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MURAD SEZER/AP
STANDING BY: The U.S.S. Normandy, which is helping to monitor the skies over southern Iraq, plies the Persian Gulf
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| Going Door to Door |
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Saddam Hussein hopes to engage Americans in street fighting in Baghdad, a scenario the U.S. wants to avoid
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By Mark Thompson | Washington |
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Posted Sunday, Sept. 8, 2002; 6:31 p.m. EST
Corporal Abraham Hernandez remembers his death as "humbling." It happened during a Pentagon war game last month at an abandoned Air Force base in the California high desert. Hernandez was hit while he and his Marine platoon were trying to secure a landing zone for a helicopter that was bringing in troops to help take the "city." The enemy, masked by surrounding buildings and sandbag bunkers, fired on the group. The laser-activated beeper on Hernandez's belt went off, signaling that he had been killed in action; 22 of his 27 fellow platoon members suffered the same fate. All in all, it was a rough day for the Marines. "It was very difficult to find a place to hide," says Hernandez. "If this had been real life, this would have been as far as I'd have gotten."
The mock battle, conducted amid 1,000 buildings in the biggest urban-war exercise the U.S. has ever held, confirmed what the Pentagon already knew: America may have the world's most fearsome military, but it is ill equipped to wage war in cities. The nation's recent triumphs—in Afghanistan, Kosovo, the Persian Gulf—were mostly air wars, carried out by American pilots far above the tangle of gritty city streets. On the ground, the Americans face enemies with the home-field advantage and lose their edge in state-of-the-art weaponry. In last month's exercises, for example, the Marines were unpleasantly surprised to learn that their high-tech, heat-seeking sights don't work through glass, meaning they can't peer through windows and into rooms where the enemy lurks. "There is no technological magic wand you can wave over these problems to make them go away," says Marine Major Dan Sullivan, who is leading the corps's efforts to improve its ability to conduct urban warfare.
That's why if the U.S. takes on Iraq, America's military planners will do whatever they can to avoid fighting in the streets. In their most optimistic scenarios, the war will begin once again in the skies, with satellite-guided bombs that are far "smarter" and more plentiful than the laser-guided bombs used in 1991 during the first war with Iraq. Washington would initially try to take out air-defense and command-and-control sites. Next to go would be Saddam's palaces and other symbols of his power, such as television studios and transmitting towers used to fill Iraqi airwaves with his words and image. Other early targets would include the mobile missile launchers in western Iraq capable of lobbing Scud missiles—perhaps laden with biological or chemical weapons—toward Israel. During the previous war, the U.S. failed to knock out a single Scud launcher. This time, with improvements in satellites, drones and intelligence, it should fare better.
After the aerial pounding, the U.S. (with whatever allies it could muster) would shift to a ground war, probably launched from Kuwait and other gulf states from the south and from Turkey, as well as three bases in the U.S.-friendly Kurdish part of Iraq from the north. This phase would probably begin with U.S. forces' seizing the cities of Basra in the south and Mosul in the north. President Bush has not decided what size force should invade Iraq. The military prefers to send in about 250,000 troops, but some Administration officials think only about 80,000 would be needed.
The U.S. has plans for what not to attack: Washington wants to leave enough of the key military-communications network intact so that the Iraqi military wouldn't lose contact with the capital and follow its standing orders under such circumstances to launch biological and chemical weapons. The U.S. also would spare, as far as possible, the 300,000-strong regular Iraqi army in the hope that it would end up siding with American forces and forming the foundation for a post-Saddam military. Once U.S. forces captured major cities in northern and southern Iraq, ground troops would advance to Baghdad for the expected end-game. And there, if Washington's war planners had their way, Saddam's regime would collapse, and victory would come swiftly. If Saddam fled to, say, his hometown of Tikrit, 100 miles north, his army might well give up the fight. The optimists' final scenario: allied caravans rolling through Baghdad, greeted by thousands of liberated, cheering Iraqis (an updated version of Paris' liberation after D-day).
But warriors do not always get to choose their battles. And while the U.S. has managed to avoid a protracted urban skirmish during the past decade, Saddam wants to provoke just such a fight. If the Bush Administration's goal is Saddam's ouster—and if Iraq's soldiers dig in for the battle—the U.S. may be unable to avoid an armed clash in Baghdad.
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NATION
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