Pre-war warnings

by Matthew Engel in Washington

Senior American military leaders are believed to have
turned sharply against any idea of invading Iraq to
overthrow Saddam Hussein, and have started to gain the
upper hand in persuading the White House that such a
mission should be postponed, preferably indefinitely.

The joint chiefs of staff have assured the White House
their forces could successfully invade Iraq - or
anywhere else - if instructed. But they have warned
that such an invasion would be extremely fraught,
given the resources depleted by the war in
Afghanistan.

One of the factors most alarming the generals is the
possibility that their troops could be drawn into
street fighting in Baghdad, without support from the
local population, leading to heavy US casualties. This
ties in with long-standing fears that Saddam might use
such a moment to unleash biological or chemical
weapons.

Their instinctive caution has been strengthened by
Operation Prominent Hammer, a highly secret war game
recently played by senior officials, details of which
have begun to leak out. It revealed that shortages of
equipment could seriously hamper the operation and
endanger the lives of Americans and Iraqi civilians.

The air force is the most alarmed of the services,
according to analysts, because they are short of
planes, trained pilots and munitions. A third of their
refueling planes are reported to be under repair.

But there are also concerns about the ability of
special forces, currently being used in the
Philippines and Yemen as well as Afghanistan, to
operate successfully in Iraq at the same time,
especially bearing in mind the intelligence services'
need to concentrate on homeland security.

It is understood that the country's senior generals -
the heads of the army, navy, air forces and marines -
agreed with the chairman of the joint chiefs, Richard
Myers, and his deputy, Peter Pace, in their
assessment.

General Tommy Franks who, as head of the army's
central command, would be in charge of any invasion of
Iraq, has told the president that an invasion to
overthrow Saddam would require at least 200,000
troops, a number that would seriously stretch even the
American military, given the near impossibility of
mounting an international coalition.

At a Pentagon briefing yesterday, General Pace sounded
what was, by military standards, an uncertain trumpet.

Turning to his boss, the defense secretary Donald
Rumsfeld, he assured him: "Your military is ready
today to execute whatever mission the civilian
leadership of this country gives us to do." But he
added: "The fact of the matter is, the more time you
have to prepare for that kind of mission, whatever it
is, the more elegant the solution could be."

The head of the air force, General John Jumper, was
blunter. "We never sized ourselves to have to do high
force-protection levels at home and overseas at the
same time. We're stretched very thin in security
forces," he was quoted as saying by the New York
Times.

The military assessment backs up the messages pouring
into the White House from elsewhere. The dangerous
situation involving India and Pakistan, as well as
Israel and Palestine, unnerves diplomats. World
opinion ranges from the wary - in Britain - to the
vehemently opposed.

Even Turkey, regarded by the Iraq-hawks in Washington
as a crucial and loyal ally on this issue, is said by
government sources there to be "very nervous indeed"
about the idea, mainly because of fears of the
political instability that would result. Officials are
also getting bleak assessments about the quality of
the Iraqi opposition to Saddam Hussein, and about the
likely reaction of the Iraqi people should the
Americans invade.

"The Iraqi people hate Saddam," said Judith Kipper,
the Iraq expert at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, "but they blame the US for
their problems. Nobody likes foreign troops marching
through their country, especially the Iraqis."

The cost of American military ambitions is mounting.
And, with the mid-term elections only five months
away, analysts believe an invasion is impossible
before 2003, and that the White House is already
starting to look for a way of reconciling its declared
policy of "regime change" in Iraq with the need to
back away from what looks increasingly like an
untenable position.

Some military sources believe that, even though
special forces are now thinly stretched, the US will
switch to covert operations to try to loosen Saddam's
grip on power.

This ties in with what President Bush said after his
meeting with the German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder,
in Berlin on Thursday: "I told the chancellor that I
have no war plans on my desk, which is the truth, and
that we've got to use all means at our disposal to
deal with Saddam Hussein." The president added that
there would be full consultation with allies and that
any action would be handled in a "respectful" way.

It remains possible that the US will feel its hand
being forced if the Iraqis, sensing American weakness,
emerge from their recent quiescence. The Pentagon says
Saddam's air defense forces have attacked American and
British planes three times in the last three weeks, as
they patrolled the southern no-fly zone.

General Pace played this down yesterday: "It's
consistent with what's been going on for the past
several years," he said.

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002