If Pentagon Gets a ‘Go,’ It’ll Be Massive Strike : Strategy: Joint Chiefs of Staff are urging that any action against Iraq be sweeping, simultaneous and lethal.

The Pentagon plans to launch an all-out attack against Iraq, including massive air strikes, naval bombardment and ground attack, if the decision is made to employ force to back up President Bush’s demands that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein surrender Kuwait and free all Western hostages, U.S. officials said Thursday.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff are urging that any military action be sweeping, simultaneous and lethal, designed not only to crush the huge Iraqi war-making capacity but also to destroy Hussein and his command structure.

“We are not looking at a gradual escalation. We will attempt to be decisive,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael J. Dugan said in an interview with The Times.

Dugan’s remarks, among the strongest by an American official so far during the three-week-long gulf crisis, appeared to be part of a concerted effort by the Bush Administration to make clear to Iraq’s leadership that any military action against the United States would be suicidal.

The rhetorical escalation comes on the eve of what could be a crucial weekend in the gulf crisis.

Administration planners expect that by Saturday, perhaps sooner, they will have U.N. approval to begin using “minimal force” to stop Iraqi shipping, particularly several oil tankers that have been approaching Yemen’s port of Aden. Even without that international approval, the White House appears prepared to give American naval captains orders to stop ships, by boarding them or firing on them, before the weekend is out.

President Bush’s advisers do not think that Hussein is in a position to retaliate militarily for U.S. action against his ships. Nonetheless, although Bush and his advisers do not believe that war is imminent, the President has accepted the chance that it could come and has sought to prepare public opinion, both at home and abroad, for the possibility of fighting and of the deaths of both U.S. soldiers and civilian hostages in Iraq.

With Saddam Hussein displaying Western hostages on television and threatening to use force to close all foreign embassies in Kuwait, the tense crisis has moved ever closer to a potentially explosive showdown.

If that showdown comes, Dugan said the size, nature and pace of the U.S. buildup in the Middle East are a clear signal that the United States is prepared to wage a punishing, multifront assault on Iraqi targets if war breaks out and if President Bush orders an all-out attack.

“We’re postured for a joint attack,” Dugan said.

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney noted Thursday that the United States had assembled a “significant” and growing military force in the Middle East and would respond “aggressively” if provoked.

“If he (Hussein) were foolish enough to attack U.S. forces, we clearly are in a position, if the President so decides, to respond very forcefully against those things he cares about--and specifically, those are his forces and his capabilities inside Iraq,” Cheney said.

Cheney’s comments were the first explicit threat to destroy targets within Iraq if Hussein attacks American troops in the region.

The defense secretary Thursday also approved plans to call as many as 49,700 military reservists and National Guardsmen to active duty. Some members of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard reserve forces could get the call as early as today, it said.

About 40,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines are already on the ground in Saudi Arabia, with tens of thousands more en route. The Navy armada is approaching 70 ships, including 3 aircraft carrier task forces with nearly 270 combat aircraft.

The Air Force has an estimated 250 bombers and fighters in the region with a variety of weapons capable of supporting U.S. ground operations as well as destroying a wide range of military and industrial targets inside Iraq.

Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, issued an explicit warning to Hussein on Thursday. “We will defend our interests. Don’t try to scare us or threaten us. It won’t work,” Powell said in speech to a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Baltimore.

Hussein, said Powell, should not think “that we don’t have the will or the ability to accomplish what is required of us.”

In Kennebunkport, Me., where President Bush is vacationing, an Administration official confirmed that the tough military rhetoric was part of a deliberate attempt to send a message to Iraq on the eve of the potential face-off at the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait city.

The official said Bush wanted to “lay the marker in the sand because we are coming up on some artificial deadlines,” referring to Iraq’s demand that the embassy be closed by noon today or midnight today (2 a.m. or 2 p.m. today PDT). “We’ve said some things; we want to make clear that we mean it.”

In addition, the official added, the comments by Powell and other military officials were part of a general escalation of the Administration’s rhetoric toward Iraq that began Monday, when Bush first referred to the Americans detained in Iraq as “hostages.”

The stepped-up belligerence in U.S. language “parallels what’s coming out of Iraq,” the official said. It also corresponds to the growing U.S. military might in the region, Pentagon sources said.

As part of the emphasis on bellicose rhetoric, the White House carefully kept Bush isolated from public view Thursday, trying to ensure that no comment from the President would upstage Powell’s and Cheney’s remarks.

