The top US military officer acknowledged on Tuesday that the Pentagon's strategy to shock the Iraqi government quickly with a dramatic early air bombardment has not worked exactly as desired.
But General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that even if Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's government was still standing after six days of intense bombing, control was slipping away from the Iraqi leadership as US forces closed in on Baghdad.
"If I were in Baghdad and I was looking south and I saw a US Army division that is on the outskirts of Baghdad, I don't know that that would be shock, but I'd certainly be a little concerned," Myers told reporters.
PHOTO: AP
"And they'll have a lot more to be concerned about shortly," he said.
Three weeks ago, Myers said the military would inflict "such shock on the system that the Iraqi regime would have to assume early on the end was inevitable."
He made no predictions, but said the goal was a "short conflict" that would be "much, much, much different" than the 43-day Persian Gulf War in 1991.
Since last Thursday, US and British warplanes and warships have launched several thousand bombs and cruise missiles against Iraqi air defenses, communication centers, headquarters, Republican Guard troops and other military targets.
But as of Tuesday, Saddam's government was still passing orders to its field commanders and there were no immediate signs of the mass surrenders many US officials had hoped for. It was not until Tuesday that a US airstrike13 bombed Iraqi television off the air.
Even before the 1991 Persian Gulf War, proponents of air power have argued that wars could be won through the air by attacking enemy leaders, their communications and their power bases. The surprise missile strike last Wednesday against Saddam and top Iraqi leaders was a bold attempt to end the war with one swift blow.
But air power experts say the Pentagon's continuing air campaign had fallen short in delivering a quick knockout blow.
"The main thing we've learned from this is that `shock and awe' hasn't panned out," said Robert Pape, a professor at the University of Chicago and author of Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War," citing the military's catch-phrase for this air campaign.
"The targeting hasn't broken the back of the leadership and it hasn't made the majority of forces not fight," he said.
Pape said that over the past 17 years, this strategy has been tried six times and has been ineffective or backfired in each instance. He cited examples ranging from the 1986 strike against the Libyan leader, Muammar Qaddafi, to the 1999 air campaign aimed at toppling Serbia's then president Slobodan Milosevic.
Neither Myers nor any of his civilian bosses explicitly said that an air campaign alone would bring down Saddam and his entrenched regime.
But military officials in briefings and interviews raised expectations that a huge display of precision bombing coupled with a broad psychological operations campaign might quickly shatter the regime and its military's high command.
Obviously, that could still happen, military officials said. It might just take more time than expected. Indeed, airstrikes Tuesday night knocked Iraqi television off the air, at least temporarily.
Military planners had avoided striking the Iraqi broadcast center and some other government ministries for fear of civilian casualties and damage to civilian buildings, and out of a desire to save the installations for a postwar Iraq.
Looking back over the week, senior Pentagon officials acknowledged that punishing initial strikes fell short of their goal.
"Did they have the effect of tipping the balance?" said one official. "Maybe not. But they sure put them back on their heels."
The targets have included Saddam's palace guard, the headquarters of the Republican Guard, facilities for the Special Republican Guard, whose mission is to protect the government and organizations charged with internal security, like the Special Security Organization.
Special Operations Forces have also called in airstrikes against targets in western and northern Iraq, away from the main clashes in the south and central part of the country.
In the past two days, the air campaign has moved away from mainly pre-planned strikes against targets that support the government's power to attacks on Iraq's fielded forces, specifically the Republican Guard divisions that are Saddam's most loyal and well equipped military forces. More than half of the 1,500 attack missions flown over the past two days were against Iraqi troops.
This is part of General Tommy Franks' strategy to soften up the elite Iraq armored forces before launching a major ground attack against the dug-in and dispersed Iraqi troops.
Even during Tuesday's sandstorm, allied warplanes carried out several hundred attack missions against Republican Guard armored divisions using satellite-guided weapons -- developed since the last Gulf War -- that soar through bad weather.
In the first Gulf War, US ground commanders sought to destroy more than half the Iraqi armor before attacking with ground troops.
Myers suggested that the threshold this time could be lower.
"Their overall strength, their training and their morale is different than it was in '91," Myers said.
"And we're going to take advantage of that in ways that I just can't go into.
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