Iraq plans to lure US from desert into street fights.

(UK) Times. 9 August 2002.

WASHINGTON -- Iraq plans to avoid desert battlefields and instead lure invading US troops into the hazards of urban warfare, US intelligence officials said.

The strategy would place millions of Iraqi civilians in the way of an aerial bombardment from US aircraft while threatening to maximise casualties among US ground troops.

This interpretation raises the spectre of US forces struggling through the streets of Baghdad in chemical weapons suits, while Iraqi forces snipe at them using a warren of underground tunnels and bunkers to escape.

It also plays on American fears of street-fighting against an unpredictable foe. The 1993 debacle on the streets of Mogadishu, when 18 US soldiers were killed by Somali rebels, the subject of the film Black Hawk Down, affected US foreign policy for the rest of the Clinton Administration.

The urban scenario is based on the accounts of Iraqi defectors and an assessment by the Pentagon war planners. The Los Angeles Timesreported that President Saddam Hussein has told his officials to be prepared for urban fighting.

His ploy derives in part from the lessons of the 1991 Gulf War, when Iraqi tanks and forces were easy prey for the coalition's air superiority.

Pentagon officials have already begun to try to factor the risks of street-fighting into their war plans. One of the strategies leaked in recent weeks envisaged an "inside-out" assault on Iraq, which aimed to cripple Saddam's command by striking Baghdad first, as opposed to a ground invasion from the north, south, and possibly west.

Such a strike could be launched swiftly, with as much surprise as remains possible for an attack that, although months away, has been so heavily telegraphed. It would require around 70,000 US troops, either in the region or within striking distance.

Although the eventual number of US troops to be amassed in the Gulf would be far greater, an "inside-out" attack could be launched while forces were still arriving. Michael O'Hanlon, a military analyst with the Brookings Institution, said that street-fighting, and all the additional dangers to Iraqi civilians and US forces involved, was a "foregone conclusion" if the US invaded.

"Saddam won't fight out in the desert," he said. "We'd win decisively."

"But it's a tough kind of war. I'm not sure President Bush has fully signed up to that kind of war."

US military chiefs believe their high-tech weaponry is precise enough to hit targets in cities. The technology that produced cruise missiles that could turn the corners of Baghdad streets in the Gulf War has improved dramatically.

In Operation Desert Storm, less than 8 per cent of the munitions dropped over Iraq were precision-guided. That figure rose to 35 per cent in the 1998 Kosovo conflict, and to 56 per cent in Afghanistan.

Saddam would know, however, that any missiles that strayed off target to hit civilian workplaces or accommodation, as many did in Afghanistan, would heighten international opposition to the war.

Although reserves of precision-guided missiles were heavily depleted by the war in Afghanistan, munitions manufacturers have bolstered supplies, and despite initial doubts about their availability the Pentagon is confident in a few months it will have enough for a war with Iraq.

Saudi officials offered further complications for US war strategists when they said that the US would not be allowed to use Saudi air bases to launch attacks on Iraq.

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