Iraq won't be an Afghanreplay
By Martin Sieff, UPISenior News Analyst
WASHINGTON, (UPI) -- President George W.Bush's somber call to arms against the Iraqi dictatorship of SaddamHussein on Monday came on the first anniversary of the -- apparently-- quick and easy war that he launched in Afghanistan to topplethe Taliban protectors of the al-Qaida terrorist group.
Now, Bush and his advisers appear to assumethat their new war will go almost as quickly and smoothly as theold one. But it is going to be a very different kind of war.
On Sunday, Oct. 7, 2001, the Armed Forcesof the United States, supported by those of Britain, launchedthe first of an extended series of air strikes against installationsof the terrorist group al-Qaida and against government facilitiesin the nation of Afghanistan.
The attacks were the first American militaryresponse to the destruction of the World Trade Center in New Yorknearly four weeks previously and to other terrorist attacks thatsame day that took about 3,000 American lives.
The United States did not go it alone inAfghanistan. Pakistan and Russia provided crucial assistance inintelligence and -- most of all -- secure airfields and militaryjump-off bases, without which the war could not have been prosecutedas quickly and efficiently as it was.
U.S. troops had virtually no ground fightingto do because the Russian-backed Northern Alliance had a cadreof reliable, experienced, motivated and fierce fighters who --though far outnumbered -- were able and willing to take full advantageof every opening that U.S. air strikes and Special Forces operationsgave them.
Also, the regular armed forces of the Talibanwere negligible in size and quality. They only had an army ofabout 50,000 men. It had no tanks or artillery worth the nameand no effective air defense system whatsoever.
But Iraq is going to be a very differentstory.
The proxy forces upon which U.S. civilianwar-planners at the Pentagon count and rely are untested, unreliableand divided. The different Kurdish groups fight endlessly amongthemselves and hate America's major ally -- Turkey -- at leastas much, if not more, than they hate Saddam.
The military forces of Ahmed Chalabi's IraqiNational Congress, eagerly championed by Deputy Defense SecretaryPaul Wolfowitz and Pentagon Policy Board Chairman Richard Perle,are at best untested and an unknown quantity.
Virtually every reputable CIA and Army intelligenceanalyst regard them with grave suspicion. Saddam's agents arewidely believed to have heavily penetrated them.
Saddam's army has more than 600,000 menunder arms. At least 100,000 of them, in the elite RepublicanGuards divisions, are highly motivated and can be expected tofight. fiercely if they cannot be isolated and immobilized. Theyare well-equipped with heavy tanks and artillery.
The Republican Guards' weapons and trainingare no match, man for man, for U.S. Army forces. But they maynot have to be if the war is initially launched without the massiveconventional forces build-up that preceded the 1991 Gulf War.
Top U.S. Army generals want to repeat thatbuild-up as much as possible. But Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,Wolfowitz and their civilian colleagues, enamored of the rapidityand apparent ease with which victory in Afghanistan was won, haverepeatedly pushed for more spectacular, romantic and unconventionalSpecial Forces.
The Taliban in Afghanistan had no weaponsof mass destruction that could serve as "equalizer"weapons against far superior U.S. conventional armed forces. Bushsaid in his Cincinnati speech on Monday that Saddam did not appearto have nuclear weapons yet.
But the President also warned that the strugglecould still be a tough one with significant casualties. And hewent out of his way to warn Saddam's top generals that they, too,would be held accountable and hunted down as war criminals ifthey participated in the unleashing of other unconventional weapons.Biological and chemical weapons appear to be the kind of deviceshe had in mind.
U.S. Air Force commanders appear confidentthey can suppress the Iraqi air defense system. But unlike Afghanistan,there certainly will be an air defense system to suppress.
Intelligence reports indicate that Russiaand China may have both sold the best anti-aircraft detectionand weapons systems they have to the Iraqis.
The Taliban armed forces crumbled fast fromthe combined onslaught of U.S. air and Special Forces expertiseand the Northern Alliance.
Pentagon civilian planners, relying on intelligencethat is overwhelmingly supplied by Chalabi's INC, are convincedmuch, if not most, of Saddam's army will defect or desert as soonas the serious shooting starts. But none of this information hasbeen filtered or confirmed by the CIA, the State Department orU.S. military intelligence organizations.
The Afghanistan conflict proved a smoothreplay of the "New American Way of War" that workedso well and cost-effectively before in the 1991 Gulf War and the1999 Yugoslavia bombing campaign. Bush and his Pentagon plannersbelieve that the coming Iraq War will go the same way.
But every war is different and war, by itsinherent nature, is messy, chaotic and unpredictable. A new andvery different kind of conflict -- with even more potential forunleashing global upheaval -- has begun. And no one, includingthose who sought the conflict most avidly, can conceive of whereit might truly lead.