Allies Risk 3000 Casualties in Baghdad: Ex-General
Mon March 24, 2003 10:17 PM ET
LONDON - The U.S.-led force in Iraq risks as many as 3,000 casualties in the battle for Baghdad and Washington has underestimated the number of troops needed, a top former commander from the 1991 Gulf War said on Monday.
Retired U.S. Army General Barry McCaffrey, commander of the 24th Infantry Division 12 years ago, said the U.S.-led force faced "a very dicey two to three day battle" as it pushes north toward the Iraqi capital.
"We ought to be able to do it (take Baghdad)," he told the Newsnight Program on Britain's BBC Television late on Monday. "In the process if they (the Iraqis) actually fight, and that's one of the assumptions, clearly it's going to be brutal, dangerous work and we could take, bluntly, a couple to 3,000 casualties," said McCaffrey who became one of the most senior ranking members of the U.S. military following the 1991 war.
"So if they (the Americans and British) are unwilling to face up to that, we may have a difficult time of it taking down Baghdad and Tikrit up to the north west."
McCaffrey said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had misjudged the nature of the conflict. Asked if Rumsfeld made a mistake by not sending more troops to start the offensive, McCaffrey replied: "Yes, sure. I think everybody told him that."
"I think he thought these were U.S. generals with their feet planted in World War II that didn't understand the new way of warfare," he added.
U.S. forces have advanced more than 200 miles into Iraqi territory since the start of the war and are beginning to confront an elite division of the Republican Guards deployed to defend the capital.
"So it ought to be a very dicey two to three day battle out there." McCaffrey said of the confrontation with the Republican Guards. He said his personal view was that the invading troops would "take them (the Iraqis) apart." "But we've never done something like this with this modest a force at such a distance from its bases," he warned.
McCaffrey, a former Commander in Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces in Latin America, served overseas for 13 years and took part in four combat tours. He twice received the Distinguished Service Cross, the second highest medal for valor in the United States.
(Reuters)
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Rumsfeld's strategy under fire as war risks become increasingly apparent
By JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY
WASHINGTON - Five days into the war, the optimistic assumptions of the Pentagon's civilian war planners have yet to be realized, the risks of the campaign are becoming increasingly apparent and some current and retired military officials are warning that there may be a mismatch between Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld's strategy and the force he's sent to carry it out.
The outcome of the war isn't in doubt: Iraq's forces are no match for America and its allies. But, so far, defeating them is proving to be harder, and it could prove to be longer and costlier in American and Iraqi lives than the architects of the American war plan expected. And if weather, Iraqi resistance, chemical weapons or anything else turned things suddenly and unexpectedly sour, the backup force, the Army's 4th Infantry Division, is still in Texas with its equipment sailing around the Arabian peninsula.
Despite the aerial pounding they've taken, it's not clear that Saddam Hussein, his lieutenants or their praetorian guard are either shocked or awed. Instead of capitulating, some regular Iraqi army units are harassing American supply lines. Contrary to American hopes - and some officials' expectations - no top commander of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard has capitulated. Even some ordinary Iraqis are greeting advancing American and British forces as invaders, not as liberators.
"This is the ground war that was not going to happen in (Rumsfeld's) plan," said a Pentagon official. Because the Pentagon didn't commit overwhelming force, "now we have three divisions strung out over 300-plus miles and the follow-on division, our reserve, is probably three weeks away from landing."
Asked Monday about concerns that the coalition force isn't big enough, Defense Department spokesperson Victoria Clarke replied: "... most people with real information are saying we have the right mix of forces. We also have a plan that allows it to adapt and to scale up and down as needed."
Knowledgeable defense and administration officials say Rumsfeld and his civilian aides at first wanted to commit no more than 60,000 American troops to the war on the assumption that the Iraqis would capitulate in two days. Intelligence officials say Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz and other Pentagon civilians ignored much of the advice of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency in favor of reports from the Iraqi opposition and from Israeli sources that predicted an immediate uprising against Saddam once the Americans attacked.
The officials said Rumsfeld also made his disdain for the Army's heavy divisions very clear when he argued about the war plan with Army Gen. Tommy Franks, the allied commander. Franks wanted more and more heavily armed forces, said one senior administration official; Rumsfeld kept pressing for smaller, lighter and more agile ones, with much bigger roles for air power and special forces.
"Our force package is very light," said a retired senior general. "If things don't happen exactly as you assumed, you get into a tangle, a mismatch of your strategy and your force. Things like the pockets (of Iraqi resistance) in Basra, Umm Qasr and Nasariyah need to be dealt with forcefully, but we don't have the forces to do it."
