Posted on 03/31/2003 8:29:43 AM PST by Smogger
NEW YORK: Iraqis have secretly bought as many as a thousand Russian-made Kornet anti-tank missiles which are lightweight, very powerful and easy-to-use, Pentagon officials claimed.
The sellers are Ukrainian arms dealers and possibly some entrepreneurial Syrian generals or the Syrian government itself, the officials were quoted as saying by Newsweek. They reportedly sent Baghdad some 500 Kornets in January.
The Kornet anti-tank missiles were used to attack two US tanks, both Abrams M1A1s during the ongoing war in Iraq. The first M1s ever destroyed by enemy fire in battle, they were caught in an ambush of the US Army's 3/7 Cavalry near As Samawah, on the west bank of the Euphrates River.
Two is not a large number and the invading forces have at least 650 tanks in Iraq with more on the way. But US officials, the magazine said, are worried about the skill or "at least the fanaticism" of the guerrilla fighters who sneaked up on the tanks driving a "technical," a jeep, under cover of a sandstorm.
Less than two weeks into the war, the magazine examined whether it started with enough force and whether Operation Iraqi Freedom risks blowing up into a Middle East War.
That scenario, once very remote, is no longer unthinkable, it said. Barring a sudden collapse of the Baathist regime - still a possibility, senior administration officials insist - the war in Iraq is about to get bloodier.
"Somewhere deep in his network of tunnels and bunkers," Saddam Hussein "is convinced he can win," not by defeating superior US forces on the battlefield, but merely by surviving while Islamic rage builds from Cairo to Islamabad, the magazine said quoting a senior US official.
With a show of "shock and awe," American might was supposed to overwhelm the Iraqis and crack Saddam Hussein's regime. Tipped off by a spy in his inner circle, the US military tried to kill him and his sons as they slept with a surprise "decapitation" strike on the first night of the war.
US officials were engaged in delicate secret talks with some of Saddam Hussein's henchmen which appear to have gone nowhere. Saddam Hussein is almost surely alive; the spy, according to a knowledgeable source, has been "compromised," meaning that he is probably dead.
When American soldiers began dying in ambushes from Iraqis pretending to surrender, it didn't take long for Washington officialdom to start leaking exculpatory memoranda.
One CIA memo made available to Newsweek was entitled "Iraq: Potential aRisks in Rear Areas." The paper warned of Saddam loyalists attacking American supply lines with "hit and run tactics" using "RPGs rocket-propelled grenades) and small arms."
The document was widely distributed at the Pentagon, though one intelligence official, Newsweek said, acknowledges that, given Washington's strange hothouse ways, the paper might have been more carefully read at the top if it had been stamped "TOP SECRET" instead of merely "SECRET."
Saddam Hussein's irregulars have adopted tricks from the Somali guerrillas, including firing from behind groups of women and children.
Saddam Hussein will try to increase the American death rate, possibly by ordering his commanders to use bio-chem weapons, the magazine said.
As for births in the US, the vast majority are by Mexicans, Muslims and Chinese...you'll be extinct just as fast if not faster. The abortion rates, if you'd bother to check, has fallen by almost a third. As for STDs, if you mean that AIDs cases went from 100 to 10,000 why that's a 100 fold increase. Go do a little more research, you can start with a link on my profile..."Russia removes itself from the Endangered List" just doesn't fit your gloom and doom...sorry. :0)
But since people like you prefer to rewrite history at every turn, here, read up...or at least others can.
Hawaii's annexation a story of betrayal
Annexation and American Influence (1875-1900)
The Annexation of Hawaii: Imperialism Strikes Again
You neocons are a hoot on how you rewrite imperialism into the natives welcoming their conquerers.
Spoken like a true JAGG puke. We used to take people out like you on patrols when we needed comic relief in the Balkins. Watching your type around a weapon and a hummer was always fun. Usually got the 1 yard marksmenship badge too...shooting the clearing barrel...;0)
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