Excerpts from an article in the April 3 "Sun" newspaper, a London tabloid: From GEORGE PASCOE-WATSON at US Central Command, Qatar
TWO entire divisions of Saddam Hussein's feared Republican Guard were destroyed by the Allies yesterday [April 2].
The Baghdad Division — 12,000 men — was blitzed by two huge Daisy Cutter bombs.
And the Medina Division was overrun by American troops in the most successful day of Operation Iraqi Freedom so far.
Several thousand Iraqi soldiers were thought to have died and the rest fled or surrendered. ...
Alliance top brass decided to use the 15,000lb BLU-82 Daisy Cutters to speed up the assault and prove to enemy troops they faced certain death if they stood and fought.
The enormous fuel-air weapons — nicknamed Big Blue — were dropped from a pair of adapted C130 Hercules cargo planes.
They fell under stabilising parachutes and detonated only 3ft above the ground.
Witnesses saw two massive mushroom clouds billowing as blazing, explosive slurry was blasted over the battlefield, incinerating everything in a 600-yard radius.
Apache attack helicopters then strafed groups of shocked Iraqi troops with rotary cannon fire.
Brig Gen Vincent Brooks, spokesman at US Central Command, in Qatar, said: "The Baghdad Division was destroyed."
Asked to elaborate, he said: "That means it is no longer effective at conducting combat operations as a cohesive force.
"It may mean that we have killed or captured a considerable number of the force to make that possible." ...
From a "fact sheet" box accompanying the article:
THE Daisy Cutter BLU-82 weighs 15,000lb.
The fuel-air weapon contains 12,600lb of high-explosive slurry.
Its blast obliterates everything within 600 yards.
The explosion sucks in oxygen and creates a shock wave and vacuum that destroys internal organs of anyone within range.
It is so big it must be shoved out of a cargo plane.
Daisy Cutters were first used in the Vietnam war.
They cleared minefields in the 1991 Gulf war and pounded Taliban positions in Afghanistan in 2001.
(End of quotes from the Sun)
And from the independent.co.uk, 4-3-03:
Allies 'destroy' Republican Guard force in pincer move on Baghdad
By Donald Macintyre in Doha, Qatar
03 April 2003 ... Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, deputy director of operations, said the Baghdad Division of the Republican Guard – 10,000-strong – which took heavy casualties as it defended Kut, and endured heavy air bombardment in the resumed advance, had been destroyed and was no longer combat effective. General Brooks added: "The dagger is pointed at the heart of the Baghdad regime and will continue to be pointed at the heart of that regime, until the regime is gone."
He said some US forces had crossed part of the so-called "red line" which he defined as a "conceptual line" within which Allied troops were at risk of chemical weapons from Iraqi forces protecting the capital. The Iraqis are defending the area with extended-range Frog rockets, artillery and surface-to-surface missiles that can carry chemical weapons but General Brooks said: "The Republican Guard is in serious trouble. They remain in contact with the most powerful force on earth."
Two 15,000lb "daisy-cutter" bombs dropped from Hercules transport aircraft were reported to have helped in the destruction of Republican Guard units. ...
(End of quote from The Independent)
There are people out there who believe this war is about WMD without ever looking at themselves, their own nation, the carnage THEY cause in the world. Will American hypocricy ever be realized by Americans??
Anyone who can come up with a name like "Daisy cutter" to describe a device designed to obliterate human beings is lacking in human sensibilities. They are the ones who belong in jail not the crack smokers and dopers if civility means anything at all.
Barbarity in the military and on the battlefield is something we should expose. It proves that the war is certainly not about our government's moral superiority to those who would use "weapons of mass destruction."
The more people who understand that it is not about WMD, the more who might be open to wondering what it IS about.
Marta
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