Strikes Focus on Clear and Present Danger

Although it has rained missiles and bombs across the length of Iraq, the U.S. military operation has emerged as a carefully focused campaign that is sparing much of the country’s conventional military and economic targets, and even some key weapons-making facilities.

In an attempt to concentrate the mission’s mayhem and minimize its casualties, military planners have limited the bombardment to selected sites linked to the development of weapons of mass destruction, along with Saddam Hussein’s top military, police and intelligence operations.

Yet in targeting suspected chemical and biological weapons labs, they are avoiding those sites where a missile or bomb attack might cause a release of deadly gases into the atmosphere. For the same reason, they have roped off “dual-use” manufacturing facilities where civilian casualties could be high. They also appear to be excluding most of the 80,000-strong Republican Guard that was Hussein’s principal instrument in the Persian Gulf War.

Compared to the vastly larger 1991 conflict, Operation Desert Fox “is much more military-specific” and is aimed “against a very tightly drawn target set,” a senior defense official said.

Limiting the targets makes the operation easier for the Clinton administration to sell to the world. However, when the smoke clears, critics might charge that the Pentagon failed to take full advantage of an opportunity to significantly damage the Iraqi arsenal.

During the first two days of strikes, U.S. and British missiles and bombs hit more than 70 targets, including 27 air defense batteries and facilities, 11 weapons sites, eight military headquarters, five airfields and one target that the Pentagon calls “economic”: an oil refinery in Basra. Television and radio transmitters were bombarded in an effort to sever Hussein’s communication lines.

Also struck were 18 of the regime’s command-and-control centers, including the headquarters of Hussein’s military intelligence, his Special Security Organization and the 27,000-member Special Republican Guard, which functions as Hussein’s palace guard.

The weapons sites are the highest priority: Administration officials have repeatedly asserted that the mission’s foremost goal is to reduce Hussein’s ability to make “weapons of mass destruction” that threaten his neighbors.

Yet the facilities of the command-and-control centers are also key--they represent the principal levers of Hussein’s power, allowing him to maintain his hold on the populace as well as to manufacture the weapons forbidden under U.N. sanctions, officials said.

If these organizations were not able to remove their computers and records before the bombardment--and whether they were remains unclear--the strikes on these buildings may have done huge physical and psychological harm.

The effect would be “as if somebody came and wiped out the CIA and the FBI buildings,” said Kenneth M. Pollack, a Middle East specialist at the National Defense University in Washington. “These places contain priceless records.”

Though the lost documents and equipment could be reassembled eventually, such destruction inflicts huge psychological impact--as when an intruder ransacks an apartment, he said.

Pentagon officials are hoping, though not publicly saying, that such attacks cut so close to home that they might convince members of Hussein’s inner circle that they no longer want him in charge.

The planners picked the airfields as targets to take out the attack helicopters Hussein has used against Kurds in the north and the Shiite rebels in the south. The Basra oil refinery, they say, has been used as a tool of Hussein’s oil smuggling operation and not for any economic purpose that might help the country.

The strikes on Iraq’s key military and police organizations are bold and have been recommended by advocates of a firmer policy toward Hussein.

Yet it is not at all clear that the administration is eager to inflict military casualties in these attacks, although officials insist that they would not shirk from them.

So far, the Iraqis have reported more than 25 deaths and 75 injuries--a toll that, if true, would be remarkably low from a three-day assault involving hundreds of missiles and bombs.

The administration’s extreme reluctance to risk civilian casualties is very evident.

Much of the suspected chemical and biological weapon production occurs in so-called dual-use facilities that can be converted from making such mundane products as beer, drugs or batteries to manufacturing poison gas or deadly anthrax.

Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen noted this week that because dual-use facilities sometimes have legitimate businesses only a floor away from weapons production, they are strictly off limits.

Officials have acknowledged that it would be very difficult to eliminate production of these deadly weapons, and removing them from the target list diminishes the prospects for doing so. Yet with many of these factories in populous areas around Baghdad, policymakers were simply not willing to take the risks.

There was never any question that warplanes would not hit the bridges, dams and utilities that are key to Hussein’s military--but also essential to the well-being of the suffering Iraqi populace.

“There was all sorts of noise when we did that in 1991, when we thought it was a military necessity,” one official said. “There’s no way we’d risk it now.”

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Saddam Hussein’s ‘Palaces’

Saddam Hussein’s “palaces” consist mostly of large compounds, the main one being in Baghdad, called Radwaniyah Palace. Many of the other palaces are large facilities containing prisons. They also have bunkers that are like sub-basements up to six floors deep, varying in protective construction, with no real pattern. Experts say Hussein uses “hide and seek” techniques so he will remain difficult to locate. They say he may be hiding in any one of the palaces.

Mosul Presidential Palace

0.75 sq. miles

50 structures

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Tharthar Presidential Palace

1 sq. mile

45 structures

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Radwaniyah Presidential Palace

9.3 sq. miles

360 structures. Hussein’s main residence

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Tikrit Presidential Palace

2 sq. miles

100 structures

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Jabal Makhul Presidential Palace

10 sq. miles

90 structures

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Republican Presidential Palace

1.7 sq. miles

140 structures. Surrounded by Republican Guard camps. Hussein’s official office.

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Sijood Presidential Palace

1.7 sq. miles

700 structures

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Basra Presidential Palace

Small Ottoman period merchant house

Source: Wire sources and staff reports