Aerial Bombardment of Iran would Eclipse 'Shock and Awe' of 2003

"Military action has been in planning since before the wars with
Afghanistan and Iraq. This could come in any one of three forms or
some combination of them: A US attack by air power alone, a ground
invasion as in the 1991 and 2003 attacks on Iraq, or the encouragement
of an Israeli attack.

The National Security Doctrine form of "Preventive Action" now
under the most intense study is aerial bombardment. This is attractive
because America does not have sufficient combat troops for a land
invasion. Moreover, allegedly the U.S. Air Force generals have said
that even alone air power could "take out" (destroy) all suspected
Iranian nuclear installations and so devastate Iran that the regime
would collapse.

What would aerial bombardment entail? What it involved in Iraq gives
at least a starting point: in some 37,000 sorties the US Air Force
dropped 13,000 "cluster munitions" that exploded into 2 million
bombs, wiping out whole areas, and fired 23,000 missiles. Naval ships
launched 750 Cruise missiles with another 1.5 million pounds of
explosives. More powerful weapons are now available. Air Force General
Thomas McInerney gave the Neoconservative Weekly Standard in April an
inventory of "improved" weapons. They include vastly larger
"bunker buster" bombs and greater targeting ability. McInerney
pointed out that a B-2 bomber can drop 80 500 pound bombs independently
targeted on 80 different aim points. In effect, this aerial
bombardment would eclipse the "shock and awe" of 2003 and be far
more destructive than the 1991 campaign or the devastating air war on
Vietnam."


http://www.hnn.us/articles/31051.html