A-Infos (en) all the spin that's fit to print ?

[MichaelP <papadop@PEAK.ORG>]

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Washington sez: "The mushroom will grow again if allowed to flower"

Don't mushrooms spread underground ?

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 NYTimes     February 21, 1998
   
U.S. Outlines Its Intended Targets in Iraq
   

  WASHINGTON -- As Saddam Hussein defied U.N. inspectors late last
     month, President Clinton's top foreign policy advisers huddled in
     the basement White House Situation Room to wrestle with their
     military options.
     
     The aides had already shelved a top-secret plan to carry out a
     prolonged series of moderate air strikes. Officials feared this
     would not force Saddam to allow unrestricted weapon inspections.
     
     Instead, at the Jan. 24 meeting, the president and his advisers
     approved an intense, four-day, round-the-clock bombardment aimed at
     undermining the Iraqi military apparatus that supports Saddam and
     diminishing Iraq's ability to use and produce biological and
     chemical weapons.
     
     As Defense Secretary William Cohen recalled in an interview Friday,
     the president turned to his top aides and asked, "Are we all
     agreed?" After the aides voiced their approval, Clinton said,
     "Let's do it."
     
     Desert Thunder, as Pentagon planners have named the military
     campaign, was born.
     
     The administration planners acknowledge that after such a bombing
     campaign the West's ability to monitor Iraq's chemical and
     biological programs will be sharply reduced. Bombing is expected to
     destroy U.N. cameras now in place at various key sites in Iraq, and
     American officials are assuming that U.N. inspectors will never be
     allowed to resume their work.
     
     Critics, however, say the plan will kill many Iraqis without
     getting to the root of the problem: Saddam's hold on power and his
     hidden cache of chemical and biological weapons.
     
     Senior administration and military officers have disclosed these
     details of their planning:
     
     -- While Clinton and others have spoken of Iraq's threat to its
     neighbors, administration specialists believe that Saddam's
     conventional military is so weakened by the 1991 Persian Gulf war
     that it does not pose an imminent threat to other countries.
     
     -- The administration is relying on strikes against production
     facilities, conventional forces and Saddam's power structure
     because it cannot pinpoint Iraq's Scud missiles and stores of
     chemical and biological weapons.
     
     -- The Pentagon is taking steps to limit civilian casualties, like
     avoiding bombing chemical sites that could unleash a deadly plume.
     But it has warned Congress that more than 1,500 Iraqis could die in
     air raids.
     
     -- Government experts say it is unlikely that Iraq will launch a
     chemical or biological counterattack. Such a move, they say, would
     buttress American claims that an attack was necessary and risk a
     devastating American assault with conventional arms.
     
     The raids would be only a fraction of those carried out during the
     43-day gulf war in 1991.
     
     But military experts expect they will include 300 combat flights a
     day and hundreds of cruise missiles.
     
     The bombing salvos would pound Iraq's air defenses, fighter planes,
     command posts, missile factories, Republican Guard compounds,
     intelligence headquarters and sites that can produce chemicals.
     
     Even senior American officials concede that the bombing is a poor
     substitute for an effective system of U.N. oversight. But they
     insist it is the best alternative if Saddam will not cooperate.
     
     "There is no question that military action is less effective than
     getting the inspections going again," said one senior Pentagon
     aide.
     
     The air campaign that Clinton approved on Jan. 24 had its origins
     in November, when Iraq balked at allowing U.N. weapons inspections
     and threatened to shoot down a U.S. U-2 spy plane.
     
     The U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla., which directs American
     forces in the Persian Gulf, began compiling a war plan under the
     direction of Gen. Anthony Zinni.
     
     Diplomacy defused that crisis. But the planning went on, and the
     military drew up at least half a dozen options to respond to Iraqi
     provocations.
     
     U.S. Narrows Its Military Options 
     
     "We were working through a variety -- from a sustained campaign, to
     a short intense one, to a 'shoot, stop, look' approach," said a
     senior American officer involved in the planning.
     
     By last month, Saddam was again blocking weapons inspectors at
     eight large sites. In Washington, Clinton's top foreign policy
     advisers, known as the principals' committee, met daily to develop
     diplomatic and military options.
     
     But Clinton's top aides did not like the military planners' concept
     of a long campaign with bombing pauses. They feared that it would
     not force Saddam to open all the suspected sites, but would allow
     him to declare a propaganda victory. Another worry was that an
     international outcry would make it hard for the United States to
     complete a long bombing campaign.
     
     So they turned to the shorter, more intense campaign.
     
     "The idea was, 'Let's hit him really hard,"' said a senior military
     officer involved in the planning.
     
     Top aides to Clinton understood from the beginning that the faced a
     conundrum with Iraq, no matter which plan they adopted.
     
     The Iraqi military's most dangerous weapons -- the presumed stocks
     of chemical and biological weapons are extremely difficult to
     locate.
     
     The easiest targets to strike are largely old aircraft and missiles
     or potential production sites already monitored by cameras
     installed by the United Nations.
     
     There were serious questions about whether a military strike was
     worthwhile. Was it better to rely on economic sanctions and U.N.
     inspectors, even ones whose movements were limited? Or was it
     better to resort to military action even thought that may bring
     what remained of the inspections to an end.
     
