NEWS ANALYSIS : Dugan’s Sin: Saying What He Thought : Military: The Air Force chief’s combat record didn’t prepare him for Pentagon politics.

Why was Air Force Chief of Staff Michael J. Dugan canned?

An angry Defense Secretary Dick Cheney publicly catalogued Dugan’s sins on Monday: revealing classified war plans, demeaning the other military services, underestimating the enemy, treating casualties in a cavalier manner. Cheney was especially disturbed by Dugan’s assertion that the United States intended to seek out Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, his family and his palace guard as targets of an intense air campaign.

These are serious offenses, especially for a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and especially as the nation teeters on the brink of war.

But a number of other, more subtle factors were at play in the Dugan affair that combined to bring about his downfall.

By discussing possible military targets inside Iraq, Dugan took upon himself decisions that are reserved for the President--a violation of the chain of command that Cheney believed he could not tolerate.

The Air Force chief also may have complicated the military operation by telling Iraq’s Hussein what sites would be targeted, allowing Hussein to place American hostages there.

In addition, Dugan discussed sensitive matters of Israeli cooperation in the American military effort, a definite taboo in an operation that depends heavily on Arab unity.

But perhaps his greatest transgression was saying what he thought and letting himself be quoted saying it--a mortal sin in this Administration, which jealously guards policy-making power and tightly controls the flow of information to the public.

By allowing himself to be quoted on the record, Dugan squandered the precious commodity of “deniability” and forced Cheney and other Administration officials to respond.

The brotherhood of combat fighter pilots, from which Dugan rose, does not generally appreciate the subtleties of the Washington game as played by such seasoned professionals as Cheney and Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

Unfortunately for Dugan, the art of the background leak and the trial balloon are not on the curriculum of the Air War College.

Dugan’s reward for his years of prowess in the cockpit was a seat on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where he found the rules of engagement to be far more ambiguous, and far more lethal, than anything he had encountered in his 32-year Air Force career.

Some of Dugan’s fateful comments, delivered in interviews last week with three reporters during a trip to Saudi Arabia, previously had been said, or at least hinted at, by other military and civilian officials.

Dugan himself, in an interview published in The Times on Aug. 24, said that U.S. war plans for Iraq revolved around the use of massive air power, including strikes on its military and civilian command centers.

On the same day Dugan made those remarks, Cheney delivered his most explicit statement on how the United States intended to employ its military power in the region, saying that American forces would respond “aggressively” if provoked by Iraq.

“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.

Is that qualitatively different from Dugan’s remarks over the weekend that if war comes: “The cutting edge would be in downtown Baghdad”? And: “If and when we choose violence, he (Hussein) ought to be at the focus of our efforts”?

Cheney clearly thought so.

“As a matter of policy, as you all know, there are some things we never discuss,” Cheney said at a Monday news conference called to announce Dugan’s dismissal. “We never talk about future operations, such as the selection of specific targets for potential air strikes. We never talk about the targeting of specific individuals who are officials of other governments.”

To say that the United States will hit Iraq and hit it hard, Cheney indicated, is acceptable saber-rattling.

But for the Air Force chief of staff to say, on the record and for attribution, that U.S. warplanes will bomb Baghdad and and try to kill Hussein, was clearly beyond the pale. No other government official, on or off the record, had asserted that U.S. war plans call for targeting Hussein and “downtown Baghdad.”

Cheney also objected to Dugan’s disclosure of “classified information about the size and disposition of U.S. forces,” referring to the Air Force general’s statement that the United States had deployed 420 combat aircraft at about 30 bases on the Arabian Peninsula. Previous estimates had been about 250 aircraft.

Another American commander, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who is in charge of all U.S. forces in the region, also ran afoul of Cheney and Powell last week for disclosing previously classified information about troop deployments. He said in an interview with the Washington Post that 143,000 U.S. troops were then in place in Saudi Arabia and surrounding areas.

Powell’s previous public estimate was “well in excess of 100,000” and he clearly did not want military officials refining the number any further.

Dugan’s errors were both military and political, a number of officials noted. For one, he violated military etiquette by minimizing the roles of the Army, Navy and Marine Corps in any potential conflict with Iraq, citing air power as the “only answer available” against Iraq’s large army.

More critically, the former Air Force chief got out in front of his only uniformed superior--Powell--and his two civilian bosses, Cheney and President Bush.

“The fact of the matter is, Gen. Dugan is not even in the chain of command,” Cheney said during Monday’s news conference. “To speculate about what may or may not be included in a plan that might or might not be implemented is inappropriate.”

It is telling that Dugan has received virtually no support from anywhere in the government, although he does enjoy some sympathy for having tried to honestly and vigorously promote his service’s point of view.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a former Navy pilot who was shot down and taken prisoner in Vietnam, said that the American system of civilian control of the military dictated the firing of Dugan.

“I think that clearly Cheney has the authority and indeed the responsibility to discipline anyone who violated policy,” he said.

Dugan also created potentially explosive diplomatic problems when he disclosed that Israel had advised the United States on targeting within Iraq. The general said Israeli sources advised the Pentagon that the most effective way to affect Hussein’s thinking is to attack “his family, his palace guard and his mistress.”

He also said that Israel had provided sophisticated air-to-ground cruise missiles that are now deployed on U.S. B-52 bombers.

President Bush has labored to keep Israel out of the Persian Gulf conflict, fearing that if Israel were involved, the moderate Arab states now arrayed against Iraq would switch sides to oppose their longtime enemies in the Jewish state.