First attacks signal strategy
Michael R. Gordon New York Times News ServiceCAMP DOHA, Kuwait -- Some wars begin with a bang. Others begin with limited airstrikes, stealthy border movements and psychological operations to weaken the enemy's resistance.
This war began with both. The major blow was a cruise missile attack from the Red Sea against three "leadership targets," an apparent effort to decapitate Saddam Hussein's regime. The strike recalled the cruise missile attack the Clinton administration mounted -- unsuccessfully -- to try to kill Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. It was an attempt to end the war with a single, decisive blow.
But even before the Baghdad attack took place, the final preparatory phase of the war was under way. It included attacks on artillery, a major psychological operations campaign, and the positioning of ground troops along the Kuwait-Iraq border.
Despite these twin developments -- the attack on the leadership and the maneuvering at the border -- the major air and land assault to collapse Saddam's regime has not yet been unleashed. The United States is still preparing the knock-out punch.
Meanwhile, it has already hit some targets. On Wednesday afternoon, allied warplanes attacked about a dozen Iraqi artillery pieces near the southern Iraqi town of Al Zubayr and on Al Faw peninsula.
The strikes were important militarily, and also for what they signaled politically. Allied warplanes patrolling the southern no- flight zone have attacked surface-to-air missiles, radar and surface- to-surface missiles in southern Iraq. But this was the first time that artillery has been attacked.
The military rationale seemed clear: to set the stage for the invasion of Iraq. The artillery pieces that were attacked included GHN-45 howitzers, an Austrian-made 155-millimeter gun that has been part of Iraq's arsenal for some time and that the Iraqi military moved south near Al Zubayr about three weeks ago. With a range of about 25 miles, the howitzers could reach the American and British forces moving into attack position in northern Kuwait and threaten them as they advanced north.
Allied warplanes also attacked Type 59 field guns stationed on Iraq's Faw peninsula, which were in range of the Kuwait's Bubiyan Island.
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