Bush spent most of the morning with National Security Adviser Brent A. Scowcroft on his boat, Fidelity, a venue where he cannot easily be questioned by reporters, and avoided any public appearances for the afternoon. Bush’s spokesman, Marlin Fitzwater, also avoided most comments on the gulf situation.

Dugan, the senior Air Force officer and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in the interview that the nation’s military leadership continues to seek solely to defend Saudi Arabia and other friendly nations against possible Iraqi aggression, not to plan any offensive operations.

But if deterrence fails because of some action by Baghdad, he said, the chiefs are planning “to bring to bear that mix of forces that can be decisive quickly and not get bogged down in a protracted engagement that will be difficult militarily, economically and socially.”

Civilian leaders, mindful of the heavy political costs of the slow escalation of combat in Vietnam, have apparently accepted the generals’ judgment that a quick, massive use of military power would be preferable to an incremental approach.

“I think the American people are not going to support a protracted war, and if we have to fight a war, we’re going to fight it with all we have,” the Pentagon’s senior policy planner, Paul D. Wolfowitz, said this week.

Dugan, like Cheney, indicated that U.S. war planners are targeting forces and facilities inside Iraq, including military and political command posts.

“I can’t give specifics . . . but one should take the fight to the center of gravity of one’s opponent,” Dugan said.

He clearly indicated that the military expects to wage a broad attack on Iraqi targets using all the U.S. military assets in the region. “There is utility, if violence arises and war eventuates, in taking on your enemy in several dimensions simultaneously,” he said.

Meantime, the Pentagon disclosed that the Navy has boarded “a handful” of ships in its week-old effort to halt Iraqi shipping.

Spokesman Pete Williams would not give the exact number of ships boarded, their nationalities or when the incidents occurred. But he indicated that fewer than 10 boardings had taken place.

Williams said he was not aware of any more warning shots having been fired since Saturday, when U.S. Navy vessels fired across the bows of two Iraqi tankers. “We continue to monitor ships” that may be bringing cargo to or from Iraq, he said.

Administration officials reiterated Bush’s position that naval vessels have “all the authority we need” to fire on Iraqi tankers if needed to enforce the blockade against Iraq. They added, however, that commanders would continue to hold their fire while diplomats wait to see if an agreement can be worked out on a U.S.-sponsored resolution by the U.N. Security Council, endorsing use of military action to enforce existing U.N. sanctions against Iraq.

The key ships now are three Iraqi tankers that have been sailing towards Yemen. Yemeni officials have said they would not allow those tankers to unload oil, but Administration officials do not want to put that pledge to the test and would prefer to stop the ships before they are able to reach port. One Iraqi tanker arrived in Yemen earlier in the crisis and was partially unloaded before Yemen ordered the process stopped. That tanker is currently floating at anchor in the harbor at Aden.

The Pentagon also said the first contingent of U.S. forces based in Europe had been sent to the Middle East. Troops from the U.S. Army Europe’s 7th Medical Command, based in West Germany, and C-130 transport planes from the 435th Tactical Airlift Wing in West Germany are en route to the gulf, officials said.

In addition, elements of the Army’s 3rd Corps Artillery from Ft. Sill, Okla., including 105-millimeter, 155-millimeter and 8-inch guns and Lance short-range missiles, are being shipped to Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, White House officials went out of their way to try to avoid a confrontation with the Soviet Union over the issue of Soviet advisers assisting the Iraqi army.

“The Soviets have continually worked to get their advisers and citizens out of there,” press secretary Fitzwater said. “We think they are acting in good faith.”

The Soviet Union, he added, “is operating in a manner that is supportive of our interests.”

Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze have discussed the issue several times, Fitzwater said.

The Soviet Union, which was Baghdad’s biggest arms supplier, said it stopped arms shipments to Hussein after Iraq invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2. But Moscow disclosed Wednesday it has 193 military advisers still in Iraq.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the U.S. government believes “there are perhaps significantly more Soviet personnel who are related to military activities” than the 193 acknowledged by Moscow.

He said that Washington believes the U.N. sanctions extend to the provision of such services to Iraq and that even if they do not, “we believe strongly that it is inappropriate to provide any sort of military services to Iraq.”

But although Administration officials are concerned about the Soviet aid to Iraq, they believe it is not the sort of assistance that would make a critical difference in the Iraqi war effort. That assessment has made it easier for the Administration to avoid a confrontation with the Soviets over the issue.

Meanwhile, Rep. Dante B. Fascell (D-Fla.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the President should explain his intentions in the Persian Gulf to Congress when lawmakers return to work in September.

Broder reported from Washington and Lauter from Kennebunkport, Me.