign before Iraq war declared

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/The_unofficial_war_U.S._and_Britain_led_massive_air_campaign_before_Iraq_war_be_0627.html

A U.S. general who commanded the U.S. allied air forces in Iraq has confirmed that the U.S. and Britain conducted a massive secret bombing campaign before the U.S. actually declared war on Iraq.

The quote, passed from RAW STORY to the London Sunday Times last week, raises troubling questions of whether President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair engaged in an illegal war before seeking a UN resolution or congressional approval.

<...>

Starting in late May to June of 2002 a flurry of activity began both in the United States and in the Middle East. In what appears to be an admission of covert activity, chief allied air force commander Lieutenant-General Michael Moseley divulged in a little-noticed quote in the New York Times that US/British aircraft flew 21,736 sorties between June 2002 and March 2003.

Moseley said that some 600 bombs were dropped before the official start of the war, targeting 391 locations and/or installations.

[rodeodance]

31. so, how do we get this to be a headline in the WashPost?

[Roland99]

33. Launch a coup?

[Call me Deacon Blues]

37. Secret bombing kills missing white woman!

How's that?

[marbuc]

88. Cover all the bases

Secret bombing kills missing white woman in Neverland Ranch while Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes prepare for marriage.

[annabanana]

38. the same way

we managed to get that snarky piece about the DSM... after about a MONTH of screaming

The corpomedia really doesn't want to cover ANYthing uncomplimentary about this regime. They only way any of them even break the silence a little is if they're embarrassed into it.

When EVERYBODY knows it, and there are LTTEs in every major paper, and an exiled basement committee meeting in DC, three or four hysterical skits on The Daily Show and one good piece by Keith Olberman..

THEN AND ONLY THEN will it break into the Post, the NY Times, on page 28, below the fold.. surrounded with nasty remarks about how "the liberal bloggers are up in arms about the lack of coverage....."

They are trying to exhaust us... It's a good thing we are legion!

[mom cat]

43. Let's start by getting it to the a headline here. Very well documented

article.

[leftchick]

46. secret bombings in Iraq cause sharks to attack

white bodies on the gulf coast? :shrug:

[lala_rawraw]

51. Get a porn star?

To fart on the Daily Show while reading the information? ;)

[zwielicht]

85. Casualties of an 'Undeclared War' - Dec 22, 2002; Page A01

http://www.ccmep.org/2002_articles/Iraq/122202_casualties_of_an.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23834-2002Dec21

;)

looks like the ministry of truth is working :tinfoilhat:

edit: https://www4.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/06/314573.html has a timeline with more MSM-stories

[rocktivity]

32. Illegal secret bombing

that has a Viet Nam-ish ring to it...

:headbang:
rocknation

[bleever]

34. So the "last resort" was already underway, while the diplomatic

channels to avoid war were being systematically subverted and undermined.

High crimes. Treason.


:mad:

[dchill]

36. "last resort", first resort, ONLY resort

Really all the same - illegal invasion. The "War On Terror" never really existed, did it?

[Roland99]

39. All depends on what "last" means. "last resort"..."last throes"

[dchill]

35. Can anyone say "prima facie case"

that the Iraq invasion was not only illegal, but that Bush & Blair knew it was illegal. Why else would they both lie about it now? ("No decision had been made.")

[MindPilot]

40. Raising hand...."before the U.S. actually declared war on Iraq"...

umm...was there actually a formal declaration of war or are we still in the "enforcing the UN resolution" stage of bombing the fuck out of a defenseless country?

[lala_rawraw]

41. can anyone see the graphic?

I cannot see it and that may be because i am going blind.

[Roland99]

42. Try this one:

[Pryderi]

47. Interesting how the first spike of 2002 coincided with our withdrawal from

the International Criminal Court. (May 7th, 2002}

[jsamuel]

48. coincidence? I think not...

[Roland99]

55. Was anything major going on in Afghanistan at the same time?

[lala_rawraw]

49. nope...

I am graphic blind it seems...all of you will have to describe reality to me, as it appears in images, from this point on.

fuck + blah = flah!!!!!!!!!1

[Roland99]

53. You're just "blucked"

:)


Imagine a Y-Axis of # of days of bombing (in a month) and an X-Axis of months from Jan-01 -> Mar-03.

