Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 6, 1991 TAG: 9102060431
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
Allied warplanes ranged deep into Iraq Tuesday and Tuesday night, dropping heavy payloads on Baghdad, Basra and Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, and there were new indications that the air campaign is deeply disrupting Iraqi civilian life and military activity.
Such bombing has not substantially weakened the combat effectiveness of Iraq's elite ground forces in a well-entrenched "strategic reserve" in northern Kuwait and southern Iraq, Pentagon officials said Tuesday.
Bush was careful to say that he had made no final decision about a ground war, a politically explosive and militarily risky choice that he faces because of the likelihood that it would lead to a heavy rise in American casualties.
Administration officials said the trip by Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Gen. Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, does not necessarily mean that a ground offensive is imminent.
But the tenor of Bush's remarks Tuesday, made at a hastily called White House news conference, seemed to mark a significant step toward that decision and appeared to be part of a deliberate effort to prepare the country for it.
"I'm not saying it wouldn't be a difficult decision," Bush said. "But I am saying, one, I'm prepared to make it and two I have total confidence that this decision will not be recommended to me unless these people I just mentioned know that it's the right thing to do."
Bush said that he wanted his advisers to tell him if they thought the air war could achieve the war aims alone. His view, he added, was that "I'm somewhat skeptical that it would."
Despite projections by the Air Force that it could reduce the fighting capability of Iraqi forces by 50 percent in the opening weeks of the war, military officials said the strategic reserve force, about 10 divisions of crack Republican Guard and Army tank units, is substantially intact with well-dispersed underground depots and supply lines despite the daily pounding from allied air forces.
Tank and artillery losses are in the "low hundreds," the officials said, and up to six months' worth of supplies have been salted away in thousands of small depots that cannot be targeted by allied bombers.
In addition, the B-52 bombing campaign against the Republican Guard positions has not been very effective against such "point" targets as tanks and artillery pieces. Point targets are those that must be hit directly in order to be destroyed.
So far even the latest cluster munitions have shown a mixed performance because of the wide dispersal of Iraqi armor and personnel and the sandbag fortifications protecting them.
These officials said some of the spectacular bombing successes reported by military commanders were important, such as the explosion last week of an ammunition dump that allied commander Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf compared to a volcano. But they said those results did not have an impact on the fighting capability of already well-supplied Iraqi forces.
One military official with access to detailed bomb damage assessment information from the war zone said of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein: "By my personal estimate, in spite of the massive interdiction campaign, we have not reduced his ability to supply his theater forces below his rate of consuming those supplies. So it has not been necessary for him to start feeding on his in-place stocks."
"It is still, substantially, the fighting force it was," the official said. "And I have every reason to believe that the Republican Guard can still be employed as an effective fighting force and it has not yet been substantially degraded. That is not to say air power has failed, but there is still a lot of work to do."
The official said "nobody in his right mind" in the military hierarchy believes allied forces have cut the fighting capability of Saddam's forces in half. Pentagon officials said there is significant aerial bombing to be done to reach a 50 percent reduction in Iraqi fighting strength, but would offer no time estimate.
Bush suggested that unless Saddam was overthrown from within his government, it seemed unlikely that the Iraqi army would cave in to the incessant pounding it has received from allied bombers and withdraw. And he said there would be no negotiations and "no concessions" on the United Nations' demand that Iraq leave Kuwait.
But Bush spelled out in more detail than ever before the terms under which he would call a halt to the fighting against Iraq. For that to happen, he said, there must be "a credible, visible, totally convincing withdrawal" by Iraq forces, followed by immediate international supervision of the pullout and immediate restoration of the government of Kuwait.
"No trust, no concession, `I'll get out if you'll get out,' " Bush said. "We passed that. We tried that. Diplomatic effort after diplomatic effort.
"Now we're in a war with this man and he will comply with these resolutions fully, without concession and then we can determine what niceties or what little detail need to be done."
His remarks seemed also to harden the Soviet-American statement last week in which the Iraqis were offered a possible cease-fire if they gave an "unequivocal commitment" to pull out of Kuwait and took concrete steps to back it up.
In announcing his plan to send Cheney and Powell to the Middle East late this week, Bush did not spell out his instructions to the two officials in great detail. But he made it clear that they were to assess the course of the war and review the options for a ground offensive.
Bush said he wanted Cheney and Powell to advise him whether an air attack alone "will get the job done."
"My own view," he said, "is I'm somewhat skeptical that it would."
Bush did not seem to intend his remarks as a counterpoint to the Pentagon's upbeat assessments of the progress of the boming campaign. Indeed, he said it was going very well.
Rather, the president's comments seemed to reflect a realization that the Pentagon's original plan - air bombardment followed by an assault on the ground - would probably have to be played out.
"I feel rather calm about it, because we have a game plan, and we've stayed with the game plan and we're on target," he said. "And unless I get recommendations from these men in whom I have so much trust, we're going to remain on the plan."
For a second day, the U.S. battleship Missouri slammed the Iraqis with shells from its 16-inch guns. Six rounds silenced a long-range artillery battery as it fired on allied troops. Another 28 rounds wiped out an Iraqi radar site. At midday, the huge guns on the ship still were firing at targets on the coastline of Kuwait.
In other developments:
Syrian troops clashed with the Iraqis for the first time. Saudi military officers said Syrian artillery drove 30 intruders back into Kuwait. But pool reports from the U.S. area of operations said the Iraqis overran a Syrian position in one attack and were pushed back by the Syrians in another.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz said that nine days of allied bombing had killed 60 Iraqi civilians and wounded another 165. Baghdad Radio put the total number of Iraqi civilians killed so far at 428. The allies denied targeting any civilians. They said some might have been killed by accident.
Oil industry and environmental experts worried that a new, strong wind might blow three oil slicks coating the Persian Gulf into desalination plants. The three slicks covered hundreds of square miles. Some of the oil has hit beaches, and fishermen said it has killed off shrimping in the gulf.
On the ground, the allies and the Iraqis traded occasional artillery rounds and small-arms fire. The most significant exchange came between the Syrians and the Iraqis.
In that exchange, official Saudi briefing officers said, about 30 Iraqi soldiers tried to penetrate a northern border position late Monday. The position was manned by Syrian soldiers. They and the Iraqis exchanged small-arms fire, the briefers said, and the Iraqis fired a number of rocket-propelled grenades.
Syrian artillery forced the Iraqis to withdraw, the Saudi briefers said.
It was the first known combat for the Syrians in the gulf war. The only other Arabs involved in ground action so far have been the Saudis and Qataris, who fought the Iraqis last week at Khafji.
Pool reports from the U.S. Marine area of operations said the Iraqis struck two separate Syrian military positions. One of them, the Marines said, was overrun and apparently occupied during the surprise attack. The other Syrian position came under artillery fire, the reports said, but turned back the Iraqi probe.
Like other Arabs in the coalition, the Syrians hold positions near the center of the line between Iraqi and allied forces, near Hafar al Batin.
At the United Nations, Iraq protested civilian deaths in an angry letter to Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar.
The letter, from Foreign Minister Aziz, said the greatest loss of life occurred Jan. 20, when 15 people were killed in Najibia.
Aziz's letter, covering casualties from Jan. 21-30, accused Perez de Cuellar of "keeping silent regarding these crimes, which for the first time in history are being committed in the name of the United Nations."
There was no immediate reply from Perez de Cuellar.
by CNB