Word: aire
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...following a four-day U.S. bombing campaign designed to hinder Saddam's efforts to build atomic, biological and chemical weapons. Since then, according to Pentagon reports, American pilots have flown close to 12,000 missions, dropped some 1,200 bombs on nearly 300 targets and destroyed 139 anti-air artillery guns, 28 radars, 13 mobile surface-to-air missile launchers and 22 command sites--all without a single scratch on American property. For the most part, the Iraqis lie low and launch a flurry of flak, hoping to down a warplane and deliver a live pilot to Saddam...
...withdrawing the first $5 million from the $97 million made available by the Iraq Liberation Act. But instead of guns, the Pentagon is providing desks, faxes and computers. And for military training, the Defense Department is starting out by having four Iraqi exiles fly to a Florida Air Force base this week for 12 days of classes on the role of the military in developing democracies. The four have been told to wear casual civilian clothes. It is clear that the White House hopes that if military power can't oust Saddam, maybe these insurgents can. Others see the training...
...problem with simply discarding hope for an on-the-ground insurgency is that the in-the-air war is expensive and, top commanders will sometimes admit, ineffective. Almost every day at Incirlik is Groundhog Day, as in Bill Murray's 1993 film. "You wake up, you come in, you get ready to launch the aircraft, you launch the aircraft, they come back, you recover them, you go home," says Staff Sergeant George Palo, who maintains aircraft fuel systems. "We don't have a lot of calendars around here, because the only day that counts...
...clear of Iraqi warplanes, is the strangest of wars. It is not being waged according to Pentagon doctrine. It lacks a clear, attainable objective and forfeits the initiative to Saddam. And it doesn't make traditional military sense. Risking the lives of your pilots to destroy an opponent's air-defense network makes sense only when such risky missions precede an aerial invasion...
Military experts are split on the effectiveness of this kind of wait-and-bomb war. Retired General Merrill McPeak, Air Force Chief of Staff during the Gulf War, believes it represents the prototypical 21st century conflict, in which a grinding, persistent battle plan trumps a short, intense war. "The bombing isn't hurting us, and it is hurting Saddam," he says. But Richard Haas, who helped run the Gulf War as a key member of the Bush Administration's national-security team, says a superpower's might evaporates as such a stalemate drags on. "When a great power acts...