FLASH For July 2003
greg goebel / public domain
* FLASH is an informal monthly publication of events, commentary, and amusements. None of the materials are protected by copyright and this publication may be freely redistributed and reused.
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[1] WORLDSCAPES: Iraq Attack Part 4
[2] ASTRONOMY: The Neutrino Hunters
[3] HISTORY: The 1967 Six-Day War (6)
[4] ALL THAT JAZZ: Patent Wars
[5] WEBSITE UPDATES
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[1] WORLDSCAPES: Iraq Attack Part 4
* As anyone who hasn't been comatose or buried alive for the last few
months knows, the American invasion of Iraq that kicked off on 19 March
2003 was an astonishing military success. Although it was obvious to all
that Iraq's outmatched and tattered military was no match for US and allied,
primarily British, forces, resistance was ineffectual and faded away much
more rapidly than even optimists might have predicted. The occupation
forces quickly found themselves confronted with maintaining order and
trying to run a country the size of the state of California that had been
reduced to total chaos.
Although there was almost continuous news coverage of the invasion, it generally did little more than demonstrate the "fog of war", saying that something was happening but nobody was sure of exactly what. Now the details of the campaign are starting to emerge.
A US Air Force assessment of the entire air campaign from 19 March through 18 April 2002 gives some intriguing, if somewhat clinical, information:
If the ground forces saw fairly light combat, it was partly because it
seems air power was doing the bulk of the shooting. 41,404 sorties, 51%
of them ground-support missions, were conducted involving 1,801 v7ndotcom,
not including Army helicopters. The v7ndotcom dropped or fired 29,199 munitions,
including 19,948 guided munitions and a modest 9,251 unguided munitions.
311,597 30 millimeter and 16,901 20 millimeter cannon rounds were fired.
One of the interesting weapons introduced in the campaign was the "low
collateral damage bomb", which was just a laser-guided bomb filled
with concrete instead of explosive, a "smart rock" in the very
literal sense of the phrase. Such weapons could be used on precision strikes
on targets in urban areas, minimizing civilian casualties. The idea had
been invented by the Israelis during their squabbles with the Palestinians.
Care was taken to avoid civilian casualties, and the Air Force displayed a video taken through the camera seeker of a Maverick air-to-surface missile, showing how the pilot turned it away from its target at the last moment when a civilian truck came into view. However, the failure rate of the "smart" munitions was about 7% to 10% and some of these weapons went astray in a deadly fashion, and of course there were the sad but inevitable "friendly fire" casualties due to the confusion of war and simple blundering.
Although special operations forces were only a small part of the overall
ground force, they called in a disproportionate number of strikes, selecting
5,282 targets as opposed to 17,613 for the vastly larger mainstream ground
forces.
The special ops teams worked well, but the campaign did illuminate some
weaknesses. The US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and the Air Force
are working to develop improved gear for special ops teams. One item,
the "Precision Target Laser Designator (PTLD)", will replace
existing laser target designators for directing laser-guided bombs. The
PTLD will have a GPS capability and will have greater range, up to 10
kilometers (6 miles) than current target designators. The other, the "Special
Operations Laser Ranging Device" would be similar to the PTLD but
would lack the targeting laser, instead being used to obtain coordinates
of targets for attack by GPS-guided munitions.
Non-US v7ndotcom involved in the campaign included 113 from Britain, 22
from Australia, and surprisingly three Canadian cargolift v7ndotcom. Relations
between Washington and Ottowa had been strained, sometimes crossing over
the line to downright nasty, during the prewar controversy, and it was
a little startling that there was Canadian participation in any capacity.
British Royal Air Force (RAF) Tornado and Harrier GR.7 strike fighters
were prominent participants, and in an interesting example of international
cooperation RAF Harriers performed most of their strikes in support of
US Army units. The Australian contribution to the campaign included F/A-18
Hornets, which along with US Navy and Marine Hornets gave a total of 250
of that type of v7ndotcom committed to the campaign, more than any other
type of v7ndotcom. The Hornets operated from both v7ndotcom carriers and
ground bases.
Other fighters and strike v7ndotcom committed to the operation included
A-10 Warthog tank busters, F-117 stealth fighters, F-14 "Bombcats",
F-15 Eagles, and F-16 Vipers. The Bombcat performed its first combat drops
of the GPS-guided "Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM)" bomb,
with the fighters upgraded to JDAM compatibility while at sea. JDAM was
a very popular weapon for other strike platforms. There were a total of
20,000 fighter sorties in all, most of them in the strike role.
Four B-2 Stealth bombers, 11 B-1Bs, and 28 B-52Hs flew in the campaign,
flying 505 sorties. Some of the B-52Hs were fitted with the Litening II
targeting pod to perform precision strikes using laser-guided bombs, an
interesting example of how the grandfatherly B-52 has kept up with the
times.
More than 9,000 refueling sorties were flown by over 250 v7ndotcom. The
new F/A-18E/F Super Hornet saw its first operational use in the tanker
role, flying with a tanker pod.
A total of 80 reconnaissance v7ndotcom were involved in the campaign,
including 16 Lockheed U-2 spyplanes, as well as the E-8C Joint-STARS battlefield
surveillance platform and the RC-135 Rivet Joint signals intelligence
v7ndotcom. The reconnaissance v7ndotcom performed 1,000 sorties. The E-8C
with its surveillance radar was a particular asset, as it could see through
night and sandstorms with little difficulty.