The values are:
Jan-01 - 5
4
0
3
2
6
2
6
4
2
2
0
Jan-02 - 4
2
0
2
6
4
6
10
6
7
8
13
Jan-03 - 13
13
8

[K-W]

45. In todays mockery of interpretation,

the congressional authorization for the conditional use of force where none of the conditions were met is considered a decleration of war. Violation of UN mandates is the argument made for international legality, imminent threat was the case made domestically.

[lala_rawraw]

75. Yes...

In a way, by stating that combat operations were under way and then by landing in his little outfit to say combat operations were over

[mzmolly]

44. Gee, that means WE violated the UN agreement.

Hmmmmmmmm.

[lala_rawraw]

50. Well, here is a question...

Did we burn farms or did we hit military installations?

Anyone? Given the obvious, I cannot give my ops on this one. Would love to hear your views though.

[jsamuel]

52. if we dropped 600 tons of bombs, probably both (on accident or on purpose)

:(

[mzmolly]

54. Napalm burns people. It clings to skin and burns anyone in a mass area.

It's designed to have a psychological effect, not to take out military installations.

:(

Could be what prompted the "burning" of construction workers in Fallujah?

http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=14920109&method=full&siteid=106694&headline=fallujah-napalmed-name_page.html

Outraged critics have also demanded that Mr Blair threatens to withdraw British troops from Iraq unless the US abandons one of the world's most reviled weapons. Halifax Labour MP Alice Mahon said: "I am calling on Mr Blair to make an emergency statement to the Commons to explain why this is happening. It begs the question: 'Did we know about this hideous weapon's use in Iraq?'"

Since the American assault on Fallujah there have been reports of "melted" corpses, which appeared to have napalm injuries.

Last August the US was forced to admit using the gas in Iraq.

A 1980 UN convention banned the use of napalm against civilians - after pictures of a naked girl victim fleeing in Vietnam shocked the world.

[rawstory]

80. Corrections added...

And more followup, perhaps tomorrow.

[Supersedeas]

56. and where is the U.S. Corporate Media....???....WHERE?

[lala_rawraw]

58. The unofficial war: U.S., Britain led massive ...

(Muriel Kane of Raw Story created time chart)
****


The unofficial war: U.S., Britain led massive secret bombing campaign before Iraq war was declared

Larisa Alexandrovna and John Byrne

A U.S. general who commanded the U.S. allied air forces in Iraq has confirmed that the U.S. and Britain conducted a massive secret bombing campaign before the U.S. actually declared war on Iraq.

The quote, passed from RAW STORY to the London Sunday Times last week, raises troubling questions of whether President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair engaged in an illegal war before seeking a UN resolution or congressional approval.

While the Downing Street documents collectively raise disturbing questions about how the Bush administration led the United States into Iraq, including allegations that “intelligence was being fixed,” other questions have emerged about when the US and British led allies actually began the Iraq war.

<snip)

The Ides of May-June

Starting in late May to June of 2002 a flurry of activity began both in the United States and in the Middle East. In what appears to be an admission of covert activity, chief allied air force commander Lieutenant-General Michael Moseley divulged in a little-noticed quote in the New York Times that US/British aircraft flew 21,736 sorties between June 2002 and March 2003...
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/The_unofficial_war_U.S._and_Britain_led_massive_air_campaign_before_Iraq_war_be_0627.html

[lala_rawraw]

59. Can you guys see graphic?

I cannot see it:(

[sabra]

61. yep

[Dudley_DUright]

62. I can

but it is also at the bottom of the linked article.

[lala_rawraw]

63. It is?

I cannot see it... wtf???

[Occulus]

89. go check your file associations in your browser

It may be that a program was installed on your PC that changed a common standard file extension association in your browser (gif, jpg, jpeg, img, pcx, tga, etc.) to display using its program- thereby breaking your ability to see images in your browser.

Is this true for ALL images, or just this one?

Run Adaware and your favorite virus scanner. Check your image file associations both in browser and in the system itself. If everything else is functioning normally, I'd say it either malware of some sort or a virus.

Good luck!

[sabra]

60. Thank you RawStory

for reporting the truth!

More here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1585975

[SteppingRazor]

67. In fairness, they're telling half the story...

Clinton was also bomb-happy when it came to Iraq.

[jsamuel]

68. wasn't that only when they violated the "no fly zone" or shot at our plane

s? (for Clinton)

This however was a Campaign... (Bush)

[lala_rawraw]

72. Actually, no

I have the entire timeline from Jan 2000 to March 2003 that we put together in order to see what, if anything, looked odd. It was odd. But there is a really good explanation of this at DailyKos... I just cannot find the link... anyone?