     One military officer who has reviewed the attack plans said they
     call for about 300 sea-based Tomahawk and 100 air-launched cruise
     missiles, carried on B-52 bombers, which would be fired in a
     round-the-clock campaign lasting about four days. Air Force F-117s
     "stealth fighters," B-1 bombers and F-16s would also strike
     military targets.
     
     Navy carrier-based F-14s and F/A-18s would play a more important
     role than in the Persian Gulf war. The aircraft are now equipped
     with laser-guided bombs.
     
     Justifying the targeting strategy, Zinni has said the intent "is to
     deny him the capability to continue to threaten his neighbors and
     his own people and to threaten the world with his capability. So I
     think we are trying to take away his tools or his ability to
     continue the way he has."
     
     Saddam "doesn't much care if you strike a unit, a surface-to-air
     missile site, a division," Zinni explained in November. "What means
     most to him are things like the special Republican Guards, his own
     special Republican Guard and other Republican Guard units that keep
     him in power, his own infrastructure and command and control
     systems and those kind of things."
     
     Among those tools are factories that could make biological and
     chemical weapons, conventional bombs, cluster bombs, fuel-air
     explosives, rocket propellants and electronic guidance systems. The
     most important of these factories are in Baghdad, Fao, Yusifiyah,
     Iskandariyah and Qaqaa, according to U.S. government officials.
     
     The United States can hit many of the so-called "dual-use"
     installations that can make ingredients for chemical and poison
     gas. But they are already subject to U.N. monitoring. As long as
     the United States does not attack, the monitoring will go on.
     
     American air power can also strike the eight presidential sites,
     which Saddam has put off limits to U.N. inspectors. But American
     officials say it is unlikely that biological and chemical stocks
     are housed there. The sites are believed to include records to
     which the United Nations would like to gain access to reconstruct
     the history of the Iraqi program. Bombing those sites would only
     destroy those records.
     
     Then there are delivery systems, such as aircraft and missile
     factories. Iraq is also allowed to manufacture missiles with a
     range of up to 150 kilometers. That program is being monitored by
     the United Nations, but the factory could make longer-range
     missiles if the monitoring was halted.
     
     Administration officials also suggest that they may be able attack
     chemical and biological sites that have eluded detection by the
     United Nations.
     
     But as experts picked targets based on information from the Defense
     Intelligence Agency, the CIA and U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq,
     senior administration officials made a crucial decision to exclude
     sites that carried even a moderate risk of civilian casualties.
     Some suspected chemical and biological sites were scratched over
     fears of unleashing a toxic plume over Baghdad.
     
     "We have gone to great lengths to ensure that in any targets that
     were selected, that we do not intentionally release any kind of
     chem/bio," Gen. Henry Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
     Staff."We have done some studies, some analysis of 'what ifs' in
     the event that in spite of the fact that he claims he doesn't have
     any, we were to strike a target where he was hiding, storing, to
     see what the result of that would be done and to see what could be
     done after that to minimize the casualties."
     
     The military has warned Congress there will be Iraqi casualties.
     
     Shelton told Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., at a private briefing
     on Capitol Hill on Feb. 11 that an air campaign could kill or
     injure 1,200 to 1,500 Iraqi civilians and troops.
     
     But Rep. John Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat with close ties to
     the military, said in an interview that the casualty estimate he
     has received in classified military briefings was much higher than
     1,500. Murtha would not disclose the higher figure.
     
     While the Clinton administration has described the Iraqi military
     as a menace to the region, it is a shadow of the military that
     stormed into Kuwait in 1990.
     
     Iraq has about 300 fighter planes, including Soviet-made MiGs-25
     and Su-25 bombers. American intelligence says that only 60 percent
     of those planes are ready to fly at a given time and that Iraqi
     pilots do relatively little training.
     
     Nor is there any indication that the Iraqis have trained their Air
     Force to deliver biological and chemical weapons.
     
     "You would think that squadrons would practice tossing bombs at
     targets or practice dispersing chemicals at high altitude so that
     it could be carried by wind drifts toward towns," said an
     administration official familiar with intelligence reports. "But
     they do not do that kind of stuff."
     
     Artillery and short-range rockets are also potential delivery
     systems but they have very limited reach.
     
     The Scud missiles which rained down on Saudi Arabia and Israel
     during the Persian Gulf remains one of Iraqi's most worrisome
     weapons.
     
     According to American intelligence, Iraq has a small stockpile of
     chemical and biological missile warheads and bombs, as well as the
     Scud missiles to deliver them. These conclusions about Iraq's
     weapons of mass destruction are based on calculations of how many
     weapons Iraq had before the 1991 Persian Gulf war and how many are
     believed to have been destroyed since them.
     
     But as worrisome as the Scuds are, officials say their utility as
     delivery systems may be limited. The best way to disperse germs or
     poison gas in a missile attack is in an "air burst" so that the
     agents cover the widest possible areas. But that requires specially
     designed fuses. One administration official said it is more likely
     that the warheads are designed to explode when it hits the ground,
     reducing its effectiveness.
     
     "In a strict logical sense it is a nuisance now," said an
     administration official said, referring to Iraq's weapons of mass
     destruction. "The mushroom will grow again if it allowed to
     flower."
     
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