Iraq success rests on more than military might

For all the talk of US military supremacy, the success of the war in Iraq will pivot in part on something far more tenuous - a needle-in-a-haystack search.

The ability of US forces to find Saddam Hussein and his ruling clique, as well as any weapons of mass destruction or Scud missiles he might harbor, will help determine the length of the war and the number of casualties that may result on both sides. It will also help shape political perceptions after the war.

Those efforts won't necessarily require huge amounts of firepower, but will involve on-the-ground intelligence, precision strikes, and more than a little serendipity.

Take Mr. Hussein, for instance. The 40 Tomahawk missiles that the US fired Wednesday night to officially start the war were intended to take out the Iraqi leader and whoever else he might have been huddling with. Did it work?

US officials yesterday were still trying to figure that out. They were pouring over the broadcast tape of Hussein shown shortly after the attacks to determine if it was really him or a body double. If they did get him, it may end up being an assassination by Cruise missile more than a war.

If they didn't, it's a reminder of how difficult it might be to find Hussein and members of his inner circle once the chaos of war is in full swing. US officials, for now, seem confident of getting the Iraqi leader. "If we didn't get him, he needs to be concerned with what the US government may know about his location at any time," a US official says. "It sends a strong signal to Saddam Hussein that we're onto him."

Hussein can be wily, though. He is known to have three body doubles whose facial features have been surgically altered to make them look exactly like the Iraqi dictator. He has more than 50 palaces, as well as hundreds of bunkers with networks of tunnels connecting them. Hussein is known to occasionally spend the night in private residences, and he never sleeps in the same bed two nights in a row. Add to that a personal security detail of 16,000 fiercely loyal warriors.

From the opening salvos, US forces will be trying to separate the Iraqi leadership from the people. Other than killing Hussein outright, the US could try to cut him off so thoroughly from his military leadership that they, themselves, take his life. That, in effect, will create the regime change that is the primary goal of the Bush administration.

The other crucial and immediate aim - to be carried out by airstrikes and Special Forces, plus CIA paramilitary teams already operating inside Iraq - is to search out and destroy weapons of mass destruction, as well as the infamous Scud missiles so effectively employed in the 1991 Gulf War and already fired at Kuwait yesterday.

"The remnants of Saddam Hussein's coterie, his security forces, have to be totally disbanded," says a former Army commander who participated in the 1991 Gulf War and still advises Pentagon planners. "And I think the finding and destruction of WMD certainly has to be one of those metrics we look at as far as measurements are concerned."

Page: 1 | 2