The map of Iraq is elaborately marked and circled, pinpointing key government buildings in Baghdad, military installations and oil fields. All are potential targets if shots are fired in the Persian Gulf standoff.
Until recent days, U.S. military planners focused on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's troop positions, including a concentration of forces along the Kuwait-Saudi border, a crescent-shaped formation further north near Kuwait and supply routes back to Iraq.Now convinced there is enough U.S. firepower on the ground to thwart any Iraqi attack, strategists at the American command post here are mulling ways to use their might against Iraq should hostilities erupt.
"Right after the invasion, we had to hurry, so it was a come-as-you-are war," a Pentagon source said. "That was more than two weeks ago. Now, for us, it's a do-as-you-please war."
There are numerous political, economic and military factors that would influence any decision to make an all-out assault on Iraq, an attack that American officials stress is highly unlikely unless Iraq fires first. Complicating all planning is Iraq's grasp on some 10,000 Western hostages, including 3,000 Americans.
But it is clear from interviews and reviews of U.S. intelligence and planning over the past week that such a plan is in place and being refined virtually daily, as spy satellites, AWACS tracking planes and other intelligence sources provide information on Iraqi military activities.
After spending their first week here reluctant to discuss contingency plans, many officers, at several command levels, have discussed such plans privately, if for no other reason than to send a signal to Saddam.
"We know when they are loading gas into their trucks," an Army colonel said Friday. "We'll be ready if they come and ready to go after them, too."Vietnam-era generals leading the deployment in Saudi Arabia favor an overwhelming attack on Iraq if fighting erupts. That would include destruction of key government facilities in Baghdad, Iraqi oil fields and military installations and infrastructure used to resupply Iraqi forces in
Kuwait and near Iraq's border with Saudi Arabia, according to a number of military sources here.
The command post for the gulf deployment, dubbed Operation Desert Shield, has been at the Central Command headquarters in Florida, but a makeshift war room will be opened in Saudi Arabia within days.
"I came out of one briefing the other day hearing B-52s humming in my head," one senior officer said this past week. A field commander privy to some of the contingency plans put it this way: "These guys have decided if we go, we go all out, none of this halfway b--- s---."
The options, according to the officials, include bombing runs, use of naval firepower from a battleship and other ships in the Persian Gulf, and even ground forces if necessary to knock out key Iraqi installations and block supply and communications routes.
American aircraft have been flying 24 hours a day on practice missions and to counter Iraqi air patrols. Elements of the 82nd and 101st airborne divisions have been briefed on possible Iraqi targets. The 82nd consists of paratroopers; the 101st has attack helicopters and can deploy infantry from helicopters as well.
Massive amounts of U.S. military force continue to pour into Saudi Arabia and the waters that surround the Arabian peninsula. For example, the first shipments of huge M-1 tanks are just offshore and once unloaded will immediately move to forward positions in the Saudi desert.
Backing up the tanks are formidable deployments of tank-fighting helicopters, A-10 planes and other heavy weapons stationed in the Saudi desert - some at airstrips not even on most maps. These strips are well within striking distance of Iraqi targets in both Kuwait and Iraq.
A ground war against entrenched Iraqi positions in Kuwait would be bloody, planners say, and the air attacks necessary to support the ground troops likely would level much of Kuwait. Kuwaiti government officials, now living in exile in Saudi Arabia, have implored U.S. officials not to wage such a fight.
Less bloody, and potentially devastating to Saddam's power, would be a direct assault on selected Iraqi targets, which if successful would create chaos in the government and choke off supplies and reinforcements to the Iraqi forces in Kuwait.
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