US Ponders Strike against Saddam After Air Reconnaissance Confirms DEBKAfile Report 19 August: The consequences of the disclosure of Iraq’s mid-July military drive into Jordan - first by DEBKA-Net-Weekly and then in DEBKAfile – surfaced in the Saturday, August 18, issue of the Houston, Texas based STRATFOR.COM: ”The lone fighter (U.S. F-16), which flew out of Turkey’s Incerlik airbase, reportedly spent 23 minutes in Syrian airspace before entering Iraq five miles south of the 36th parallel. Considering the duration of the incursion and depth of the plane’s path into Syria, it is unlikely the overflight was an accident. Rather, it may have been a reconnaissance mission seeking evidence of Iraqi military presence in Syria. ”US officials have expressed concern over reports of Iraqi commandos in Jordan. Washington may soon be forced to attack Iraqi troops in order to maintain a firewall between the Israeli-Palestinian crisis and a belligerent Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.” STRATFOR.COM cites DEBKA.com as the source of those reports and quotes them at length. It adds from its own sources: “Fearful that Iraq will widen the Israeli conflict, Washington is now apparently preparing to intervene. Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of the US Central Command, met separately with Jordanian Prime Minister Ali Abu-Ragheb, who also holds the defense portfolio and Gen. Mohammad Yousef Malkawi of the Jordanian armed forces on August 16.” The site concludes: “the United States has refrained from striking hard at Iraq for fear of inadvertently exacerbating the problem in Israel. But if, as reports suggest, Hussein is committed to involving Iraqi in the crisis, the United States may soon be forced into a pre-emptive strike to prevent the eruption of a broad Arab-Israeli war. Reconnaissance flights and meetings with Jordanian officials will determine whether the strikes should target only western Iraq or Syria and northern Jordan as well. They may even lead to a US deployment in Jordan.” DEBKAfile’s Middle East experts comment: The dramatic turnabout in Washington’s thinking, as revealed in STRATFOR.COM’s follow-up of DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s expose, may well presage a new stage in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Until now the Bush administration was inhibited by the Israel-Palestinian conflict from launching a major attack on Iraq. But Saddam’s decision to link the two conflicts has released Washington from that constraint.
