DEBKAfile is reporting that the offensive against Iraq has already begun, with a combination of Kurdish and US Special Forces seizing an airbase in Northern Iraq. I’d take this report with enough grains of salt to decorate several margeritas, but it is a possibility.
If there’s one thing that is likely about this campaign, it’s that it will be done largely in the shadows. There won’t be large waves of troops or massive armor columns as there was before. Chances are there will be some uprisings with opposition forces in major cities, planned and trained by US Special Forces advisors. Saddam Hussein willl probably be killed in the streets by his own people like Mussolini. Unlike Osama bin Laden, Hussein has no friendly nations to escape to. When the hammer falls, he’ll be trapped like the rat that he is.
The only truly visible results of this campaign will likely to be occasional airstrikes, some of which have already gone on in the name of securing the northern and southern no-fly zones. It is quite possible that while all the debate over an attack on Iraq is happening, the groundwork for that attack has already been laid.
