WASHINGTON – The Pentagon has ordered the setting up of a Patriot anti-missile missile battery, which has become famous in public opinion worldwide during the Gulf War. The decision of the US Defense, according to the newspaper “The Washington Post”, was once again proving to be Iraq, which is feared as a possible military attack against Israel in the midst of the US presidential campaign. And in fact the Patriots should be deployed in the Jewish state, like nine years ago and also at the end of 1998, when the crisis of UNScom inspectors expelled from Baghdad exploded. In Washington the preventive move, the American newspaper specifies, would have been completed yesterday and would have covered the missile anti-missile supplied to the LXIX Air Force Artillery Brigade, based in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. The hypothesis is that the Iraqis can launch ground-to-ground missiles against Israel as early as this weekend, when the campaign for the White House will begin to enter the crucial phase. The newspaper mentions unspecified US military sources, which furthermore would not have specified if it was decided to act on the basis of concrete and detailed indications or as a simple precautionary measure. In 1991 Saddam Hussein employed as many as 39 Scud missiles against the Israelis, above all in order to involve them in the conflict and thus determine a split in the opposing front, making the Arab and Islamic component emerge; he did not succeed, but not even the Patriots proved to be up to their fame: most of the bombs reached the target, causing widespread devastation all around Tel Aviv.