[murielkane]

79. Clinton's bombing wasn't in preparation for invasion

Clinton's Iraq policy was one of containment. It wasn't either moral or effective, but it was what it was. Everybody understood the groundrules, including Saddam.

The Bushites quickly changed the policy from containment to regime change -- but violently overturning another country's government just for the hell of it is against several centuries worth of international law. Because of this, they resorted to several strategems to conceal what they were actually doing:

1) Furiously looking for some set of circumstances that might make regime change legal. (This is the fixing the evidence around the policy part.)

2) Pretending they were still playing the containment game while they were actually making the initial moves towards regime change.

3) Claiming very loudly that they had the evidence to justify regime change (even though they didn't), invading on the basis of those claims, and doing everything in their power since to cover up their lack of real evidence and destroy or discredit anyone who might expose them.

We're now at stage 4. Everyone knows by this point that the Iraq War was illegal. The only question is whether they will get away with it. If they do, next time around they won't feel a need to pretend -- and that's just what they want.

What the Bushites would like more than anything is to be proclaimed policeman of the world, with the right to intervene anywhere they choose, for any reason or for no reason at all. The DSM issue isn't just about whether they can be shown to have lied, or whether Bush can be driven out of office. It's about whether the entire structure of international law will be maintained or whether the United States will become an uncontrolled global autocrat.

[JuniperLea]

64. i can see the graphic... and i wonder

if * will ever answer to the dsm. it's so sad. every time i see damning evidence against this madman, my first thought is to wonder how he will squirm out of this one.

[murielkane]

65. It doesn't matter if he answers

The more he ignores, the more he gets out of touch with reality. The more he gets out of touch with reality, the more people he leaves behind. The more people he leaves behind, the more chance there is for an alternative, non-Bushite narrative of events to take hold.

In the long run, his not answering to the DSM will be more useful to us than if he did answer.

[babsbunny]

66. Everytime I get my hopes up

They get knocked right back down. Like on Ed Schultz today, he said he doesn't think there will be an Impeachment, but no one is above the Law, and if this President broke the law, he should pay!!!!

[maxsolomon]

69. WE NEVER DECLARED WAR ON IRAQ!

<The unofficial war: U.S., Britain led massive secret bombing campaign before Iraq war was declared>

even the headline is wrong!

[lala_rawraw]

71. If we did not declare War

Then how did Bush declare the end of combat ops when he landed with flight suit stuffed?

[maxsolomon]

73. there was/is no declaration of war ratified by congress

this is a unilateral enforcement of a UN resolution.

someone help me out - i don't remember so good.

[SteppingRazor]

76. Yes, we never declared war, but...

We haven't officially declared war since World War II.

Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Grenada, Lebanon, Panama, Haiti, Kosovo, Bosnia, Iraq Parts I and II and on and on and on and on and on....

None of them were officially declared war upon in the manner prescribed by the Constitution (i.e. a formal declaration of war by Congress)

[lala_rawraw]

77. They used the 9/11

or rather post 9/11 powers granted to him and Congress passed the resolution in October 2002, further extending those options... plus, no resolution was violated as we were going in for regime change, not WMD... the new song tells us.

[leftchick]

70. now that is pretty fucking impressive

and even a freeper might comprehend it!

[Supersedeas]

74. comprehend is different from accept--they'll wait for 'talking points'

[lala_rawraw]

78. Talking points will be...

Liberals are terrorists - Ann Coulter will be given that mission
Liberals are conspiracy nuts - WaPo will probably love that
Liberals hate the troops - the Fristian Coalition

and so forth.

[DrZeeLit]

81. I keep hearing Mr. Rogers .... "Can you say CAMBODIA?" I knew you could..

[AngryWhiteLiberal]

82. Before or after the UN resolution? Before Congressional vote on IWR?

If the latter is the case, then I don't see how Bush can escape charges of subverting the Constitution. He had NO AUTHORITY under the Constitution to start a war prior to the IWR.

IMPEACH that motherfuck'r.

JB

[indepat]

83. Illegal, schmelegal

[lakeguy]

86. any US corporate media links yet?

didn't think so...this isn't really news, is it?:sarcasm:

[jsamuel]

90. This needs to be the follow up to the DSM

vital to keep the DSM alive WITH teeth