Time Magazine March 31, 2003
Awestruck
A Surprise Attack Aimed At Saddam, Plus The Kickoff Of The Air And Ground Assault, Shake The Iraqi Regime. Inside The Allied Plan To Finish It Off For Good
By Romesh Ratnesar, Reported by Mark Thompson, Tim Burger, James Carney, John F. Dickerson and Douglas Waller/Washington; Brian Bennett/with the 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing; Sally B. Donnelly/Doha; Meenakshi Ganguly/on the U.S.S. Constellation; Terry McCarthy/Safwan; and Alex Perry/ Nasiriyah; Kathleen Adams
The smoke rose above Baghdad in plumes of thick, black soot, carrying with it the ashes of a dying regime. The nights were full of fire and noise, as thousands of Tomahawk missiles and smart bombs crashed into their targets, sending up balloons of searing orange flame into the night sky. In the light of day, calm descended on the city's streets, and the silence was pierced only by the crackle of burning buildings and the wail of emergency sirens. Iraqi officials angrily prevented reporters from venturing near the scenes of destruction, but word spread quickly among the hardened citizens of the city what exactly had been destroyed. Three days into the American war on Saddam Hussein, the soaring government buildings and opulent palaces that once stood on the banks of the Tigris River were gone. Even if Saddam and his most trusted aides somehow managed to survive a bombing campaign expressly designed to kill them, their tyranny appeared ready to crumble with the foundations of their fortresses. It seemed to be only a matter of time.
But wars move according to their own tempo; war plans, military men often say, are made to bebroken, good only until the first bombs are dropped and the real fighting begins. At the White House and inside the allied war rooms, the mood swung from hopeful expectation, with signs that the Iraqi regime may have been decapitated, to admonishing sobriety on Saturday, as U.S. soldiers encountered significant enemy fire outside southern Iraqi cities and on the road to Baghdad. "There's no cheering or high-fiving whatsoever," said a senior White House aide. "This is not a cakewalk." By the end of last week, Pentagon officials said they were pleased with the pace of the campaign, as U.S. forces pushed more than 150 miles into Iraq, but there was also plenty of anxiety about the hazards that might still lie in wait--perhaps only days away--as the steel wave of allied power pushed toward the gates of the capital. "Things are going pretty well," a senior Pentagon official says. "Perhaps too well."
The opening act of Gulf War II did not proceed according to the Pentagon's carefully scripted blueprint--to begin the attack with a rapid push of ground troops, followed by a massive air assault designed to "shock and awe" the enemy into submission. That plan was pre-empted because of an intelligence bonanza that could have delivered the knockout punch before the opening bell. Acting on fresh information that came in hours before the deadline the U.S. President had set for Saddam to give up power, George W. Bush ordered U.S. forces to strike the Baghdad bunker where Saddam was believed to be sleeping. Just before dawn Thursday, three dozen Tomahawk missiles outfitted with 1,000-lb. warheads were unleashed from six warships in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea and slammed into three buildings in Baghdad. "The intelligence indicated there would be senior Iraqi leadership at all three," a Pentagon official said, "but one target was more important than the other two." Shortly after the missiles found their marks, a pair of U.S. F117 fighters dropped four 2,000-lb. bunker-busting bombs on an underground facility believed to be housing Saddam and at least one of his two ruthless sons Qusay and Uday.
U.S. military officials told TIME that the barrage obliterated its intended targets and almost certainly killed some if not many of the key Iraqi leaders believed to be huddling inside. A senior U.S. official told TIME that the CIA received an intelligence report that one of Saddam's sons was either killed or seriously injured; a second intelligence report cited sources who saw Saddam carried out of the rubble on a stretcher. In the wake of the U.S. strike, Iraqi television broadcast what it claimed was a live statement from Saddam that purported to show he had survived. Some viewers wondered whether the haggard, bespectacled figure was actually the dictator or one of his body doubles, though intelligence experts concluded that it was probably Saddam. Still, that did not rule out the possibility that the speech may have been previously taped.
Lawmakers briefed by Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice late last week say that the White House did not rule out the possibility that Saddam was dead or gravely injured. A U.S. intelligence official says that early Thursday morning, electronic intercepts picked up frantic calls for medical assistance from someone at the bombing site, though there was no indication which Iraqi leaders had been hit. Three days after the strike, U.S. strategists still didn't know exactly who had been taken out, but they were certain, says an intelligence official, that "we got somebody."