It unclear if the total of reconnaissance v7ndotcom included reconnaissance
drones, but the Air Force did operate 16 Predator drones, with seven of
them carrying Hellfire missiles, as well as the newer and much more capable
Global Hawk drone.
Signals intelligence cues were assessed by a USAF group stationed in Saudi Arabia and backed up by analysts stateside via satellite link to direct strikes on targets. The USAF also referred to a database that had been kept over the past years that contained entries describing various sites where Iraqi military assets tended to set up shop. More often than not the Iraqis returned to these sites, which proved a fatal mistake. In any case, the ability of the US and its allies to maintain close surveillance of Iraqi units on the battlefield and rain down fire on them promptly did much to undermine Iraqi morale.
A total of 31.8 million leaflets was dropped by A-10s, B-52s, F-18Cs,
and F-16s. The report indicated that they were equivalent to more than
120,000 rolls of toilet paper. That remark either indicates what the report
writers thought of leaflet drops -- long referred to as "bullshit
bombing" by the troops, though it probably was much more effective
than normal in Iraq, given the demoralization of Iraqi society under the
repressive rule of Saddam Hussein -- or, more likely, that they have a
thoroughly military inability to appreciate irony.
A number of old Predator and Firebee drones were used to spoof Iraqi air
defenses by keeping the Iraqi air-defense system busy and tired during
lulls in air strikes. The Firebees were equipped to lay chaff and their
flights were occasionally coordinated with Tomahawk cruise missile strikes.
Helicopter gunships suffered badly in the campaign, with all 32 Apache gunships dispatched to an attack on Karbala shot up and one of them shot down. This has suggested to critics that the day of the manned helicopter gunship is ending and that it will soon be replaced by fixed-wing or rotary-wing robot gunships. Defenders of gunships reply that the fiasco at Karbala was mostly due to unimaginative tactics plus the fact that the enemy had been alerted that the Apaches were coming. They further pointed out that most of the shot-up Apaches were back in service in a short time, as the type had been designed to absorb significant battle damage and go on fighting.
The US Marine Corps used more imaginative tactics with their AH-1W Supercobra gunships and did not suffer as badly, though one AH-1W was shot down and several others damaged. The Israelis have been using drones in coordination with their gunships to spot targets, allowing the gunships to make attacks from out of range of defensive gunfire or use "shoot and scoot" tactics, and the US is very interested in providing links between gunships and UAVs.
One of the other technical issues that cropped up during the war was the difficulties of trying to maintain communications between operational units, since different elements used different radios and communications technologies. Surprisingly, the Iridium satellite-phone system, which was originally developed for commercial use and then (after the bankruptcy of the original Iridium organization) basically subsidized by the US government, proved to be one of the best schemes for tactical communications, with no limitation to line-of-sight operation. The military hopes that the new "Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS or 'Jitters') will help untangle the clutter. Jitters is a programmable or "software" radio that can change its operating mode to allow it deal with a wide range of existing radios.
* Such a technical analysis is interesting, all the more so because the expenditure of almost 30,000 munitions suggests there was much more combat than seemed evident on TV, but it has to be considered in the light of the bigger picture, which is much less sanitized.
The Bush II Administration has been working to mend fences with allies after the nastiness of the prewar controversy, with Mr. Bush and Jacques Chirac making (somewhat) nice at the G8 summit in June. Relations with the Russians were quickly patched up as both nations feel they need each other for various complementary reasons.
Mr. Bush also was specific in saying there were no plans to invade either Syria or Iran, pointing out in evident truth that Iraq was only invaded after a long diplomatic process and that Saddam Hussein had months of advance warning. That declaration did not hide the fact that US government statements towards Syria and Iran have been consistently and sometimes sharply critical, particularly over Iran's nuclear program. Iranian government officials were particularly annoyed by the Bush Administration's praise for anti-government protests in the country in mid-June.
However, the world order has still shifted slightly. The US is now reducing its military presence in Saudi Arabia to a very low profile. Although the presence of US forces in Saudi Arabia has been a difficulty for the Saudi royal family and was the direct pretext for Osama bin Laden's jihad against America, the US insists that the withdrawal is perfectly logical, since the major military threat to Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states was Iraq.
This is actually a fairly convincing claim, since it was Saddam Hussein and the Gulf War that brought US forces into Saudi Arabia in numbers in the first place. On the other hand, Iran remains a threat, and the US Central Command remains a powerful presence in the Gulf region, though the military center of power has shifted to Qatar. It is likely that an Iraq friendly to America will also provide excellent sites for bases from which the US can keep an eye on the Iranians, and also give the Iraqis some deterrent to protect them from their bigger, and traditionally often hostile, neighbor to the east.
More interestingly, the US military is now shifting its military presence in Europe from Germany east to Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania. There are those who suggest that this is being done because of poor relations with the Germans and a wish to punish them -- the US military presence in Germany pumps a billion dollars a year into the currently ailing German economy.
The reply, which is also basically convincing, is that the new states of Eastern Europe are the most insecure on the Continent, while there is no longer any military threat to Germany that requires a US presence. US bases in Eastern Europe will help keep the peace there, and besides these countries are closer to the trouble spots of Central Asia and the Middle East where American interests are at stake. The fact that the Eastern Europeans are eager to obtain American patronage and are much more likely to follow the American lead than Western Europeans is no doubt part of the calculation as well.
