Recently I heard an ex-marine preacher say that during Desert Storm Saddam Hussein parked his jets at some kind of ancient shrine south of Baghdad knowing that the US would not bomb this particular place because of its history. Does anyone know if that is true? If so, what is it?
I had not heard of that particular story but, considering who Sodamn Insane was, it wouldn't surprise me. Given that he did have a number of his aircraft buried in the desert to keep them from becoming toast, I'd say it very likely happened; I just don't know anything about it, other than what you posted.
Thanks for the reply anyway. The preacher is a member of the "Frozen Chosen" up at the Chosin resevoir in Korea. If you do happen to find out the answer in the future plz email me
The only thing I've found so far has been a story in the NYT from Feb. '91, which mentions an aircraft being hidden in a schoolhouse but nothing about a shrine.
I may be just fanning the flames of rumor, but I remember hearing that Iraq kept SAM batteries, AA guns, scuds, etc. parked near schools, Mosques and hospitals. The thought being that since we had rules about bombing non-military targets, we would have a hard time taking out their defenses without damaging the schools and hospitals.
When our aircraft went in, they were assaulted by what was described as the most heavily defended city in the world. If you remember the news clips there were AA tracers everywhere. The rumor was that the AA guns were next to sensitive areas so that our pilots would have an extremely difficult time taking them out.
Bomb the AA and damage the school and the press tells the whole world how we bombed a bunch of kids.
It's hardly "fanning the flames of rumor" when video clearly showed AA positions all over the roofs of the buildings in Baghdad, so putting SAM's, Scuds, etc., in populated neighborhoods, around hospitals, schools, and the like would be par for the course with Hussein. Remember the outcry when we hit that one communications (?) bunker that they were using for an air raid shelter? As far as I'm concerned, most of the civilian casualties from Desert Storm were of Hussein's own doing. We all know the value he placed on human life.
