From the military’s point of view, the possibility that Saddam Hussein may be sincere in offering to withdraw from Kuwait is simply irrelevant. The Iraqi Army is being systematically pulverized with relentless bombing, and the moment for the long-awaited ground offensive is drawing nigh. Despite the controversy over civilian casualties in Baghdad last week, the focus of the allied air campaign has shifted to what military briefers call the KTO, the Kuwait theater of operations. The reported results have been impressive: U.S. spokesmen claimed that the Iraqis had already lost a third of the tanks and artillery pieces defending Kuwait. Meanwhile, they said, the allies have begun to use fuel-air explosives (box) and 15,000-pound “daisy cutter” bombs to blow holes in the vast array of minefields protecting Iraqi positions - an unmistakable precursor of the ground assault to come. “We’re saying, ‘Let’s get the battlefield shaped so we can go ahead across the border’,” one senior U.S. officer told reporters in Saudi Arabia.
They are also doing their level best to leave Saddam Hussein’s generals, and everyone else, hopelessly confused about the precise targets of the planned ground campaign. Desert Storm commander Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf has repeatedly said that he has no intention of sending his troops into the strength of the Iraqi defenses. That suggests a massive allied flanking maneuver through southeastern Iraq, to the west of the Iraqi fortifications. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, meanwhile, touched off a spate of news stories about the possibility of a somewhat smaller flanking attack designed to draw the Iraqi Republican Guard out of its positions along the Iraq-Kuwait border. And in background briefings, allied sources seemed to be stressing the fact that an armada of amphibious ships carrying 17,000 U.S. Marines is steaming northward in the Persian Gulf toward the coast of Kuwait.
At least some of this is probably disinformation - for as one Pentagon official says, Cheney and Gen. Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “are not dilettantes. These guys are pretty settled on what they want to do, [and] when the military conditions are right, we’ll move.” In fact, U.S. planners have not discouraged the news media’s attempts to predict the shape of the coming ground campaign, and some of them are taking quiet satisfaction in the gusher of speculation and contradictory information. During the past month many news organizations have run stories about the attempt to outflank the Iraqi Army along with maps showing where the flanking maneuver would take place. At first, senior Pentagon strategists worried that the stories would tip off the Iraqi Army as to the thrusts that were actually planned, a senior Pentagon officer told NEWSWEEK. But several weeks into Desert Storm, the brass realized that the maps being broadcast on television or published in magazines and newspapers were far from consistent about where the ground attacks would take place.
If Iraqi intelligence is monitoring the U.S. news media, senior U.S. military officers now hope it is thoroughly baffled as to exactly where the allied thrust will come from. “There’s been so much speculation about it, people in Baghdad get confused about what’s actually being planned,” this senior Pentagon officer told NEWSWEEK. And Pentagon officials believe they’ve succeeded in hiding the exact location of the main force of about 250,000 allied soldiers who will be used for the thrust into Kuwait. “You haven’t heard much about those people recently,” the Pentagon officer said. “That’s on purpose. Our people in country have done a great job of hiding that army. How we do the thrust is still a secret. And there are so many different views in the press about how we’ll accomplish it, our view now is, ‘Hey - let them go wild with speculation’.”
The scope of this deception, which is intended to shield crucial information about the allied order of battle from the Iraqi high command, is very large. Unclassified Pentagon reports suggest that the allied army now includes the equivalent of about three corps, or multidivisional task forces. One is the XVIII Corps, which seems to have been split in two. One element combines the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne and First Cavalry divisions together with French troops, including elements of the Foreign Legion. The other - the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division - seems to have been split off for a mission of its own. Arab troops - the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, the Egyptians and the Syrians - are teamed up with U.S. Marine units in eastern Saudi Arabia, where they are poised for a drive toward Kuwait City (though that drive may be a feint). The missions of two other heavy divisions - the U.S. 1st and 24th mechanized-infantry divisions - are still a mystery. And the entire U.S. VII Corps, consisting of two and a half crack U.S. armored divisions from Germany reinforced by the British 1st Armoured Division, has vanished from the map.
