Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!cbnews!military From: richk@tera.com (Richard Korry) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: Iraq and no SR-71 Message-ID: <1990Aug18.182952.25373@cbnews.att.com> Date: 18 Aug 90 18:29:52 GMT References: <1990Aug8.030554.26134@cbnews.att.com> <1990Aug16.030636.15921@cbnews.att.com> Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker) Organization: Tera Computer Company Lines: 23 Approved: military@att.att.com From: richk@tera.com (Richard Korry) In article <1990Aug16.030636.15921@cbnews.att.com> DJBQC@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (David Bressler) writes: > > >From: David Bressler >I've got no knowledge except what I've read in books and the newspapers >over the past few years about the SR-71 and its missions. I believe the >reason that we were surprised in Iraq was because the Blackbird was not >operational. Sattelites are good but not flexible enough for the type >of lightning attack that Iraq used on Kuwait. -- From what I have read and listened to, I disagree. The intelligence was that the Iraqis were poised to move into Kuwait. All sides knew this. The problem was that the Iraqis had moved their forces upto the border and rattled sabers many times before. The Kuwaitis were told *not* to mobilize as this would give the Iraqis an excuse to invade. Mubarak of Egypt was told by Pres. Hussein of Iraq that he would not attack. Thus, the problem was not a technical one, it was one of interpreting the intelligence - what would Hussein do *this* time. Having good intelligence means having the raw data AND the ability to correctly interpret it. In this case, the data was there but the interpretation was incorrect. rich