By Michael Jansen, Jordan Times

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THE BUSH administration has been waging an air war on Iraq for almost as long as it has been in office. It began by gradually stepping up attacks on Iraq's air defence system, command and control centres and communications networks with the aim of degrading the country's ability to protect itself against an all out offensive. Such attacks are now taking place on an almost daily basis and are often against multiple targets.

US spokesmen used to claim that US and British planes are only acting in self-defence, saying that Iraqi radar installations tracked US or British planes flying in the northern or southern “no fly zones” or, on occasion, attempted to shoot down these intruders. However, the Pentagon no longer bothers with fabricating pretexts for striking strategic Iraqi targets. The US now admits that these attacks are all part of the process of “softening up” Iraqi defences and destroying its assets in preparation for the offensive the Bush administration decided to wage in the immediate aftermath of the attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001. US planners now argue that Iraq's air defences do not pose a serious threat to US warplanes once the order is issued to launch a war.

Some weeks ago, US and British special forces began the ground war by entering northern Iraq to conduct reconnaissance missions. Their primary objective is said to be to map the placement of Iraqi missile launchers so they can be taken out in the first hours of a war. These forces are also meant to probe Iraqi ground defences in much the same way the aerial patrols have challenged and destroyed the country's defences against air attack.

While this constant military pressure on Iraq is meant to weaken the country's physical ability to defend itself, it is also designed to undermine Iraq's will to resist. According to the dictum of the military strategist von Clausewitz, “in war, the spiritual is to the material as three to one”. The US aim is to undermine the morale of Iraqi troops with the aim of encouraging them to desert their posts or throw down their weapons once the US launches its ground campaign. The US has begun to combine its rising level of air and ground engagement with propaganda campaigns directed at different constituencies in Iraqi society. But it is unlikely that the campaign to win hearts and minds will succeed.

One particular endeavour has already backfired. Late last year, US “cyber-war experts” sent e-mails to senior Iraqi officials and army officers of various ranks, urging them to turn against the government. This effort was quickly discovered. The Iraqi authorities responded in early January by switching off almost all e-mail services. Attempts to log on to e-mail servers were met with a black computer screen carrying an English language message in red letters saying: “Access denied”. This intervention affected e-mail only. Iraqis with access to computers could continue to surf the net and read the world press. But the disruption meant ordinary Iraqis who have computers at home or who frequent the dozens of government-run Internet centres throughout the capital and elsewhere could not carry on correspondence with family, friends or business contacts abroad. This made Iraqis angry at Washington for trying to use the Internet as an instrument of subversion.

The Iraqi government soon got round this problem by permitting members of the public (and the foreign press, also deprived of e-mail access in most cases) to send and receive messages through the e-mail addresses of its Internet centres. It took a few days for Iraqis who formerly used e-mail to catch on to the new system, but once they did, centres which had been empty for a week or so bustled with business. Entire families would turn up to send messages. Computer-agile youngsters and the clever buffs running the centres typed out dictated messages and launched them into cyber-space.

Leaflets and radio messages in Arabic calling upon troops to surrender and avoid all-out attacks on their positions, barracks and compounds are unlikely to persuade many to do so. The legacy of the previous war does not encourage them to follow US instructions. Iraqi troops are repeatedly reminded by superiors and survivors of what happened between Feb. 26 and 28., 1991, when columns of unprotected Iraqi forces flying white flags on their vehicles were withdrawing from Kuwait along Highway 80 to the southern Iraqi port of Basra. The Iraqis, caught in a massive traffic jam, were attacked constantly for 40 hours from air, sea and land by US warplanes, naval guns and artillery. Similar assaults were carried out against retreating Iraqi troops on the road from Jahra in Kuwait to the Iraqi frontier town of Umm Qasr and along the main highway from Basra to Baghdad. Thousands were slaughtered in this final assault of the 1991 offensive. The aim of this action was, in the words of US Commander General Norman Schwartzkopf, to inflict “the maximum casualties on the enemy”. But he suggested that there was also a political dimension to the bombing and strafing of retreating troops when he stated: “There is a lot more purpose to this war than getting the Iraqis out of Kuwait.” Having given defeated Iraqis no quarter then, Washington may find it difficult to convince Iraqi soldiers to put themselves in US hands if there is a new war.

On the civilian front, most Iraqis dismiss the propaganda claim that the US is fighting their leaders but not ordinary people. They know full well that they will be targeted by US firepower. Civilians also doubt that “smart weapons” will prove to be as accurate as Washington says or that sites chosen by US intelligence to be bombed will be legitimate military objectives. Again, Iraqis recall what happened in 1991. On Feb. 13, US warplanes bombed a site Washington claimed was a “bunker” housing a military command and control centre. It was, instead, an underground civilian shelter where at least 400 women, children and elderly people died. Since that war, the Amiriya shelter, complete with the twisted frames of the bunk beds where the victims were incinerated as they slept, has become a place of pilgrimage for Iraqis and foreign visitors. Few Iraqis say they will go to shelters in the event of another war.

The US “shock and awe” strategy chosen for the campaign the Bush administration is determined to wage involves an initial blitz on the open city of Baghdad with 3,000 bombs-fuel air explosives, cluster bombs, implosion bombs and deep penetration bombs sheathed in depleted uranium — followed by a sustained assault by 400 Cruise missiles a day for a week.

By leaking detailed information on its war plan, the Bush administration has shown that it is, once again, not prepared to give any quarter to Iraq's soldiers and citizens. Indeed, as far as the White House and the Pentagon are concerned, Iraqis count for nothing. To paraphrase Schwartzkopf: “There is a lot more purpose to this war than getting Iraqi President Saddam Hussein out of power.” The objective will be to so “shock and awe” the Iraqi people that they will not resist US military occupation and exploitation of their oil resources.