Now it's confirmed by a general:

THE American general who commanded allied air forces during the Iraq war appears to have admitted in a briefing to American and British officers that coalition aircraft waged a secret air war against Iraq from the middle of 2002, nine months before the invasion began.

Addressing a briefing on lessons learnt from the Iraq war Lieutenant-General Michael Moseley said that in 2002 and early 2003 allied aircraft flew 21,736 sorties, dropping more than 600 bombs on 391 “carefully selected targets� before the war officially started.

The nine months of allied raids “laid the foundations� for the allied victory, Moseley said. They ensured that allied forces did not have to start the war with a protracted bombardment of Iraqi positions.

If those raids exceeded the need to maintain security in the no-fly zones of southern and northern Iraq, they would leave President George W Bush and Tony Blair vulnerable to allegations that they had acted illegally.

Old news? Since when does the President have unilateral power to launch a war even before he makes sure that the "facts are fixed around the policy"?

Why do the mainstream newspapers and television networks continue to ignore this? People are dying. We're stuck in a war that may last over a dozen years, according to Rumsfeld. When does this reach the threshold of "all the news that's fit to print"?

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