WAR ON IRAK: PROPAGANDA WATCH

Reuters: Video Suggests U.S. Hit Useless Decoys - Analyst


DOHA (Reuters) - Iraqi aircraft destroyed by U.S. bombs in video shown on Monday at the daily U.S. briefing on the Iraq war looked like useless old decoys, British military analyst Paul Beaver said.
"I'm surprised that they would put this up on television when, to the trained eye, these were at least two or three generations old," said the former publisher of Jane's Defense Weekly.

Beaver told BBC World television that the three aircraft shown exploding in black-and-white video shot by attacking U.S. warplanes looked like an old British Hawker Hunter, an old Soviet-designed MiG and a newer but obsolescent Sukhoi.

The aircraft were sitting in the middle of runways, suggesting the Iraqis had put them out deliberately as decoys, Beaver said. The Hunter "was an aircraft that was in service when there was a kingdom of Iraq in the 1950s," he added.

A spokesman for U.S. Central Command said: "Obviously, we thought they were targets to take out. And we continue to take out targets that can erode the regime."

Decoys were used to great effect by Yugoslavia in the 1999 U.S.-dominated bombing campaign by NATO forces to end the Kosovo crisis. Battle damage studies after the war showed far fewer tanks and armored vehicles were destroyed than claimed.

Iraq has kept its air force on the ground so far in the 12-day-old war.

The reason for that was "if they fly, they die," U.S. Brigadier-General Vincent Brooks told reporters in Qatar.