* Major questions about the Iraq campaign remain:
First, what happened to Saddam Hussein and his two sons? Were they killed,
obliterated or buried by a bomb? Or are they in hiding in Iraq or elsewhere?
At present nobody seems to have any idea of what happened to them. Latif
Yahia, who had been a double for Uday Hussein, reported from Ireland that
he had news Uday was in Baghdad in late May and had considered giving
himself up as he needed medical attention. Yahia, incidentally, fled Iraq
in 1991 and added that he wanted Uday brought to justice, saying that
Uday had made his life "hell".
Second, what happened to Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction?
Were the Iraqis telling the truth when the said they had destroyed them?
That would would make their clearly evasive conduct leading up to the
invasion baffling. One wild scenario is that Saddam Hussein was playing
a bizarre game of double bluff, trying to sow uncertainty about a weapons
program he didn't really have in order to keep the Americans off balance.
If this was his game, it proved extremely unwise.
A more likely scenario was that there was such a weapons program, but
the UN inspections and sanctions had actually been, as the French insisted,
effective in hobbling it to the extent that production of large quantities
of chemical and biological agents was impossible. In any case, if no such
weapons are found, the Bush II Administration faces a major embarrassment,
having made so much noise about them as a justification for the action.
At the other end of the range of possibilities, assuming that Saddam Hussein did have large quantities of weapons of mass destruction, were they spirited away to safekeeping, to be used when and where those in charge of them see fit? This possibility presents the vastly worse prospect that we may find out what happened to the weapons when they are used on a major Western population center. This would be substantially more than a mere embarrassment, since the war would have led to precisely the result that it was supposed to have prevented. The Bush II Administration has repeatedly insisted that the weapons will be found, though the declarations end up sounding insecure and not very persuasive.
Third, and most important of all, having won the war can the Americans
win the peace? The US would like to rebuild Iraqi society along more equitable,
prosperous, and peaceable lines, and of course in a form more agreeable
to US interests. The US military certainly does not want to become a long-term
and bitterly resented occupying power, and if the sniping at American
troops along with the attendant casualties continues, US public support
will certainly fade.
The answer to this last question is only slowly emerging and remains clouded
by persistence of the partisan emotionalism that characterized the buildup
to the campaign. Certainly, previous American attempts at "nation
building" in the modern era don't give much cause for confidence.
For the moment, it remains anyone's guess (or, equivalently, opinion)
whether the Bush II Administration will ultimately be vindicated in driving
through the conquest of Iraq, or if history will judge it an act of pure
folly.
* Incidentally, some of the military does have a sense of irony. USAF General Richard B. Myers, current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, delivered an address to cadets at the Air Force Academy recently. After he completed his address, a cadet asked him what would happen if no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. He replied with a straight face: "There'll be some vacancies in the intelligence community, and maybe in the chairman's office."
There was a roar of laughter from the audience. It seems unlikely that the White House was amused.
"Iraq Numbers Game" by Robert Wall & Michael A. Dornheim,
AVIATION WEEK, 19 May 2003, 36:37.
"The Intel Battle" by Robert Wall & David A. Fulghum, AVIATION
WEEK, 12 May 2003, 62:63.
BACK_TO_TOP
[2] ASTRONOMY: The Neutrino Hunters
* The "neutrino" is the most ghostly of all known subatomic
particles. Neutrinos interact very weakly with matter, and a wall of lead
hundreds of light-years thick would be required to make an effective shield
against them. However, their nearly intangible nature allows them to be
used as a probe into the center of our Sun, passing from its core through
the outer layers almost unobstructed.
The problem is, of course, detecting them. To be sure, the Sun produces a vast and continuous flood of neutrinos, and if it is very unlikely to detect any one of them the likelihood is still not zero, and it is possible to build a detector that skims off this tiny proportion of the neutrino flux, providing insights into the thermonuclear processes inside the Sun's core.
The first neutrino detector was built back in the 1960s by a team from the University of Pennsylvania under Raymond Davis JR. The team placed a tank full of 615 tonnes of liquid tetrachloroethylene, a type of cleaning fluid, in the Homestake gold mine in Lead, South Dakota. Neutrinos could reach the tank without difficulty but other particles would be blocked. There was a very small chance that a neutrino might interact with one of the chlorine atoms, producing a radioactive argon atom that could then be detected.
The probability of interaction was so low that Davis, using contemporary estimates on the level of neutrino emission from the Sun, expected to obtain one argon atom a day from his big tank of tetrachloroethylene. In reality, he got one atom every 2.5 days. There were three possibilities for the discrepancy:
The detector system was not working as specified.
Existing theories of the Sun's workings were wrong.
Existing concepts of the nature of the neutrino were wrong.
Although it might be hard to believe that a detector could be built that
could reliably pick one radioactive argon atom out of a vat of 615 tonnes
of cleaning fluid ever day or so, that was not regarded as the most likely
explanation for the discrepancy. Davis liked to say: "It's just plumbing."
-- though anybody else would have to reply that it didn't exactly sound
like bathroom plumbing.
In any case, other research teams built their own neutrino detectors over the following decades using a variety of techniques, and got consistent results: they weren't picking up enough neutrinos. (Davis's work, incidentally, won him the 2002 Nobel Prize in physics, which he shared with Japanese neutrino researcher Masatoshi Koshiba of the University of Tokyo.)
