lander: Bush has handed over operational decisions in the war over to the military. They allowed a window of about a day, I'm surmising to allow troops to surrender, and when movement did not occur, they began that campaign. The campaign is targeting only military and regime-related targets in an attempt to sap their will to fight and avoid having to invade Baghdad, to try to avoid a costly fight on both sides (i.e., to save coalition and civilian lives alike), to remove their capacity to threaten our troops, and to hopefully destroy sites where they suspect WMDs are being stored that could otherwise be used. The objective of the war is full victory with as few casualties on both sides as necessary. If you do not start this campaign, you run the serious risk of the attitude of the enemy becoming more bold since nothing is happening, and I have yet to hear a peep about significant civilian casualties.
This is not a war run by polls. It is serious. It IS a war. The targeting has been unprecedented in its accuracy and humaneness. Maybe the Iraqis won't surrender - they are being given that option, but this isn't the U.N., they are not going to be given unlimited time in wartime to make up their minds, especially when they still have the capacity for harm and the unknown about whether they might use those WMDS.
This is the same regime that unfortunately the U.S. helped during the Iran/Iraq war in which Saddam personally targeted civilians in Iran with chemical munitions, and of course we all know about the Kurds. One cannot apply U.N. dithering in this war.
