A rchive Date
[ 20-03-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[http://www.msnbc.com/news/870749.asp?vts=032020030750
U.S. hopeful Saddam was hit
NBC, MSNBC AND NEWS SERVICES
March 20 - The Bush administration was hopeful that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was killed or wounded in the first strikes on Baghdad, military sources told NBC News Thursday. While CIA analysts worked to verify what, if anything, happened to Saddam, Pentagon officials made it clear that Wednesday’s isolated strikes were nothing compared to the assault to come.
ALTHOUGH IRAQI television showed Saddam speaking to the nation shortly after Wednesday’s strikes, U.S. officials suspect it might have been a double. They noted that the person in the video was wearing glasses and reading from a notepad - habits not associated with Saddam.
In addition, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reported that U.S. intelligence officials suspect the appearance might have been previously recorded, noting as evidence a brief freeze in a frame. The CIA was using voice print analysis to try to confirm whether the voice matches Saddam’s, NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski reported from the Pentagon.
The first military strikes were aimed at what President Bush, in a speech to the American public on Wednesday night, called “selected targets of military importance.” They included Saddam and members of his inner circle, who were believed by U.S. intelligence to be hiding out in a Baghdad residence. Bush announced the war at 10:15 p.m. ET Wednesday, saying he would use decisive force to remove Saddam from power, but cautioned that the conflict “could be longer and more difficult than some expect.”
A senior White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press that military advisers originally did not intend to begin the assault Wednesday. However, Bush was told in the final meeting that fresh intelligence had prompted military planners to change their recommendation. British officials were caught by surprise. Reuters reported officials had been told late on Wednesday that no action was expected overnight and that the government was informed of the U.S. plans only hours before the strikes were launched.
As tens of thousands of U.S. and British troops remained poised on the Kuwaiti-Iraqi border, Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon that Wednesday’s strike “was the first. It will not likely be the last.” “The days of the Saddam Hussein regime are numbered,” he added. “We continue to feel there is no need for a broader conflict if the Iraqi leaders act to save themselves and to prevent such further conflict.”
“The Iraqi soldiers and officers must ask themselves whether they want to die fighting for a doomed regime or do they want to survive, help the Iraqi people in the liberation of their country and play a role in the new, free Iraq,” he said. Asked about reports of oil fires in southern Iraq, Rumsfeld said he had indications but no confirmation that Iraq officials might have set several fires. But along the border with Kuwait, witnesses on Thursday reported seeing orange flames in southern Iraq after explosions shook buildings in the area.
On the question of whether an Iraqi television broadcast after the attack showed Saddam or a double, Rumsfeld replied, “There is debate about that.” Administration and intelligence sources told NBC News that they suspect it might have been a double. They noted that the person in the video was wearing glasses and reading from a notepad - habits not associated with Saddam.
In addition, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reported that U.S. intelligence officials suspect the appearance might have been previously recorded, noting as evidence a brief freeze in a frame. The CIA was using voice print analysis to try to confirm whether the voice matches Saddam’s, NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski reported from the Pentagon.
The first military strikes were aimed at what President Bush, in a speech to the American public on Wednesday night, called “selected targets of military importance.” They included Saddam and members of his inner circle, who were believed by U.S. intelligence to be hiding out in a Baghdad residence. Bush announced the war at 10:15 p.m. ET Wednesday, saying he would use decisive force to remove Saddam from power, but cautioned that the conflict “could be longer and more difficult than some expect.”
According to U.S. officials, the weapons unleashed against Baghdad consisted of 40 Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from Navy ships in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, as well as precision-guided 2,000-pound bombs dropped from two F-117 stealth fighters
ATTACK ON U.S. FORCES
Iraq’s military responded hours later, firing missiles toward American troops positioned just across its border with Kuwait. None of the Iraqi missiles caused injuries or damage, and one was intercepted by a Patriot missile, according to U.S. officers.
American and British soldiers in the region briefly donned gas masks or protective suits, but officers later said the missiles apparently were not armed with chemical or biological weapons. There appeared to be one close call. In a statement, the U.S. Marine Corps First Marine Expeditionary Force said one missile struck outside Camp Commando in the Kuwaiti desert at around 2:28 a.m. ET.
“Initial reports cited that soldiers from the U.K. and (U.S.) Marines sighted a gray missile land just outside the compound,” the statement said. NBC reporters embedded with U.S. forces in the Kuwaiti desert say American troops were sobered by the missile attacks. “In the past when we’ve done drills, there’s been a lot of conversation,” NBC’s Dana Lewis reported. “But today everyone was very quiet - this was the real thing.”
Lewis said U.S. commanders are clearly concerned that their troops are exposed within range of the Iraqis, even though the incoming missiles so far have caused no injuries. Air raid sirens wailed repeatedly in Kuwait City as officials warned that some Iraqi missiles might be aimed there.
U.S. officials, speaking to NBC News on condition of anonymity, rejected Kuwaiti assertions that Iraq fired Scud missiles, which have a range of up to 360 miles but which Baghdad said it scrapped in 1991. A senior U.S. official told NBC’s Robert Windrem that the rockets, in all likelihood, were Al Samoud I missiles, which have a range of up to 90 miles.