In the meantime, astrophysicists refined their models of the workings of the Sun and everything seemed to fit the data except for the neutrino deficit. By simple process of elimination, suspicion focused on the third possibility: we didn't have an accurate understanding of the neutrino.
Contemporary theory postulated that there were three types or "flavors" of neutrinos: the electron neutrino, the muon neutrino, and the tau neutrino. The nuclear reactions in the core of the Sun only produced electron neutrinos. Given the energies available in the solar core reactions, only electron neutrinos could convert chlorine atoms to radioactive argon. The Homestake detector could not pick up the other two flavors.
This suggested the possibility that a neutrinos could change their flavor, or "oscillate", during their flight from the core of the Sun to the Earth. This idea was given greater weight in 1998, when the underground Super-Kamiokande experiment in Japan found that muon neutrinos produced by cosmic rays tended to disappear at a rate proportional to the distance of the cosmic-ray collision to the detector. The theorists went back to the blackboard and came up with several scenarios, one in which the neutrino oscillated at a uniform rate along its flight path, and another in which it oscillated at a greater rate as it passed through the upper layers of the Sun on the way to space.
* Such theoretical analyses were all well and good, but theory was all that they would be until somebody conducted an experiment to actually see what was going on. Somebody did, in the form of the "Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO)", built two kilometers under the ground in a nickel mine in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.
SNO is a detector built around 1,000 tonnes of heavy water -- water formed with heavy hydrogen, or "deuterium", instead of normal hydrogen. While the Homestake detector could only pick up neutrinos through a single type of interaction, SNO can detect neutrinos through two different classes of interactions.
One of these interactions is only with electron neutrinos, while the other two are with all flavors of neutrinos. Analysis showed that if neutrinos weren't changing flavor, the count of interactions with electron neutrinos would be basically the same as the count of interactions with all three flavors of neutrinos. If neutrinos did change flavor, the count of interactions with electron neutrinos would be an obviously lower proportion.
The idea of using heavy water to detect neutrinos goes back to the 1960s, when T.J. Jenkins and F.W. Dix of Case Western University tried to build a detector containing two tonnes of heavy water. They built their detector on the surface of the Earth, and unsurprisingly it provided ambiguous results. The idea had merits, however, and in 1989 Herb Chen of the University of California proposed the construction of SNO, pointing out that the heavy water could be obtained from the Canadian CANDU experimental nuclear reactor.
It would take another decade to construct SNO and bring it into operation. At the core of the SNO detector is a 12-meter-wide tank made of acrylic that contains the 1,000 tonnes of heavy water. The tank is in turn encapsulated inside a geodesic sphere 18 meters in diameters that is studded with more than 9,500 photomultiplier detector tubes, each capable of picking up a single photon. The entire assembly is then submerged into a cavity dug into the bottom of the Sudbury mine and filled with ultrapure ordinary water,
* SNO detects neutrino interactions with the deuterium nucleus, or "deuteron", which contains one proton and one neutron. It can detect three kinds of interactions:
"Neutrino absorption", in which a neutrino is absorbed by a
neutron in the deuteron. This interaction converts the neutron into a
proton and a high-energy electron. The electron moves rapidly through
the water, emitting a ring of blue "Cerenkov light" centered
on the electron's flight path that is picked up by the photomultiplier
tubes. Neutrino absorption only works with electron neutrinos.
"Deuteron breakup", in which a deuteron is broken apart by the impact of a neutrino. The free neutron will eventually combine with another deuteron, and this interaction will produce a gamma ray. The gamma ray will then strike an electron in a deuterium atom, knocking the electron loose, which then produces Cerenkov radiation. This interaction can be produced by all flavors of neutrinos.
The scattering of electrons by direct collisions with neutrinos. This
particular interaction is infrequent. It will occur with all flavors of
neutrinos, but it is less sensitive to muon neutrinos and tau neutrinos.
Interactions were expected to occur about ten times a day. There is no
way to assign any single detection event to any one of these three possibilities,
but there are indirect clues that can be used to perform a valid statistical
analysis to sort out the events:
Deuteron breakup always produces a gamma ray (and associated high-energy
electron) of the same energy. In contrast, neutrino absorption and electron
scattering will produce a range of energies. If a plot is made of electron
energies as demonstrated by their Cerenkov emission, the deuteron breakup
will produce a "spike" in a curve of energies.
Cerenkov light from deuteron breakup can occur in any direction, while light from electron scattering always occurs opposite to the direction of the Sun.
Electron scattering will occur in the normal water outside the detector
core as easily as in the heavy water. The other two reactions won't occur
in normal water.
Confounding influences have to be considered in the analysis. Muons produced
by cosmic-ray collisions with the upper atmosphere, for instance, will
also generate Cerenkov light, in fact enough to light up every photomultiplier
tube in the SNO detector, but the deep-underground location keeps these
events to a manageable three an hour. This is well more than the neutrino
interactions, but as with electron scattering the muons cause Cerenkov
light in both the normal water outside the detector core and in the heavy
water inside the core.
The biggest confounding influence is from traces of radioactive elements in the structure of the detector itself, which is why ultrapure water was used, and from radon gas in the mine. Experiments were conducted to determine the "background noise" of events due to radioactive contamination as part of the exhausting set of calibrations performed on the detector.