The allies' show of might and the possibility that the U.S. air strikes may have picked off Saddam initially raised hopes that a war so widely dreaded would come to a mercifully short end. Even some White House officials wondered aloud whether the opening-night salvo and the rapid advance of American ground forces might render the "shock and awe" of the Pentagon's planned assault unnecessary. But the battlefield picture remained too muddled for allied commanders to hold their fire for long.
The initial wave of U.S. ground forces, led by British marines and the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division, swept into southern Iraq on Thursday night. Though limited to a few targets in Baghdad, the early bombardment had staggered the Iraqi regime, cutting it off from its field commanders, Pentagon officials asserted, and leaving much of its undermanned, underfed army on its own in the face of the allied onslaught. That may explain why U.S. and British troops encountered meager resistance as they pushed toward the oil-rich southern Iraqi city of Basra. One day into the ground war, allied forces secured the town of Safwan and the port city of Umm Qasr; Marines seized two vital oil fields that Saddam's forces may have been preparing to set ablaze. Iraqi forces managed to set fire to only nine of 1,000 oil wells. In western Iraq, special-operations forces secured a key airfield where U.S. officials thought Saddam was hiding Scud missiles that could hit Israel.
On Friday, as called for in the original plan, the U.S. finally delivered the shock and awe, pulverizing targets in Baghdad and positions scattered throughout the country with a barrage of bombs dropped from hundreds of planes, as well as Tomahawks fired from 30 warships. By then, the Iraqi will to fight was weakening across southern Iraq. Close to 10,000 Iraqi troops surrendered in the first three days of conflict; on Saturday, Iraq's 51st Infantry Division, a 200-tank-strong corps charged with defending Basra, told U.S. commanders it was giving up. On Friday, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said surrender discussions between U.S. officials and some Iraqi military leaders had intensified. "They're beginning to realize the regime is history," Rumsfeld said. "And as that realization sets in, their behavior is likely to begin to tip and to change."
Even a rapid victory for the allies must come with costs. U.S. and British forces lost 22 soldiers in the war's first three days. Nineteen died in military accidents. Early Sunday morning more than a dozen U.S. soldiers were wounded and one killed in a grenade attack on a camp housing the 101st Airborne Division; a U.S. soldier was held in connection with the attack. At least two soldiers died at the hands of overmatched enemy forces that nevertheless tried to fight off the invaders. Allied troops found themselves in fire fights near the cities of Samawah, Basra and Nasiriyah. Some Iraqi soldiers left their positions, put on plain clothes and vanished into the populace, raising concerns that they would stage guerrilla attacks on Western troops as they drew closer. Despite signs of weakening Iraqi morale, the mass surrenders witnessed at the end of the first Gulf War had yet to materialize. "We think they're coming," a senior Pentagon official said late last week. "We've really only been bombing for 24 hours."
American and British forces could still confront fearsome resistance if the Republican Guard units defending Baghdad are ready and willing to fight. No one expected Iraqi forces to put up much of a struggle in the barren, Shi'ite-dominated south, where support for Saddam's regime is soft. "We figured they would cave," says a Pentagon official. "They aren't the Republican Guard." But Saddam's most loyal fighters remain entrenched farther north, outside the capital and in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit. While their numbers are dwindling by the day--from desertions if not from U.S. bombs--at least some are expected to try to lure the invaders into a bloody urban campaign. U.S. and British troops are also still scrambling to uncover Iraq's suspected arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, a task that would reduce the risks to advancing troops and also validate their governments' chief rationale for war.
Even as it closes in on Saddam, the military faces the larger task of maintaining order in a country full of conflicts waiting to erupt. Last week more than 1,000 Turkish troops crossed the border into Kurdish-dominated northern Iraq to reinforce up to 7,000 already there, raising the dreaded possibility of a confrontation between the Turks and anti-Saddam Kurdish forces, who fear the Turks will never leave. Because Ankara refused to allow the U.S. to send ground troops into northern Iraq through Turkey, the U.S. may not be able to do much if skirmishes break out. "We don't have the kind of force that could really stand between the Turks and the Kurds," says a U.S. official.
As allied troops begin to liberate Iraqi cities from Saddam's tyranny, the battle for the hearts and minds of 22 million Iraqis will remain impossible to win so long as the country is under relentless U.S. bombardment. A nagging anxiety among U.S. commanders is that the toll on Iraqi civilians is bound to increase if the allies face stiffer resistance near Baghdad. Although Rumsfeld insisted that the U.S.'s massive aerial blitz has spared not just civilians but also infrastructure targets like roads, bridges and power plants, there was less certainty among some of the soldiers who carried out the attacks. "We want to avoid collateral damage, but that is the most difficult thing," said a combat pilot aboard the U.S.S. Constellation after returning from a bombing run. "When we drop that bomb, we know that someone is dying."
