U.S., Britain split on Assad

NICOSIA, Cyprus — A rift is developing between the United States and Great Britain on how to confront Syrian President Bashar Assad and his uncompromising stand against Israel.

According to diplomats in the region, if the rift is allowed to grow, it may damage the cooperation between the two countries in Iraq.

In the past no one ever expected that an attacking force would immunize schools, churches, hospitals, urban areas, if that is where shooting came from. I imagine that churches were attacked by tank fire routinely during WWII when snipers were in the bell towers.

Precision munitions only go so far. We are deploying now 500-lb JDAMS to use in tighter quarters, and even concrete-filled bombs. But when a Saddam places anti-aircraft missles on top of a hospital or hotel filled with American journalists, what do we do? We are training enemies to commit war crimes by letting them know that it is a winning tactic. If and when there are trials in Iraq, I hope they make an example of people who placed weapons in these sites.

We are training enemies to commit war crimes by letting them know that it is a winning tactic.

Winning tactic? LOL. It didn't help Saddam's sorry a$$.

Precision munitions only go so far.

Yep, this is true. But it's not just about precision munitions. This is only one aspect of effects based warfare. The crux of it is identifying what it is you're trying to kill in the first place and then killing that. For example, Operation Iraqi Freedom wasn't a campaign against the Iraqis themselves. We didn't want to kill Iraqis. We wanted to kill the regime. So, we identified what would most likely do that and then did it. The Ba'athists tried very hard to goad us into doing exactly what you are calling for- shooting into crowds of people and levelling neighborhoods because this would've been a winning tactic for them. We avoided doing that though and deprived them of the only weapon they really had- the people.

Mass bombing and destruction is just "poke and hope". Sort of like breaking up the cluster of balls on the billiards table in the hopes that something will fall in a pocket. Effects based warfare is more like a snooker player who uses precise aim and control of the ball to win the game.

Well, I said tactic, not strategy. It does keep us from blowing up those particular assets, for a while. Saddam could have a bunker under the Al-Rashid hotel or a hospital, and there could be no decapitation strike attempt on Day 1.

Now maybe the response is simply that it doesn't matter, that you can hide but then you can't run, and our foot soldiers will come knocking.

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