BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
The Clinton administration is waging a war of attrition
against Iraq, with almost daily attacks on Iraqi defense
installations. Over the last month, U.S. and British
warplanes have struck more than 40 sites there. United
Nations officials said February 3 they were ordering U.S. and
British staff members to leave Iraq.
Two F-14s and two F/A-18s bombed a missile site in southern Iraq February 2 that Pentagon officials claim could have threatened U.S. warships in the Arab-Persian Gulf. There were no indications that the Iraqi forces were preparing to attack. "We're...taking out [Iraqi] air defenses, piece by piece," gloated one Pentagon official.
Two days earlier U.S. and British warplanes bombed a communications in Talil and a radio relay station in Al Amarah after an Iraqi jet flew into the southern "no-fly zone" imposed by Washington. That same day U.S. aircraft fired a missile at a radar facility in northern Iraq near Mosul.
Last week, U.S. national security adviser Samuel Berger announced that President William Clinton had given U.S. pilots broader authority to bomb Iraq any time and place they choose. Whenever Baghdad does anything to displease Washington, "they're going to pay a penalty for it," said William Cohen, the U.S. war secretary.
During the month of January Washington has stepped up its daily flights to impose the so-called no-fly zones that cover two-thirds of the country.
There are now some 200 U.S. warplanes patrolling the southern "no-fly" zone and roughly 40 patrolling the northern "no-fly" zones. London has about 24 jets flying over Iraq.