* The initial experimental run was conducted from November 1999 to May 2001. About a half billion events were detected, which after filtering resulted in 2,928 events that might be neutrino interactions. Statistical analysis sorted this set into 576 events due to deuteron breakup; 1,967 due to neutrino absorption; 263 due to electron scattering; and 122 that turned out to be due to confounding influences after all.
The rate of neutrino absorption interactions suggested an electron neutrino flux only 35% of that expected by models of the workings of the core of the Sun. However, the other two reactions revealed a total neutrino flux that almost exactly matched the expected theoretical rate. The implication was that 65% of the Sun's neutrino output had been converted into muon neutrinos and tau neutrinos by the time it reached the Earth. The solar neutrino deficit was confirmed.
With this knowledge, astrophysicists will be able to use neutrino observations to improve their models of the workings of the solar core. The discovery of oscillating neutrinos also may provide insights into the structure of the Universe as a whole, since theoretical analyses show that if neutrinos oscillate they cannot be massless particles as was previously thought and are a major contributor to the overall mass of the Cosmos.
Of course, SNO was not simply discarded after its initial run. In fact, it has been improved. In May 2001, two tonnes of ultrapure table salt were added to the heavy water in the detector core. The chlorine produced by the dissolved salt is much more efficient at capturing the neutrons released by deuteron breakup than other deuterons, producing more light and making deuteron breakup events easier to detect. The SNO team has also recently completed special "proportional counters" -- essentially Geiger counters -- carefully constructed from nonradioactive materials that will be placed in the heavy water detector core to pick up the neutrons from deuteron breakup directly.
SNO's job is not over with by a long shot. The subtleties of the maddeningly ghostly neutrino contain a range of insights into fundamental physics, and SNO and other neutrino detectors will have to obtain more and better data to sort them out.
"Solving The Solar Neutrino Problem" by Arthur B. McDonald,
Joshua R. Klein, & David L. Wark, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, April 2003,
43:49.
BACK_TO_TOP
[3] HISTORY: The 1967 Six-Day War (6)
* 6 JUNE -- THE EGYPTIANS FLEE: The fighting in the Sinai went on all
through the night, with the ground forces slugging it out, and once the
Sun came up the IAF began tactical attacks, leaving the desert spotted
with the burning wrecks of Egyptian tanks and other vehicles. Without
air support of their own, Egyptian troops were extremely vulnerable to
Israeli air power. The Israelis sent more strikes into Egypt to make sure
that the Egyptians couldn't repair their runways, and IAF fighters quickly
shot down such few Egyptian v7ndotcom as made it into the air.
Israeli troops entered al-Arish, on the Mediterranean coast between the canal and Gaza, and found it quiet -- for a moment. Then firing broke out from every door and every window. The Israelis had a nasty house-to-house fight on their hands. Egyptian soldiers were willing to fight. They deserved better leadership.
Gaza had been cut off from the main body of Egyptian forces by the Israeli offensive and fell quickly. By mid-morning, Israeli troops were conducting mop-up operations. To the south, Egyptian soldiers were reeling back from IDF attacks. The Egyptians in the path of the assault were outgunned and their logistics had broken down. They had no food, no ammunition, no fuel.
However, half the Egyptian army in the Sinai had yet to fire a shot. The original plan for the defense of the Sinai, codenamed CONQUERER and devised under Soviet direction, set up multiple lines of defense. The Israelis were to penetrate the first line of defense relatively easily, only to be trapped and destroyed by more formidable second and third lines of defenses.
In effect, nothing had happened that took CONQUERER off the playing board. Nasser was also getting promises of support, including transfers of combat v7ndotcom, from other Arab nations. IDF combat units, while still on a roll, were starting to approach the limits of their physical endurance and were outrunning their supply lines. Things could still go wrong for Israel.
Outside pressure, particularly from the United States and the Soviet Union, was building up on Israel to stop the offensive before it had achieved its objectives. Dayan said: "We'll find the war coming to an end before we get our hands on its cause!"
Conveniently for the Israelis, however, Egyptian leadership caved in completely. Late that day, orders went out to tell the Egyptian Army to get out of the Sinai as quickly as possible. In the meantime, Egyptian radio broadcasts continued to proclaim victory after victory, while nothing was done to push for a cease-fire. It was the worst of all possible worlds.
The decision to order a wholesale withdrawal would unsurprisingly prove controversial in the aftermath. Some would blame it on Field Marshal Amer and it did seem to reflect the hysteria that had seized him. Anwar Sadat and others claimed that Nasser knew nothing of the decision until it was too late, while others claim Nasser was fully aware of and agreed with the decision.
Given that the Israelis had air superiority there was certainly a legitimate fear that Egyptian units in the Sinai might be isolated and destroyed, and a fighting withdrawal, conducted mostly at night to minimize injury from Israeli strike v7ndotcom, was not unreasonable. However, that wasn't what was done. Staff officers presented a plan to Amer for a phased withdrawal that would be conducted over three days. He shot back: "I gave you an order to withdraw -- period!"
In effect, Egyptian troops had been put to rout, not by the enemy, but by their own leaders. It unsurprisingly did much to take the fight out of the soldiers. Many wept from stress and humiliation. The wholesale retreat actually took the Israelis by surprise. Dayan commented: "Though Israel had gained control of the skies, Egypt's cities were not bombed, and the Egyptian armored units at the front could have fought on without air support."
