* The air war over Iraq has begun. Fighter jets now bomb Iraqi targets almost daily and the Air Force has dropped more bombs and missiles in the past three months than in the previous three years.
The U.S. Central Command has announced air strikes on nine of the last 10 days, targeting more than 20 individual locations. At least 16 of those were “military communication” sites. The others were a surface-to-air missile system and various radar systems.
“While, officially, no decision has been made on a recourse to military action, the air campaign part of the war really started months ago in all but name,” said Francois Boo of GlobalSecurity.org.
In addition to the bombs, pilots have dropped more than 11 million leaflets since December, including 900,000 scattered Monday about 250 miles southeast of Baghdad. The leaflets are key to a psychological operations campaign aimed at persuading Iraqis to surrender. Officials with U.S. Central Command predict tens of thousands of Saddam Hussein’s troops will heed those warnings within days of any invasion

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