The Kuwaiti assertion also was rejected by Iraq. “I would like to tell you that we don’t have Scud missiles, and why they were fired, I don’t know,” Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf said.
BIG ATTACK YET TO COME
Still to come was the main air offensive against Iraq, U.S. officials said. “The massive air attack plan has not yet commenced,” Rear Adm. Barry M. Costello, the commander of the USS Constellation battle group, said Thursday.
Separately, a U.S. military commander in Kuwait said limited raids would go on for two or three days ahead of any huge assault, which U.S. officials have said could involve a fearsome salvo of at least 3,000 satellite-guided bombs and cruise missiles.
The commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the planned strikes would be beefed-up versions of the bombing raids carried out in Iraq’s southern “no-fly” zone in recent years. “It will be like Southern Watch on steroids,” he said.
A senior U.S. official told NBC News that U.S. forces would accelerate psychological operations and selective bombing of air defense, command-and-control and leadership targets in the next 24 hours. About 300,000 troops - most of them from the United States, but about 40,000 of them from Britain - are poised within striking distance of Iraq. Backing them are scores of attack helicopters and more than 1,000 airplanes.
OTHER TARGETS
Officials said U.S. forces also struck several other targets in southern and far western Iraq Wednesday night, including the Shaibah air traffic control radar and communications site near Basra. The damage to the Shaibah site would significantly degrade Iraq’s ability to track and strike helicopters assigned to the 101st Airborne Division as it moved north from Kuwait, a senior official said.
The attacks also damaged two airfields, one in the far southwestern desert and the other in far western Iraq near the Jordanian border, as well as the Az Zubayr artillery unit of the 51st Mechanized Division in southern Iraq, the H-3 airfield air defense center in the far west, the Al Faw artillery unit in the far southeast near the Iranian border, the Basra missile site and the Taji air defense operations center 10 miles north of Baghdad.
Many of the targets were struck with the support of special operations units, who were heavily represented in the attacks on the two airfields, a senior official said. Special operations forces were expected to use those bases as staging points for operations inside Iraq.
BAGHDAD AFTERMATH
The precise targets that were struck in Baghdad were not identified, but a senior U.S. official said they did not include any of Saddam’s palaces. Iraqi Information Minister al-Sahaf said the U.S. strikes killed one person, injured several and hit a customs office and some empty Iraqi TV buildings, among other targets. There was no way to verify this.
Sahhaf said two civilian suburbs were also struck. He said Iraqis were trying to dejam an Iraqi satellite television station that had been jammed by coalition forces. Many people had already streamed out of Baghdad a day earlier for the relative safety of the countryside. Nearly every store was shut, and many residents who remained taped their windows. Addressing journalists in the capital, Al Sahaf denounced the attempt to assassinate Saddam, saying, “The rulers of America are announcing that they are assassins; they are a gang of murderers.”
POST-DIPLOMATIC OPTION
What the Pentagon has dubbed Operation Iraqi Freedom began about an hour and a half after the expiration of the 48-hour deadline issued by Bush, who told Saddam and his sons, Uday and Qusay, to leave the country or face military action. The Baghdad regime rejected the option and continued to deny that it was hiding banned weapons of mass destruction.
The White House issued the ultimatum after months of diplomatic efforts disintegrated, leaving the international community bitterly divided over how to ensure that Iraq was disarming under agreements dating to the end of the 1991 Gulf War.
In November, the 15-member U.N. Security Council agreed unanimously on a tough new resolution that threatened serious consequences if Iraq did not fully cooperate with a new round of inspections. Several months of inspections had mixed results.
The United States and Britain insisted that Iraq had continued its banned weapons program and argued that the regime was a threat, in particular because it could connect with terrorists. But other key Security Council members, led by France, argued that inspections were succeeding and should be given more time, and they rejected any move toward war.
British and U.S. efforts to win support for a second U.N. resolution authorizing military action against Iraq failed, and they abandoned the idea earlier this week. The United States and Britain argued that they had the authority to go ahead with military action on their own.
OTHER DEVELOPMENTS
- Inside southern Iraq, a helicopter carrying U.S. special forces crashed hours before the U.S. missile strikes, U.S. officials said. There were no casualties in the incident.
- U.S. officials in Central Command in Qatar said more Iraqi soldiers had surrender, although they did not give number. On Wednesday, two groups of Iraqi soldiers defected along the border Wednesday and were handed over to Kuwaiti authorities.
- The Vatican said it was “deeply pained” by the start of the Iraq conflict and deplored the abandonment of efforts to bring about a peaceful solution.
- Iran said its airspace was closed to “belligerent forces” after its western neighbor Iraq came under attack, state television reported.
Contributing to this report were “National Geographic Explorer’s” Peter Arnett in Baghdad; NBC’s Don Teague, David Bloom and Bob Arnot in Kuwait; Jim Miklaszewski, Andrea Mitchell and Carl Rochelle in Washington; Robert Windrem in New York; Anne Curry on board the USS Constellation; The Associated Press and Reuters news services.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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