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When the ground beneath divides.

Article Excerpt
By the time you read this, the war against Iraq will be underway. Writing in the hours prior to its commencement it is impossible to know how it will proceed. It is likely that it will be devastating for the population of Baghdad, and of other Iraqi cities. The civilian casualties of an extensive bombing campaign will be both now and later: now from the `smart' bombs that miss their target, or take out civilian areas surrounding military targets, or which are aimed at civilian targets deemed military targets; later from the destruction of infrastructure, the cancers from depleted uranium and other `collateral damage'. Should the US find that the Iraqi leadership is hunkered down, it will consider the use of `bunker-busting' tactical nuclear weapons--the weapons of mass destruction it ostensibly went to war to prevent the use of. The Iraqi army--should it not simply dissolve--may land the occasional blow against the US-led forces, but it will be a backward struggle against vast superiority. As we have noted hitherto, and as Chomsky remarks in an interview within these pages, to call such actions `war' is misleading, since war involves some contestation of forces with a real chance of victory.

There are other, wilder possibilities of course: a prolonged war may so enrage the Arab world that its populations will take more concerted action; upheaval in Pakistan may deliver nuclear weapons into the hands of the Islamic fundamentalists who sponsored the Taliban; and so on. All of these scenarios are unlikely.

More possible is that the Iraq war will be...

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