U.S. Bombing: The Myth of Surgical Bombing in the Gulf War

     by Paul Walker

     I first want to thank Ramsey Clark and the National Coalition for having the courage to undertake an event of
     this nature. I hope as we continue to dig for the truth in this war, the inquiry will be repeated and repeated and
     repeated hundreds of times over, not only in the United States but around the globe.

     Let me try to give you a brief account of the weapons and the war as a military analyst like myself is trying to
     discover. I must say first that our research at the Institute for Peace and International Security in Cambridge has
     been going on for several months at this point, ever since the war began and to a certain extent before it began.
     And there still is a large amount of stonewalling in Washington. Much of the information is unavailable. Much of
     the information takes an inordinate amount of time to come out. Much of it given out by the various services is in
     fact contradictory.

     The first images of the 42-day Mideast war mesmerized most viewers - nighttime television pictures of targeted
     Iraqi bunkers and buildings, many in downtown Baghdad, being surgically destroyed by precision-guided bombs
     dropped by stealthy aircraft. The crosshairs of an aircraft high-tech laser targeting system lined up on the rooftop
     of the Iraqi Ministry of Defense, moments later a laser-seeking 2,000 pound bomb blew the building apart. Then
     the cameras would turn to U.S. General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of the anti-Iraq coalition, who
     described the attack "on his counterparts headquarters" with a wry, amused smile - you'll all remember this from
     the first night as I do. Hundreds of military news reporters in the Saudi briefing room laughed with nervous
     interest as if viewing Nintendo games, although thousands of individuals were killed, possibly, by that weapon.
     High-tech warfare had, indeed, come of age.

     Back in Washington, General Colin Powell, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced that he was
     "rather pleased that we appear to have achieved tactical surprise" against Iraqi forces in a sudden early morning
     first strike on January 17, 1991. Coalition forces undertook, in short, thousands of aircraft sorties and missile
     strikes in the first days of war. A select number of the successful ones with laser-guided bombs were portrayed
     daily back home on Cable News Network, Nightline, and other regular news programs.

     Some 50 of the new F- 117A batwing stealth fighter bombers were flown in early attacks, apparently achieving
     better success in Baghdad than they had one year earlier when they missed their targets in Panama City. Over
     200 Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired from ships and submarines for the first time in combat, also reportedly
     achieving successful "surgical strikes" on high-value Baghdad targets, including the Ministry of Defense and
     Saddam Hussein's presidential palace. American technological prowess was again displayed graphically several
     days later when Patriot air-defense missiles successfully intercepted attacking Iraqi missiles launched against
     Saudi Arabia and Israel.

     These and other images of war, perhaps more than anything else, I believe, created an illusion of remote,
     bloodless, pushbutton battle in which only military targets were assumed destroyed. Pentagon officials stressed
     throughout their daily briefings that Coalition war planners were taking great pains to marry the right weapon
     with the right target in order to minimize "collateral damage," that is, injury to innocent civilians in Iraq and
     Kuwait, particularly in populated areas such as Baghdad and Kuwait City.

     Halfway through the war, one journalist described the conflict as a "robo war" in which "the raids are intense,
     unremitting, and conducted with the world's most advanced non-nuclear weaponry but are unlikely to cause the
     sort of general destruction being anticipated by commentators." A Wall Street Journal article proclaimed,
     "Despite public perceptions, the recent history of high-tech conventional warfare has been to steadily reduce
     general destruction."

     Despite all these public proclamations about limited casualties from so-called surgical and precision strikes there
     would appear to be much greater destruction and much higher numbers of dead and injured in Iraq and Kuwait.
     Early first-hand accounts provided glimpses of the possibilities of more than surgical damage to Iraqi targets.
     From my discussions with Ramsey Clark, this is certainly the case. For example, Captain Steven Tait, pilot of an
     F-16 jet fighter which escorted the first wave of bomber aircraft and who was the first American to shoot down
     an Iraqi plane, described his bird's eye view of Baghdad after the first hour of allied bombardment: "Flames
     rising up from the city, some neighborhoods lit up like a huge Christmas tree. The entire city was just sparkling at
     us."

