US to attack if Annan mission fails

US military planners say President Clinton and his advisers have approved an intense, round-the-clock bombardment aimed at decimating Saddam Hussein’s command and control systems and undermining Iraq’s ability to manufacture chemical and biological weapons. The air campaign would last just four to eight days — compared to the seven-week Gulf War — mainly because of the expected international outcry.

In a special effort to explain US’ Iraq policy, President Clinton on Friday sent a videotaped messageto “all out Arab and Muslim friends” warning that Saddam must bear full responsibility for every casualty resulting from threatened US military action against Iraq. “Nobody wants to use force. But if Saddam refused to keep his commitments to the international community, we must be prepared to deal with the threat these weapons pose to the Iraqi people, to Iraq’s neighbours, and to the rest of the world. Either Saddam acts or we act,” Clinton said.

The US will be using generationally advanced weapons systems vastly superior to the ones used in the Gulf War. Six years of intense intelligence gathering is also helping Washington pinpoint the target it wants to strike, compared to the more random attacks in 1992. Some 500 sorties a day — compared to 2500 in 1991 — will pound Iraq’s air defenses, fighter planes, command posts, missile factories, Republican Guard compounds and intelligence headquarters.

The biggest advance will be the use of Global Positioning System (GPS) which will provide precisionguidance systems to missiles and bombs even in poor weather, a bane in the 1992 campaign. In addition, nearly 80 per cent of the ordnance will now be precision guided, compared to only about 10 per cent in the 1992 bombings.

These two factors alone will cut the campaign to a seventh of the 1992 war because many targets will not withstand a first time attack. American experts still chafe at the vastly exaggerated accounts of destruction in the Gulf War and have been planning ever since to correct that record with the superior technology they have since developed.

Pentagon has already warned Congress that there will be Iraqi military and civilian casualties of 1500 or more. But the bombing campaign is expected to exclude knowingly striking any chemical or biological stockpile which could release the toxins into the atmosphere.

The US air attack will be up against a virtually defenceless Iraq, whose air force of some 300 planes has been virtually grounded since the Gulf War.