WASHINGTON, March 22: The United States and Britain waited to see if President Saddam Hussein was alive before ordering the start of Friday’s heavy air attacks on Baghdad officials said on Saturday.

President George Bush took a gamble in targeting the elusive Iraqi leader in the opening air strikes of the war, which produced cascading readjustments in US war plans, putting the ground campaign before the widely anticipated “awe and shock” massive strategic bombing, analysts said.

Major bombing raids of Baghdad and other targets were started on Friday after the US administration admitted it did not know if Saddam was alive and it was clear he was not going to meet US demands to quit Iraq.

“The decision to go ahead with the ground campaign and the air campaign was a direct result of the fact that the 48-hour ultimatum expired and Saddam Hussein and his crowd did not leave the country,” said US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

He said the US military had looked for signs that the regime might dump Saddam. “When that did not happen the only choice one has, is to proceed and use coercion.

“It was the absolute last choice, after every single other thing that could be done had been done.”

The US decision to started with only limited strikes on Baghdad had surprised many military experts. The first raid before dawn on Thursday targeted a compound where US intelligence believed Saddam was staying.

The US military had warned that it would open the war with massive bombing.

“I think they saw an opportunity. They thought it was too good to pass up. And so they jumped the gun,” said Andrew Krepinevich, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Affairs.

If the attack early Thursday on the residential compound failed to kill the Iraqi leader, it still left the message that he is vulnerable to attack either because of intercepted communications or spies in his inner circle, US officials believe.

Since the strikes, US intelligence has seen a marked decline in communications between the senior leadership and military commanders, said a US defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“The messages aren’t going to the guys in the field like they used to,” he said.

But the strike also forced changes in the carefully constructed US game plan, the most obvious one being a delay in the all-out campaign of precision bombing of regime power centers in Baghdad.

“There may be this willingness to say, look if we can avoid this kind of campaign, if we can avoid the damage that it will inflict,... maybe we can get a leg up on not only winning the war, but winning the peace,” said Mr Krepinevich.

Despite the start of the big air campaign, targeting commanders of the Republican Guards, Special Republican Guards and regular, US officials said contacts were also being pursued to encourage mass defections.

Mr Rumsfeld said the administration wanted the air strikes to be “persuasive enough with the people who would have to implement the orders of the senior people in that regime, and persuade them that it is clearly not in their interests to obey those types of orders.”

A former secretary of state, Lawrence Eagleburger, said the efforts to persuade the Iraqi military not to fight may be “a whole new chapter of warfare”.

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised, if they decide it’s time to quit. And indeed if they can figure out a way to deal with Saddam’s security forces, if they wouldn’t decide they would like to take him out as well,” he said in an interview aired by CNN. —AFP