Posted on 03/03/2003 10:06:51 PM PST by knak
Several thousand allied special forces, including Australians and more than 300 elite British soldiers, are operating inside Iraq, the Daily Telegraph reported today.
The deployment suggested that war has already begun, even as US-British efforts continue to secure a new United Nations resolution backing force against President Saddam Hussein's regime, the right-wing British paper said.
The troops were part of joint special operations, which include more than 4,000 American and Australian special forces with headquarters in Qatar and bases in Jordan, Kuwait and Turkey, according to the Telegraph.
Defence sources told the daily that about 240 men drawn from two squadrons of Britain's elite Special Air Service (SAS), plus more than 100 support troops, were engaged in various parts of Iraq.
The scale of the operations in the south and west was unprecedented, the paper said, adding that British special forces did not enter Iraq during the 1991 Gulf war until the ground offensive began.
The Telegraph reported in January that a team of 35 SAS men was operating in and out of western Iraq as part of a 100-strong allied force looking for Scud missile launchers that could be used to attack Israel.
The special forces were now moving in and out of Iraq virtually at will, monitoring Iraqi oilfields west of Baghdad and in the north amid concern that Saddam would set fire to them in the event of an invasion, the Telegraph said.
The priority of the British SAS has been to ascertain Iraqi troop positions and confirm that targets selected from satellite photographs for the first attacks in any air war were not decoys, the paper reported.
The troops have also been looking for suitable holding areas in southwestern Iraq for the many Iraqi troops who are expected to give themselves up in the early phases of fighting.
The reported insertion of special forces into Iraq coincides with intensified air attacks.
An Iraqi army spokesman said yesterday that six Iraqis had been killed and 15 others wounded in a US-British air strike on "civilian and service installations" in the southern province of Basra late on Sunday.
Yesterday Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon confirmed in parliament that British warplanes had been involved in US air strikes on Iraqi targets in the no-fly zones over the north and south of Iraq. The zones date back to the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War.
Hoon rejected claims that the attacks represented the opening shots of a bigger war.
But The Independent daily reported that anti-war British parliamentarians were claiming that war had began by stealth.
The paper quoted Doug Henderson, a former armed forces minister, as saying that the increased activity in the no-fly zones was a "slide into war".
The Times reported today that until recently only 21 British Royal Air Force aircraft were involved in the operation over the no-fly zones, a longstanding mission to protect the Kurds in the north and Shias in the south from Iraqi attacks.
Now the figure has reached about 60 and will soon be 100, the paper said.
The Times also reported that emergency bases for Prime Minister Tony Blair, America's staunchest ally in the Iraq crisis, and ministers were being set up outside London to keep Britain running in the event of a big terrorist attack in the capital.
Home Secretary David Blunkett said yesterday that Britain planned a full-scale exercise in the coming weeks of its ability to cope with "catastrophic incident" in the heart of London.
The Times reported that it would involve a mock chemical weapons attack on the London Underground metro system near Bank station on March 23.
Meanwhile, Britain's Press Association reported that Chancellor Gordon Brown would signal today that he is ready to add to the STG1.75 billion ($A4.5 billion) he has earmarked already to meet the costs of a new Gulf war.
Note the "right-wing" label. These guys probably wouldn't describe even Castro or Chomsky as left-wing.
All these "sources".
Of course the special forces of the U.S., Britain and Australia are there.
As they were in Afghanistan.
And yes it will be much further along by the time it breaks the surface--on CNN.
Won't Hitlery be fit to be tied.
Or duct-taped.
Since the Telegraph is "right-wing" and the Independent and the Times are nothing, then we may assume the Age is nothing.
Which is to say, left-wing.
Just as Bernard Goldberg (Bias) and Ann Coulter (Slander) have told us.
But we're all getting onto their game--and it drives them wild.
They'd be wilder to know how many more each day consider the New York Times not merely left-wing but trash liner.
Refuse-wing.
It would make sense not to say too much on television until we have neutralized Iraq's support of sleeper cells.
Of course, this is merely me fantasizing, and who knows what will happen.
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