The Observer March 16, 2003
The Final Showdown In The Desert
US and British forces deploy, the Mother of All Bombs is tested and Baghdad waits for battle. How will Iraqs leader respond?
By Reporting Team: Peter Beaumont, Amman: Paul Harris, Kuwait: Ed Vulliamy, New York: James Meek, Kuwait: Jason Burke, Northern Iraq: Paul Webster, Paris: Burhan Wazir, Kuwait: Kamal Ahmed, London
IN Baghdad last week the quiet conversations among the citizens focus on how that war will be fought, for how long and how they will survive it. Last week a hint of how it will unfold was provided as a group of senior US military officials were shuttled to the viewing stands of the live-fire range of Eglin air force base in Florida. It was at this base that the pilots of the Doolittle Raid against Japan trained for their mission.
The officials, driven to the base in their staff cars, were there for a demonstration that history may judge as important as that raid. They had come to see was the final testing of a bomb whose first use is likely to determine how quick the coming war in Iraq is likely to be. Weighing 21,000 pounds, it is designed to deliver a blast little short of that provided by a small nuclear weapon. Officially, it is called the Massive Ordnance Air Blast weapon n the MOAB. Unofficially, test pilots and technicians have nicknamed it the Mother of All Bombs. Loaded on to the back of a C-130 transport plane, the bomb was dropped over Eglin, detonating in a blast that sucked the air out of the sky. A Pentagon official described a towering dark cloud of debris that rose above the test range and a shock wave that shook the doors of houses and businesses well beyond the area of the test ranges.The next time it is delivered, it is likely to be over Iraq. Any troops not blown apart by the shock of the detonation are likely to have their lungs imploded by the sudden change in pressure.
As the last US and British troops poured into the Gulf region last week, the Mother of All Bombs was simply the most spectacular weapon in the vast array of weaponry being lined up against Baghdad. By mid-week naccording to the estimates of Global Security.org n Centcom, the area of responsibility of General Tommy Franks, had under its command around 211,000 soldiers and 1,100 aircraft of all types plus a further UK contingent of around 30,000 soldiers.
Offshore, the US navy is in the final stages of deploying six carrier battle groups, each with around 11,000 sailors aboard, carrying around 1000 Tomahawk cruise missiles.
At the centre of this build-up is Franks's forward command headquarters at As-Sayliyah camp outside Doha, 430 miles from Iraq's southern border. There in a sprawling desert compound of giant steel warehouses is the nerve centre of Franks's operation: a vast war room equipped with banks of computers, plasma screens and communications equipment used by commanders to direct military activities. It is from this nerve centre that the gaunt and wiry figure of Franks will fight his war na war with the potential to remake the shape of our world both for better and for worse.
What it all eventually will mean is known to a handful of men n Franks and Rumsfeld at their centre nand contained in a secret document known only as Deployment Order No. 177 nAmerica's order of battle for the coming war.
In recent months raids by British and American planes patrolling the northern and southern No Fly Zones have been stepped up include ground targets as well as anti-aircraft and anti-shipping sites. On Sunday it was the turn of five underground precision-guided weapons communications sites, located at Numinaya, about 60 miles southeast of Baghdad. Elsewhere Special Forces, both US and UK, are already undertaking missions inside Iraq, particularly in the Western Desert where they are tracking mobile Scud launchers, and in northern Iraq, to prepare the way for later attacks.
But the final, and most pressing of the unanswered questions, is how Franks will fight his war. Military officials on both sides of the Atlantic have repeatedly insisted that this will be ea war like none seen before' whose principal component will be to quickly eshock and awe' the Iraqi leadership.
According to predictions in the Washington Post last week, if Bush gives the go-ahead for war, is expected to begin on three fronts simultaneously, on a scale, and with a rapidity, perhaps not planned since the Russian advance on Berlin in final weeks of World War II. The object, say those familiar with the plan, is to rush straight to Baghdad, by-passing other areas of resistance to be mopped up by following forces so that the main thrust of the assault is not slowed down as the first tanks and armoured personnel carriers and heavy guns engage Saddam's defences that have been thrown around the city. The only exception will be a British push towards the city of Basra, a bare on-and-a-half hours' drive from the Kuwaiti border.
According to the Washington Post, the pace of Special Operations forces would be stepped up simultaneously with the object to deny Iraqi forces access to certain chemical and biological weapons. But the most striking aspect of this campaign will be the air assault. The Pentagon has suggested that as many as 3,000 cruise missile may be used, in addition to air raids, the aim being to decapitate the Iraqi regime on the first day by hitting targets associated with Saddam's regime.