The allied war plan calls for at least six separate, simultaneous assaults involving all these units. “Don’t assume the next stage in the campaign is going to be some phased, step-by-step affair,” a senior U.S. officer said last week. “When we go, it’s going to be a multifront operation - land, sea and air. Simultaneous.” It will also be the first real-world test of a new U.S. concept known as the AirLand Battle doctrine. That doctrine, developed for conventional war in Europe, is a radical departure from the U.S. Army’s traditional fighting style of massive frontal envelopment. It emphasizes speed, deception and deep penetration by armored and air-mobile units, supported by close air support. The idea, this senior officer said, “is that the Iraqis won’t know what hit them.”
That may be braggadocio, or it may not. Although there is still considerable dispute among U.S. intelligence analysts about the effectiveness of allied bombing so far, no one doubts the Iraqi Army’s losses are mounting steadily. Now, according to one Pentagon official, the commanders of the allied air forces have “only a few days left to wrap it up” before the ground troops move in. The Iraqi forces have little time, too - and even if, as some pessimists believe, elite units like the Republican Guard have survived the repeated B-52 raids of the past several weeks, the allies’ ability to mount devastating bomb and missile attacks on exposed enemy troops and tanks has already been proven in combat. That test came two weeks ago, during the battle for Khafji - and since then, according to one U.S. officer, Iraqi commanders in the field may have been forced to reconsider the possibility of defending their troops.
What happens now is essentially up to Saddam Hussein. Bush seems determined to destroy the Iraqi Army where it stands, and the combined forces of Operation Desert Storm are poised to carry out that wish. If the president is bluffing - playing for time to give the Soviets one last chance to avert the carnage - he gave no sign of that last week. And so, to thousands of soldiers waiting in the desert, the real question was not whether the ground war was coming, but only when.
Should President Bush continue the air war? Or should he start the ground war soon because the air war is doing too much damage to Iraq and its civilians?
Continue air war
Start ground war
Are U.S. military capabilities in the Persian Gulf about as effective as you expected, more effective or less?
As effective
More effective
Less
From the NEWSWEEK Poll of Feb. 15, 1991
The United States first used fuel-air explosive bombs to clear jungle in Vietnam. In the gulf war, the allies are using them to destroy Iraqi mines.
Each CBU cluster bomb contains three BLU bomblets
CBU-55/B BLU-73/B
B-52 or helicopter drops cluster bomb containing the three 100-lb. BLU bomblets.
Cluster bomb breaks apart, releasing canisters filled with highly explosive liquid fuel.
Thirty feet above target, bomblets disperse fuel, forming a fine mist covering a large area.
Just above ground, a fuse detonates fuel vapor. An intense pressure wave destroys all surface structures within hundreds of yards; firestorm sucks air from the lungs of nearby troops.
After 73,000 allied air sorties, the U.S. military command said Iraqi control over its forces was “precarious.” Amid signs that a ground war was imminent, Saddam Hussein for the first time offered to withdraw from Kuwait.
Two Scuds launched toward Israel; no serious injuries
U.S. intelligence shows two Iraqi MiGs parked next to pyramid at ancient city of Ur
Air raids on Baghdad continue: laser-guided bombs destroy shelter; Iraq counts hundreds of civilians killed; U.S. says target was military command center
Two Scuds break up over Hafar al-Batin near key allied troops while one other is destroyed over Riyadh; no serious injures
B-52 bombers continue attacks on Republican Guard in the north and fortified Iraqi troops in the south of Kuwait
U.S. charges Iraq sets oilfields ablaze to obscure battlegrounds
Battleships and other naval forces pummel Iraqi tanks and artillery positions
U.S. detonates fuel air explosives and other bombs to clear minefields
Oil slick threatens main Saudi desalination plant
- Bombed air-raid bunker 2. Presidential palace 3. Al-Rashid Hotel 4. Saddam International Airport * Three of six main Tigris River bridges destroyed
