For the first time, a top U.S. official has admitted that the U.S. deliberately stepped up aid raids over Iraq last year to prepare for this year’s invasion. Publicly the U.S. had claimed its pilots were simply enforcing the No-Fly Zones but officials now admit the strikes targeted Iraq’s fiber-optic military communications system as well as the military’s key command centers.

The secret plan codenamed Operation Southern Focus was launched last summer–before President Bush even took his case against Iraq to the United Nations.

Lt. Gen. Michael Moseley told The New York Times that U.S. forces dropped some 600 precision guided bombs on about 400 targets in the months leading up to the actual invasion of Iraq.

But the report further strengthens the assertion the U.S. war on Iraq did not begin in March but quietly during the summer of 2002.