March 21, 2003
LOOSE LIPS LET YOU PLAY AT HOME
B-52 Bombers Take Off From Britain (FoxNews.Com).I am an eager consumer of war news. I'm spending my time listening to the news, watching the news and downloading the news, sometimes all at the same time. As a result, I know that 8 B-52 bombers took off from Fairford Airforce Base, England, this morning. I know the approximate flight time to Iraq, although I also know that, with refueling, a B-52 can stay in the air over a target for hours. I know that each B-52 can carry up to 30 metric tons of ordinance. So I suspect that, sometime in the next two to six hours, a couple of hundred thousand pounds of high explosive are going to rain down upon Iraq.
Now, I like knowing this. My eagerness to know it, along with your eagerness and our neighbor's eagerness, is responsible for it being available. I even can understand that letting the Iraqis know this is part of our shock and awe campaign. Still, I can't help but be a little nervous that all this information is so easily available.
Posted by David Cohen at March 21, 2003 12:01 PMYou're assuming the Iraqi command are in a position to take advantage of such info.
If the US faces a halfway competent foe in the future, censorship would surely be imposed and the flow of news about troop movements strictly curtailed.
Iraq doesn't have any weapon capable of reaching where the B52s fly.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at March 21, 2003 1:29 PMIs it just me, or is it passing strange to have several camera overviews of portions of Baghdad, waiting for the ruin to occur?
Posted by: Bruce Cleaver at March 21, 2003 1:34 PMI have heard that they are carrying
tomahawk missles which they can fire from egypt or over turkey.
It is not clear to me whether the B52s are using smart or dum ordnance.
The smart bombs can be dropped from far, far off and glide to their targets,as we've seen in Afghanistan. You don't need a million-dollar Tomahawk to stand off and fire.
The brief report I've seen suggests guided munitions, since they seem to have stayed within fairly constricted military areas. If they'd been dumb bombs, they'd have been exploding over the equivalent of a couples of counties.