New York, Mar 31: US has what it considers credible evidence that some Scud missiles have eluded detection in western Iraq, within striking distance of Israel. "We're not out of the woods yet," a senior US intelligence official told the Time magazine. Saddam Hussein may have "a Scud or two that he's saving for the right moment," the official said, noting that coalition forces are hunting the western desert for missile launchers.



The standoff in Basra, it says, underscored a central dilemma facing the war planners as they plot their final assault--the longer the allies remain handcuffed by their desire to limit collateral damage, the longer the conflict will be-and, perhaps, the deadlier for coalition troops. "The war ultimately will boil down to how many of our soldiers are willing to sacrifice to keep dead Iraqi civilians off al-Jazeera," an officer on the Joint Chiefs of Staff was quoted as saying.



US military officials also believe the Iraqi command circulated copies of the movie Black Hawk Down before the war, as a manual for defeating the Americans, the magazine said.
The film tells the story of 18 US army rangers who were killed by Somali mobs in an attempt to rescue comrades from two helicopters downed in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993. Bureau Report