The issue was they didn't know where the Scud launchers were.

The mission of the two squadrons was to get rid of all the Scud missile launchers.

And their mission was to find and to destroy remember the Scud missile launchers, those surface to air missiles that the Iraqis were launching at the Israelis?

The determination is easy if the missile clearly exceeds the allowable range by a large margin, as in the case of Scud B and Al Hussein missiles (which have maximum ranges of about 300 and 600 kilometres, respectively).

During the first Gulf War in 1991, when Iraq fired 39 Scud missiles at Israeli civilian targets and US forces failed to stop the Iraqi attacks, Israel was set to strike Iraqi targets, which would have split the US Arab anti Iraq coalition. The US warned Israel not to get involved, and Israel was forced to comply.

As dangerous as Syria s chemical weapons stockpile is, it pales in comparison with another risk that became evident in late February, when Syrian rebels overran a Scud missile base in Al Kibar, in the country s remote northeastern desert. Beneath the installation lay the buried remnants of the North Korean engineered nuclear reactor that Israel s air force had destroyed on September 6, 2007.