The combat air patrol (CAP) over southern Iraq will be flown mostly by U.S. Air Force F-15s based in Saudi Arabia and guided by AWACS command planes. Backing them up will be navy planes from the carrier Independence, 10 French Mirages and six British Tornadoes. Other details of the 688 Strategy:
If the 100,000 or more Iraqi soldiers in the south continue to attack the Shiites the Pentagon has plans for escalation. U.S warplanes, including the A-10 Warthog, would strike at Iraqi tanks and artillery. Radar-busting planes would clear the way for F-15s to bomb targets in Baghdad.
F-117A stealth fighter-bombers remain at Riyadh, the Saudi Arabian capital, for possible use against Iraq. Heavy B-52 bombers based in the United States could also be called up. The navy has retargeted some of its Tomahawk cruise missiles to hit weapons facilities in Iraq.
A long list of targets has been drawn up in case the “no fly” operation escalates into a wider air war. Pentagon and intelligence sources say the list includes, as it did in Desert Storm last year, command bunkers where the air force would hope, this time, to catch Saddam.
With little internal disagreement, the administration has been planning for months to take military action against Saddam if he continues to violate U.N. resolutions governing the cease-fire in the Persian Gulf. But Washington is extremely skittish about getting into a wider air war or, worse yet, a ground conflict. NEWSWEEK learned that the administration secretly authorized airstrikes to begin last week if Saddam refused to allow U.N. arms inspectors into the Ministry of Military Industrialization in Baghdad. The plan leaked to The New York Times, which claimed that the administration wanted to “provoke a confrontation with Iraq” in order to give Bush a political “boost” during the Republican convention. Bush angrily denied the charge. (In a NEWSWEEK Poll, 43 percent of the people surveyed said Bush was acting for “his own political purposes”; 49 percent thought he wanted to protect the Shiites or put new pressure on Saddam.) The U.N. inspectors were responsible for the timing. Angered by the leak, they decided not to visit the ministry building and left Iraq.
Reasons to attack Saddam weren’t hard to find. U.N. inspectors were stonewalled for months. Iraqi forces attacked Kurdish dissidents in their enclave north of the 36th parallel, where security is guaranteed by the allies, and stepped up their air raids in the south. Meanwhile, Saddam’s domestic political position deteriorated to the point where another military setback arguably might lead to his downfall. Economic sanctions began to bite hard; under U.S. pressure, Jordan sharply cut smuggling into Iraq. Saddam made things worse by executing 42 merchants accused of profiteering. Other merchants saw no reason to take chances; supplies shrank and prices rose. “The situation has gone from desperation to total despair,” says an Iraqi trader.
Baghdad said it would resist the no-fly operation with “all means.” But Iraq’s air defenses are no match for the Americans and their allies. “Saddam has no alternative but to withdraw his aircraft from the south,” says a Western diplomat based in Baghdad. He warns, however, that allied air intervention “will not force Saddam’s ground troops to withdraw from the Shiite heartland.”
In March 1991, after Bush called on the Iraqi people to rise up against Saddam, allied forces stood by as the dictator’s troops slaughtered the Shiite rebels. The administration thought only a palace coup could get rid of Saddam. Since then, Washington has greatly expanded its contacts with the Shiites and other opposition groups. Interdiction in the south could effectively carve Iraq into three zones, with Saddam sandwiched between the Kurds and the Shiites. But some of Bush’s best friends in the region don’t want to attack Saddam again or dismember Iraq, which has been the gulf’s principal bulwark against Iran. Both Egypt and Turkey have opposed new military action against Iraq. Some Arabs worry that another military campaign against Saddam will make him a hero just when he needs a boost even more than Bush does.
