No military analyst believes that the United States would lose a war with Iraq. But there are quite a few - both inside and outside the Pentagon - who say there is a real possibility for things to go wrong despite the overwhelming U.S. superiority in weapons, training and technology.
“No plan survives contact with an enemy, no matter how positive or optimistic you can be about a conflict,” says Andrew Krepinevich, executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a defense think tank in Washington, D.C.
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"There is a nearly 100% probability that actual combat will not neatly conform to any scenario developed before the war," says Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Many expert arguments over how to structure given (war) scenarios are largely irrelevant.”
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The worry goes all the way to the top. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld keeps a typewritten list of what he calls “very unpleasant” things that could go wrong, topped by concerns about chemical and biological weapons, house-to-house fighting in Baghdad and civil war in a post-Saddam Iraq.
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Saddam did not do that during the long buildup before the 1991 Gulf War, in part out of the belief that the U.S.-led attack could be forestalled by negotiations. He will not be under any such illusion this time, military experts say. Planners fear that once Saddam senses an attack is about to begin, he will start a scorched-earth campaign to destroy Iraq’s oil fields and bridges, actions that could force U.S. commanders to move sooner than planned.
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A good part of the unease about setbacks comes from some senior officers’ concerns that not enough troops are being deployed - some planners wanted as many as 400,000 - and that there is too much micromanaging by Rumsfeld, according to military personnel who insist on not being identified.
Rumsfeld has demanded a smaller force than some advisers advocate, and military officials have complained about his overriding their recommendations.
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… the Serbs shot down an F-117 stealth fighter and an F-16, used decoys and other tricks to hide targets from U.S. aircraft, and jammed U.S. military communications.
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The Iraqis hope to replicate the Serbs’ success: Senior U.S. Air Force officials say the Iraqis have met with the Serbs to learn how their air defenses fought U.S. warplanes.
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Here is a worrisome scenario outlined by several strategists, including some at the Pentagon:
The armor gets slowed crossing the Euphrates on the way to Baghdad. The Iraqis lob chemical shells into the gridlock, and they manage to jam the electronic communications systems in the Abrams tanks and the Bradley fighting vehicles - perhaps by broadcasting noise on all available frequencies.
Suddenly, the U.S. vehicles find themselves out of communication with each other and unsure of where their foes are.
The Iraqi attacks create confusion. With little fuel, the armor cannot move far. Soon, the tanks’ internal oxygen systems are exhausted, forcing crews to breathe outside air, which makes them vulnerable to Iraqi chemical weapons. Ground troops begin to withdraw, and the tanks must be abandoned.
There are other problems Pentagon planners worry the Iraqis or others could create:
Destroying crucial dams. Iraqis could blow up dams to flood areas around Baghdad, the northern city of Mosul, and the marshes around Basra in the south. This would slow a direct, quick punch against Baghdad and other cities.
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Destroying one dam on the Tigris River north of Mosul - the 35th largest dam in the world in terms of the water behind it - would unleash 9.5 billion gallons of water. That would flood northern roads U.S. forces need for an assault from Turkey. Rupturing two dams north of Baghdad would flood the city and the agricultural area around the capital.
Destroying other dams south and west of Baghdad would flood the marsh regions and Basra, complicating the assault from Kuwait.
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Setting oil wells on fire. The Iraqis set oil wells ablaze in Kuwait in 1991. Pentagon planners say they believe that Saddam is ready to do the same in Iraq, but this time he could also place chemical or biological agents in the oil fields. That would turn burning wells into chemical or biological weapons.
Interfering with communications and targeting devices. Iraqi forces can easily obtain jamming equipment that could block or confuse radar, radios and the Global Positioning System units allied forces would use to navigate and to target weapons. Military experts say the Iraqis have the technical capability to conduct the jamming, but they are unsure whether the Iraqi forces have the creativity to do it, as the Serbs did.
Besides jamming communications by filling the airwaves, Iraqis could confuse radar by adding spurious signals to a radar system’s returns.
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It would also be possible to infect military computers with computer viruses and worms, but experts again say the Iraqis might not know how to do the necessary hacking.
Iraq has also tried to develop an electromagnetic pulse weapon that could fry the computer and electronic networks in U.S. weapons, experts say.
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Using weapons of mass destruction.
Strategists presume Saddam does not have nuclear bombs, but they believe he does have chemical and biological weapons. “The use of either of those would slow an infantry advance and probably slow an armor advance,” says Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, a defense think tank in Arlington, Virginia.
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Adding to the problem: Saudi and Kuwaiti officials have hinted they would refuse to let contaminated personnel and vehicles back into their countries.
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The Turks have begun to move more troops to the Turkey-Iraq border to prevent Kurdish separatists in northern Iraq from infiltrating into Turkey during a war. That has angered Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq.
<snip> … would delay efforts to secure the northern oil wells, rout the local pockets of Saddam supporters and stamp out a small group of al-Qaeda supporters in the northeast.
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Urban warfare.
A street-by-street battle would slow U.S. troops and drive up casualties. That would create what one military analyst warned could become a “Mesopotamian Stalingrad” - referring to the World War II battle in which Soviet defenders fought heavily armed German invaders to a stalemate in the streets of Stalingrad and turned the course of the war. One factor working in the favor of U.S. troops is that Baghdad’s relatively low-rise buildings make it an open urban landscape.
{My comment: Badghdad is almost a 1,5 times bigger area than New York}
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Fighters in civilian clothing
Cordesman says Iraqis are building defensive structures to heavily fortify Baghdad and Tikrit, Saddam’s hometown, an indication that the Iraqi leader plans to make a stand in his cities.
The Pentagon says it believes reports that Iraqi forces have bought U.S. and British uniforms and plan to use them to confuse allied forces.
Even more worrisome, Cordesman says, there are signs that some elements of the elite Republican Guard are training to fight in civilian dress and that Iraq will deliberately use fighters in civilian clothes to make a stand in the streets of Baghdad and Tikrit.
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