News Digests™ o.cT
Edited by Jennifer O Cilka
Officials to seek advice on ground war
WASHINGTON - The nation's top military
officials, heading for the war front, said Thurs
day they would seek battlefield advice on whether
the time is right to begin a ground attack
against Iraq’s powerful army.
Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said the ad
ministration is “not eager
to do something foolish
but there are a whole se
ries of considerations.”
Cheney and Gen. Colin
Powell, chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, were
to arrive in Saudi Arabia
on Friday for three days
of discussions with Gen.
Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of allied
forces, and other military leaders on the next
stage of the Persian Gulf war.
“Our hope is that we can wrap it up as soon
as possible, to minimize the loss of life on all
sides,” the defense secretary told the House
Armed Services Committee before he left.
“The war can end tomorrow, if Saddam Hussein
will get out of Kuwait.”
Cheney and Powell are to return Sunday to
brief President Bush, who will make the final
decision on a ground war.
As allied bombing and artillery attacks
continued, the Un:ted States held out the pros
pect of postwar reconstruction aid for Iraq,
particularly if Saddam Hussein is gone.
Secretary of Slate James A. Baker III said
the Middle East deserves “the same spirit of
multilateral commitment to reconstruction
and development” that the world’s developed
nations have shown in such areas as Europe and
Latin America.
However, Baker said, “There is no sugges
tion on our part that the rebuilding of Iraq could
proceed, if the current leadership of Iraq re
mained in power, to the same extent and degree
that it could otherwise.”
Testifying before the Senate Foreign Rela
tions Committee, the secretary said that if
Saddam remained in power, “we might very
well be adopting di fferen t measures” regard ing
economic embargoes and weapons controls
than if the Iraqi president were gone.
Raker said. “The time of reconstruction and
recovery should not be the occasion for venge
ful actions against a nation forced to war by a
dictator’s ambition. The secure and prosperous
future everyone hopes to see in the gulf must
include Iraq.”
Across the Capitol, Cheney and Powell
explained their fact-finding mission to Saudi
Arabia to the House Armed Services Commit
tee.
“Our mission ... is specifically to go spend
time with General Schwarzkopf, our commander,
and his staff, to review the overall course of the
war, to see what steps should come next and to
report back to the president,” Cheney said.
“Do not go forward with this escalation,”
implored Rep. Ron Dellums, D-Calif. “Every
single feeling I have in my body is frightening,
ominous and foreboding. That to go forward
with escalation may very well mean a cost in
human terms that stagger the imagination.”
Rep. Larry Hopkins, R-Ky., said “patience
has been a great reward for us up until now,”
and he urged Cheney “not to ask America’s
children to walk across the sand.”
In Saudi Arabia, the commander of British
forces in the gulf, Lt. Gen. Peter de la Billiere,
said, “I believe the land war is inevitable.” But
Marine Brig. Gen. Richard Neal, a U.S. com
mand spokesman, said, “I don’t think I would
attach the word ‘inevitable’ to it.”
In Paris, French President Francois Mitter
rand said a ground war “promises to take place
in coming days, in any case sometime this
month.”
3-LJ war
Battle plan fine-tuned in gulf
WASHINGTON - When and if the
land battle begins, it will be three
dimensional: close combat, deep
operations and rear-area security.
The three-dimensional approach
is central to the U.S. Army’s war
fighting doctrine, known as AirLand
Battle. Developed in the early 1980s
and even now being fine-tuned, the
doctrine has never been tested in a
major conflict.
But this is how it might work in the
Persian Gulf war, according to Penta
gon planners:
•An Army task force of infantry
men, combat engineers and tanks opens
a pre-dawn assault on Iraq’s fortified
defenses at the Saudi-Kuwaiti bor
der.
•An airborne division drops deep
behind the Iraqi front line, supported
by helicopter gunships and allied
ground attack planes whose fire is
guided by surveillance aircraft oper
ating miles back of the Saudi border.
•Far to the rear of the U.S. attack
ing forces, a tank battalion patrols for
signs that Iraqi air assault learns have
infiltrated to strike at allied supply
lines.
These scenes may not precisely fit
an actual U.S.-led ground offensive
against Iraq. But they do describe the
three elements that almost certainly
are key features of the American plan
for conducting a land battle.
