>How can you bomb something back to the stone age, when it is already there, especially the northern areas.

Actually that's the typically American fear that the end of civilization is only three meals away, that any malfunction in the big systems will bring widespread panic and return to savagery within hours. That's Hollywood nurturing the nation that way, and in a way that's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Everyone panics because everyone thinks everyone will panic.

Except it doesn't really happen. From numerous witness accounts I know that in case of earthquakes, floods and other disasters most of the people do stay calm, react in a quite civilized and efficient manner and even manage to calm those who did panic.

And crashing of major systems doesn't necessarily bring everything down. During the bombing 1999, there were attempts to bring the country to its knees by shutting down the power grid. Bombs with carbon filaments were dropped over the high voltage cables (dang, there's no word for "dalekovod" - maybe we should introduce "farduct" into English?) - but nothing much happened. Yes we were without power all night and some time into the morning, so what? Water supply had its own generators, so did the hospitals, telephony and a few other important services. And the engineers found a good solvent for the carbon fiber and got rid of it within 12 hours (which includes the time to restore the system). Next attack, we were without power for just about three hours. After four attempts, they just gave up, seeing that no real damage is done. No rolling blackouts, no widespread panic, no riots in the streets, nothing.

So this empty threat with the stone age just shows the level of US military planners (and others in charge of war scenarios) not really knowing how do the target countries work. They are Americans, they think in American terms and imagery. Yes, they can do some real damage, yes, they can help the current ruler add a few dozen percents to his job rating, but stone age - remains an empty threat.