How did our airpower stop Saddam from operating his two terrorist training camps (ie Salman Pak)?
Are you suggesting it couldn't have?
I>How did our airpower stop his violations of UN sanctions, his aquisition of banned missiles from RPNK, bio-weapons labs, etc.?
Are you kidding? Again airpower could have takin any missiles or labs out. If we wanted to, I'd would have been a piece of cake.
bottom line: Just as airpower doesnt win wars alone, it cant stop terrorist sponsorship and rogue nation's activities by itself.
Your bottom line is wrong.
Airpower could have taken out *anything* deemed militarily offensive on the ground routinely, on short notice. *Including* his capacity to produce oil for offensive purposes. Piece of cake. We've done it in other wars and it worked very well.
But how would we have taken out Saddam's WMD program in Libya when we didn't even know about it? It IS because we went into Iraq that led to that knowledge.
Joe, actually my bottom line is right.
Saddam had bunkers and in any case we didnt know if and *where* to bomb. Those two terror camps I mentioned? One was salman pak. The other one - WE DISCOVERED ONLY AFTER WE INVADED IRAQ. It's trivial. We bomb one camp, they move it somewhere else and camaflauge it.
If bombing terror camps was enough to stop terrorism, we never would have had 9/11 (since we bombed bin laden in 1998 dontcha know).
Then how do you explain the missiles that hit Kuwait? Or the ones we found after the invasion? Air Power is not the be-all end-all. Even the USAF is begining to realize that since Operation Allied Force (Balkans) and the hunt for UBL. You have to identify targets before you can bomb them. That's pretty tough to do in many circumstances for instance when you're after terrorists intermingled with the populace.