Thursday, April 24, 2003 | 8:15 a.m.
AMERICAN TROOPS LEARN QUICKLY and several bits of information have been gleaned from their experiences in Iraq. What they have learned on the ground in combat is rapidly being brought back home for basic training and military school use. Although our next war may be entirely different than Iraq, and that would be the case if we tangle with North Korea, all ground combat has some similarities and many differences. Remember World War I was trench warfare and World War II was fast and furious mechanized ground warfare with heavy air support. The last half of the following war in Korea was fought from trenches.
Our troops in Iraq are now familiar with suicide bombers and car bombs. There is good reason to believe these tactics may become even more prevalent during the coming weeks and months. Car bombs have been a weapon in Iraq and the entire Middle East for many years. I can recall their use by Saddam's agents in northern Iraq when I was with the Kurds in 1992. The suicide bombings have been developed into a fine art by the Palestinians during the past three years. Last year this tactic had progressed to the point where even women joined their ranks. Israeli schoolchildren, teenagers, family and religious gatherings and shoppers have all felt the pain of these killers.
So what's next on the list of terrorist groups in the Middle East and eventually around the world? We already had a preview of some of their plans last November in Mombasa, Kenya. That's when terrorists launched two Soviet SA-7 shoulder-fired missiles in an attempt to bring down an Israeli Boeing 757 charter jet loaded with vacationers. This was a close but failed attempt to bring down the aircraft. What didn't fail was the car bomb exploded minutes before in the nearby Paradise Hotel where 13 people were killed and dozens were seriously injured.
Our world is loaded with deadly weapons now in the hands of terrorists. U.S. News & World Report magazine in a recent article tells readers: "A thriving black market for some 700,000 surface-to-air missiles has made it relatively cheap for terrorist groups, including al Qaeda and Hezbollah, to stockpile the weapons. The United States has contributed marginally to the supply of missiles, having sold more than 900 U.S.-made Stingers to Afghan militias fighting the Soviets between 1979 and 1988."
In Iraq, American troops are scrambling to retrieve even more weapons and explosives before they reach the terrorists through the black market. The weapons are extremely valuable and some are only seized after a firefight with Saddam's supporters. Large numbers of the SA-7 anti-aircraft weapons are scattered in arsenals all over Iraq. One of our military units has picked up and destroyed almost 300 tons of weapons the terrorists want and will purchase.
What is amazing is that a civilian airline tragedy, resulting from a plane being hit by shoulder-fired missiles, hasn't happened. At least we haven't had such an attack being given credit for any downed airliner. However, we know for certain that plans have been made for such a strike.
Last November, before the attempt to down the Israeli aircraft in Kenya, the Jerusalem Report magazine did reveal some important information. "A few months ago, three Baghdad-trained Palestinian terrorists were caught trying to cross the border through Jordan: they were reportedly planning to fire shoulder-held anti-aircraft missiles at planes leaving or landing at Ben-Gurion Airport," reported the magazine.
We do know that other attempts have been made, but sharp intelligence agencies have stopped them before they succeeded in shooting down a civilian passenger airliner. Actually shooting down scheduled aircraft is made easier because of known times of departure and landing. For this very reason, Israel's El Al planes do change schedules unannounced publicly. We have come to understand that some of the El Al planes already have systems to identify and deflect missiles. Because of the expense for such systems, the U.S. government and commercial airlines are debating who should pay for their installation. This debate will only end when a commercial airliner is shot from the sky by a shoulder-fired weapon.
One constant in today's world is that terrorists will continue to seek out and use the most efficient weapons to, indiscriminately, kill the maximum number of people.
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