Word: iraqis
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Inside Operation Desert Storm, the military juggernaut that freed Kuwait in 1991, was a small, secret operation all its own: an effort to kill Saddam Hussein. Of the 40,000 U.S. air attacks during the Gulf War, about 40 were aimed at the Iraqi leader's headquarters, residences, command bunkers and buildings he was expected to visit. Pentagon lawyers had ruled that Saddam was a legal target because he was considered a wartime military commander. But in the end it didn't matter. Saddam and his entire family came through without a scratch...
...phone to as many as three foreign Presidents a day pleading for support. The Pentagon has been freely releasing sensitive information on its deployments to the gulf, hoping the show of force will scare Saddam into backing down. The CIA director, George Tenet, briefs Clinton daily on how the Iraqi dictator is hiding military equipment to escape damage from bombardment. This week, following closely in George Bush's Desert Storm footsteps, Clinton travels to the Pentagon for a final review of the targets...
...aides have fallen back to a more limited strategy: chip away at Saddam's ability to make horror weapons, delay the day Saddam is able use them against neighbors, and then do it again after 12 months, if necessary. That way, the Administration can hail almost any damage to Iraqi targets as a success...
This far-flung air battle will be directed by Air Force E-3 AWACS and Navy E-2 Hawkeye planes, the controllers aboard them squinting at radar screens tracking friendly and enemy planes in all directions. They will also be receiving up-to-the-minute data on Iraqi positions on the ground from the Navy's ES-3A Shadow jet, hovering just south of the Iraqi border, which will electronically vacuum up radio transmissions from Saddam's forces. The Shadow squadron's motto: In God We Trust--All Others We Monitor...
...Once the Iraqi surface-to-air missiles are out of commission, F-15 Eagles and F-14 Tomcats will move in at high altitude to guard against any threat from hostile planes. Below them the attack planes, F/A-18 Hornets, F-16 Fighting Falcons and British Tornados will swarm in to bomb the buildings and bunkers that have been linked to the production of biological and chemical weapons and missiles, and to units of Saddam's elite Republican Guard. B-52s, which can carry 20 times the bomb load of a carrier-based Hornet, will unload on Republican Guard bases...