Although the battlefield produced the usual fog of conflicting reports, at least one thing was made clear with the first salvo: the principal target of Gulf War II is not the Iraqi military but Saddam himself. Inside the U.S. war rooms, quickly decapitating the Iraqi regime is seen as critical to bringing about the destruction of the enemy. "We want to turn the Iraqi military into a chicken with its head cut off," a senior Navy official says. Saddam "might be able to strike back, but it will be uncoordinated and ultimately fruitless." Defense sources say that U.S. forces will rush to Baghdad as quickly as possible to try to corner Saddam and flush him out into the open; if a coup or assassination fails to dislodge him, U.S. air and ground forces plan to launch more strikes against critical targets inside the capital in an effort to kill him. A senior U.S official told TIME that covert U.S. intelligence personnel have infiltrated Baghdad, hunting in the shadows for the Iraqi leaders. "We've had some folks on the ground over there now for weeks," the official says.
The decision to target Saddam directly in the war's first hours reflected the White House's determination to seize the offensive after weeks of humbling diplomatic rebuffs. The early strike "did not change the original plan at all," says a senior Administration official. "It was an addition." Waiting for the diplomatic clock to run out wore at Bush. Aides say the President's mood shifted early last week after the U.S. and Britain decided to withdraw a second U.N. Security Council resolution that essentially would have authorized force against Iraq. That move made war almost certain. "It's a totally different mind-set when you go from a diplomatic process to a military operation; you have more control of the terms," says a senior White House official. "It's no mystery this President likes clarity."
At the White House last Tuesday, Bush held a lengthy meeting with Rice, Rumsfeld and a handful of high-ranking Pentagon officials to go over the final preparations for the opening phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The next morning, hours before the deadline for Saddam's departure ran out, Bush held a videoconference in the White House Situation Room with members of his war council, as well as U.S. Central Command Chief Army General Tommy Franks and the top commanders in the region.
Bush opened the meeting by greeting Franks, who had traveled to the Prince Sultan air base in Saudi Arabia to meet with the war's top air commander, Air Force Lieut. General T. Michael Moseley. Bush teased Franks for the general's clumsiness with the videoconferencing technology; when Franks apologized, Bush said, "Don't worry, Tommy, I haven't lost faith in you." The room broke into laughter, but Bush quickly grew serious. "Do you have everything you need to win?" he asked each of the commanders. "Are you comfortable and pleased with the strategy?" After receiving assurances from all the participants, Bush asked Franks whether the general had anything left to say. "This force is ready to go," Franks said. Bush gave the order to "execute Operation Iraqi Freedom." The war would begin on Friday. "God bless the troops," Bush said, as he saluted Franks and walked out of the situation room.
Sooner than anyone expected, Bush was back. On Wednesday afternoon CIA Director George Tenet received an astonishing report, transmitted over the CIA's classified communications network: U.S. intelligence sources had pinpointed the whereabouts of Saddam and his top military leaders in Baghdad; Administration officials told TIME that the intelligence was gleaned from multiple sources, including electronic eavesdropping and reports from a single Iraqi official who had recently turned on Saddam. A senior Jordanian official says tips were also passed to the U.S. by a Jordanian diplomat and Egyptian intelligence agents, who claimed they had identified Saddam's exact location. For days, a senior White House aide says, the CIA had been conducting an all-sources operation to try to track Saddam's movements. On Wednesday they hit pay dirt. According to the aide, at least one CIA source gave the agency what it thought was "a positive ID" for Saddam. "It was very specific: This is where he is, this is where he's going, this is the possible location." If the U.S. military acted fast enough, it could kill Saddam while he slept.
Tenet rushed to the Pentagon and briefed Rumsfeld on the report; the two called the White House to request a meeting with the President. An hour later Bush met with Tenet, Rumsfeld, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Air Force General Richard Myers and the other members of the war council--including Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Cheney and White House chief of staff Andrew Card. From his headquarters in Qatar, Franks dialed in over a secure line. The rest of the group spent the next three hours shuttling in and out of the Oval Office, discussing what to do with the intelligence on Saddam, running through scenarios and calling for more information. Fresh reports detailing the dimensions and coordinates of Saddam's bunker streamed in from the CIA.
