American General Confirms Secret Air War in 2002

We all know that Bush and Blair tried awful hard not to go to war with Saddam. We also know that while they were trying really, really hard to convince the rest of the world that the weapons inspectors that Saddam agreed to allow back into Iraq shouldn't be given time to do their jobs, Bush and Blair were bombing the daylights out of Iraq in preparation for the war that they were still trying really, really hard to prevent. The Times of London reported this last month, and now an American general's confirmed it. Highlights:

Addressing a briefing on lessons learnt from the Iraq war Lieutenant-General Michael Moseley said that in 2002 and early 2003 allied aircraft flew 21,736 sorties, dropping more than 600 bombs on 391 "carefully selected targets" before the war officially started.

The nine months of allied raids "laid the foundations" for the allied victory, Moseley said. They ensured that allied forces did not have to start the war with a protracted bombardment of Iraqi positions.
...
Moseley's remarks have emerged after reports in The Sunday Times that showed an increase in allied bombing in southern Iraq was described in leaked minutes of a meeting of the war cabinet as "spikes of activity to put pressure on the regime."

Moseley told the briefing at Nellis airbase in Nebraska on July 17, 2003, that the raids took place under cover of patrols of the southern no-fly zone; their purpose was ostensibly to protect the ethnic minorities.

As Agitprop remarked, "No wonder coalition troops were able to sack Baghdad in only three weeks in March 2003. They had already destroyed most of Saddam's defenses the year before."

Remember: We had to invade in March 2003 because Saddam would most likely hand off the weapons of mass destruction to Al Qaeda (which he wasn't in cahoots with even though the Administration kept saying that he was) as a last resort if he felt cornered—say, by an invasion of Iraq. Dear RNC, how's the koolaid?

BTW, according to Michael Smith, who wrote the article and who is now justifiably famous for reporting on the Downing Street documents, it was Raw Story's Larisa Alexandrovna who found the Moseley quote.