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.
The war is eminently winnable. But analysts
warn of a variety of potential problems, from chemical or
biological warfare to a situation in which
high-tech U.S. tanks bog down in the marshes around Baghdad.
The problems aren't highlighted in the
war scenarios leaked from the Pentagon, but strategists have worked
them over nonetheless.
"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."
The concern about possible setbacks to a
U.S.-led military strike comes as the United States and Britain
assemble a force of about 270,000 for an
invasion that looks likely to begin by late March or early April.
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.
"There are any number of things that can go wrong,"
Rumsfeld told PBS's The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.
"There are also a number of things that can go
right, and what one has to do is to look at them all with a cold eye."
Rumsfeld said he has shared the list with
"everyone who works with me," including President Bush and the
National Security Council.
Some steps already have been taken to respond
to setbacks, such as creating an air evacuation plan to
Germany for troops who might be exposed
to chemical or biological weapons in case nearby Persian Gulf
nations refuse to accept them.
One of the unknowns facing military strategists
is what Saddam will do when he reaches the "cross-over point,"
the moment he realizes that United Nations
weapons inspections are about to end and that an invasion is imminent.
At that point, it will be enormously tempting
for him to strike first, when opposing forces are massing and are
most vulnerable.
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.
"When he does start blowing up infrastructure,
we've got to move right away," says Benjamin Works,
executive director of the Strategic Issues
Research Institute, a defense think tank in Arlington, Va.
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.
There are also concerns that the U.S. military,
whose technology and training make it the most dominant
armed force on the planet, could become
overconfident. The last time the U.S. military went up against a
nation considered a pushover was in 1999,
when U.S. forces intervened to try to stop Serbs from killing
ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, Yugoslavia.
Though they were badly outgunned and vulnerable to U.S. air
power, 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.
Shooting down the sophisticated F-117 was
a point of Serb pride and a U.S. embarrassment. A popular
postcard Serbs circulated afterward showed
the burning stealth fighter with the derisive caption: "Sorry, we
didn't know it was invisible." The U.S.
military wrote off the downing of the F-117 as a lucky shot, but the
incident underscored the danger of being
overconfident because of a superior, high-tech force.
Lessons from Serbs
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.
One of the concerns about a war with Iraq
comes from U.S. planners' new tactic of having troops and
armor advance as fast as possible with
little regard to supply and reinforcement lines. That is designed to
take advantage of developments in armor
and communications that will permit the United States to attack
Iraqi forces from many directions with
little warning. The down side is that tanks and other armor could
move so fast they would wind up stuck on
the banks of the Euphrates River and in the marshes around
Baghdad, waiting for engineers to construct
sturdy roads and replace bridges destroyed by the Iraqis.
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. It would also complicate postwar recovery efforts by wiping
out
areas needed to grow
food.
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.
To cope with this tactic, extra Marine amphibious
units are being deployed in the region. Their equipment
and training permit them to carry the fight
to the enemy regardless of water barriers.
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. That could
lead the radar to conclude there are more, or fewer, targets in an area.
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, expertssay.
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.
The Pentagon says no matter how well troops
have been trained in the use of protective suits, there would
inevitably be gruesome deaths if Saddam
used chemical weapons. Depending on how many died and how
many times it happened, that could be a
huge psychological setback for soldiers and for Americans back home.
Adding to the problem: Saudi and Kuwaiti
officials have hinted they would refuse to let contaminated
personnel and vehicles back into their
countries.
Fighting between the
Turks and the Kurds in northern Iraq. Turkish troops have waged a
15-year struggle in
and near northern Iraq to contain Kurdish separatists, some of whom want
to
create an independent
Kurdish nation that would include parts of Turkey and Iraq. 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.
U.S. forces are waiting for permission to
launch attacks from Turkey. Even if they don't get a green light
from that country, they will go into northern
Iraq, most likely by airlift. In either case, fighting between Turks
and Kurds would complicate the U.S. drive
to Baghdad and the reinforcement and resupply of troops by
requiring the U.S. soldiers to try to keep
the two sides apart. It would also give regional Saddam loyalists the
chance to harass distracted U.S. forces.
That 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.
Launching Scud missiles
against Israel, possibly with chemical or biological warheads.
Israeli retaliation
could recast the war as the Arabs against Israel. If Iraq cannot launch
Scuds, it may
try to provoke Israel
by infiltrating terrorist bombers with chemical or biological weapons.
Among other things, an Israeli entry into
the fighting would most likely close off Jordan and Saudi Arabia as
areas from which U.S. forces could operate.
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. That makes
it
easier for allied forces
to use helicopters to protect ground troops and flush out Iraqi defenders.
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.
At a time when allied forces will want to
be especially careful to avoid killing civilians so as not to alienate
opinion in Arab states and around the world,
that could prove a huge headache. "The U.S. and British may
find it impossible to distinguish combatants
from civilians," Cordesman says.