Typically, meetings of a group like this are exercises in official decorum, with Cabinet members presenting the President with lists of options and no one speaking out of turn; White House officials say that on Wednesday the Oval Office was a swirl of activity. Chairs were dragged in from the hallway; the President's advisers leaned over one another and volunteered their assessments as more raw intelligence reports flowed in. Bush asked whether the weather might impede an attack on Saddam, how quickly U.S. forces could carry out the mission and how an early strike could affect the rest of the battle plan. Racing against the clock and unable to confirm much of what it was hearing, the U.S. ran the risk of making a costly opening-night bombing mistake that could embolden Saddam and his forces. Franks said he needed a decision by 7:15 p.m. E.T. At 7:12 Bush asked the members of his team for their recommendations; all of them argued for a strike to decapitate the Baghdad regime. Bush didn't need much convincing. "Let's go," he said.
The order reached the warships stationed in the waters off Iraq at 2:30 a.m. local time Thursday. Onboard the U.S.S. Constellation, Navy Prowlers, charged with jamming the enemy's air-defense and communications systems, were told to take off for Baghdad within the hour. Two F-117s based in Qatar followed behind them, reaching the skies above Iraq's capital before dawn broke. "It was fairly quiet," says the pilot of a Prowler aircraft, who asked to be identified by his handle, Dutch. "There wasn't a lot going on."
That would soon change. The Tomahawks reached their targets shortly after 5 a.m., exploding with a force that shook the city. They were followed by four bunker-buster smart bombs from the F117s. After U.S. commanders debriefed their pilots and assessed the bomb damage Thursday morning, Pentagon officials knew the mission had shocked the Iraqi leadership, but Saddam's fate remained unknown. "Everybody expected it to begin with 'shock and awe' and figured Saddam would see it coming," says a senior Defense official. "But by doing it this way, we were able to preserve some tactical surprise."
The allies faced surprises of their own. On Thursday Iraqi forces responded to the U.S. strike by setting several oil wells on fire and lobbing missiles toward allied troops massing on the border. Though none hit their target, the Iraqi missiles were enough to unnerve many of the U.S. forces, which were gearing up to begin their invasion on Friday. With each missile alert, frontline soldiers were forced to retreat to their bunkers and don full-protection biochem suits, only to hear minutes later that the bombs had landed in the desert or the gulf. Even commanders in Kuwait held videoconferences with Franks while wearing their gas masks. The haphazard nature of Iraq's response convinced Pentagon officials that the U.S. strike had succeeded in creating a power vacuum inside the Iraqi military command, cutting links between Baghdad and its forces in the field. But the possibility that those forces would panic, firing off more weapons and sabotaging southern oil fields, persuaded the U.S. commanders to begin the ground war on Thursday, 24 hours ahead of schedule.
It didn't seem to matter. Whatever enemy resistance the allies expected to face on their first push into Iraq was gone by the time they got there. Columns of U.S. and British tanks, trucks, humvees and armored personnel carriers fanned out across the southern Iraqi desert on the road to Baghdad. In the war's first days, Bedouin campsites were a more common sight than Iraqi garrisons. Some U.S. troops could barely hide their disappointment at not coming under enemy fire. "What the hell did we come here to do?" asked First Sergeant William Mitchell, 34, a member of Charlie Rock Company, the 3rd Infantry Division's 3rd Brigade Combat Team, as his crew idled on the highway last week. On Friday members of Charlie Rock burst into the southern city of Nasiriyah, fully expecting a battle with Iraqi forces. As their convoy roared toward the Tallil airfield south of Nasiriyah, the brigade's gunners and dismount crews oiled their M-16s and readied the grips on their .50-cal. turret machine guns. But the brigade commanders ordered the convoy to stop its advance. Mitchell and his unit sat on a highway shoulder for hours. When they finally arrived to seize their main target--the Tallil airfield, an Iraqi military installation--the company found only a weed-strewn apron of rusting, wrecked Iraqi warplanes. "It's just plain embarrassing," Major Richard Des Jardin muttered.
By the end of the week the U.S. military push was making enough progress that war planners were considering slowing down the aerial bombardment that began Friday night. But that was not a sure thing. "They've got lots of stuff to keep us busy," said a Pentagon official of the Iraqis, "and if they hole up, we'll start hitting the holes." In the first two nights of raids, the Pentagon said, U.S. bombs rained down on more than 1,500 targets across the country; in Baghdad alone, hundreds of targets were said to have been hit.