     The sheer amount of explosive tonnage dropped over Iraq and Kuwai also, I think, tends to undermine any
     assumption of surgical strikes. Air Force General McPeak, Air Force commanding general, proudly proclaiming,
     "Probably the first time in history that a field army has been defeated by air power," estimated that some 88,500
     tons of bombs have been dropped in over 109,000 sorties flown by a total of 2,800 fixed-wing aircraft. Of
     these flights somewhat over half were actual bombing raids while the remainder involved refueling, bomber
     escort, surveillance, and so forth. Of the actual bombing missions, about 20,000 sorties were flown against a
     select list of 300 strategic targets in Iraq and Kuwait; about 5,000 were flown against SCUD missile launchers,
     and some 30,000 to 50,000 against Iraqi forces in southern Iraq and Kuwait. In all, more than 3,000 bombs
     (including sea-launched cruise missiles) were dropped on metropolitan Baghdad. The total number of bombs
     dropped by allied forces in the war comes to about 250,000. Of these only 22,000 were the so-called "smart
     bombs" or guided bombs. About 10,000 of these guided bombs were laser-guided and about 10,000 were
     guided anti-tank bombs. The remaining 2,000 were radiation guided bombs directed at communication and
     radar installations.

     The most complete survey of all the different bombs, missiles, shells, and weapons so far appears in Appendix A
     of On Impact: Modern Warfare and the Environment, a report prepared by William Arkin, Damian Durrant,
     and Marianne Cherni for Greenpeace. This report was prepared for the "Fifth Geneva Convention on the
     Protection of the Environment in the Time of Armed Conflict" (London, June 3, 1991). The authors infer the
     total weapons used from the 1991 fiscal year supplemental budget request to Congress which lists weapons
     required to replenish U.S. stockpiles. The numbers are revealing and staggering. In part, they include:

          2,095 HARM missiles
          217 Walleye missiles
          5,276 guided anti-tank missiles
          44,922 cluster bombs and rockets
          136,755 conventional bombs
          4,077 guided bombs[1]

     The conventional unguided bomb (so-called "dumb bomb") was the most commonly used weapon in the
     massacre. These come in four types: the Mk 82 (500 lbs), Mk 83 (1,000 lbs), Mk 84 (2,000 lbs), and the
     M117 (750 lbs). In all some 150,000 to 170,000 of these bombs were dropped during the war.

     The U.S. arsenal contains eight kinds of guided bombs:

          AGM-130, an electro-optically or infrared-guided 2,000 pound powered bomb,
          GBU-10 Paveway II, a 2,000 pound laser-guided bomb based on a Mk 84,
          GBU-101 Paveway II, a 2,000 pound laser-guided bomb with I-2000 hard target munition, employed
          exclusively on the F117A and used in small numbers,
          GBU-12 Paveway II, a 500 pound laser-guided bomb, used against tanks,
          GBU-24 Paveway III, a 2,000 pound laser-guided, low-level weapon (with BLU-109 bomb and
          mid-course auto pilot) used against chemical and industrial facilities, bridges, nuclear storage areas, and
          aircraft shelters,
          GBU-27 Paveway III, a 2,000 pound laser-guided bomb with I-2000 hard target munition on the
          BLU-109/B, a "black program" adapted version of the GBU-24, used exclusively by F- 117A fighters to
          attack aircraft shelters, bunkers, and other targets in Baghdad, and
          GBU-28, a 5,000 pound "bunker busting" laser-guided bomb, fabricated especially for the war against
          Iraq "in an effort to destroy extremely hardened, deeply buried Iraqi command and control bunkers, kill
          senior military officials and possible kill Saddam Hussein."[2]

