SPOOKY and SPECTRE are returning to Iraq

In  yet another  reminder of the ominous reality of the growing  brutality of  the War in Iraq ,  and   Bush administration's  `Peace and Freedom on the March' approach to "solving" it, the Associated Press is now reporting that the US military is secretly bringing  back the extremely deadly, heavily armed slow flying "Spooky" and "Spectre" C130U gunships to Iraq.  The last time the US press had reported that Spooky gunships were being used in Iraq was in the  November 2004  Siege of Fallujah, during which the majority of that city was destroyed.  

Lethal `flying gunships' returning to Iraq. AP: Armed airplanes used in Vietnam War secretly moved to Iraqi base

AN AIR BASE IN IRAQ - The U.S. Air Force has begun moving heavily armed AC-130 airplanes -- the lethal "flying gunships" of the Vietnam War -- to a base in Iraq as commanders search for new tools to counter the Iraqi resistance, The Associated Press has learned.

An AP reporter saw the first of the turboprop-driven aircraft after it landed at the airfield this week. Four are expected.

The Iraq-based special forces command controlling the AC-130s, the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force, said it would have no comment on the deployment. But the plan's general outline was confirmed by other Air Force officers, speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of the subject.

Military officials warned that disclosing the location of the aircraft's new base would violate security provisions of rules governing media access to U.S. installations.

The four-engine gunships, whose home base is Hurlburt Field in Florida, have operated over Iraq before, flying from airfields elsewhere in the region. In November 2004, air-to-ground fire from AC-130s supported the U.S. attack that took the western city of Fallujah from insurgents.

The slow, propeller-driven gunships , originally designed on DC 3 and C-47 platforms, were used during the Vietnam era  primarily for battlefield use to place saturated fire on massed troops. The  so-called  Puffs  (the Magic Dragon) and Spookies  were deployed to devastating effect  against North Vietnamese troop and supply convoys along the heavily forested  Ho Chi Minh Trail. During the later half of the Vietnam war.  

Their tactical  advantages over helicopter gunships  are that Spookies/Spectres have longer range, heavier armor protection , they can linger much longer over targets, and deliver a much more devastating array and heavier load of weapons against personnel and unarmored vehiclesprimary.  

There are of course no obscure heavily forested Ho Chi Minh trails in Iraq, and no classic organized battlefield-style troop formations among the Iraqi guerillas/insurgents, as far as we have been told by reliable sources.  But we do know these deadly gunships (there are presently  13 AC-130U  Spookies in the US military inventory) have been used in Iraq previously,  and very controversially,  against targets * inside* of cities and villages  during `passivation' sieges of  Iraqi cities like Fallujah [and possibly  Tal Afar,  Qaim and other Anbar province cities ].  During the earlier passivation operations,   the Spookies were based outside of country, according to the AP story.  

The obvious questions:

• What do the US Special Forces plan to use these gunships for in the future in Iraq?
  
• Why do they now want them close at hand at bases inside Iraq.
  
• Is this part of the Pentagon's stepped up US Air War plan for the New Iraq that Seymour Hersh warned about last fall?