TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/092490/0924013.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.8 KB | 126 lines

                                                                                THE GULF, Page 36

COVER STORIES

Taking the First Shot


If the embargo fails, could the U.S. launch a swift strike
against Saddam that would demolish his ability to fight back?


    It could come sooner, later or not at all. Predicting how
the script will play out is almost impossible: war is an
activity that almost always seems to be governed by Murphy's
Law (if anything can go wrong, it will). Nonetheless, this is
how a war with Iraq might start -- and how some Pentagon
planners think the U.S. might win quickly and with minimum
casualties:

    Mid-November comes, and Iraqi troops still occupy Kuwait.
The worldwide embargo shows no signs of squeezing Iraq hard
enough to force a withdrawal; on the contrary, maintaining the
embargo against defections gets more difficult every day. The
U.S. has at long last finished its military buildup. Every
plane, ship, tank and soldier it needs to fight Iraq is in
place; so are substantial Arab League forces. President Bush
hesitates to order an assault that would certainly bring death
to some hostages (as well as to many troops) and cause some
U.S. allies to desert the anti-Iraq coalition. But Saddam
Hussein offers a provocation -- perhaps killing hostages,
perhaps a terrorist outrage -- that allows the U.S. to justify
an attack.

    A plan being called in Pentagon circles "the Half War" goes
into effect. Some 700 U.S. aircraft flying from Saudi Arabia
and carriers in the Persian Gulf turn a 75-mile-wide area of
Iraq north of the Kuwait border into what some Air Force
officers call a "parking lot" -- an area that has been
completely leveled. F-117A fighter-bombers take out Iraqi
antiaircraft missiles. Tomahawk cruise missiles from the
battleship Wisconsin hit communications centers, truck
junctions, munitions depots. B-52 bombers blast targets with
highly accurate missiles. Most important, a variety of weapons
throw a suffocating "electronic blanket" over the area, jamming
and disrupting Iraqi military communications (but not U.S.
communications, which operate on different frequencies).

    Somewhat surprisingly, there is no bombing of Iraqi
chemical-weapons or nuclear facilities, electric power lines
or dams in the north. Nor is there any ground fighting, at
least initially. The Iraqi troops in Kuwait are totally cut off
from the main army in Iraq proper. No supplies or
reinforcements can reach them through the "death zone"; no
radio messages or other communications can penetrate the
electronic blanket. The Iraqis quickly withdraw -- or if they
do not, U.S. airborne and amphibious assaults coupled with a
ground attack flanking Kuwait break them up quickly (a lot of
Iraqi tanks are destroyed by air raids too). In the most
optimistic scenario, Saddam Hussein's generals depose him and
sue for peace.

    Maybe. But even in the Pentagon there are commanders who
consider this all an Air Force pipe dream. Other experts point
out that the script is modeled on the stunning Israeli success
in the Six-Day War of 1967. But 23 years later, technology is
vastly different, and the Iraqis are much better armed, trained
and led than the Egyptians were then. "You don't win a war only
with air strikes," says Zeev Eytan at the Jaffee Center for
Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv. Administration estimates of
American casualties in a quick-hit war run to 5,000 to 10,000
dead, about half the Pentagon estimate for a more or less
conventional war but still frighteningly high.

    What could go wrong? For one thing, Iraqi air defenses,
consisting largely of the latest Soviet missiles and
sophisticated, radar-guided antiaircraft guns, are formidable
-- the more so because Saddam Hussein's troops captured four
batteries of American-made Hawk antiaircraft missiles in Kuwait
(ironically, U.S. antimissile weapons are ineffective  against
them). The U.S. air attacks would probably still be effective,
but not costless.

    Iraq might launch air attacks of its own. U.S. commanders
doubt that they can destroy the Iraqi air force on the ground;
Iraqi airfields are too well protected. In the air, the planes
are no match for the U.S. Air Force but could still do damage.
Iraq also could launch missile attacks on Saudi Arabian cities
and oil fields, killing civilians and destroying wells that the
U.S. forces are in the Middle East to protect.

    Most important, suppose the Iraqi army in Kuwait chose to
fight rather than run -- and worse, that forces from the north
crossed the "parking lot" after all and came to their relief.
If the U.S. were forced to push out well-dug-in troops by
ground assault, American soldiers eventually might be engaged
in house-to-house fighting in Kuwait City -- a type of battle
that has long proved especially drawn-out and bloody.

    No one doubts that the U.S. would win. Iraq's military
machine is widely considered overrated. Its 1 million troops
consist in large part of flabby reserves, and they are not so
much battle tested from the eight-year war against Iran as
battle weary. Many of its vaunted 5,500 tanks are obsolete;
only about 700 are top-ranked T-72s. Even Saddam Hussein's
dreaded chemical-warfare potential might be less terrible than
thought: chemical weapons are difficult to handle in the
searing heat and shifting winds of the desert.

    But would an American victory really come swiftly and at low
cost? That could happen, but it would be most unwise to count
on it. As a senior British defense staff officer puts it,
"There has never been a battle that went totally according to
plan." It is a maxim that George Bush -- and the Pentagon hawks
-- should bear in mind.


By George J. Church. Reported by Jon D. Hull/Jerusalem and Bruce
van Voorst/Washington.