November 11, 2002	Monday	Ramazan 5, 1423

WASHINGTON: The Bush Administration has settled on a plan for a possible invasion of Iraq that envisions seizing most of the country quickly and encircling Baghdad, but assumes that Saddam Hussein will probably fall from power before US forces enter the capital, senior US military officials said.

Hedging its bets, the Pentagon is also preparing for the possibility of prolonged fighting in and around Baghdad. Administration war planners expect that, even if the Iraqi leader is deposed from power, there could be messy skirmishes there and in Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit, the military officials said.

The war plan, sometimes the subject of bitter arguments between senior civilian and military officials, has been refined in recent weeks even as the Bush administration pursued a successful diplomatic effort to secure a new UN weapons inspection system for Iraq. Officials said that the plan could still change in some important ways, such as the precise number of troops required, but that the broad outlines are now agreed upon within the administration.

Most notably, the emerging US approach tries to take into account regional sensitivities by attempting to inflict the minimum amount of damage deemed necessary to achieve the US goals in a war. The plan aims to do that mainly by attacking quickly, but with a relatively small force conducting focused attacks. But it also hedges by putting enough combat force in the area — including around 150,000 US and allied ground troops — to engage in close combat with the Special Republican Guard if Iraqi resistance is stiffer than expected.

The dual nature of the US war plan is designed to encourage Iraqis to revolt against Saddam. As an administration official put it in a recent interview, the plan aims to “create the conditions” under which Iraqis can do that.

To create those conditions, the US invasion would begin with a series of simultaneous air and ground actions and psychological warfare operations, all aimed at destroying the security police and other institutions that help Saddam hold on to power.

Under the concept of operations briefed this fall to President Bush, rather than begin with a lengthy air campaign, as in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, an invasion would begin with the US military swiftly seizing the northern, western and southern sectors of Iraq while launching air strikes and other attacks on “regime targets” — mainly security forces and suspected repositories of chemical and biological weapons — in the remaining part of the country around Baghdad, military officials said.

Simultaneously, a nationwide “psychological operations” campaign that is already underway would use leaflets and radio broadcasts to try to persuade the Iraqi military to change sides and to tell the Iraqi population that they aren’t being targeted. Also, troops and civilian officials would be warned against carrying out orders to use chemical or biological weapons.

If Saddam falls quickly, US ground forces wouldn’t need to assault Baghdad.

Overall, the plan makes sense by trying both to undercut Saddam’s domestic base and to minimize his ability to strike neighbours, said retired Air Force Col. Richard Atchison, an intelligence officer who specialized in targeting during the Gulf War.

Meanwhile, Atchison said, in the west, where there is little except a highway and two Iraqi military airfields and weapons depots, “you protect Jordan and Israel.”

Some of those officials said they see a strategic benefit in disclosing the dual nature of the plan. Discussing its broad outline would help inform the Arab world that the United States is making a determined effort to avoid attacking the Iraqi people, one said. At the same time, he added, it also might help the Iraqi military understand that the US military will be able to destroy any units that resist.

But the entire plan is designed to avoid having to engage in debilitating urban combat in the streets of the capital, where US technological advantages would be degraded and civilian casualties would be inevitable.

In phase one of the operation, the US military would move into the nearly empty western desert bordering Jordan. The purpose of this action would be to keep Israel from being attacked by missiles or unmanned drone aircraft laden with chemical or biological weapons. US troops would look for airstrips and stretches of highway where drones could be launched. They also would keep a watch for Scud missiles, though US military intelligence analysts consider it unlikely that Iraq has operational Scuds that it could deploy to the west.

At roughly about the same time, the 101st Airborne Division and a similar helicopter-heavy British unit would move from bases in Germany and Turkey into northern Iraq. This is expected to be a largely unopposed movement because northern Iraq is Kurdish and has been largely autonomous since the end of the 1991 Gulf War. The CIA is believed to already be operating there.

In the south, British forces and the US Marines likely would be assigned to seize airstrips and other key facilities in the heavily Shia section around the port city of Basra, just north of Kuwait.

Then, if Saddam were still in power, US tanks would spearhead a multipronged attack on Baghdad and Tikrit, the source of Saddam’s strongest support. The plan resembles the 1989 US invasion of Panama more than it does the 1991 Gulf War, people familiar with it noted.—Dawn/The Washington Post News Service.