     As if explosive bombs were not enough, the U.S. used massive amounts of fire bombs and napalm, although
     U.S. officials denied using napalm against Iraqi troops, only on oil filled trenches (this raises the question of who
     set all the oil wells on fire in Kuwait and southern Iraq). These trenches, of course, in many cases surrounded
     bunkers where Iraqi soldiers were hiding. Perhaps the most horrifying of all bombs was the Fuel Air Explosives
     (FAE) which were used to destroy minefields and bunkers in Iraq and Kuwait. These firebombs were directly
     used against Iraqi soldiers, although military spokesmen and press reports have consistently tried to downplay
     their role.[3] Perhaps this is only because press reports were too descriptive before the war when the Pentagon
     was leaking stories about possible Iraqi use of FAEs, along with nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons -
     none of which ever appeared on the Iraqi side. The FAE is composed of an ethelene oxide fuel which forms an
     aerosol cloud or mist on impact. The cloud is then detonated, forming very high overpressures and a blast or
     shock wave that destroys anything within an area of about 50,000 square feet (for a 2,000 pound bomb). The
     U.S. also used "daisy cutters" or the BLU-82, a 15,000 pound bomb containing GSX Gelled slurry explosives.
     This, too, is a concussion type bomb which military spokesmen and the U.S. press said was used to detonate
     pressure sensitive mines. The mines, of course, surrounded Iraqi troop deployments and the concussive force of
     the bomb would surely also rupture internal organs or ear-drums of Iraqi soldiers pinned down in their bunkers.
     This is not even to mention incineration and asphyxiation, as the fire storm of the bomb sucks all of the oxygen
     out of the area. President Bush continually warned about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, but it is clear that
     U.S. forces alone used weapons of mass destruction against Iraqi troops in both Iraq and Kuwait.

     Among other controversial weapons are cluster bombs and anti-personnel bombs which contain a large number
     of small bomblets inside a large casing. Upon impact the little bombs are dispersed over a wide area and then
     explode. Using cluster bombs, a single B-52 can deliver more than 8,000 bomblets in a single mission. A total of
     about 60,000 to 80,000 cluster bombs were dropped.[4]

     What all of this means to anyone who thinks about the numbers is simply that the bombing was not a series of
     surgical strikes but rather an old fashioned mass destruction. On March 15, 1991, the Air Force released
     information stating that 93.6% of the tonnage dropped were traditional unguided bombs. So we have something
     like 82,000 tons of bombs that were non-precision guided and only 7,000 tons of guided bombs. This is not
     surgical warfare in any accurate sense of the term and more importantly in the sense that was commonly
     understood by the American public. Bombs were, moreover, not the only source of explosives rained down
     upon Iraq. Artillery shells from battleships and rocket launchers amounted to an additional 20,000 to 30,000
     tons of explosives.

     While the F-117 Stealth fighter captured the fascination of the news media, massive B-52s carried out the bulk
     of the work. Flying out of bases in Diego Garcia, Spain, United Kingdom, the United States, Saudi Arabia, and
     other places, B-52s dropped about thirty percent of the total tonnage of bombs. B-52s were used from the first
     night of the war to the last. Flying at 40,000 feet and releasing 40 - 60 bombs of 500 or 750 pounds each, their
     only function is to carpet bomb entire areas. General McPeak told Defense Week, "The targets we are going
     after are widespread. They are brigades, and divisions and battalions on the battlefield. It's a rather low density
     target. So to spread the bombs - carpet bombing is not my favorite expression - is proportionate to the target.
     Now is it a terrible thing? Yes. Does it kill people? Yes."[5] B-52s were used against chemical and industrial
     storage areas, air fields, troop encampments, storage sites, and they were apparently used against large
     populated areas in Basra.

     Language used by military spokesman General Richard Neal during the war made it sound as if Basra had been
     declared a "free fire zone" - to use a term from the Vietnam war for areas which were declared to be entirely
     military in nature and thus susceptible to complete bombing. On February 11, 1991, Neal told members of the
     press that "Basra is a military town in the true sense.... The infrastructure, military infrastructure, is closely
     interwoven within the city of Basra itself"[6] He went on to say that there were no civilians left in Basra, only
     military targets. Before the war, Basra was a city of 800,000 people, Iraq's second largest. Eyewitness accounts
     Suggest that there was no pretense at a surgical war in this city. On February 5, 1991, the Los Angeles Times
     reported that the air war had brought "a hellish nightime of fires and smoke so dense that witnesses say the sun
     hasn't been clearly visible for several days at a time . . . [that the bombing is] leveling some entire city blocks . . .
     [and that there are] bomb craters the size of football fields and an untold number of casualties."[7] Press reports
     immediately following the cease-fire tried to suggest that the massive destruction of Basra was caused by Iraqi
     forces suppressing the Shiite rebellion or was simply left over from the Iran-Iraq war. This would not be the first
     time the press and the U.S. government covered up the extent of its war destruction - the case of Panama comes
     immediately to mind