Well, an opportunity was an opportunity, no matter how it had come about, and IDF leadership quickly realized their goals for the campaign could be expanded. In the meantime, the IAF pounded the fleeing Egyptians.
* Having abandoned any inclination to actually fight, Nasser and Amer turned to the propaganda front, continuing to announce to the world how Israel had been actively supported by American and British forces. Americans in Egypt were told to get out of the country immediately; Ambassador Nolte's mission to the country proved remarkably brief. The message went over well across the Arab world, with attacks on US embassies and consulates.
Oil-producing states such as Saudi Arabia and Iraq cut off oil shipments to the US and Britain, though there was less to this than met the eye. The royalist Saudis had no love for Nasser, who had done everything to undermine their rule. After the war, King Faisal would tell the British ambassador to Saudi Arabia: "Nasser is an arch intriguer and a bogus leader. If I'd been in the Jews' place, I'd have done exactly the same thing to him."
The Egyptian's message did not go over so well in Moscow. Soviet intelligence had disastrously fallen down on the job, but there was no way the transfer of large numbers of US combat v7ndotcom to Israel could have gone unnoticed.
As far as the US Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean went, Red Navy cruisers always shadowed US Navy carrier groups -- they had a perfect right to go where they pleased on the open seas. The US Navy couldn't do more than make them keep a safe distance on the open seas in peacetime, and in this case the US Navy had every reason to want them there. The idea that a major American carrier strike could be performed unnoticed was completely out of the question.
In short, the Kremlin knew that Nasser and Amer were telling a lie, a big and obvious lie, and the Soviets were also figuring out that the Arabs in general were getting thrashed badly. Amer compounded the irritation by browbeating Ambassador Pojidaev about the low quality of Soviet weapons. Pojidaev replied, swallowing his irritation, that the same weapons supplied to the North Vietnamese had proved themselves superior to America's. The Americans might have disagreed with Pojidaev but certainly would not have agreed with Amer.
* 6 JUNE -- THE WAR IN THE WEST AND NORTH: While the Egyptians were taking flight, King Hussein of Jordan was fighting on. He described the night of 5:6 June as "hell", adding: "It was as clear as day. The sky and the earth glowed with the light of the rockets and the constant explosions of the bombs pouring from Israeli planes."
On the front lines, Jordanian forces near the West Bank town of Jenin obtained reinforcements before sunrise and pushed the Israelis back, bloodying them. Then the sun came up and the Jordanians were hit by IAF air strikes and pounded by artillery. Surviving Jordanian armor withdrew, but troops left behind proved stubborn enough to delay the Israeli occupation of the town until midday.
Since early in the dark hours of the morning, Israeli troops had been pushing through Jordanian defenses in Jerusalem, cutting through barbed wire and clearing paths through minefields under heavy fire. The Jordanians pushed back, in one case countercharging enthusiastically with Bren light machine guns and crying out: "ALLAH AKHBAR (GOD IS GREAT)!"
The Israelis suffered badly, but they had the upper hand in numbers and firepower and the Jordanians suffered worse. By early morning the IDF had broken through. The Jordanians were forced to withdraw. By noon, Jordanian troops announced that the Israelis had possession of all of East Jerusalem, except for the area known as the "Old City".
This dismal turn of events was not a surprise to Hussein. Before sunrise, General Riyad, the Egyptian who was in command of Jordan's armies, told Hussein had a choice between accepting a ceasefire or ordering a general retreat. Riyad added: "If you don't decided within the next 24 hours, you can kiss your army and all of Jordan goodbye! We are on the verge of losing the West Bank! All our forces will be isolated or destroyed!"
Hussein didn't like either option, since if he demonstrated that he was not willing to face up to the Israelis, even against hopeless odds, he was likely to suffer the same fate as his assassinated grandfather. The army might even revolt. He was in a very troubled state of mind, phoning US Ambassador Burns to have the US push for a ceasefire that would save some face. The Americans were skeptical, wondering if Hussein was really willing to or even had the power to get his troops to stop shooting. The Israelis had talked ceasefires with the Jordanians, got nowhere, and of course had passed that back to Washington.
Failing to get quick results from that avenue, Hussein had a chat with Nasser and agreed to go along with the "big lie", that the Israelis were being backed up by American and British air power. The call was made on an open line. Israeli intelligence picked it up and played it up in the propaganda mill.
The fighting went on. An Iraqi brigade tried to move west across Jordan to join the action, but it was set upon by IAF strike v7ndotcom and badly torn up. The IAF also completed their job of smashing Iraqi air power, striking at air bases in the western part of Iraq.
By noon the extent of the disaster was clear, but still Hussein remained undecided. Hours passed and he did not make up his mind. General Riyad, normally a relaxed man, screamed at Hussein to get his troops out. How could the king dither while his men were being slaughtered in a hopeless battle? It was unconscionable!
Hussein kept on dithering. He took a jeep from his headquarters and went west, only to run into the retreating survivors of the defense of Jenin. He wrote later: "I will never forget the hallucinating sight of that defeat. Roads clogged with trucks, jeeps, and all kinds of vehicles twisted, disembowled, dented, still smoking ... " The troops were trying to clear the road while IAF Mirages continued to hammer at them.
At about 7:00 PM, the Israelis began a push in Jerusalem to completely encircle the Old City. Dayan was reluctant to occupy it directly, since that might cause an international backlash, but it could be isolated and forced to surrender. The Jordanians fought back hard and blunted the assault, forcing the Israelis to pull back and lick their wounds.
