Attitude readjustments galore -- could this war go on for weeks or longer, after all? The Dow drops 300 points after an 800-point surge over the past week; the bluster that US forces will be at the walls of Baghad in two days is muted. Bypassed Iraqi troops put up "unexpectedly" fierce resistance in towns along the Euphrates. Saddam makes another radio address, if only to show that he's not incapacitated. In several towns gunmen, guerillas or irregulars -- whether fedayeen, or mere Ba'ath Party functionaries with nothing much to lose -- snipe from cover. Has the coalition enough troops to secure its supply lines? If not, there could be a problem when humanitarian aid convoys arrive in the Shatt-al-Arab. The US Navy stops more small boats southbound, finds bundles of mines aboard them. Aircraft crash or are hit by ground fire. Could the Russians be to blame?
Exaggerated claims by reporters as well as official spokespeople eventually engender a credibility gap. It's not a new problem -- some untruths or stretches, first deployed in the name of psychological warfare, get compounded by reporters' enthusiasm for scoops, then bump hard into the reality of events. Now the process is accelerated by the speed of 24/7 reporting. Moreover the "embedding" (thud!) of correspondents into military units has worsened this by tying the press yet closer to official sources.
On a historical note, check out this older piece on the Iran Iraq War of 1980-88. It's a salutary reminder of how patient and tough the Iraqis were, especially on the defensive. It also tells how a number of powers -- not just the US and UK, but the French and the Soviets too -- backed them with hardware, strategy and tactics.
And lest we forget the alleged casus belli this time around, observe that during that conflict -- comparable to the trench warfare of the Western Front in WWI -- it took the US and UK intil 1984, i.e. four years to impose export controls on chemicals they shipped to Iraq for use as poison gases on the battlefields less than fifty miles east of Basra. For the record they were: Thiodiglycol: convertible into mustard gas simply by contact with hydrogen chloride.
Chloroethanol: essential to one of the ways for making thiodiglycol (see above).
Phosphoryl chloride: Essential to tabun production. Can also be converted, with some difficulty, into methylphosphonyl dichloride (see below).
Dimethylamine: Like phosphoryl chloride (see above), essential to tabun production, but much easier to make.
Methylphosphonyl difluoride: Convertible into sarin-family nerve gases simply by contact with any of' many alcohols.
Methylphosphonyl dichloride: Convertible into sarin-family nerve gases by carefully controlled reaction with an alcohol and a fluoride such as potassium fluoride (see below).
Dimethyl methylphosphonate: One of many methylphosphonyl compounds from which methylphosphonyl dichloride (see above) can be made quite easily.
Potassium fluoride: One of many fluorine compounds that could be used in the production of sarin-family nerve gases. Insignificant in the absence of a supply of methylphosphonyl or ethylphosphonyl compounds.
Will Army CWB search teams uncover long-lost drums of any of these, I wonder?
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Exaggerated claims by reporters as well as official spokespeople eventually engender a credibility gap. It's not a new problem -- some untruths or stretches, first deployed in the name of psychological warfare, get compounded by reporters' enthusiasm for scoops, then bump hard into the reality of events. Now the process is accelerated by the speed of 24/7 reporting. Moreover the "embedding" (thud!) of correspondents into military units has worsened this by tying the press yet closer to official sources.
On a historical note, check out this older piece on the Iran Iraq War of 1980-88. It's a salutary reminder of how patient and tough the Iraqis were, especially on the defensive. It also tells how a number of powers -- not just the US and UK, but the French and the Soviets too -- backed them with hardware, strategy and tactics.
And lest we forget the alleged casus belli this time around, observe that during that conflict -- comparable to the trench warfare of the Western Front in WWI -- it took the US and UK intil 1984, i.e. four years to impose export controls on chemicals they shipped to Iraq for use as poison gases on the battlefields less than fifty miles east of Basra. For the record they were: Will Army CWB search teams uncover long-lost drums of any of these, I wonder?
- bruno 3-24-2003 11:57 pm