Gannett News Service
WASHINGTON — If only because of the geography, there is a temptation to think of a possible confrontation with Saddam Hussein in terms of the Persian Gulf War: tanks routing Iraq's vaunted Republican Guard while U.S. fighters scream overhead — untouched — to drop smart bombs down chimneys.
But military analysts and lawmakers are doing handsprings now to discourage that kind of thinking.
A war to oust Saddam probably would be a rout but not a pretty one. Even if all goes according to plan, infantrymen likely will have to fight an urban war through the streets of Baghdad, trying to sort civilians from soldiers.
And if Saddam finds himself cornered with all of his nine lives spent, intelligence reports indicate a high probability he will use whatever is left of his weapons of mass destruction.
Afterward, the United States could have a large Arab body count to explain in a region of growing hatred for the West and what is perceived to be a new U.S.-Israeli imperialism in the Arab world.
''It could get very messy,'' said retired Gen. John Shalikashvili, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. ''The collateral damage could be very great.''
Deterrence vs. invasion
So is war all that Saddam will respond to?
Retired Gen. Anthony Zinni, former head of the U.S. Central Command, is convinced that Saddam "is deterrable and containable at this point.''
No small number of military experts agree and have accused the Bush administration of exaggerating the threat Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction pose.
Deterrence advocates claim he could be handled using the classic, Cold War threat of annihilation.
Indeed, Saddam did not use chemical and biological weapons during the gulf war largely because he faced the threat of nuclear retaliation.
But even the staunchest deterrence advocates stress containing Saddam would require a new weapons inspections regime with real teeth. Under the cease-fire agreement that ended the gulf war, Iraq was required to submit to weapons inspections by the United Nations.
While the U.N. weapons inspectors were initially successful after the gulf war, Saddam quickly learned how to hide material and develop weapons out of dual-use chemicals and facilities such as breweries and fertilizer plants.
Before Saddam halted the inspections in 1998, inspectors were routinely thwarted and fooled with aerial reconnaissance showing activity at numerous factories consistent with weapons development.
''There's no question that Saddam has gone to school on the inspectors,'' Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said. ''They're experts at this cat-and-mouse game.''
The Bush administration has been lobbying the United Nations to staff future inspection teams with plenty of Americans, arguing the "U.N. bureaucrats" have been ineffective.
So far, France and Russia, which both have veto power in the U.N. Security Council, oppose the proposal. Their opposition raises serious doubts that renewed inspections will have any real effect other than to serve as a pre-invasion gesture to the international community.
"Iraq has learned how to divide and conquer in the Security Council,'' said Jessica Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace.
Ironically, the kind of weak inspections resolution that Iraq appears to be angling for may be what ultimately prompts the invasion Saddam is trying to avoid.
'Nightmare scenario'
Operation Desert Storm in 1991 saw swarms of tanks sweeping across the dunes of Kuwait, but an invasion of Iraq could quickly degenerate into what one retired U.S. general called a "nightmare scenario'' of incremental urban combat.
Military planners almost universally agree that if Saddam retreats into Baghdad, casualties would skyrocket on both sides as armies square off in close quarters.
Strategists estimate that if Saddam can rally half a dozen Republican Guard divisions and six heavy divisions reinforced with several thousand anti-aircraft and artillery pieces, he would be capable of diluting many of the high-tech and other advantages the coalition forces exploited in the gulf war.
''All our advantages of command and control, technology and mobility, all those things are, in part, given up and you are working with corporals and sergeants and young men fighting street to street,'' said retired Gen. Joseph Hoar, who was the senior U.S. commander in the Middle East after the gulf war.
"It looks like the last 15 minutes of 'Saving Private Ryan.' ''
Saddam's defense plans almost certainly include stationing the majority of his Republican Guard units and his weapons of mass destruction in the hospitals, schools and mosques around Baghdad, raising the possibility of massive collateral damage.
Iraqi generals have threatened to create a "new Vietnam" for U.S. forces in Baghdad, and U.S. commanders concede they are not as prepared as they would like for this kind of urban combat.
The hope is that a massive air campaign would soften resistance, and shatter resolve before Saddam could dig in. But don't look to the successful bombing campaign in Afghanistan with B-52 bombers flying figure eights over potential targets as an example of how easy it could be.
Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, has formidable air defenses.
An important initial objective would be to establish "no movement" zones to allow ground troops to search for and destroy Saddam's biological and chemical weapons.
Initial intelligence indicates that once troops move into Iraq, Iraqi scientists would likely assist in revealing the weapons laboratories Saddam is believed to have concealed underground and in other secret locations.
If Saddam feels he has met his Waterloo, there is a significant risk he could resort to using his biological and chemical weapons against invading forces or launch them aboard his few remaining Scud missiles against Israel in the hope of provoking a significant response and igniting a wider Arab-Israeli war.
Saddam attempted this tactic in the gulf war, but Israel was persuaded to withhold its retaliation.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said unequivocally that he will respond to any attack by Saddam.
Saddam's military might
Although Saddam suffered significant losses in the gulf war — some 40 percent of his army and air equipment — he still commands the most potentially lethal military force in the region, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Iraq has a standing army of about 424,000 soldiers and an inventory of 2,200 battle tanks, 3,700 other armored vehicles, 2,400 major artillery weapons and more than 300 combat aircraft, many Russian-made MiG fighters and French-made Mirage jets.
The most perplexing and troubling question in assessing Saddam's threat surrounds his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.
Despite his unrelenting efforts to acquire a nuclear weapon, virtually no one believes he possesses one or has the fissile material to make one.
The only disagreement seems to be over how much of his prodigious chemical and biological arsenal he has been able to reconstitute since U.N. weapons inspections ceased in 1998.
In 1991, following the gulf war, Iraq declared only a fraction of its chemical capabilities and denied having any nuclear and biological weapons.
But according to the United Nations Special Commission, called UNSCOM, Iraq had produced 22,457 gallons of anthrax and 100,393 gallons of botulism toxin — enough to kill hundreds of thousands.
UNSCOM also reported finding and destroying nearly 39,000 chemical munitions and more than 3,000 tons of precursor chemicals.
Former UNSCOM inspectors say Saddam is clearly married to these weapons, and history shows that he has no compunction about using them.
"A critical point we learned in the mid-'90s was just how important weapons of mass destruction were to the regime,'' said Charles Duelfer, former deputy executive chairman of UNSCOM. "Senior Iraqi officials stated convincingly that the use of chemical weapons saved them in their war against Iran. It was their counter to Iranian human wave attacks.''
Gassing U.S. forces would possibly invite a nuclear retaliation or at least a severe conventional counterstrike probably killing huge numbers of Iraqi civilians.
That is among the worst-case scenarios, and it's one that Saddam has a worrisome degree of control over.
Click the thumbnails below to look at larger photos of the people and places described in this story. (Photos open in new windows.)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