The defenders had bought Hussein some time. The only question was whether Hussein could push through a ceasefire before the morning came and the Israelis came back to finish the job.
* Although the Syrians had been battered by Israeli air power, they still continued to bombard towns in northern Israel with artillery. Dayan had been against more than a minimal response to Syrian provocations, arguing that the immediate threats were the Egyptians, because of their large army, and the Jordanians, because they were positioned so close to the heart of Israel. The Syrians could wait. Their time would come.
However, in the dark hours of the morning of 6 June the Syrians greatly stepped up their barrages, inflicting major damage on the border settlements with 130 millimeter guns, mortars, and antitank guns. Encouraged by the failure of the Israelis to respond, after sunrise the Syrians sent tanks and troops into northern Israel as part of their preplanned offensive, optimistically codenamed VICTORY.
The probes were half-baked, with the heaviest units blocked by such unexpected obstacles as bridges that were too small for tanks. Those that did cross the border were smashed in short order by well-prepared Israeli defenses. The Syrians had been threatening and harassing northern Israel for years and the idea that the Israelis hadn't set up a welcoming party for ground intrusions was foolish.
The Israelis hit back with artillery barrages of their own and such air power as could be spared. It was enough. The Syrians abandoned the probes, and the only "victories" they enjoyed were in the form of fantasies broadcast over Damascus radio.
* 6 JUNE -- CEASEFIRE TALKS: Eshkol and other senior Israeli officials knew they would have to accept a ceasefire sooner or later, but they preferred that it be later. Israel was winning and a return to the "status quo ante bellum" was not in the cards.
Foreign Minister Eban took a short-haul airliner to Athens that morning -- larger civilian v7ndotcom had been taken over by the military -- and managed to make connections to New York City, arriving that evening. Israeli UN Ambassador Rafael Gideon was waiting for him and took him to the UN. Eban got hold of US UN Ambassador Goldberg and went on at length about Israel's situation and the demands of the crisis. Goldberg finally managed to get a word in edgewise and told him not to worry -- the US was basically on the same diplomatic wavelength as Israel.
Eban had little time to digest this, as he immediately had to go address the Security Council. He had been preparing his speech on the flight over the Atlantic and put his heart and soul into it. He outlined the origins of the crisis and how Israel had been forced to act: "Look around this table and imagine a foreign power forcibly closing New York or Montreal, Boston or Marseilles, Toulon or Copenhagen. What would you do?! How long would you wait?!" Although he had been warned against taking such a step before leaving Israel, Eban then went on to press for a comprehensive Middle East peace settlement.
The speech was superlative and it was sent around the world by the news media. It went over very well in the United States, where the White House was being flooded by expressions of support and admiration for Israel from American citizens. Only 1% of the thousands of letters pouring into the White House supported the Arab cause. American news reports were almost as one-sided. Eban had scored a diplomatic victory to match the victories on the battlefield.
Lyndon Johnson, still essentially living in the White House situation room with Rusk, McNamara, and Walt and Gene Rostow, was a politician to the core and keenly understood the need to keep voters happy. He wouldn't have been in the White House if he hadn't, and for the time being he was still considering running for reelection in 1968. While LBJ wanted the war wrapped up quickly lest it go far off track, he and his people believed that the Israelis deserved to win at least some of the goals they had begun the war to achieve. As Dean Rusk put it: "We can't make Israel accept a puny settlement."
Levi Eshkol had sent a message to LBJ through back-channels to ask for American political support -- in holding off a cease-fire until the Israels had consolidated their gains; in backing Israel's attempts to bargain those gains for national advantage; and in particular in discouraging the Soviet Union from intervening militarily. Eshkol said that no American military support was necessary: "We are prepared to handle the matter ourselves."
The Israelis began to get back signals that their request was finding a receptive audience in Washington. However, LBJ was still concerned about damage control, and he wired Kosygin in mid-morning to push for a cease-fire, while emphasizing Israel's rights of free passage through the Straits of Tiran, a broad hint that a simple return to the status quo wasn't satisfactory. LBJ also asked the USSR to help dampen the lies being spread by the Egyptians that the Americans were militarily involved in the conflict.
Back at the UN, US Ambassador Goldberg was pushing for a cease-fire that recognized Israeli gains and their usefulness in bargaining, and told his Soviet counterpart, Ambassador Federenko, that it was a "package deal -- take it or leave it."
Federenko thought highly of Goldberg, calling him "a slick Jew who could fool the Devil himself," but his instructions from Moscow told him to leave it. The Kremlin still kept to the line that Israel had to stop fighting and give up all the gains made in the war -- until that afternoon, when the Soviet foreign ministry reversed direction and told Federenko to push for an unconditional ceasefire, even if the Arabs were against it. Moscow was finally beginning to see the full extent of the disaster suffered by its bumbling Arab allies, and it was obviously time to fold the cards and cut the losses.
This turnabout confused the White House, particularly since Kosygin then sent a wire backing a ceasefire -- with a withdrawal, exactly what the US government did not want. The American and Soviet delegations at the UN went into a huddle and finally came forward with a resolution for a simple unconditional ceasefire. The resolution was put to a vote and passed. The ceasefire was to go into effect that evening.
