With U.S. troops stretched farther and thinner in their quick march to Baghdad, military experts are scrutinizing the much-debated decision to deploy a relatively lean force to topple Saddam Hussein and subdue Iraq.
The force of nearly 300,000 U.S. troops now in the Iraq region–along with 45,000 from Britain and 2,000 from Australia–is a little more than half the size that fought in the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
This time, though, the war’s aims are more ambitious and the resistance from Iraqi troops, while scattered, appears more resolute.
“We do have a problem,” said Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “This is `Desert Lite.’ As they said in briefings before the war, this force is probably adequate for the job, but it doesn’t leave much room for setbacks or sandstorms.”
A similar view was voiced by retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, commander of the 24th Infantry Division 12 years ago in the gulf, when asked on BBC Television whether Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had made a mistake by not sending more troops to start the offensive.
“Yes, sure. I think everybody told him that,” McCaffrey replied.
“I think he thought these were U.S. generals with their feet planted in World War II, that didn’t understand the new way of warfare.”
U.S. forces, led by the 3rd Infantry Division, have managed to advance to within 50 miles of Baghdad. Apache helicopters are operating out of a makeshift base near An Najaf in central Iraq. Marines are also advancing from the southeast.
But the U.S.-British land force has been forced into firefights to protect the flanks of a long, slender supply corridor wending up through southeastern Iraq. That supply line is getting longer, and it traverses a region that commanders thought would be friendlier.
The notion of a northern front made up of the 17,000 soldiers, tanks and artillery of the 4th Infantry Division has withered in a Turkish-American dispute over U.S. basing troops in Turkey to send over the border into Iraq. Instead, their weapons and supplies have been diverted to Kuwait, but they won’t be fielded for about another week.
Franks confident of size
Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of allied forces in Iraq, and other Pentagon officials insist they have assembled a large enough force to overwhelm Hussein’s military, particularly his vaunted Republican Guard.
A top Army commander reiterated that at the Pentagon on Monday, just a day after clashes left at least nine Marines dead and 12 Army soldiers presumed captured or killed.
“Gen. Franks has incredible flexibility right now,” said Army Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “In fact he has a heavy division, the 3rd ID [Infantry Division], which has moved with extraordinary speed, more than 200 miles in a short amount of time.”
Flexibility has become a byword of the invasion force, and the battle planners of the Central Command have had to shift their forces and priorities with changes in political considerations, weather and enemy resistance.
But the size of the force in Iraq has long been a contentious issue between command staff and Rumsfeld’s office. Many Army war planners were urging that a larger, fully assembled force would be necessary to invade Iraq and assure a rapid victory. That would be more in line with Secretary of State Colin Powell’s well-known dictum of using overwhelming force to assure victory.
“We have never done something like this with this modest a force at such a distance from its bases,” McCaffrey said. Nonetheless, he emphasized he believed the U.S. would win a commanding victory.
Rumsfeld has been pressing the military to adopt lighter and faster ground forces. He holds that maneuverability and superior weaponry can pack the same punch that heavy armored forces used to.
Ground force of 250,000
In the end, Franks settled on a ground force of nearly 250,000, though only a quarter to a third of those are combat troops.
The Iraq invasion force is unique not just for its size but also for its staggered start. Some forces began the attack while others still were on their way to the Persian Gulf.
Notably, the 101st Airborne Division was still in camp in Kuwait when the first invasion force moved over the Iraqi border. And it was several more days before the 101st moved.
Some of the buildup’s size was necessitated by limitations at the port in Kuwait, the only country close to Iraq that would allow U.S. forces to land. But part of it also attributable to the administration’s belief that a force of 250,000 could defeat Iraq’s Republican Guard and its less capable regular army.
Five days of war, however, have shifted coalition thinking.
“We have got to recognize that it is not simply the front lines that are vulnerable,” said Geoffrey Hoon, Britain’s defense minister. “As we have seen, there are risks that those behind the front line will face, and certainly we need to adjust our force protection to take account of those risks.”
