Please see the fifth paragraph.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23867-2003Mar1.html

War Plan for Iraq Largely in Place

Quick, Simultaneous Attacks on Ground and From Air

Envisioned

By Thomas E. Ricks

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, March 2, 2003; Page A01

After more than a year of intense work, the Bush

administration's plan for an assault on Iraq is

essentially in place and is based on an unusual

approach that envisions simultaneous air and ground

operations combining the U.S. advantages in firepower,

speed and precision, according to several people

familiar with the strategy.

Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the chief of U.S. military

operations in the Middle East, sat down in the Persian

Gulf state of Qatar last week and reviewed the plan

with his top Army, Navy, Marine, Air Force and Special

Operations commanders. The conclusion of the top

secret session, said a U.S. official based in the

region, was that everything is ready once President

Bush gives the order.

As military action draws nearer, Franks and the

Pentagon are keeping the actual war plan closely held,

publicly revealing only the vaguest of details about

their intentions. But the broad outlines are now

apparent, pieced together from congressional testimony

and briefings by defense officials, the assessment of

dozens of military analysts and relief experts privy

to particular aspects of the operation, and from the

military's deployments and high-profile exercises in

the region.

The framework that has emerged calls for a war that

would be remarkably different from anything the U.S.

military has done. It aims to combine the armored fist

of the tank-heavy 1991 Persian Gulf War with the speed

of the overnight 1989 U.S. takeover of Panama and the

precision bombing of the 2001 U.S. campaign in

Afghanistan.

One sign of the innovative nature of the plan is that,

without much public notice, its first phase is already

underway. Special Operations troops are executing

missions inside Iraq to prepare the way for later

attacks. U.S. and British warplanes ostensibly

enforcing the "no-fly" zones in northern and southern

Iraq have increased the number and intensity of

airstrikes, and recently expanded their list of

targets to include Iraqi surface-to-surface missiles.

They were attacked, defense officials said, not

because they were in the "no-fly" zones and threatened

U.S. aircraft but because they were in range of U.S.

troops mustering just over the border in Kuwait.

"We've already got a lot of stuff underway -- the air

campaign, psychological operations, Special Ops," said

Robert Andrews, a former Pentagon official who oversaw

Special Operations activities.

The formal onset of the war, if Bush gives the

go-ahead, is expected to begin with three nearly

simultaneous moves. That is a sharp contrast to the

sequential nature of the Gulf War, in which the ground

war only began after five weeks of bombing.

On the ground, tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles and

Apache attack helicopters will charge north into Iraq

from Kuwait. Most Army units will be on the west,

heading northward toward the Euphrates River, while

the Marine Corps and British forces will jump off

farther to the east and move up alongside Iraq's

southern marshes around the southern city of Basra.

In the north, the U.S. military also plans to launch

some kind of offensive, though the continued

foot-dragging by the Turkish government could impede

the execution of the attack envisioned by the plan.

Planners think the minimum U.S. force needed in the

north to create a second front is about one division,

plus some specialized reinforcements, for a total of

about 20,000 troops. While some troops and gear can be

flown into airstrips in Kurdish areas in the north,

getting a force that size into Iraq by air would be a

logistical nightmare.

"General Franks . . . is looking at lots of options,"

Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the

Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Friday. "My guess: In the

end, we will have U.S. forces in northern Iraq, one

way or the other."

The pace of Special Operations forces will also be

stepped up. Their main focus will be denying Iraqi

forces access to certain chemical and biological

weapons sites that cannot be bombed for fear of

setting up toxic plumes, according to people familiar

with their missions and training. Preventing Iraq from

launching drones or missiles against Israel will be

another major focus of Special Operations troops and

other units. Some Special Operations personnel may be

ordered to protect key points in Iraq's oil fields to

prevent any Iraqi attempt to set them afire.

At the same time, the air campaign will begin with a

thunderous volley of strikes by aircraft and missiles.

These will be aimed first at eliminating Iraq's

antiaircraft emplacements, which have been

concentrated around Baghdad, and also at hitting

military communications systems and presidential

palaces. Pentagon sources said they expect that more

targets will be struck in Baghdad on the first night

of the campaign than were hit in the Iraqi capital

during the entire Gulf War, when about 330 bombs and

missiles hit the city. In contrast to the 1991 war,

when nine out of 10 bombs were unguided "dumb" bombs,

nine out of 10 to be used in the new campaign would be

precision-guided munitions.

Paradoxically, the air campaign promises to be as

narrowly aimed as it is ferocious. Most of the

airstrikes will focus on "regime change targets --

weapons of mass destruction, command and control, and

palaces," said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas

McInerney. Infrastructure such as electrical plants

will not be hit, said people familiar with the

planning.

A major reason is that the Bush administration is

already making plans to oversee Iraq's reconstruction

if President Saddam Hussein and his government are

removed. Unlike in the Gulf War, said former Navy

secretary Richard Danzig, "[w]e know we have to repair

whatever we bomb."

The war plan even calls for sparing the Iraqi

military, if it doesn't fight. Some leaflets being

dropped by U.S. planes on Iraqi military installations

urge troops, "Leave now and go home -- Watch your

children learn, grow and prosper." Others dropped

yesterday warned against using chemical or biological

weapons, asserting, under an image of a satellite, "We

can see everything. . . . Unit commanders will be held

accountable for non-compliance." Bush has vowed to

prosecute Iraqi leaders for possible war crimes if

they use weapons of mass destruction.

Other military leaflets and radio broadcasts are

telling civilians that they will not be targeted.

