Beyond blitzkrieg

As they began an opening blitzkrieg to drop 3,000 bombs on Iraq, some US planners believe the best chance for toppling Saddam Hussein throug...

As they began an opening blitzkrieg to drop 3,000 bombs on Iraq, some US planners believe the best chance for toppling Saddam Hussein through air attacks is to destroy his inner rings of security and expose the Iraqi leader to an uprising by his own people.

Of course, Pentagon officials are crossing their fingers that one of the bombs will hit Saddam, ending the war before it has completely begun. It would also eliminate the messy problem of what to do with Hussein if he were captured alive. But this silver-bullet scenario is regarded as an extreme long shot by officials.

A senior Air Force officer said the air plan for Iraq calls for an intensified version of the 1998 Desert Fox strategy to undermine Saddam: They will target barracks and command posts 8212; responsible for protecting him. That, it is hoped, will crack the protective shell and create opportunities for members of his own regime to carry out a coup.

US military and intelligence officials say Hussein is an amazingly elusive figure. 8216;8216;I don8217;t think anybody8217;s ever had a good idea of where he is at any given moment, or where he will be in the future,8217;8217; a military intelligence official said Wednesday.

That admission, echoed by other officials, helps to explain why eliminating Saddam with an airstrike is seen by military planners as worth trying, but not something to build the air campaign around.

If Saddam Hussein eludes US efforts to target him, it would follow a pattern in recent decades in which the US has been unable to catch or kill individual leaders 8212; from Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega to Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently told reporters that victory would be defined by disarming Iraq, not eliminating Saddam. But other officials and Pentagon advisers said there is no question that the US could seize any opportunity to end the war early with an airstrike on Saddam.

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In fact, the US attacked a vehicle in the first Gulf War based on intelligence that it was one Saddam routinely used, only to learn later that Saddam8217;s security forces managed a small fleet of such vehicles and the Iraqi leader escaped unharmed.

8216;8216;We tried to smoke him. We didn8217;t get him,8217;8217; said a former senior intelligence official. Saddam has surrounded himself with more than two layers of security. He is believed to employ several lookalikes as decoys.

The closest the United States has ever come to penetrating Saddam8217;s inner circle may have been in the late 1990s, when US spy agencies took advantage of the weapons inspection programmes to install sensors and listening devices.

Colonel Gary Crowder, a senior Air Force commander, told reporters at a Pentagon news conference Wednesday that plans call for the unleashing of 10 times the number of bombs and missiles used in the opening days of the Gulf War. 8216;8216;I do not think our adversary has any idea what8217;s coming,8217;8217; Crowder said.

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What8217;s more, the vast majority of the munitions to be used now are precision-guided, while just 10 percent were in 1991. Crowder said the weapons will disable military systems with fewer strikes. LATWP