     The use of B-52s and carpet bombing violates Article 51 of Geneva Protocol I which prohibits area bombing.
     Any bombardment that treats a number of clearly separated and distinct military objectives located within a city
     as a single military objective is prohibited. Basra and most of southern Iraq and Kuwait where Iraqi forces were
     deployed were treated by U.S. military planners as a single area or to use McPeak's phrase "a low density
     target." The same is true for General Norman Schwarzkopf's order at the start of the ground war "not to let
     anybody or anything out of Kuwait City."[8] The result of this order was the massive destruction that came to be
     known as the "Highway of Death." In addition to retreating soldiers, many of whom had affixed white flags to
     their tanks which were clearly visible to U.S. pilots,[9] thousands of civilians, especially Palestinians, were killed
     as they tried to escape from Kuwait City. An Army officer on the scene told reporters that the "U.S. Air Force
     had been given the word to work over that entire area [roads leading north from Kuwait City] to find anything
     that was moving and take it out.''[10]

     By now it should be clear to anyone that claims of a surgical or a precise war are no more than the kind of
     excuses which the guilty always give to deflect blame elsewhere. The destruction of Iraq was near total and it
     was criminal. The fact that Baghdad was not carpet bombed by B-52s does not mean that the civilian population
     was not attacked and killed. On top of the massive bombing, we have now a new kind of war: bomb now, die
     later. The precision bombs which did manage to hit their targets destroyed precisely the life-sustaining economic
     infrastructure without which Iraqis would soon die from disease and malnutrition. George Bush's remark on
     February 6, 1991, that the air strikes have "been fantastically accurate" can only mean that the destruction of the
     civilian economic infrastructure was, indeed, the desired target and that the U.S. either made no distinction
     between military and civilian targets or defined the military area in such a broad manner as to include much
     civilian property. In both cases, it is a war crime.

     Finally, comments about the surgical nature of the war tend to neglect the outright massacre which occurred in
     southern Iraq and Kuwait. The only way to describe what happened there would be a killing frenzy. No
     accurate numbers of people killed in these areas exist but with the massive bombing of bunkers, especially by
     FAEs, it is likely that most of the Iraqi soldiers were killed by the saturation bombing. This number could go as
     high as several hundred thousand. These soldiers were defenseless from air attacks and cut off from
     communication with leaders in Baghdad. They were simply isolated by the U.S.-led coalition, brutally killed, and
     then bulldozed into some forty-nine mass graves. That is what General Colin Powell said in November with
     regard to the Iraqi army: "First you cut it off, then you kill it." There is nothing surgical about that.

     Notes

        1.Williarn M. Arkin, Darnian Durrant, and Marianne Cherni , On Impact: Modern Warfare and the
          Environment - A Case Study of the Gulf War (Washington, DC: Greenpeace, May 1991), p. 160, fn
          377.
        2.John D. Morrocco and David Fulghum , "USAF Developed a 4,700-lb. Bomb in Crash Program to
          Attack Iraqi Military Leaders in Hardened Bunkers," Aviation Week eS Space Technology, May 6,
          1991: 85.
        3.John Morrocco , "Looming Budget Cuts Threaten Future of Key HighTech Weapons," Aviation Week
          & Space Technology, April 22, 1991: 66-67. Eric Schmitt, "Why Iraqi Battle Threat Fizzled: Allied
          Strengths and Enemy Weaknesses," New York Times, March 4,1991: A9. Barbara Starr, "FAEs Used
          to Clear Mines," Jane's Defense Weekly, February 23, 1991: 247.
        4.Arkin, Durrant, and Cherni , On Impact, Appendix A.
        5.Tony Capaccio , "McPeak: Unclear If Air War has Sapped Iraqi Will," Defense Week, February 4,
          1991.
        6.Washington Post , February 2, 1991: A14.
        7.Mark Fineman , "Smoke Blots Out Sun in Bomb-Blasted Basra," Los Angeles Times, February 5, 1991.
        8.Bill Gannon "Pool Report with the Tiger Brigade Outside Kuwait City," Newark Star-Ledger, February
          27, 1991.
        9.Rowan Scarborough , "Pool Report Aboard the USS Blue Ridge," Washington Times, February 27,
          1991.
       10.Michael Kelly, "Highway to Hell," New Republic, April 1991: 12.

     Paul Walker is the director of the Institute for Peace and International Security at the Massachusetts
     Institute of Technology. His report was given at the New York Commission hearing, May 11, 1991 and at
     the Boston ommission hearing on June 8, 1991.