The U.S. assault was stunning as much for its apparent precision as for its violence. Military experts say the Pentagon is concentrating on effects-based bombings. In previous wars, the U.S. military has tried to take out command-and-control facilities by destroying every power station in a given area, but precision-guided technology allows U.S. warplanes to pinpoint the power plants that serve Saddam and his aides and spare the rest. Indeed, even while Saddam's palaces came under a ferocious barrage, the lights stayed on in Baghdad.
For the allied command, the hope remains that the mere demonstration of American air power will persuade large numbers of Saddam's best trained and most loyal soldiers, the Republican and Special Republican Guard, to surrender before the U.S. and British forces begin a siege of Baghdad. A senior Administration official told TIME that the military has "killed a significant number of the Republican Guard. We're trying to break their will and get them to go home." Defense officials predicted last week that up to a quarter of the Republican Guard troops would surrender if the details were worked out. "They're using the psychological instrument to collapse [the enemy's] will through intimidation and the creation in his mind of inevitable defeat," says Robert Scales, a retired Army major general. U.S. military officials are convinced that if Saddam manages to retain command and control of his forces, he will try to unleash chemical and biological weapons against allied troops and that most of those weapons are in the hands of forces close to the capital. Among the soldiers moving toward Baghdad last week, the specter of unconventional warfare was never far from their minds, as they endured the heat of their biochemical suits while riding in tanks and armored personnel vehicles. "We fully expect to face a dirty battlefield at some point," says Colonel Daniel Allyn, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division's 3rd Brigade. "I don't look forward to the fight of that kind, but I am confident it will not defeat us."
For the Administration, uncovering Saddam's weapons stores is critical to blunting opposition to the war. The U.S. also hopes that scenes of liberated Iraqis cheering the Americans' arrival would silence the antiwar crowd, but those images were proving scarce. In cities liberated by the allies last week, there were few signs of jubilation. While glad to be freed from Saddam's terror, the mostly Shi'ite population remained suspicious of U.S. motives and fearful that the U.S. would abandon them, as it did during uprisings after Gulf War I. Muhsen Salem, 24, a farmer from Safwan, says he is "very happy now but scared the Americans might leave." Many Iraqis say they are disappointed that humanitarian aid did not begin flowing as soon as U.S. and British forces moved in. Military officials say the second wave of invasion forces--the civil-affairs officers who will administer the allied relief effort--are heading toward the cities under American control. But it may still be weeks before significant amounts of food and medical aid arrive.
Urban combat, chemical weapons, civilian casualties, guerrilla warfare, humanitarian crises in the south, instability in the north--whatever the unknowns that lurked ahead, the war machine was undeterred, as evidenced by the various units rolling across the desert, preparing to deliver the ultimate blow to the Iraqi regime. While each day that the war drags on gives the Iraqis a chance to regroup, it also grants allied forces the opportunity to reload. As the 3rd Infantry Division made its way past Nasiriyah, a long column of the 101st Airborne Division barreled out of Kuwait into the desert on a parallel track, crossing the marshes and heading toward Baghdad. Scores of Harriers and A-10 Warthogs took off from bases in Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and from aircraft carriers in the gulf, providing support to the Marines and British ground forces laying siege to Basra. Midday Sunday, the Marine column ran into stiff resistance outside Nasiriyah in what appeared to be a coming together of Iraqi forces that had been fighting in sporadic skirmishes with the 3rd Infantry over the previous 36 hours. Nasiriyah remained unoccupied by U.S. forces. In the capital, Saddam's Interior Minister, Mohammed Diab al-Ahmed, appeared before journalists, brandishing a Kalashnikov. "It is Bush who is the lone fighter," al-Ahmed said. "It is we who will achieve a great victory, and we are not dreaming." Maybe not. But the regime's worst nightmare is about to begin.--Reported by Mark Thompson, Tim Burger, James Carney, John F. Dickerson and Douglas Waller/Washington; Brian Bennett/with the 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing; Sally B. Donnelly/Doha; Meenakshi Ganguly/on the U.S.S. Constellation; Terry McCarthy/Safwan; and Alex Perry/Nasiriyah
BOX STORY:
A GUIDE TO THE ALLIED FORCES
A look at U.S. and British ground units, their commanders and the role they are playing in Gulf War II
101st Airborne Division
ITS MISSION The 17,000 troops of the storied "Screaming Eagles" are scheduled to use their massive Apache helicopter firepower to help destroy the Republican Guard units protecting Baghdad. They're helping to protect the 3rd Infantry Division as both units move across the southern Iraqi desert bound for the capital. Units from the division may get orders to seize biological-or chemical-weapons stockpiles.
