WASHINGTON, March 6: The Pentagon has prepared a “shock and awe” plan to destroy the Iraqi defence and intends to drop 10 times as many bombs on Iraq as in the opening days of the 1991 Gulf War, US officials said on Thursday.
They said US and British pilots had already “tripled” their sorties over the no fly zone in southern Iraq on Thursday.
The strategy, they said, aims at engaging Iraqi air defence so that they are caught unaware when the actual attack begins.
Pentagon officials said some 300,000 US troops had already reached the Gulf region or were waiting in the nearby areas.
In northern Iraq, the officials said, US troops have employed hundreds of Kurds to build airstrips for bringing in the 101st Airborne Division in the event of war.
Defence analysts in Washington say that such moves indicate that the Bush administration is not allowing the current diplomatic row over Iraq to affect its war preparations.
Pentagon officials say they have ordered an irregular pattern of flights over invasion routes in the south, making it more difficult for Iraqi air defenders to foresee a shift from air patrols to actual combat.
They said that several hundred sorties a day are now being flown over southern Iraq, including F-16 and other attack planes as well as surveillance, refuelling and other support aircraft.
During the war, powerful airstrikes with thousands of bombs and missiles would be combined with quick ground assaults to overwhelm the Iraqi forces, the officials said.
The aim is to prevent the Iraqi military from launching a major retaliatory strike and convince them that they can’t win, Pentagon officials said.
They said part of that plan is to launch an initial air bombardment using 10 times the number of precision-guided weapons fired in the opening days of the 1991 war.
Targets will include Saddam’s military and political headquarters, air defences, and communications facilities.
The Pentagon says the ordnance possibly earmarked for Iraq includes a new kind of weapon — nicknamed “the mother of all bombs.” Considered the biggest bomb in the US conventional arsenal, it weighs 21,000 pounds.
Like its predecessor, the “daisy cutter,” the bomb’s blast would create a huge mushroom cloud.
BUSH’S ANNOUNCEMENT: US President George Bush is expected to make an important announcement at a news conference at 0100 GMT (6am PST) on Friday. Hundreds of journalists from around the world are expected to attend the conference.
“Almost every TV network in existence has made arrangement to broadcast it live,” said a White House official.
Amid gathering war clouds over Iraq and media reports that Osama bin Laden has been sighted in Pakistan’s tribal areas, the news conference has generated tremendous popular interest.
Rumours are rife. The hottest is that the president is going to announce an invasion of Iraq. Others speculate that he will make an important announcement about Osama bin Laden, maybe his possible capture.
Asked to comment on these rumours, a US official laughed and said: “Obviously they know more than we do.”
