Before 2003, the Pentagon Planned a Secret Air War Over Iraq

By Edward Change,War Is Boring

In early 2004, as controversy over the decision to invade Iraq the year prior mounted, Pres. George W. Bush endured accusations his administration had decided from the very beginning to take military action to force regime change in Baghdad.

Paul H. O’Neill, Bush’s secretary of the treasury until his dismissal in December 2002, was the subject of Ron Suskind’s book The Price of Loyalty. Highly-critical of the administration, O’Neill asserted that attacking Iraq was considered a top priority during the early days of the 43rd presidency and had even drawn up plans for doing so.

Shortly after the book’s release in January 2004, Bush was questioned regarding O’Neill’s allegations during a press conference. “Like the previous administration, we were for regime change. And in the initial stages of the administration, you might remember, we were dealing with Desert Badger or flyovers, and fly-betweens and looks And so, we were fashioning policy along those lines.”

It appeared the president had, intentionally or not, revealed the existence of a plan from the early weeks of his administration for taking military action against Iraq. Bush’s assertion that the media “might remember” Desert Badger was also peculiar, given that the Jan. 12, 2004 press conference during which Bush made the aforementioned remarks were the first public reference to the plan.

But was Desert Badger, as critics alleged, evidence of a strategy for pursuing regime change via military force? The president’s statement raised more questions than it answered. The details of the operation and the circumstances under which the plan was developed suggests a less nefarious motivation, however.

Between the end of Operation Desert Storm in March 1991 and the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom in March 2003, the United States and its allies, under United Nations authority, enforced no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq. The former, starting as Operation Provide Comfort and transitioning into Northern Watch, was commanded by U.S. European Command and aimed primarily at protecting the Kurdish minority of the region from Saddam Hussein’s brutal campaign of oppression.

The latter, Operation Southern Watch, was controlled by Joint Task Force Southwest Asia and aimed to protect the Shia Islamic majority in southern Iraq from the same, while also deterring Iraq from further aggression, such as another invasion of Kuwait. U.N. sanctions against Iraq, including ones pertaining to its weapons of mass destruction programs, were also enforced through both Northern and Southern Watch.