[lelio]

What's the Jaguar system? Is that an encryption mechanism sold to Iraq by the British?

[Mark Hamilton]

That is all I do know; i.e. Jaguar is an encryption system that the British sold Iraq in the Iran/Irag war of the 1980's and that Saddam had been confident that it was the only electronic system that was secure.

Although codebreaking is extremely difficult these days, it's not surprizing that the Brits would provide the US with its schema, and the Brits (see Ultra) were superb at code-breaking themselves.

Lot's of conflicting information at this point though. For example I heard that the info was given to Centcom in the morning and the strike was at 2:00 P.M. Bagdad time - a longer cycle time than intially reported.

Unless the regime announces the deaths, I don't see how we are going to confirm it...maybe they'll find an ear or nose 200 yards from the blast zone :)