Reserve Major-General, Professor Vladimir Slipchenko, military analyst, doctor of military science is Russia’s first-rate specialist on wars of tomorrow. His forecasts concerning US’s military operations in Iraq (1991, 1996 and 1998), in Yugoslavia (1999) and Afghanistan (2001) proved to be almost 100% true, and that was proved by the actual course of the operations. Now the analyst gives forecasts concerning further development and result of the US-led war in Iraq.
Main objective of the Iraqi war is still offscreen, nobody ever mentions it. My opinion is that main objective of the war is a large-scale testing of new high precision weapons held by the USA in Iraq. This is the top-priority objective for America, all the rest are minor objectives or undisguised misinformation in fact.
For over ten years already the USA has been waging no-contact wars. In May 2001, George W. Bush delivered his first presidential speech to students of the US Navy Academy in Annapolis and declared that drastic measures must be taken to start preparation of the US armed forces for wars of tomorrow. He emphasized at that, these should be high-tech armed forces to perform no-contact operations all over the world. Now the objective is persistently carried out.
It makes sense to mention that the Pentagon purchases from the defense establishment only weapons tested in real wars and holding quality certificates taken on battle fields. After several real experiments, the wars in Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, many of the US defense corporations have been given the right to sell their high-precision weapons to the Pentagon. These are Martin Lockheed, General Electric and Loral. Other large companies haven’t yet got orders from the military department. The price of the issue is 50-60 billion dollars per year, everybody wants to get such sums. But today’s weapons suppliers of the Pentagon constantly develop more new weapons that must be tested. The US defense establishment demands the political leadership to provide testing grounds, wars where the new weapons can be tested. And they do get such grounds. This is the main reason why the war has been started in Iraq, not because of US’s desire to get control over Iraqi oil.
This war will differ from the US’s previously held no-contact wars for its political purposes first of all. It is for the first time since 1991 that the USA makes sets itself an objective to change the political regime in an inimical country, to remove or liquidate leadership of the country. Objectives of this kind haven’t been yet attained.
Remember, the USA never attempted to remove Saddam out of politics; those were not war methods used for overthrowing Slobodan Milosevic. The US armed forces held tests of new weapons, then took the weapons and went home. Now they are facing a very hard objective.
So, if the objective is different, the war strategy changes as well. It is for the first time declared that a war must result in US’s absolute victory. Three problems must be settled for this purpose: to smash inimical armed forces, to destroy economy of the country and change its political regime.
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