Warplanes strike strategic sites outside Baghdad
By John DiamondTribune Staff Writer
February 16, 2001, 9:52 PM CST
WASHINGTON -- President Bush ordered strikes on military command targets around Baghdad Friday, setting off air raid sirens and rattling windows in the Iraqi capital and sending a clear message to his father's old adversary.
In the first military action of his presidency, Bush dispatched U.S. carrier- and ground-based planes against air defense command and control centers. The two dozen attacking aircraft included six British Tornado fighters as the Labor Party government of British Prime Minister Tony Blair joined forces with the Republican president's decision to strike Iraq.
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein claimed that the U.S. was acting in concert with Israel and issued a statement calling the attack "proof of their evil intentions." The government in Baghdad reported one death and 11 people injured in the strike.
Bush called the strike a "routine" continuation of longstanding U.S. policy designed to prevent Iraq from threatening its neighbors. The Pentagon said the raid responded to increasingly aggressive tactics by Iraqi air defense crews against U.S. and British warplanes patrolling the no-fly zone over southern Iraq. Some experts speculate the tactics represent Hussein testing the new U.S. administration's resolve.
Bush, visiting Mexico on his first foreign trip as president, indicated that Iraq could come under further attack if it continues to develop weapons of mass destruction, though the Pentagon said no immediate follow-up strikes would be necessary.
"Saddam Hussein has got to understand we expect him to conform to the agreement that he signed after Desert Storm," Bush said, referring to the terms of the truce ending the 1991 Persian Gulf war in which Iraq agreed to destroy its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.
"Our intention is to make sure that the world is as peaceful as possible," Bush said. "And we're going to watch very carefully as to whether or not he develops weapons of mass destruction. And if we catch him doing so, we'll take the appropriate action."
The president and his aides made no mention of Hussein's role as the elder Bush's foe in the gulf war, or of the plot hatched by Iraqi security forces, and foiled by U.S. intelligence, to assassinate the retired president in 1993.
Friday's attack was unusual because it targeted sites close to Baghdad, well north of the 33rd parallel that marks the northern extreme of the southern no-fly zone.
Of five target areas, four were just outside of Baghdad. And while most of the recent strikes on Iraq have involved pilots responding to challenges from the ground, this was carefully planned over more than a week, and approved by the president.
The strike was the largest attack on Iraq since December 1998 and the first in two years that targeted sites outside the northern and southern no-fly zones. U.S. and British warplanes have been patrolling those zones, designed to contain Iraqi military activity in the air and on the ground, since the end of gulf war.
In addition to the six British Tornadoes, the attacking aircraft included Navy F-18 fighters flying off the deck of the USS Harry S. Truman steaming in the Persian Gulf and Air Force F-15s flying out of bases in Kuwait.
The warplanes, backed by some 40 support aircraft, including radar jammers, AWACS command planes and aerial tankers, dropped guided bombs with the ability to glide long distances. That enabled the planes to drop their weapons from the relatively safe confines of the southern no-fly zone and hit targets 40 to 50 miles to the north.
The targets were radar stations and air defense control centers that the Pentagon said had been coordinating an increasingly threatening game of shoot-and-run against the planes patrolling the southern no-fly zone.
This year, U.S. and British patrols have counted 51 instances of anti-aircraft fire and 14 launchings of Iraqi surface-to-air missiles. The Iraqi missiles, however, were not guided by radar because to do so would bring the Iraqi radar stations under immediate counter-attack. No U.S. or British planes were hit in these incidents.
"Both the frequency and the more sophisticated command and control of their operations had yielded an increased threat to our aircraft and our crews," said Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, director of operations for the Joint Staff, the Pentagon's command nerve center.
"It reached the point where it was obvious to our forces that they had to conduct operations to safeguard those pilots and aircraft," said Newbold, who spoke at a Pentagon briefing. "As a matter of fact, it's essentially a self-defense measure."
Suggesting that the intent was to send a signal as much as destroy assets, Newbold called the strike a success and said no follow-up sorties against the targets would be needed.
Bush spoke in carefully measured tones in a joint news conference in San Cristobal on the lawn of Mexican President Vicente Fox's ranch. He repeatedly called the strike "a routine mission" that carried on a pattern set under the Clinton administration.
Indeed, the strike was on a scale that Republicans often criticized as a "pin-prick" operation when Clinton was in charge. Yet there were aspects of it that were clearly not routine.
"It's unusual that they hit that close to Baghdad," said John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, a military analysis Web site. "The main thing that is new is that they called a news conference and had a briefing on it. That is a major, substantial departure from the last several years."
Under Clinton, the planes flying in the northern and southern zones frequently dropped bombs and fired radar-seeking missiles on isolated Iraqi air defense posts without any involvement by the White House. Clinton sought to downplay the strikes to keep to a minimum the criticism from moderate Arab states whose support he was seeking in the Mideast peace process.
Friday's attack was different in that it was carefully planned over at least a week at the U.S. Central Command, the Tampa-based headquarters responsible for military operations in the oil-rich Persian Gulf region.
Bush's order came at the end of a week Bush devoted to focusing on national defense with visits to several military bases around the country and meetings with senior commanders.
Even as Bush sought to portray the operation as routine, other Republicans said it heralded a new, harder line on Iraq.
"For eight years we have allowed Saddam Hussein to rebuild his military, consolidate his power and pursue aggressive new weapons programs that threaten our friends in the region," said Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.). "Today's air strikes are an unambiguous sign that America is once again serious about our international commitments and ready to lead again."
It was unclear, however, whether the events leading up to the strike represented Bush's initiative or Hussein's.
Charles Duelfer, a former senior member of the UN arms inspection team in Iraq, said the Iraqis "are probably testing the will of the new administration" with their more aggressive air defense tactics.
"The U.S. and British missions signal a more vigorous commitment" to protect their aircraft and defend the no-fly zone, Duelfer said. "It is a clear message to Iraq that the new administration will respond to Iraqi threats."
It was Hussein's decision to oust UN weapons inspectors in the fall of 1998 that sparked Clinton's decision to launch Operation Desert Fox, a large-scale air strike on Iraq. Since then, the United States and Britain have been alone in pursuing patrol of the no-fly zones. At the UN there have been increasing calls to ease economic sanctions on Iraq.
During the presidential campaign, Bush said frequently that he wanted a tougher line on Iraq. Given the unwillingness of the UN to go along with sterner sanctions, the only options available to the president appear to be intensified military strikes and support for the Iraqi opposition movement, whose leaders met Friday with senior State Department officials even as the bombs were falling around Baghdad.
Copyright © 2001, The Chicago Tribune