Dick Cheney, the secretary of
defense, and Colin Powell, the chair
man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were
flying to Saudi Arabia on Thursday to
get a firsthand look at the war and a
readout for President Bush on when a
ground war might begin.
The Army carried out the Decem
ber 1989 invasion of Panama in ac
cordance with AirLand Battle, but
the opposition force was weak com
pared with the Iraqi military.
The features of AirLand Battle
that distinguish it from the war-fight
ing doctrines of other countries, in
cluding Iraq, are its emphasis on
engaging enemy forces deep behind
the front line and combining conven
tional and electronic warfare.
The doctrine also incorporates the
use of nuclear weapons on the as
sumption that the most likely U.S.
opponent would be the world’s other
major nuclear power, the Soviet Un
ion. President Bush has not publicly
ruled out using nuclear weapons against
Iraq, but the possibility is believed to
be extremely remote.
An Armed Forces Staff College
instructional booklet says AirLand
Battle is designed to keep U.S. forces
“in a state of combat readiness for any
war, anywhere, anytime, in any
manner.”
In the Persian Gulf war, it is the
U.S. military’s technological won
ders that make AirLand Battle seem
well-suited to the task of defeating
Iraq. These advantages — such as
laser-guided artillery and missile fire
and revolutionary airborne radar sys
tems — allow U.S. forces to deepen
the battlefield.
Vietnam-style body count banned;
armament ‘kills’ measure success
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - racing
an edict from their commander that
there will be no Vietnam-style “body
count” in a gulf ground war, U.S.
officers will use wrecked tanks, guns
and helicopters to measure the course
of battle against the Iraqis.
Some officers question privately
whether this impersonal approach, set
forth in a new statement of policy, is
appropriate. They believe the count
ing of enemy dead unavoidably will
become common practice by units
doing the actual fighting.
“It’s all very well to talk about
‘killing tanks’ and ‘killing APCs,’
but if you’re going to do that you
might as well try to figure out how
many people were also killed,” sa»d a
headquarters officer, speaking on
condition ol anonymity.
A recent query to the U.S. Central
Command seeking a definition of
“light, moderate and heavy” casual
ties elicited the response that this
method of reporting losses, used in
Vietnam, is no longer accepted by the
military.
U.S. officers said Thursday they
were still waiting for the Pentagon to
say how U.S. battle casualties would
be reported on a daily basis, by num
bers or by some far less precise method,
such as the effect ol personnel losses
on the unit involved.
In the only ground action so far lo
inflict U.S. casualties, the command
gave a precise figure of 11 Marines
killed, and went even further to say
seven were killed by “friendly fire.”
NelSfa^kan
Editor Eric Planner Professional Adviser Don Walton
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Soviet turmoil threat to peace I
WASHINGTON - Defense Secre
tary Dick Cheney said Thursday that
the inability of Kremlin leaders to
control events within Soviet borders
could pose a greater threat to world
peace than “any conscious policy of
seeking to expand their influence
through military means.”
The Pentagon chief also cast doubts
on the prospects for U.S.-Soviet arms
control treaties.
Cheney noted to the House Armed
Services Committee that problems
remain with the strategic arms reduc
tion treaty, still under negotiation,
and the conventional forces treaty
signed last November, but not yet
submitted for Senate ratification.'
Talks between U.S. and Soviet
officials on cutting arsenals of strate- budget, calling for steep reductions in
gic nuclear missiles, bombers and troop strength and acquisitions of
submarines resume this week in aircraft, ships and other weapons in
Geneva following an unsuccessful response to a diminishing Soviet threat
effort to conclude the pact in Wash- to the West,
ington. The budget is a response to the
The prospective treaty was to be collapse of the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet
the centerpiece for a U.S.-Soviet Union’s continuing withdrawal from
summit in Moscow next week. The Eastern Europe and its lessening in
two superpowers postponed the meet- flucncc there, Cheney said,
ing, officially citing needs to focus “That means that the greatest threat
instead on the war in the Persian Gulf, to the neighbors of the Soviet Union
But unstated reasons for the delay in the future may well come more
were the snags in the arms talks and from the Soviet inability to control
U.S. displeasure over the Soviet Un- events inside the Soviet Ujiion than it
ion s deadly crackdown on demon- will from any conscious policy of
strators n the Baltic republics. seeking to expand their influence by
Cheney unveiled for members of military means,” the Pentagon chief
Congress his fiscal 1992 defense said.