On paper it looks neat. In some ways it is. The US and its allies enjoy a massive superiority in terms of equipment, training, personnel and morale. Indeed, few expect much of the Iraq's regular army to fight and anticipate defections in the Republican Guard too, leaving Saddam's Special Republican Guard in and around Baghdad to bear the brunt of the assault.
But neat as the planning is, it leaves questions unresolved. The key one is: what will Saddam do when confronted by military defeat? It is this that is most scaring military planners on both sides of the Atlantic who fear that in the end Saddam may use his elong arm' nhis remaining chemical weapons n as a last throw of the dice in the misguided belief that if he can inflict sufficient US and British casualties then public opinion will force and immediate halt, and Saddam can negotiate one last lease of life.
If he believesthat the US does not have the stomach to take casualties in a new Gulf war then Saddam may have made is last and most fatal calculation. For the destruction of the Twin Towers not only hurt America, it marked a transformative experience. As many have noted, the sight of New York's fire crews plunging into the smoke and horror, many to their deaths, marked a change in the US public mood.
Not far from the British camp where letters were being written and phone calls being made, sprawled in the desert across a neat, relatively dustless patch of brought-in gravel, is a weapons-free zone. The largely empty beds of 33 Field Hospital speak more clearly than the clustered gun barrels of the Army about the darkest consequences of any invasion of Iraq.
'I think it was Napoleon Bonaparte who said: iI see you're serious, you brought your doctorsi,' said Lieutenant- Colonel Graham Sunderland, a consultant general surgeon normally based at Southern General Hospital in Glasgow. eI think that's still true.'
Standing by one of the hospital tents in Kuwait, his green camouflage uniform dark in the afternoon glare, Sunderland looked remote from the wards of the Scottish NHS. He felt it: eThe kind of injuries we're going to see will be those of major trauma. eThey're likely to be things like bullet wounds and explosive injuries, which are relatively rare in the UK.'
Since 1945, according to the British Legion, 2,755 British servicemen and women have been killed in combat n the bulk of them in Korea, Northern Ireland, Malaya, the Falklands and Palestine n with many more injured. Forty-seven died during the 1991 Gulf war, most as the result of efriendly fire' incidents like the A10 attack on the Fusiliers.
With 300 beds, X-ray equipment, containerised operating theatres and a sealed area to allow surgical teams to work protected from chemical or biological attack, 33 Field Hospital is designed to be packed up and moved as close as possible to the battlefield.
Casualties will be brought in by US helicopters, or, if weather conditions are too severe, military ambulance. Difficult cases can be taken to civilian hospitals in Kuwait City, to naval hospitals offshore or to US military hospitals. The care network is comprehensive, but it is in the vicious nature of war that not everyone can be saved.
Lt-Col Richard Cantelo, consultant anaesthetist at the field hospital, was in the military surgical team which operated on British Army casualties from the hostage rescue mission in Sierra Leone in 2000. Of the 13 wounded soldiers who were brought in, they operated on seven. One died.
'He was shot, and it was not a survivable injury,' said Cantelo. eThe others had shrapnel wounds that were not life-threatening under normal conditions. The fact we were there on site made a great difference to their recovery. The most seriously injured, who had a lot of tissue lost from shrapnel, has gone back to his career as a soldier.'
The pressure on the surgical teams was enormous and, in a strange way, exhilarating. eWe operated for about twelve hours. It was the most exciting day of my life.'
In the worst imaginable case n and, at this stage, planners among the army medics sleep, eat and breathe worst imaginable cases n casualties will be brought in who are both injured and contaminated from a chemical attack. Specialists will do their best to decontaminate patients before they go for surgery, but the surgeons still have to be cautious.
Major David Standley, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon, put it bluntly. eThe last thing we want to do is put our hands into a contaminated wound and end up being evacuated as well. We can't do anything without our hands.'
So the battle lines are set and the hospitals are in place. Blair, Bush and JosE Maria Aznar, the hawkish Spanish premier, are meeting today in the Azores. Despite the opposition, they are determined to end the rule of Saddam Hussein. And the soldiers n British, American, Iraqi n are spending their last moments of peace.
'There is the possibility n I hope to God not n that some of you out here now may not be going home,' said the chaplain for 3 Commando Brigade in Northern Kuwait, at last prayers before battle on Friday. eEach of us has to face each day as if it were our last. If we live each way as if it were our last, we will be ready.'
The soldiers are waiting for the sky to light up any day soon, and the earth to shudder under the onslaught of bombs and missiles and shell-fire. Troops will start moving. War will begin. And then? Nobody n not soldiers, not politicians, not diplomats, not fathers or mothers, not sons or daughters n knows what will happen after the fighting begins. Not for sure.
They will find out when it is over.
Copyright © 2003, Guardian Newspapers Limited
