Military Tactics: Could Saddam Have Done Better?

When General Norman Schwarzkopf was asked to evaluate Saddam Hussein as a military leader last week, the allied commander telegraphed his answer with a derisive "Ha!" Then, with studied scorn, Schwarzkopf elaborated, "He is neither a strategist, nor is he schooled in the operational art, nor is he a tactician, nor is he a general, nor is he a soldier. Other than that, he's a great military man."

Because of the huge number of men and weapons Saddam poured into Kuwait, many military observers expected him to fight more effectively and inflict many more casualties than he did. As Schwarzkopf recounted at his wrap-up briefing, Iraqi combat forces outnumbered the coalition's 2 to 1 on the battlefield. In addition, the Iraqis had many more tanks and artillery pieces and had carefully dug them in.

The general's detailed account of the campaign was a pointed reminder that simple comparisons of numbers are of limited use in predicting a war's outcome. Much more important in this battle was a series of strategic mistakes that proved Saddam's military ineptitude.

The first, analysts now agree, was his failure to press ahead last Aug. 3 after his Republican Guard overran Kuwait. If Iraq's million-man army had gone on to invade Saudi Arabia and the gulf states, the whole shape of the struggle could have been different. "At that time there were no American forces in the area," says Andrew Duncan, assistant director of London's International Institute of Strategic Studies. "Saddam's troops could have swept down the . gulf, toppling one state after another."

Says a senior Pentagon officer: "Had Iraq occupied Saudi ports and airfields, the ((allied)) buildup as we know it would have been impossible." If Saddam had seized control of so much of the region's oil, fears of devastating price rises or of losing supplies altogether might have deterred the allies from even considering the use of force against Iraq.

Having stopped at the Saudi border, however, Saddam developed a strategic fixation on keeping Kuwait. He declared it the 19th province of Iraq and concentrated more and more of his troops -- 535,000 eventually -- on its soil or just north of the Kuwait-Iraq frontier. Apparently he hoped to refight his past war, the eight-year contest of attrition with Iran, battling from behind elaborate fortifications and minefields, with armored reserves quickly deployable to seal off enemy breakthroughs.

Saddam was so preoccupied with the defense of Kuwait that he did not extend his defensive line of berms, razor wire and mines more than a few miles west of the Kuwait frontier that faces Saudi Arabia. The struggle for Kuwait, he said in January, would finally depend on "the soldier who comes with rifle and bayonet to fight the soldier in the battle trench." In that, he boasted, "we are people with experience."