Some military experts doubt whether the narrow

approach of the bombing will be effective. One

problem, said retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson, an

expert in urban warfare, is that the high-tech,

airpower-oriented war-fighting strategy now embraced

by the U.S. military has become familiar to

adversaries over the past decade -- in Bosnia, Kosovo,

Afghanistan and in Iraq itself. Because Iraqi leaders

know the United States will not bomb indiscriminately,

he said, they may be able to ride out the bombing from

private homes in the suburbs as they watch government

buildings explode on the horizon.

"I think they're going to watch the fireworks and say,

'Oh, that's nice,' " Anderson said.

A person who has been briefed on the entire war plan

dismissed those concerns. If Hussein and his

lieutenants can be forced to hide in private houses

away from military communications centers, this source

said, their control of the regime will begin to break

down. Also, it will make it harder for them to issue

orders to use chemical and biological weapons -- an

overriding concern of Franks and other U.S. commanders

-- and to confirm that their orders have been carried

out.

"The first goal is to conduct the air campaign in such

a way that undecided Iraqis leave the regime, narrow

it down," the source said. "The second goal is to

disrupt the regime's ability to command and control

WMD [weapons of mass destruction]."

With the bombing of Baghdad in full force, thousands

of U.S. tanks and trucks will race toward the capital

from Kuwait and Turkey. Military experts said they do

not expect much fighting along the way. "I'm fairly

confident they [U.S. forces] won't encounter much

resistance" until they reach the outskirts of the

capital, said Michael Vickers, a former Army officer

who now frequently consults with the Pentagon.

One reason for that optimism is that Iraqi forces

learned during the Gulf War that if they mass in the

desert, they make a fat target for U.S. bombers. Yet

if they spread out, they can be easily overwhelmed by

U.S. ground and air attacks in which they would be

heavily outgunned and outnumbered.

The major war event in the south, said several people

briefed on the plan, is likely to be a no-holds-barred

assault on the Republican Guard division based in

southern Iraq. That unit will be given a chance to

surrender, but if it tries to fight, it will be hit

with a barrage of bombs and missiles, followed by an

artillery shelling and a tank attack.

"They want to make an object lesson" of a major Iraqi

unit, said one of the people familiar with this aspect

of the plan. "There's an attitude that if there is a

division that wants to fight, they will wipe it from

the face of the Earth, and just make it a crushing

lesson." The thinking behind this, he said, is "hit

them hard, let that be an example and encourage the

rest to stay in their barracks."

While such a pounding at the outset of the war may

evoke memories of the "Highway of Death," the carnage

of bombed Iraqi units as they fled north from Kuwait

at the end of the Gulf War, those familiar with this

aspect of the plan said Franks and his commanders are

determined to get the fighting over with as quickly as

possible. "There will be a very high premium on a very

quick resolution, even if it gets a bit bloody," said

one person involved in high-level Pentagon reviews of

some aspects of the war plan. "That works a lot better

than a long period of even small violence to

noncombatants."

As U.S. forces move toward Baghdad, noted retired

Marine Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper, the major issue

confronting them may be logistical. U.S. armored units

require tens of thousands of gallons of fuel and water

daily, and their supply lines will be stretched to

three or four times the length of the lines in the

Gulf War.

U.S. intelligence estimates are that most regular

Iraqi army units won't fight. Even top officials are

talking openly now about the sorry state of most Iraqi

troops. "Generally, we think in the Iraqi military,

particularly the regular army, morale is relatively

low," Myers said on NBC's "Today Show" last week.

While the Army and some Marines will move north, the

British will split off to occupy Basra and the oil

fields near it, said people familiar with the plan.

For that purpose, said a U.S. official in Kuwait, the

15th Marine Expeditionary Unit will likely be assigned

to a British command. Putting a large U.S. unit under

foreign command in combat apparently has not occurred

since World War II, when British Field Marshal Bernard

Law Montgomery commanded large numbers of U.S. Army

troops. As such, it is likely to carry much symbolic

meaning, rewarding British Prime Minister Tony Blair

for his close support of Bush's Iraq policy by evoking

the close ties forged between President Franklin D.

Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Although there remains considerable concern about the

prospect of U.S. forces getting bogged down in urban

warfare in Baghdad, even here there is surprising

optimism among military officials and analysts. Some

think the Iraqi government will fall well before U.S.

forces reach the capital.

Even if there is some organized resistance in the

capital, said Anderson, it isn't likely to be

effective. If Iraqi forces seek to survive by

dispersing in the city, they will be able to inflict

casualties by sniping but won't be able to stop U.S.

military progress, he said. And if they mass in

buildings, the buildings will be destroyed.

Said McInerney: "There isn't going to be a large urban

battle."

The wild card, which hasn't been discussed much in

public, may be northern Iraq, which some of those

interviewed for this article said could prove to be

the most troublesome part of Iraq in the long run --

after the war. Their concern isn't Iraqi forces but

the complex politics of the region, revolving around

armed Kurdish factions, a skittish Turkey confronting

its own restless Kurdish population over the border to

the north, an Iranian government that also has

interests in the area, and some of the world's richest

oil fields.

Turkish balking at U.S. troop movements promises to

complicate the matter: U.S. planners worry that the

slower the U.S. entry in the north, the greater the

chance that Hussein will destroy the infrastructure of

the northern oil fields, which would greatly increase

the expense of postwar rebuilding.

Indeed, the end of the fighting may be the beginning

of the real difficulties for the U.S. military, some

experts said, noting that the Bush administration is

planning for a lengthy military occupation. "The major

concerns," said Andrews, "are still pretty much what

happens after the shooting stops."

© 2003 The Washington Post Company