Iraq Can Rebuild in a Year, U.S. Says

WASHINGTON —  Even as they proclaimed their four-night air campaign a success, defense officials acknowledged Saturday that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein may need as little as 12 months to rebuild his missile program and key sites pounded by $300 million worth of cruise missiles and an assortment of high-tech bombs.

Reviewing the latest battle damage assessments at the Pentagon, officials said they were pleased with the damage inflicted during the attack, which saw the war debut of the controversial B-1B Lancer bomber.

Yet Defense Secretary William S. Cohen acknowledged that Hussein is expected to start trying to rebuild his war machine as soon as the thunderous roar of U.S. and British warplanes subsides.

Displaying new aerial photos of destroyed missile sites and government buildings, he estimated reconstruction will take “a year or longer.”

Cohen insisted that the United States will slow the rebuilding effort through a tough policy of “containment.”

Yet his acknowledgment of Baghdad’s capacity to rebound underscored again the limits to the mission’s declared primary goal of “degrading” Hussein’s banned weapons program and reducing his ability to threaten his neighbors.

Officials said from the beginning of the campaign that it would be very difficult to wipe out with an air attack the highly compact laboratories where Hussein is believed to manufacture chemical and biological weapons.

And they said it would be even tougher to hit Hussein’s biological and chemical weapons caches, which are even smaller and have eluded canny United Nations inspectors on the ground for years.

These weapons facilities were spread “throughout a country the size of California,” Cohen noted.

Operation Desert Fox sought to concentrate its fire, he said, on “delivery systems,” such as missile factories and the electronics plants that support them. Such targets are larger and less easily moved.

Yet even this strategy, officials acknowledged, was only an effort to buy time in the fight against Hussein.

The new damage assessments that were presented as the air campaign wound to a close Saturday made even clearer the importance of the Clinton administration’s other goal in the bombardment: 1936289136that keep him in power.

Of the 100 Iraqi targets discussed by officials, 11 were sites where “weapons of mass destruction” might be produced or kept, the new data showed. Fully half were sites associated with Hussein’s security police, military commanders and the “command-and-control” centers they use to keep a hold on the country.

The remainder were air defense batteries and air defense command posts, along with airfields used to mount helicopter attacks on Kurdish minorities in the north and Shiite Muslims in the south.

The operation’s focus on hitting Hussein’s inner circle became more evident in the Pentagon’s decision to strike Republican Guard barracks in Tikrit, 100 miles north of Baghdad.

The dusty city on the west bank of the Tigris River is the home of Hussein, his family and the clan that has helped him maintain power.

The military and government organizations that run the country at Hussein’s direction are filled with Tikritis, including Hussein’s relatives and in-laws. A strike there sent a message, said one military officer: “You can’t run, you can’t hide.”

According to outside analysts, the strike on Tikrit suggested again that the administration was not being completely candid when it insisted that “destabilizing” Hussein’s regime was not a goal.

Many analysts--and some government officials--who have pushed a harder line in dealing with Iraq have urged attacks on Tikrit for precisely this reason.

Still, it is not clear whether the nearly 300 warplanes deployed were able to accomplish one goal advocated by the hawks: inflicting big casualties among the “thugs” in Hussein’s inner circle.

“If they really want to get the message across that it is risky to work for Saddam, the way to do it is to kill people,” said Daniel Goure, defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

An aerial photo shown to reporters revealed severe damage inflicted by the 500-pound bombs from a B-1B bomber on a barracks of the Republican Guard in the northwest corner of Iraq.

Officials said the bombs were dropped on the first night of raids, and thus may have been able to strike with a great deal of surprise.

However, they acknowledged that Hussein had been dispersing his troops from the beginning, first to their garrisons and then to urban areas, where the Iraqis believed--correctly--that U.S. warplanes would not hit for fear of civilian casualties.

Officials said they have no accurate reading of Iraqi military casualties. Iraqi officials have not discussed military casualties either, perhaps out of reluctance to frighten the troops on whom Hussein relies.

While the campaign wound down, the Pentagon was already preparing itself for the inevitable arguments about the wisdom of the mission.

Some members of Congress and other critics were already getting ready to argue that the engagement was not long enough, while others will contend that it did not do enough damage to justify its expense and risk.

“You’ll have people criticizing it from every direction,” predicted Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst and former Pentagon official.

In their public comments, Pentagon officials sought to position themselves for the coming debate by contending that news reports had not adequately represented the damage done by the bombardment.

Quoting Friday’s cautious assessments by the Pentagon, some news organizations pointed out that the missiles and bombs had destroyed or severely damaged only a small fraction of the first 75 targets hit. The Pentagon had stated that it was unable at that point to evaluate many of the strikes.

On Saturday, however, Cohen sought to strongly rebut any suggestion that the operation was falling short.

He noted that the bomb damage to the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania, struck by terrorists Aug. 7, was initially termed “light to moderate” by analysts, while the 1995 destruction of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was classified as only “moderate.” Hundreds were killed in those terrorist blasts.

“I am very pleased with the results of our strikes,” he said. “The plan is being executed with precision and success.”