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    Feeding the Peanut Gallery Senior Member Redleg's Avatar
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    Default Re: Hizbollah's tactics denounced as war crimes

    Quote Originally Posted by Pannonian
    Targeting infrastructure supporting the civilian population has long been regarded as unfair. Check out the historical view of poisoning wells and springs.
    Poisoning wells and springs is indeed part of the supporting infrastructure, but aside from your attempt at emotional appeal, you don't have much ground to stand on in your attempt here. population.

    You might want to check out the history of modern warfare, and definitions of infrastructure of a nation. Here is a little help from Wikipedia

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    Infrastructure, most generally, is a set of interconnected structural elements that provide the framework supporting an entire structure. The term has diverse meanings in different fields, but is perhaps most widely understood to refer to roads, sewers, and the like, the infrastructure of a city or region. These various elements may collectively be termed civil infrastructure, municipal infrastructure, or simply public works, although they may be developed and operated as private-sector or government enterprises. In other applications, infrastructure may refer to information technology, informal and formal channels of communication, software development tools, political and social networks, or shared beliefs held by members of particular groups. Still underlying these more general uses is the concept that infrastructure provides organizing structure and support for the system or organization it serves, whether it is a city, a nation, or a corporation.

    The word seems to have originated in 19th century France, and throughout the first half of the 20th century was used to refer primarily to military installations. The term came to prominence in the United States in the 1980s following publication of America in Ruins (Choate and Walter, 1981), which initiated a public-policy discussion of the nation’s “infrastructure crisis,” purported to be caused by decades of inadequate investment and poor maintenance of public works.

    That public-policy discussion was hampered by lack of a precise definition for infrastructure. A U. S. National Research Council (NRC) committee cited Senator Stafford, who commented at hearings before the Subcommittee on Water Resources, Transportation, and Infrastructure; Committee on Environment and Public Works; that “probably the word infrastructure means different things to different people." The NRC panel then sought to rectify the situation by adopting the term "public works infrastructure," referring to "...both specific functional modes--highways, streets, roads, and bridges; mass transit; airports and airways; water supply and water resources; wastewater management; solid-waste treatment and disposal; electric power generation and transmission; telecommunications; and hazardous waste management--and the combined system these modal elements comprise. A comprehension of infrastructure spans not only these public works facilities, but also the operating procedures, management practices, and development policies that interact together with societal demand and the physical world to facilitate the transport of people and goods, provision of water for drinking and a variety of other uses, safe disposal of society's waste products, provision of energy where it is needed, and transmission of information within and between communities." (Infrastructure for the 21st Century, Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1987)

    In subsequent years the word has grown in popularity and been applied with increasing generality to suggest the internal framework discernable in any technology system or business organization. The term “critical infrastructure” has been widely adopted to distinguish those infrastructure elements that, if significantly damaged or destroyed, would cause serious disruption of the dependent system or organization. Storm or earthquake damage leading to loss of certain transportation routes in a city (for example, bridges crossing a river), could make it impossible for people to evacuate and for emergency services to operate; these routes would be deemed critical infrastructure. Similarly, an on-line reservations system might be critical infrastructure for an airline.


    Here is a decent article on targeting infrastructure in two recent conflicts.

    http://www.ciaonet.org/pbei/winep/po.../2003_725.html

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    Infrastructure Targeting and Postwar Iraq

    The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

    By Michael Knights

    PolicyWatch #725
    March 14, 2003

    Using new operational concepts in concert with rapidly maturing strike technologies, the U.S. military will attempt to seamlessly dovetail the destructive process of warfare with the reconstructive effort of nation building in any future air operations against Iraq. Lessons learned from air campaigns conducted in Iraq during the 1990s have laid the foundation for a more finessed approach to infrastructure targeting.



    Changes in Targeting from Desert Storm to Desert Fox

    In Operation Desert Storm, a ground offensive was supported with extensive air strikes on every significant element of Iraq's dual-use power, communications, transportation, and industrial sectors. In a war that had the potential to become protracted, it made sense to destroy Iraq's ability to refine oil and produce ammunition, as well as its stockpiled reserves. At the same time, U.S. Air Force planners sought to cause only temporary damage to Iraq's economic infrastructure by precisely targeting easy-to-replace elements of key facilities rather than destroying such facilities outright.

    Yet, these plans were thwarted by standard operating procedures that were deeply ingrained in the military community. Wary of underestimating Iraq, Desert Storm planners inflicted massive damage on the country's economic infrastructure. For example, instead of targeting rapidly replaceable electricity transformer yards and refined oil storage sites, U.S. forces destroyed hard-to-replace generator halls and cracking (distillation) towers. Initially, Tomahawk cruise missiles were used to dispense carbon graphite filaments over power stations, minimizing permanent damage while still causing blackouts. Yet, these sites were later used as bomb dumps for carrier-based aircraft returning to ship, rendering the less-destructive effects of the cruise missile strikes meaningless. Desert Storm also highlighted the unforeseen consequences of disrupting the highly interconnected critical infrastructure of a modern industrialized country, as attacks on dual-use power facilities caused cascading damage throughout the water purification and sanitation systems, exacerbating a public health crisis.

