WASHINGTON – The Pentagon has set up a state of alert for a battery of Patriot anti-missile missiles, which became famous in public opinion around the world during the Gulf War. The US Defense decision, according to the newspaper “The Washington Post”, would once again be Iraq, which is feared of a possible military attack against Israel in the middle of the campaign for US presidential elections. In fact, the Patriot should be deployed in the Jewish State, as it was nine years ago, as well as at the end of ’98, when the crisis of the UNCOM inspectors expelled from Baghdad broke out.

In Washington, the preventive move, according to the American newspaper, would have been carried out yesterday and would have involved the anti-missile missiles supplied to the LXIX Aviation Artillery Brigade, stationed in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. The hypothesis is that Iraqis can launch ground-to-ground missiles against Israel as early as this weekend, when the White House campaign begins to enter the crucial phase. The newspaper cites unspecified US military sources, which would not have specified whether it was decided to act on the basis of concrete and circumstantial evidence or simply as a precautionary measure.

In ’91, Saddam Hussein commissioned 39 Scud missiles to the Israelis, especially in order to engage them in the conflict and thus determine a rift in the adverse front, making the Arab and Islamic component emerge; it failed, but not even the Patriot proved to be worthy of fame: most of the bombs reached the target, causing extensive devastation all around Tel Aviv.