"The Secretary of Defense cut off the flow of Army units, saying this thing would be over in two days," said a retired senior general who has followed the evolution of the war plan. "He shut down movement of the 1st Cavalry Division and the1st Armored Division. Now we don't even have a nominal ground force."
He added ruefully: "As in Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan, we are using concepts and methods that are entirely unproved. If your strategy and assumptions are flawed, there is nothing in the well to draw from."
In addition, said senior administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, Rumsfeld and his civilian aides rewrote parts of the military services' plans for shipping U.S. forces to the Persian Gulf, which they said resulted in a number of mistakes and delays, and also changed plans for calling up some reserve and National Guard units.
"There was nothing too small for them to meddle with," said one senior official. "It's caused no end of problems, but I think we've managed to overcome them all."
Robin Dorff, the director of national security strategy at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., said three things have gone wrong in the campaign:
_A "mismatch between expectations and reality."
_The threat posed by irregular troops, especially the 60,000 strong Saddam Fedayeen, who are harassing the 300-mile-long supply lines crucial to fueling and resupplying the armor units barreling toward Baghdad.
_The Turks threatening to move more troops into northern Iraq, which could trigger fighting between Turks and Kurds over Iraq's rich northern oilfields.
Dorff and others said that the nightmare scenario is that allied forces might punch through to the Iraqi capital and then get bogged down in house-to-house fighting in a crowded city.
"If these guys fight and fight hard for Baghdad, with embedded Baathists stiffening their resistance at the point of a gun, then we are up the creek," said one retired general.
Dr. John Collins, a retired Army colonel and former chief researcher for the Library of Congress, said the worst scenario would be sending American troops to fight for Baghdad. He said every military commander since Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese strategist, has hated urban warfare.
"Military casualties normally soar on both sides; innocent civilians lose lives and suffer severe privation; reconstruction costs skyrocket," Collins said, adding that fighting for the capital would cancel out the allied advantages in air and armor and reduce it to an Infantry battle house to house, street by street.
Another retired senior officer said the Apache Longbow helicopter gunships that were shot up badly Sunday had been sent on a deep strike against Republican Guard divisions guarding the approaches to Baghdad. He and others said the Apaches shouldn't have been used that way.
"They should have been preceded by suppression of enemy air defenses," the general said. "There should be a barrage of long-range artillery and MLRS (Multiple-Launch Rocket System) rockets before you send the Apaches in."
Reports from the field said virtually every one of the estimated 30 to 40 Apache Longbows came back shot full of holes, as the Iraqis fired everything they had at them. One did not come back, and its two-man crew apparently was taken prisoner.
"Every division should have two brigades of MLRS launches for a campaign like this," the general said. "They do not, and the question in the end will be why they don't."
He said the Air Force was bombing day and night, but its strikes have so far failed to produce the anticipated capitulation and uprising by the Iraqi people. One senior administration official put it this way: "'Shock and Awe' is Air Force bull---!"
Dorff said: "Expectations were raised for something that might be quick and relatively painless. What we're seeing in the first few days probably ought to dispel that. Part of the problem is that expectations were raised that we would march in and everybody would surrender - sort of the four-day scenario of 1991."
Instead of streams of surrendering Iraqi soldiers, the American and British forces report that they are holding around 2,000 enemy prisoners.
(Knight Ridder Newspapers)
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The Goal Is Baghdad, but at What Cost?
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
CAMP DOHA, Kuwait, March 24 — The way to Baghdad is through the Republican Guard. The United States Army and the Marine Corps are now moving up supplies and getting their forces into place to take the fight to Saddam Hussein's most loyal units. According to the allied war plan, by the time the onslaught begins in earnest, the Iraqi troops will have been thoroughly pummeled from the air.
There is little doubt that the United States military has the skills, training and weapons to take the capital and dislodge the Hussein government. The questions are how long it will take, and what the cost will be in terms of casualties, both allied and Iraqi.
The Iraqis are trying to counter the allied strategy by carrying out guerrilla-style raids to disrupt the movement of troops and supplies and divert allied attention to threats in the rear. The advance on the Iraqi capital may also bring allied forces closer to the threat of chemical weapons, according to American officials. They are concerned that the Iraqis have drawn a red line around the approaches to the capital and that crossing it could prompt Mr. Hussein's forces to fire artillery and missiles tipped with chemical or germ warheads.