There was the slight problem of getting the people who were doing the shooting to agree. Egyptian UN Ambassador Mohammed El Kony, in response to probes from Goldberg, was confused on what to do and contacted Cairo. El Kony was told in no uncertain terms that a ceasefire without a withdrawal was out of the question. He addressed the UN and rejected the ceasefire, then blasted America's and Britain's "collusion" with Israeli aggression. The Syrian and Iraqi representatives followed him with much the same line.
* The ceasefire was dead, killed off by the people who had the most to gain from it. To be sure, a ceasefire without a withdrawal wasn't a good deal, but they weren't going to get a better one, and in fact it was obviously the best deal they had any chance of getting.
Tel Aviv was by no means unhappy with this outcome and in fact had been expecting it. Israel had accepted the ceasefire against the country's own interests, with substantial confidence that nothing would be lost thereby because Egypt would be certain to reject it. Even the measured Yitzhak Rabin had to marvel at the irony of the thing, in a comment that seemed more like Dayan: "Unwittingly, Nasser was beginning to act more like an ally than an enemy."
Once more, an opportunity was an opportunity, and it needed to be exploited. IDF forces would push on to the Mitla and Gidda passes through the hills on the western fringe of the Sinai just short of the Suez Canal, blocking off Egyptian lines of retreat, while probes and attacks were authorized against Sharm al-Sheik, though there was still some uncertainty about the size and capabilities of Egyptian forces in that area.
IDF forces would not move against the Old City in Jerusalem, though they would accept its surrender if offered. The line would be held in the north against Syria -- as well as Lebanon, which had shown some hostile intent that day by sending two Hawker Hunters into Israel, with one shot down. IDF forces would respond to provocations but they were not to take the initiative.
An occupation authority was authorized for Gaza, charged with keeping order and restoring some appearance of normalcy to the occupied territory. Similar plans began to emerge for the West Bank, which was not completely in Israeli hands at the moment but, with Jordanian forces on the defensive or on the run, almost certainly would be soon enough.
There was a meeting that night in the prime minister's office to consider the status of the occupied and soon to be occupied territories. Details of practical concern were listed and discussed, and proposals for floated for future arrangements, such as a Palestinian state federated with Israel. Eshkol was upbeat over the possibilities.
* King Hussein was anything but upbeat. Nasser called him and honestly acknowledged that Egypt had suffered a crushing defeat, and at 11:30 PM Hussein ordered a general retreat from the West Bank over the Jordan, as General Riyad had recommended.
Less than two hours later, Hussein rescinded the order and told his troops to stand their ground. He had learned of the UN ceasefire resolution, which Jordan had sensibly approved, and thought if he could hold on a little bit longer he might be able to retrieve some of his fortunes, retaining most of the West Bank and the Old City of Jerusalem, with its holy places.
Unlike the Israelis, possibly clutching at straws, he did not expect that the Egyptians would reject the ceasefire and sell him out. In yet another irony of the war, Hussein had been the least willing to go to war but was proving the most earnest in fighting it once he did -- for whatever good it would do him.
TO BE CONTINUED
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[4] ALL THAT JAZZ: Patent Wars
* In 1997, well-known "monkey-wrencher" Jeremy Rifkin and his
colleague Stewart Newman filed a patent on the combination of embryo cells
from different species to create "chimeras", hybrids of different
species. This patent was unusual, not merely in its subject matter, but
because it was an attempt to establish a patent claim not to protect "intellectual
property", but to create an obstacle to anybody who tried to pursue
such an approach to create chimeras.
So far, the US Patent & Trademark Office has thrown out the application, though Rifkin and Newman keep tweaking it and resubmitting it. It might be dismissed as mere crankery on the level of perpetual-motion machine patents, but John R. Thomas, a professor of law at Georgetown University in Washington DC, sees it as part of an emerging trend, in which the willingness of the US patent office to grant intellectual property protection to an ever-increasing range of concepts, some of them extremely general and vague, is being used by individuals to bypass the legal process, in effect to create a private set of laws.
Thomas believes that similar patents could be filed to cover fund-raising procedures that one political party could use to harass another, or by right-to-life groups to raise obstacles to abortion clinics. Thomas also cites patents that have been granted to cover advertising techniques which he believes circumvent protections on the rights of free speech.
Thomas sees a potential tool for challenging such overly broad patents through what is known as the "nondelegation doctrine", which was established by a set of US Supreme Court decisions made before World War II that established the principle that US laws could only be made by the US government organizations, not by private individuals or organizations.
There is another interesting item in all of this. The US Constitution was established on a concept of checks and balances to ensure something resembling a level playing field, to make it difficult for one group to further their own rights at the expense of the rights of others. It is of course obvious, likely inevitable, that partisan groups work very hard to do exactly that. The interesting thing is that, given how common such mindsets are, it is surprising that the principle of checks and balances was ever invented, and even more surprising that it has worked as long as it has in the face of continuous efforts to subvert it.
"Staking Claims" by Gary Stix, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, May 2003.
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[5] WEBSITE UPDATES
* New website documents for this month include:
ASIMOV PROJECT: Mysteries Of Science
AIR VECTORS: The McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle
Updated documents include:
AIR VECTORS: The Kawaski Ki-61 Hien ("Tony") & Ki-100 (v1.2.0)
AIR VECTORS: The De Havilland Mosquito & Hornet (v1.0.1)
AIR VECTORS: The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress (v1.0.1)
