Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 22, 1991 TAG: 9102220671
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: PATRICK J. SLOYAN NEWSDAY
DATELINE: RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA LENGTH: Medium
It can be as simple as a can of burning oil. Iraqis put them on top of their tanks to make them look damaged, and Desert Storm pilots veered away in search of other targets.
"It took us a while to figure that one out," said a U.S. Air Force F-16 pilot.
Or, a more profound ruse may affect the outcome of this conflict, the fate of both George Bush and Saddam Hussein and the stability of a region that controls both the price and supply of world oil.
Sadsam has flicked a wrist at Bush in the ubiquitous Mideast command to wait, while the Soviets seek a way to end the conflict. And in considering how to react to Thursday night's eight-point plan for withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait, the Bush administration must have wondered how much of an effective force the Iraqi leader still had up his sleeve.
For the American president, a decision to reject the plan and launch the final phase of Desert Storm might produce a speedy liberation of Kuwait and a death knell for Saddam. Or it might mean a prolonged desert blood bath with American casualty figures that will show up on signs at 1992 political rallies.
It all depends on the state of the entrenched Iraqi forces, which is being deliberately hidden by Saddam's military commanders. They have allied brass guessing, with assessments that now range from an enemy on the "verge of collapse" - Army Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf's view - to a battered but still lethal force, as British military commanders believe.
While Saddam is not a military man himself, his forces may be acting out the words of Chinese philosopher Sun-tzu, who wrote in 490 BC: "All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive."
Are the Iraqis playing possum, or really damaged?
The brute force of a 34-day aerial pounding failed to bring about two things some allied commanders expected: The Iraqi troops did not surrender in significant numbers, nor did the army move out of its fortified positions for open desert warfare.
Schwarzkopf was convinced that, in the open, a combined land and air assault would quickly destroy Iraq's best troops, the Republican Guard. Instead, as Schwarzkopf predicted last month, Saddam's forces dug deeper behind three defensive lines.
The idea that air power alone could shake the troops into the open was "Air Force bean-counter optimism," said one Marine general.
In debating the potential difficulty of a ground attack, the allied military was also divided about weapons Iraq still possessed. In counting tanks destroyed by air attacks, Schwarzkopf was determined to avoid the self-deception that dominated the U.S. military in Vietnam.
"The turret has to be off or the tank has to be belly-up to be considered a confirmed kill," said Marine Brig. Gen. Richard Neal, the deputy for Desert Storm operations.
Under those rules, more than half of the Iraqi inventory of tanks, armored vehicles and their most lethal weapon, artillery, was destroyed and damaged - but intelligence estimates were substantially lower.
Even the more optimistic assessment left Iraq with more tanks - 2,000, against 1,700 for the allied invasion force - and more than double the 200,000 allied troops poised on the northern Saudi border. And the effectiveness of that Iraqi numerical superiority would almost double if they stayed in their fortified positions, according to U.S. military calculations.
And some American infantry generals doubted the degree of Iraqi demoralization. One of them brushed aside the dramatic surrender of more than 400 Iraqis during a single skirmish on Wednesday.
Instead, he pointed to an Iraqi artillery attack the same day that killed one American soldier and wounded seven others.
"That was indirect artillery fire," the general said. "It was pretty damn good." Since Jan. 17, eliminating the Iraqi artillery's ability to fire accurately beyond a gunner's sight has been a top priority of Desert Storm.
"They've got plenty of fight left in them," he said.
by CNB