Baghdad is what the United States military calls the center of gravity. It is the stronghold from which Mr. Hussein controls his forces, a bulls-eye for the American air war commanders and the final objective for American ground forces that have drawn up plans to fight their way to the gates of the capital, then conduct thrusts at power centers inside the city.
From the start, the campaign to take Baghdad was envisioned as a multifaceted effort.
It began with a cruise missile attack that was intended to kill Mr. Hussein. Government command centers and bunkers have been blasted with bombs and cruise missiles, attacks that can be expected to continue periodically.
For all the talk about waging a punishing air campaign, the United States has been holding back some punch. The Pentagon removed hundreds of strikes from its attack plan in an effort to limit civilian casualties and damage to civilian structures.
The calculation is that this approach will make it easier for American officials to receive public support and rebuild Iraq after Mr. Hussein is toppled. In contrast to the Persian Gulf war in 1991, Iraqi television is still on the air. Should American air power destroy Mr. Hussein's government — a prospect that seems increasingly unlikely — American ground forces would be rushed to Baghdad to fill the power vacuum.
Otherwise, the role of air power is to weaken the government's command and control and knock out Iraqi air defenses, then provide United States ground commanders with air cover if American ground forces have to venture into the still-defended capital.
Airstrikes will also be directed against Republican Guard forces protecting the approaches to the city, including their command and control, artillery and tanks. The goal is to weaken the units and freeze the Republican Guard in place so they cannot drop back and prepare for urban warfare.
The land attack on Baghdad is still in its initial phases. The first step took place Sunday night when the 11th Attack Helicopter Regiment began to strike a brigade of the Medina. To set the stage for the assault, the United States military hammered Iraqi radar and tried to suppress surface-to-air missiles. But the Iraqis had a low-tech solution: they deployed a large number of irregular fighters who were equipped with machine guns and small arms.
As the helicopters took off, they flew low off the ground to make themselves less inviting targets for surface-to-air missiles. But that made them vulnerable to the small-arms fire. Thirty of 32 Apache helicopters were struck by small-arms fire.One helicopter went down, and its two-man crew was captured. The Army was so concerned that the Iraqis would get their hands on the technology that they fired two Atacms missiles today to destroy the helicopter. Because of bad weather after the action, the military had no report on whether they succeeded.
The Apaches destroyed only 10 to 15 Iraqi armored vehicles. American military commanders say they are rethinking their helicopter tactics as a result of the events of the past 24 hours.
The weather has also become at least a temporary ally of the Iraqis. American military officials are forecasting several days of cloudy weather with 10,000-foot ceilings and 30-knot winds that will create sandstorms. The bad weather will preclude helicopter attacks and make it more difficult for allied warplanes to attack the three Republican Guard divisions around Baghdad.
But the bad weather will not last forever, and American forces are using the time to get their forces into position and move up large amounts of fuel and supplies.
The marines, for example, are laying a long fuel pipeline in Iraqi territory. American forces are also trying to improve the security of their convoys by deploying more armed escorts on the ground and by helicopter in response to a wave of attacks by Iraqi fedayeen and other irregular forces.
During the stretch of bad weather, the Army hopes to keep the pressure on by firing Atacms surface-to-surface missiles. The weather will make it difficult for allied pilots to hit mobile targets, but the air war commanders could try to keep the heat on by dropping gravity bombs or cluster bombs.
When the moment comes to battle the Republican Guards full tilt, it will be through a combined arms attack involving artillery, close air support and tanks. Army and Marine forces will be involved.
After reaching the outskirts of the capital, American commanders envision a deliberate fight and say they are determined not to rush into the city.Rather, their plan calls for patient reconnaissance to try to pinpoint the location of Mr. Hussein, his top deputies and the main defenders of his rule, including internal security organizations and elements of the Special Republican Guard. They are hoping that residents will provide the necessary intelligence.
The goal is to avoid house-to-house fighting that could result in large American and civilian casualties. Instead, allied commanders envision thrusts at crucial power centers. Army combat engineers might be at the front of a formation to destroy barricades and other obstacles. Tanks could follow, protected by light infantry to guard against attacks, rocket-propelled grenades and antitank weapons. The formations would also be protected by air power, including spotters that would call in airstrikes and Apache helicopters, which could fire Hellfire missiles.
"If there is to be a fight in and around Baghdad, we're going to have to be very patient to establish the right conditions for us to engage in that fight," Gen. William S. Wallace, the commander of the V Corps, said in a recent interview. "I think that means forming joint combined arms teams that include Air Force, Army aviation, light infantry, armored forces, engineer forces that together can go after a specific target, for a specific purpose."
(The New York Times, 25.3.03)