THE COMMANDER Major General David H. Petraeus, 50, a 1974 West Point grad who holds a doctorate in international relations from Princeton, has led the 101st since July. The son of a World War II Liberty-Ship captain, he has also led troops in Bosnia and Haiti. The great unknown in this war, he says, is the Iraqi will to fight.
173rd Airborne Regiment
ITS MISSION Based in Italy, the troops of the 173rd are trained to parachute into hot spots--and seize them. Still at their home base, they may be called on to jump into northern Iraq to keep the peace between the Kurds and the Turks and to protect oil fields.
THE COMMANDER Colonel William C. Mayville Jr., 42, who leads America's only European-based airborne force, went to the 173rd after being with the Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, N.C. Mayville, who hails from Springfield, Va., has a master's in aerospace engineering. Of his 1,800 troops, he says, "Victory is our only course."
1st Marine Expeditionary
ITS MISSION The 1st Marines, based at Camp Pendleton, Calif., are best known for winning World War II's Battle of Guadalcanal. The force can call on its more than 100 F-18 and AV-8B warplanes and 50 AH-1 Cobra helicopter gunships to soften up the Iraqis before ground troops advance. The first U.S. soldier to die in Gulf War II was a 1st Marine, who was shot while approaching an oil station in southern Iraq.
THE COMMANDER Lieut. General James T. Conway, 55, served in Desert Storm, ran the Marine Corps University at Quantico, Va., and recently held one of the military's top terrorism-fighting jobs. He commands more than 85,000 troops and told his soldiers, "This isn't a fair fight. We didn't intend it to be." The U.S. mission, he said, is to depose Saddam, "not to lay waste to this place."
3rd Infantry Division
ITS MISSION Known as the "Rock of the Marne" for its exploits in France during World War I, the 3rd Infantry consists of 20,000 troops, some 200 M-1 tanks and 260 Bradley fighting vehicles. The unit, which saw heavy action in Kuwait during the first Gulf War, is slated to play a key role in fighting the Republican Guard after crossing the Euphrates River on its way to Baghdad.
THE COMMANDER Major General Buford C. Blount III, a 32-year Army veteran, assumed control of the 3rd Infantry shortly after 9/11. A Texas native who graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi, he spent four years in Saudi Arabia, advising the kingdom on its military. Though concerned about chemical and biological weapons, he said before the war, "If we go to Baghdad, we are prepared."
82nd Airborne Division
ITS MISSION The days of massive invasions by parachute ended after World War II. The 82nd's 21st century mission is to have smaller forces quickly seize targets like airfields and secure them for reinforcements with greater firepower. In such cases, the 82nd is inserted at night by blacked-out C-130s, along with humvees and howitzers. The 4,000 troops of the 82nd's 2nd Brigade are poised to rush into hot spots inside Iraq within hours of getting the order.
THE COMMANDER Major General Charles H. Swannack Jr., 54, leads the "All-American Division" of the 82nd Airborne, which is based at Fort Bragg, N.C. Swannack, a West Point grad who has taught engineering, has led troops in Bosnia, Haiti and Panama. Swannack says if the 82nd is ordered to take an objective inside Iraq, he will be parachuting in himself out of the first plane.
Combined British Forces
ITS MISSION The British have deployed 26,000 Royal Army troops, including the famed "Desert Rats" of the 7th Armored Brigade, on the ground in the region, along with 4,000 Royal Marines. Britain's 1st Armored Division is accompanying the U.S. Marines' 1st Expeditionary Force in the siege of Basra. The British suffered one of the allies' first major losses of the war, when eight Royal Marine commandos were killed in a helicopter crash in Kuwait.
THE COMMANDER Major General Robin Brims, 51, who leads Britain's 1st Armored Division, is commander of all the British land forces in the region. Commissioned into the light infantry in 1970, he has served in Bosnia, Germany and Northern Ireland. His hope, he said before the war began, is that Iraqi troops will "join the coalition" against Saddam Hussein.
