Pentagon Hails Gulf Victory but Admits Lapses

The Pentagon released its long-awaited report to Congress on the Persian Gulf War on Friday, a 1,335-page compendium of self-congratulation with an abridged list of a dozen “shortcomings” that emerged during the conflict.

In an introduction, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney celebrated the “outstanding victory” of allied forces against Iraq, saying it will pay military and geopolitical dividends for the United States for years to come. He also praised U.S. leadership--from President Bush to platoon commanders--and the contributions of high-tech weaponry and “tough” American forces.

But the document owned up to intelligence lapses that caused the military to repeatedly bomb targets it already had destroyed, to damage utilities beyond military necessity and to allow key parts of Iraq’s war machine--particularly nuclear and chemical weapons complexes--to emerge unscathed.

Only the continuing U.N. inspection program has prevented Baghdad from aggressively rearming and posing a new threat to its neighbors, the report said.

The report also acknowledged that the United States enjoyed unique advantages that are unlikely ever to be repeated--near-unanimous world support for its cause, a six-month grace period to deploy forces and plan the battle and a barren battlefield ideally suited to American bombers, missiles and armor.

The study, prepared in response to a demand from Congress for a comprehensive report on the war, tells in exhaustive detail the story of the massive logistical buildup to the war, touched off by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, and the conduct of the 42-day aerial and ground campaign against the Iraqi army.

Yet it is silent on the two most controversial lingering questions from the war: How many Iraqi soldiers and civilians were killed in the allied onslaught? And did the decision to halt combat after four days of ground war allow Saddam Hussein to escape with much of his military power untouched?

Independent analysts estimate that 75,000 to 120,000 Iraqi troops and 33,000 Iraqi civilians died in the U.S.-led war and the Kurdish and Shiite uprisings that followed. Human rights groups also estimate that 70,000 Iraqi civilians died in the sixth months after the end of the war from hunger and poor medical care resulting from the extensive damage to the Iraqi infrastructure caused by the U.S. air campaign.

The new Pentagon study offers no estimate of Iraqi casualties, and military officials say they have no intention of ever producing one. The only mention of civilian casualties is a statement saying: “Although the death or injury of any civilian is regrettable, the apparently low number clearly reflects coalition efforts to minimize civilian casualties.”

There is no discussion of the still-controversial question of whether President Bush stopped the war too soon, leaving Hussein still in power with the bulk of his million-man army battered but intact.

“Unfortunately,” the report concedes, “Saddam Hussein’s brutal treatment of his own people, which long preceded this war, has survived it. The world will be a better place when Saddam Hussein no longer misrules Iraq. However, his tyranny over Kuwait has ended.”

The report highlights a number of previously recognized weaknesses of the war effort, including poor intelligence coordination, a shortage of trucks to transport heavy equipment to the front, inadequate measures to distinguish between friendly and enemy forces leading to the deaths of 35 Americans in “friendly fire” incidents, an inability to find mobile Scud missile launchers and insufficient preparation for chemical or biological warfare.

Despite these shortcomings, the report concludes, U.S.-led coalition forces “won one of the fastest and most complete victories in military history.”

The report provides no startling new disclosures, but it contains a number of new details and admissions, including:

* The four-phase air and ground assault on Iraq took shape as early as Aug. 25, when the theater commander, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, briefed Cheney and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Colin L. Powell on his war plan at Central Command headquarters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He said that as soon as adequate forces were assembled and President Bush gave the order, he would mount an intense air campaign to “decapitate” Iraqi leadership, cut off logistical support to the Iraqi army in Kuwait and destroy as much enemy armor as possible. The final phase would be a land, sea and air attack to demolish the remaining Iraqi troops.

* At the outset of the war, commanders expected the ground campaign to take two weeks, followed by four weeks of mopping up. Bush stopped the ground war after four days, saying the Iraqi army had been crushed and all allied goals had been met.

* During the Persian Gulf deployment, U.S. intelligence agents detected and countered “U.S. military members attempting to sell classified defense information to foreign intelligence services.” The report did not elaborate, and Pentagon officials refused to comment.

* Air strikes destroyed far more of Iraq’s electrical generating capacity than had been planned because of poor bomb-damage assessment and faulty instructions to pilots. The original intention was to hit easily repaired electrical switching stations, cutting off power for a few days or weeks to cripple the Iraqi military. Instead, numerous Iraqi power generators were bombed, leaving the country’s electrical grid a shambles for many months and causing extensive civilian suffering.

* Unspecified “human sources”--presumably including Iraqi defectors and possibly allied spies inside Iraq--yielded invaluable targeting data, including the locations of hidden command centers and communications facilities. The sources also provided blueprints and plans of military targets and told war planners that the Iraqis suspended coaxial communications cables under bridges rather than burying them under riverbeds, making them easier to take out from the air.

* As late as Feb. 10, U.S. commanders planned to mount an amphibious attack south of Kuwait city. But damage to two U.S. warships from Iraqi mines and uncertainty about how many more mines might be in the waters along the Kuwaiti coastline forced planners to abandon the option. The Marines remained on their ships off the coast to deceive the Iraqis into thinking they were coming ashore.

* Although the Pentagon reported at the end of the war that some 2,400 Iraqi armored personnel carriers had been destroyed, follow-up studies showed that only 1,450 had been wrecked.

* While overestimating the number of APCs hit, allied intelligence underestimated the damage to numerous other targets, leading at times to “unnecessary restrikes.” The report said that many battlefield officers complained that photographs of targets and assessments of battle damage often “were neither timely nor adequate.” The report also conceded that high-level intelligence failed to discern the morale and intentions of Iraqi forces and leaders.