Word: iraqi
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Another possibility is that the Army's XVIII Airborne Corps will attack the Iraqi town of Najaf, a transportation hub halfway between Baghdad and the Saudi border that could act as an allied supply-and-staging post. Speed is critical to concentrate forces for an attack and then disperse before the enemy can pull itself together for a counterattack...
While the Army and Marine divisions form a giant pincer to isolate the Iraqi forces on the battlefield, the airborne troops could be dropped behind enemy lines from Black Hawk helicopters to lure the Republican Guards out of their tank bunkers. Once in the open, the Guards would be easy pickings for allied tank killers like the Thunderbolt and Harrier jets and the Apache and Cobra helicopters...
...perfect example of the kind of precise, high-technology air war the allies have conducted against Iraq. It was also a tragedy: the bunker was filled with Iraqi civilians who had taken refuge there from nighttime raids on the capital. But U.S. officials insisted that there had been no mistake and the bunker was, in fact, a military communications center. "From the military point of view, nothing went wrong," said Brigadier General Richard Neal, the briefing officer in Saudi Arabia. "The target was hit as designated...
...overall allied commander, General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, contends that his pilots take additional risks to avoid hitting civilians. Pilots approach targets closer than might otherwise be the case, flying lower and slower. They take extra time on the bombing run, which means they are more vulnerable to Iraqi missiles...
...clincher came last month, when U.S. intelligence satellites picked up radio transmissions from the bunker, sending orders to Iraqi military units in the Kuwait theater of operations. Missing from the accumulated evidence were any photos of civilians entering the bunker at night in search of safety. American officers say they assumed that civilians were being kept out because it was a military security area and the wire-mesh fence was there for that purpose...