BOX STORY:
BOMBING IRAQ
Although the campaign against Saddam Hussein began in fits and starts, it nonetheless gave Iraq and the world a dramatic display of American firepower
WEAPONS OF WAR
The U.S. brought out its full complement of air power
B-52 STRATOFORTRESS
The workhorse of the modern U.S. air campaigns, the B-52, flying from Britain, launched $ 1 million-apiece air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs) on Baghdad
TOMAHAWK CRUISE MISSILE RGM/UGM-109
Launched from surface ships and submarines, the Tomahawk flies, with global positioning system guidance, under the radar at high speeds. It carries a 1,000-lb. (450 kg) conventional warhead and is highly accurate
F-117 NIGHTHAWK
These radar-evading Stealth fighter jets fly out of al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, dropping EGBU-27 bombs on Baghdad. A host of other fighter-bombers fill the skies over Iraq, including F-14s and F-18s flying from carriers in the Mediterranean and land-based F-15s and F-16s from Kuwait
JOINT STAND-OFF WEAPON (JSOW)
This is a 1,000-lb. (450 kg) air-to-surface guided glide missile with various capabilities, including a single warhead, armor-piercing bomblets or a soft bomb containing filaments that can short-circuit power lines. The B-2 Spirit flying from Diego Garcia dropped JSOWs, JDAMs and other guided bombs
EGBU-27
The Enhanced Guided Bomb Unit-27 is a relatively new bomb designed specifically for use on F-117s. It can find its target by either laser or global positioning system (GPS), making it ideal for any weather condition. Four of these 2,000-lb. (900 kg) bombs were launched at the Baghdad bunker thought to hold Saddam the first
JOINT DIRECT ATTACK MUNITION (JDAM)
The weapon of choice during bad weather conditions, JDAM is a guidance kit of movable tail fins controlled by an navigation system and aided by a GPS. Together they turn a dumb free-falling bomb into a smart bomb capable of a surgical strike
Note: weapons are not to scale
GOING IN
Ground troops pushed north from the Kuwaiti border aided by heavy air support
TARGET OF OPPORTUNITY
In the opening salvo of the war, a surprise predawn attack Thursday targeted a bunker in southern Baghdad that, according to intelligence, held Saddam Hussein. Antiaircraft fire pockmarked the sky as 36 Tomahawk missiles launched from the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf homed in on the target. Soon after, two F-117A Stealth fighters followed, dropping four smart bombs
DRIVE TOWARD BAGHDAD
In a departure from plan, U.S. and British ground troops began the push into Iraq on Thursday ahead of the touted "shockand-awe" air campaign. A convoy of tanks, armored bulldozers and personnel carriers cut a swath through the south, along the way meeting both pockets of resistance and surrendering Iraqi soldiers. Leaders of the Iraqi 51st Mechanized Division surrendered their troops. Forces secured Umm
Qasr, the Faw peninsula, the southern oil fields and Nasiriyah
SHOCK AND AWE
Central Command's promised air show began with a barrage of bombs that rained on central Baghdad Friday night. Over the following nights, thousands of cruise missiles and other guided bombs leveled the Planning Ministry, two presidential palaces and many other key government buildings
TIME Map by Joe Lertola
Text by Kathleen Adams
Sources: AP, Globalsecurity.org, Federation of American Scientists, TIME reporting, East ViewC artographic, NASA
BOX STORY:
PINPOINTING BAGHDAD
U.S. strikes focus on Saddam's immense presidential complex in the center of a city of 5 million
AL-SALAM PALACE
This new palace was built over the site of a Republican Guard headquarters that was destroyed during the first Gulf War
AL-SIJOOD PRESIDENTIAL PALACE
U.N. inspectors visited Saddam's lavish residence in December. Last week it was the target of cruise missiles
BAGHDAD PRESIDENTIAL COMPLEX
Palaces and government buildings are concentrated in this zone
MINISTRY OF INFORMATION
Television cameras on this building have provided views of the city during the bombing
MINISTRY OF PLANNING
This complex included the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the office of the deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz
PALESTINE MERIDIAN HOTEL
Many journalists stay here. Cameras placed here have provided many of the images of the bombing campaign
COUNCIL OF MINISTERS
This distinctive pyramid-shaped building housed the bureaucrats responsible for implementing Saddam's policies
REPUBLICAN PALACE
One of the main targets of the bombing, it was believed to have housed large underground bunkers used by top officials
Sources: NIMA, GlobalSecurity.org
September 2002 satellite photo of central
Baghdad courtesy of Digital Globe
BOX STORY:
HIGH-TECH BRUTE FORCE
The tens of thousands of U.S. forces that streamed into southern Iraq last week rely on the world's most impressive weaponry, a
combination of the latest in battlefield technology and overwhelming firepower
Advanced Attack Helicopter
APACHE LONGBOW War at warp speed: the newly modified Apache can use its radar systems to detect and classify more than 120 targets, identify the 16 most dangerous, transmit that information to other aircraft and begin an attack--all in less than 30 sec.
