Quick strikes

The Pentagon has approved an Iraq war plan that features quick strikes to topple Saddam Hussein early in a potential conflict by cutting his lifelines, such as command and control centers, according to informed officials. The plan is a departure from the heavy bombing and armor attacks that brought victory in the first Persian Gulf War.

President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and field commander Gen. Tommy Franks believe they can bring down the Iraqi leader quickly with far fewer troops than the half-million used for Desert Storm in 1991. But some members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the president's principal military advisers, are not so sure. They say that a massive attack may be required to stimulate the shock effect needed for quick victory, according to one general familiar with the closed-door debate that has been under way at the Pentagon for months.

The American military is so superior to the still-crippled Iraqi forces in troop strength, weaponry, and tactics that victory is virtually assured. The questions are how long it would take and how many combatants and civilians would be killed or wounded. The prospect of Saddam's resorting to chemical or biological weapons or sending his troops into cities to take on invading Americans is among the main worries of U.S. military leaders.

"I don't think Saddam Hussein is going to fight us like he did the last time," said one Desert Storm general. In 1990 and 1991, Saddam deployed most of his troops on the Iraqi and Kuwaiti deserts, where they were vulnerable to bomber and armor attacks. "I think Saddam is going to hole up in cities this time," the general said.

Iraqi defenders hidden in concrete office buildings and brick apartment houses would have the advantage over exposed attackers. Women and children could be mixed in with the armed defenders as shields. To reduce the chance of having to fight that kind of block-by-block urban warfare, the Pentagon's current war plan calls for Green Berets and other clandestine warriors in the Special Operations Command to enter Iraq before the shooting starts to entice local rebels to join the American side. The CIA, which sent what one intelligence officer said were "hundreds" of former Special Operations troops into Afghanistan to recruit spies and target spotters, is expected to do the same thing in Iraq in hopes of achieving early victory.

Just as the Northern Alliance proved valuable in the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, Kurdish militia should be employed to destabilize northern Iraq, including the oil-rich area around Kirkuk, specialists on the region have advised the Pentagon. This part of the war plan could already be unfolding.

If Bush gives the go-ahead, bombers will destroy Iraq's air defense and warning systems as ground forces-much larger than the clandestine ones deployed earlier-launch a series of attacks against Saddam's vital links to his military commanders, sources said. Iraqi troops have already been showered with American leaflets urging them to stay in their barracks if the United States invades their country. The quick collapse of Saddam's regime would avoid the bloody street fighting the generals are worried about.

To buttress the effort to bring Saddam down, Iraq experts have been urging Franks, head of the U.S. Central Command, which would run the war, to capture Saddam's hometown of Tikrit early on to humiliate Saddam and his Baath party. Tikrit is the birthplace not only of Saddam but-more importantly in the experts' view-of the 12th-century Iraqi hero Saladin, who recaptured Jerusalem from the Crusaders. Saddam would almost certainly deploy troops to defend Tikrit on the open ground between Baghdad and Kirkuk, the experts contend, making the Iraqis vulnerable to air strikes.

Under the Pentagon plan, if the quick assaults in the first phase of a U.S. invasion failed to topple Saddam, additional infantrymen and armor-as many as 200,000 troops in all-would be sent in to attack Iraq from the south, through Kuwait, and from the north, through Turkey. It is this planned piecemeal commitment of force, rather than an all-out attack, that has the generals concerned about the loss of shock value, military officials said.

The land war in Desert Storm lasted only 100 hours. American deaths, in combat and accidents, totaled 390. Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton sent troops into Somalia in 1992 and 1993, only to withdraw them after a horrific street battle in Mogadishu took the lives of 18 of them.

President George W. Bush, who has vowed to disarm Saddam, has no way of knowing how a new war against the Iraqi leader would turn out. On December 17, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, disputed predictions that the war would be easy: "There's nobody involved in the military planning, to include the secretary [of Defense] or any of the senior leadership in this building, ... that would say that this sort of endeavor, if we were asked to do it, would be a cakewalk."