[Nasional-e] Going Door to Door

[Ambon]

http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020916/wurban2.html

MURAD SEZER/AP
STANDING BY: The U.S.S. Normandy, which is helping to monitor the skies over
southern Iraq, plies the Persian Gulf

Going Door to Door

Saddam Hussein hopes to engage Americans in street fighting in Baghdad, a
scenario the U.S. wants to avoid


By Mark Thompson | Washington


Posted Sunday, Sept. 8, 2002; 6:31 p.m. EST

Corporal Abraham Hernandez remembers his death as "humbling." It happened
during a Pentagon war game last month at an abandoned Air Force base in the
California high desert. Hernandez was hit while he and his Marine platoon
were trying to secure a landing zone for a helicopter that was bringing in
troops to help take the "city." The enemy, masked by surrounding buildings
and sandbag bunkers, fired on the group. The laser-activated beeper on
Hernandez's belt went off, signaling that he had been killed in action; 22
of his 27 fellow platoon members suffered the same fate. All in all, it was
a rough day for the Marines. "It was very difficult to find a place to
hide," says Hernandez. "If this had been real life, this would have been as
far as I'd have gotten."
The mock battle, conducted amid 1,000 buildings in the biggest urban-war
exercise the U.S. has ever held, confirmed what the Pentagon already knew:
America may have the world's most fearsome military, but it is ill equipped
to wage war in cities. The nation's recent triumphs—in Afghanistan, Kosovo,
the Persian Gulf—were mostly air wars, carried out by American pilots far
above the tangle of gritty city streets. On the ground, the Americans face
enemies with the home-field advantage and lose their edge in
state-of-the-art weaponry. In last month's exercises, for example, the
Marines were unpleasantly surprised to learn that their high-tech,
heat-seeking sights don't work through glass, meaning they can't peer
through windows and into rooms where the enemy lurks. "There is no
technological magic wand you can wave over these problems to make them go
away," says Marine Major Dan Sullivan, who is leading the corps's efforts to
improve its ability to conduct urban warfare.
That's why if the U.S. takes on Iraq, America's military planners will do
whatever they can to avoid fighting in the streets. In their most optimistic
scenarios, the war will begin once again in the skies, with satellite-guided
bombs that are far "smarter" and more plentiful than the laser-guided bombs
used in 1991 during the first war with Iraq. Washington would initially try
to take out air-defense and command-and-control sites. Next to go would be
Saddam's palaces and other symbols of his power, such as television studios
and transmitting towers used to fill Iraqi airwaves with his words and
image. Other early targets would include the mobile missile launchers in
western Iraq capable of lobbing Scud missiles—perhaps laden with biological
or chemical weapons—toward Israel. During the previous war, the U.S. failed
to knock out a single Scud launcher. This time, with improvements in
satellites, drones and intelligence, it should fare better.
After the aerial pounding, the U.S. (with whatever allies it could muster)
would shift to a ground war, probably launched from Kuwait and other gulf
states from the south and from Turkey, as well as three bases in the
U.S.-friendly Kurdish part of Iraq from the north. This phase would probably
begin with U.S. forces' seizing the cities of Basra in the south and Mosul
in the north. President Bush has not decided what size force should invade
Iraq. The military prefers to send in about 250,000 troops, but some
Administration officials think only about 80,000 would be needed.
The U.S. has plans for what not to attack: Washington wants to leave enough
of the key military-communications network intact so that the Iraqi military
wouldn't lose contact with the capital and follow its standing orders under
such circumstances to launch biological and chemical weapons. The U.S. also
would spare, as far as possible, the 300,000-strong regular Iraqi army in
the hope that it would end up siding with American forces and forming the
foundation for a post-Saddam military. Once U.S. forces captured major
cities in northern and southern Iraq, ground troops would advance to Baghdad
for the expected end-game. And there, if Washington's war planners had their
way, Saddam's regime would collapse, and victory would come swiftly. If
Saddam fled to, say, his hometown of Tikrit, 100 miles north, his army might
well give up the fight. The optimists' final scenario: allied caravans
rolling through Baghdad, greeted by thousands of liberated, cheering Iraqis
(an updated version of Paris' liberation after D-day).
But warriors do not always get to choose their battles. And while the U.S.
has managed to avoid a protracted urban skirmish during the past decade,
Saddam wants to provoke just such a fight. If the Bush Administration's goal
is Saddam's ouster—and if Iraq's soldiers dig in for the battle—the U.S. may
be unable to avoid an armed clash in Baghdad.