LENGTH 58.2 ft. (17.7 m)
TOP SPEED 170 m.p.h. (273 km/h)
COST $ 14 million
CREW 2(pilot, co-pilot)
Rocket Launcher
M270 Without leaving the cab, the crew can fire up to 12 surface-to-surface rockets in less than a minute, then move on. The vehicle can climb a 60-degree slope
LENGTH 22.5 ft. (6.9 m)
TOP SPEED 40 m.p.h. (64 km/h)
COST $ 2.3 million
CREW 3 (section leader, gunner, driver)
Main Battle Tank
M1 ABRAMS With thermal imaging, night vision, laser rangefinders and computerized targeting, this is the world's most advanced-and most lethal-tank. But it uses nearly 2 gal. of gas to go a mile
LENGTH 32.25 ft. (9.8 m)
TOP SPEED 42 m.p.h. (68 km/h)
COST $ 4.3 million
CREW 4 (commander, driver, gunner, loader)
Self-Propelled Howitzer
M109 PALADIN This advanced cannon can hurl a 155-mm shell up to 19 miles (30 km). Individual air systems inside the vehicle help
protect the crew from chemical attack
LENGTH 32 ft. (9.75 m)
TOP SPEED 35 m.p.h. (56 km/h)
COST $ 1.8 million
CREW 4 (commander, driver, gunner, loader)
Fighting Vehicle
M2 BRADLEY Beyond carrying infantry squads into battle, the Bradley is a weapons platform, firing 200 armor-piercing rounds a minute or launching antitank missiles
LENGTH 21.2 ft. (6.5 m)
TOP SPEED 45 m.p.h. (72 km/h)
COST $ 3.2 million
CREW 9 (commander, gunner, driver, 6 infantry)
TIME Graphic by Ed Gabel
Sources: The Illustrated History of McDonnell Douglas Aircraft; GlobalSecurity.org; Lockheed Martin; Defense Department
GRAPHIC: COLOR PHOTO: COVER: PHOTOGRAPH BY RAMZI HAIDAR--AFP, [COVER], GULF WAR II, BAGHDAD MARCH 21, 2003, COLOR PHOTO: BENJAMIN LOWY--CORBIS, [T of C] 38U.S. troops seek cover after a missile alert; COLOR PHOTO: PHOTOGRAPH FOR TIME BY JAMES NACHTWEY--VII, BOMBS OVER BAGHDAD U.S. air strikes devastated hundreds of military and government targets in the Iraqi capital; COLOR PHOTO: ERIC DRAPER--WHITE HOUSE/ZUMA, THE MORNING AFTER In the Oval Office last Thursday, Bush, top, is briefed on the action in Iraq. With him, from left, are Cheney, Tenet and Card. A few hours after the first U.S. strike, Iraqi TV aired a speech by Saddam, above, but the U.S. believes it may have been taped; COLOR PHOTO: IRAQI TV--AP, [See caption above]; COLOR PHOTO: CHRISTOPHER MORRIS--VII, COLOR PHOTO: BENJAMIN LOWY--CORBIS FOR TIME, COLOR PHOTO: JEAN-MARC BOUJU--AP, TWO COLOR PHOTOS: U.S. ARMY, COLOR PHOTO: DESMOND BOYLAN--REUTERS, COLOR PHOTO: MARK RICHARDS--AFP, COLOR PHOTO: JOHN MOORE--AP, COLOR PHOTO: CHUCK LIDDY--NEWS AND OBSERVER/CORBIS, COLOR PHOTO: BOB JORDAN--AP, COLOR PHOTO: PAUL JARVIS--MOD-GETTY IMAGES, COLOR PHOTO: GILES PENFOLD--REUTERS, COLOR MAP: TIME MAP BY JOE LERTOLA, COLOR PHOTO: JEROME DELAY-AP, COLOR PHOTO, COLOR PHOTO: JOBARD-SIPA, COLOR PHOTO: PATRICK ROBERT-CORBIS, COLOR ILLUSTRATION: TIME GRAPHIC BY ED GABEL
Copyright © 2003, Time Inc.