    In the years following Desert Storm, these lessons were rapidly incorporated into targeting policy. During the four-day Operation Desert Fox in December 1998, the military took great pains to focus its strikes on Saddam Husayn's regime rather than on dual-use infrastructure. While numerous Ba'ath security, intelligence, and military targets were destroyed, power and telephone systems were spared. The sole economic target, authorized after hard bargaining by Desert Fox planners, was an oil refinery linked to smuggling. This target was temporarily crippled in a strike designed by the Joint Warfare Analysis Center, which engineered a targeting solution that disabled the site for six months while minimizing pollution. Five months after Desert Fox, new types of carbon graphite munitions were used to disable Serbian electrical networks during Operation Allied Force, greatly reducing permanent damage. Moreover, current reports indicate that radio frequency (RF) devices that use electromagnetic pulse effects to disrupt advanced electronics are being weaponized for deployment in cruise missiles and guided bombs in the event of a new war in Iraq.



    Targeting Iraq in 2003

    Given the fact that the Iraqi military has been greatly reduced, U.S. Air Force planners recognize that the current operational problem is how to quickly overcome a static Iraqi defense in support of a high-intensity ground war that would likely begin nearly simultaneously with an air campaign. In such a situation, slowly maturing attacks on Iraqi dual-use industrial infrastructure would not be particularly useful from a military point of view. Military planners now recognize that targeting certain forms of infrastructure (e.g., the national electrical grid or public telecommunications) causes more disruption to civilians than to the enemy military and hence may not meaningfully reduce the risk to allied forces. Moreover, such attacks may cause collateral damage -- a particularly sensitive issue given Washington's uncertain mandate for war. According to a February 5, 2003, Pentagon briefing, strikes against dual-use facilities are now automatically considered to cause collateral damage, and thus require special authorization.

    Moreover, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development's (USAID's) "Vision for Post-Conflict Iraq," the United States will strive to ensure that critical infrastructure remains operational following a war, with most transport links and water, sanitation, and electrical services functioning, especially in urban areas. Within eighteen months after a war, USAID plans to rebuild Iraqi infrastructure completely, even improving on prewar conditions. This will require limited infrastructure targeting in each sector:

    Power. Strikes against Iraq's electricity grid will probably be limited, focusing on power transmission to specific government and military facilities. RF and other nonkinetic weapons are likely to be used to minimize permanent damage.

    Water/Sanitation. USAID is preparing to deploy generators to key water and sanitation facilities in case of disruption, while personnel from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and firms such as Contrack and Morganti will be on hand within sixty days of war's end to operate Iraq's ten major facilities.

    Transportation. Iraq's transportation network is unlikely to be dismembered as it was in 1991, when over forty road and rail bridges and all major airports were destroyed. For one thing, transport nodes are necessary for allied offensive and logistical operations. In addition, more precise twenty-four-hour, all-weather intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and strike technologies will allow on-call air forces to interdict Iraqi movement without destroying basic infrastructure such as bridges. Moreover, an intact transportation network will be required immediately after a war, as USAID aims to restore humanitarian access to major seaports (e.g., Umm Qasr), airports (e.g., Basra), and the rail network in order to ensure rapid resumption of UN Oil-for-Food deliveries and domestic fuel distribution.

    Petrol, Oil, and Lubricants. The need for a functioning transportation system and an expedient return of Iraqi oil to market following a war make it unlikely that facilities such as oil refineries will be extensively targeted. Initially, damage to downstream oil industry infrastructure will likely be tended to by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and civilian contractors Kellogg, Brown, and Root, Inc.

    Communications. Certain types of telecommunications facilities have already been extensively targeted (e.g., microwave relay, tropospheric scatter, fiber-optic). The public telephone network has been spared in all air strikes since 1991 and is unlikely to be comprehensively targeted in the future. Yet, Iraq's radio and television jamming and transmission facilities will likely be destroyed in order to open the airwaves for extensive U.S. psychological operations. RF weapons may be used in attacks on government communications infrastructure, leaving large (yet isolated) segments of the system undamaged but functionally dead.



    Implications

    U.S. forces will face many wild cards. For example, Iraqi sabotage of oil infrastructure and bridges could reverse the effectiveness of finessed U.S. targeting policies, while a prolonged conflict could necessitate wider strikes on industrial facilities or infrastructure defended by the regime. Nevertheless, current U.S. targeting plans represent an unprecedented attempt to move seamlessly from war to reconstruction. In fact, psychological operations may be the only U.S. military measures that directly target the Iraqi public and key constituencies in the Iraqi regular military and militia (as distinct from the Republican Guard). As in the Desert Fox strikes, the regime's leadership, security forces, and weapons of mass destruction materiel will constitute a large share of the preplanned targets. Such a strategy will help spare infrastructure and avoid the overkill wrought by Desert Storm.

    Michael Knights is joining The Washington Institute as a military fellow.







    In other words your attempt here is based more on emotional appeal then fact.
    Last edited by Redleg; 09-14-2006 at 23:12.
    O well, seems like 'some' people decide to ruin a perfectly valid threat. Nice going guys... doc bean

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