Word: exocets
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...with ambitions to expand their country's borders. Whether a successor to Saddam would perpetuate that tradition is unknowable. But as long as Saddam himself is around, trouble will be close by. He is, after all, the same Saddam whose air force crippled the U.S.S. Stark with an Exocet missile three years ago. (A mistake, said Baghdad, and apologized.) Saddam sees himself as the rightful ruler of the Arab world -- and he is embarked on a nuclear-weapons development program that the CIA says could be successful in three to five years. Thus the unstated third prong of Bush...
...Saudis' F-15s to establish air superiority over the battlefield. While Iraq has 500 combat planes, only about 50 of its pilots are considered first-rate. They were trained by France when Iraq was importing more than $2.5 billion worth of French weapons, including 210 Mirage fighters and Exocet missiles. During the war with Iran, the Iraqi air force showed little daring, dropping bombs from 30,000 ft. that often missed their targets. Coordination between air and ground forces was usually lacking. Former Defense Secretary Harold Brown says, "I think we would achieve air superiority within...
...reflag Kuwait oil vessels with the Stars and Stripes and escort them through gulf waters under U.S. naval protection. That decision sparked some Democratic demands for Reagan to seek congressional approval under the War Powers Act, especially after an Iraqi jet accidentally hit the U.S. frigate Stark with an Exocet missile, killing 37 American sailors. But political heat died down as the U.S. oil convoys continued to function. The Democratic Party platform adopted last week, for example, endorsed freedom of navigation in the gulf as a desirable U.S. foreign-policy objective...
...attacking Iran in 1980, and it was Iraq that expanded the fighting into the Persian Gulf in 1984 by initiating the tanker war, thus endangering international oil shipments. The U.S. became an inadvertent victim of the last phase of the tanker war when on May 17 an Iraqi Exocet missile hit the cruiser U.S.S. Stark, killing 37 American sailors. The incident increased Administration resolve to protect neutral shipping in the gulf by reflagging and escorting the Kuwaiti tankers. Said one U.S. official in Washington: "Iraq owes us in the gulf. It owes us the U.S.S. Stark...
...warships are not suited to the warfare of the narrow Gulf, where small speedboats, mines, and Exocet missiles seem to be the weapons of the day. The navy has concentrated the largest American armada of warships, those designed for escorting convoys across the Atlantic and attacking the Soviet navy in its bases off the cold Kola Penninsula, in a region filled with terrorists, Revolutionary Guards, and trigger-happy Iraqui pilots...