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This is American planners' worst fear. City combat blunts the U.S. military
advantages of speed and knowledge. What the Pentagon calls "urban canyons"
offers hideouts for foes and civilians as well as sniper nests and
underground lairs from which combatants can strike. Buildings create vast
"dead spaces" for an enemy to exploit out of the sight of those trying to
kill Saddam. They hinder communication and hamper anything flying low, like
helicopters, spy drones and warplanes assisting forces on the ground. In
cities, mobility and maneuver—two tenets of U.S. ground-combat strategy—hit
a dead end.
Commanders in urban environments can't survey the entire battlefield and
instead see only bits and pieces; it's like playing chess while viewing only
four squares on the board. This battlefield compression means that
low-ranking corporals and sergeants—not colonels and captains—must often
make life-and-death decisions. These choices come fast and furious when
you're fighting downtown: 90% of the targets are less than 50 yards away and
seen for only seconds. Killing innocent civilians—or your own men—is a risk
that goes with the terrain. A quarter of all explosive rounds turn into duds
when they glance off walls and roofs. Helicopters can get tangled in
overhead wires and crash. And America's most promising gizmos—robots that
can crawl from building to building, miniature drones that can spy around
corners, acoustic sensors capable of taking out snipers—are still unproven.
The hottest "new" technology at last month's war game: John Deere two-seat
Gator tractors, which can zip through narrow passageways bringing ammo and
supplies to the front and returning with casualties.
Undeterred, Pentagon planners are poring over maps and plotting potential
invasion routes along Baghdad's streets and even through its sewers. The
sprawling capital is marked by broad boulevards, labyrinthine alleys and 5
million people. Missile batteries surround the city, along with most of the
15,000-man élite Special Republican Guard. "If they come, we are ready,"
Saddam told a British newspaper last month, reportedly from a bunker beneath
Baghdad. "We will fight them on the streets, from the rooftops, from house
to house."
Saddam's rhetoric is probably overblown. Iraqi soldiers may well surrender
as readily as they did in 1991 after 38 days of heavy bombing. But the Iraqi
leader, intelligence officials believe, is shrewdly calculating that the
U.S. military brass—and the American public—cannot stomach the prospect of
sizable losses in such an exchange. Think back to the debacle in Mogadishu,
Somalia, in 1993 (chronicled in the movie Black Hawk Down), when 18 U.S.
troops were killed, prompting a quick American withdrawal from that African
nation. In Iraq there is the added risk that Saddam will use biological or
chemical weapons against American troops. U.S. military leaders say 30% of
street-fighting combatants tend to end up as casualties. The Pentagon wants
to drive that figure down to 10%.
Any invasion of Baghdad would most likely start under cover of darkness.
U.S. troops, brought in by helicopters, would seek a secure foothold from
which to expand their presence in the city. The biggest advantage U.S.
troops would have in downtown Baghdad would be their night-vision devices,
giving them a greenish but clear-eyed view of a nighttime world. Once inside
Baghdad, the Americans would start clearing buildings one by one, from the
top floor down. They would probably use the technique that Israeli forces
employed during fighting earlier this year in the West Bank's Balata refugee
camp. Once inside a building, Israeli forces moved to the next one by
cutting holes in the adjoining walls. That kept the Israeli troops largely
inside and safe from Palestinian sniper fire. The U.S. has a wide range of
wall-breaching weapons, ranging from M-1 tanks to exploding tape to
crowbars. Traveling through walls, though time-consuming, also helps troops
elude the booby traps that are often rigged to doors and windows.
There is also an entirely different tactic the U.S. could adopt in taking on
Baghdad. Robert Scales, a retired major general who used to run the U.S.
Army War College, says the Americans should avoid door-to-door battles and
instead cordon off the capital with a loose chain of tanks and armored
vehicles. This porous ring would allow civilians to flee the city center,
where Saddam's soldiers—and perhaps the Iraqi leader himself—would be holed
up, anxiously waiting for a "mother of all battles" that would never
materialize. "You can be patient, with a minimum loss of life," says Scales,
"or you can rush in and kill a lot of people on both sides."
Baghdad would seem particularly vulnerable to such a wait-it-out strategy.
It is not even close to being self-sufficient. If U.S. troops cut off the
supply of water, food, electricity and communications, civilians would no
doubt quickly begin fleeing to the safety of refugee camps set up outside
the cordon. The U.S. military could wait for the white flag of surrender to
flutter outside the range of most of Saddam's weapons. Armed with
intelligence gleaned from fleeing refugees, the Americans could attack key
targets inside the city with long-range weapons. Such a siege could help
nurture one prized U.S. goal: Saddam's falling at the hands of his own
people. "Baghdad is one of those classic cities that happen to contain all
the kindling necessary to spark a revolt," says Scales. "You'd have the
ruling élite and the army cheek by jowl with the people, who despise both
the élite and the army."
—With reporting by Matt Rees and Aharon Klein/Jerusalem