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The Iraqis, however, have been adapting to such tactics. Horne's pilots, for example, report that Iraqi supply columns increasingly have been broken up into small groups of perhaps five trucks or cars to avoid presenting concentrated targets. Saddam's soldiers also have become ever more expert at decoy practices. They put aluminum sheets under camouflage netting to confuse U.S. radar, build small fires under metal plates that infrared sensors aboard a smart bomb might read as the engine heat from a tank, and set off smoke pots to tempt aviators into reporting bomb hits that never happened.
Determining how many bombs have struck such phantoms and how many have hit real targets is no mean trick. One American report quoted Pentagon sources as figuring that the fighting efficiency of the Republican Guard, Saddam's best troops, had hardly been dented, but General Michel Roquejoffre, French commander in the gulf, estimated that it had been lessened "between 20% and 30% on average." The Israelis reckon that as of last week the bombing had destroyed 600 of 4,000 Iraqi tanks believed to be deployed in Kuwait and 40,000 tons of ammunition out of an estimated 300,000 tons that Saddam's forces have stashed away. A U.S. briefing officer claimed the number was 750 tanks destroyed, along with 650 artillery pieces and 600 armored personnel carriers.
While that would certainly mark progress, it also indicates that the Iraqis still have more than enough weapons and ammunition left to put up a savage fight on the ground. True enough, the tactical bombing will be stepped up steadily from here. But almost everyone agrees that more bombing is needed before the time looks anything like ripe for a ground assault. Two more weeks would bring the date close to the end of February. By coincidence or not, that is also the long-standing target for the last American troops and weapons being sent to Saudi Arabia to be in place and trained and acclimated to desert conditions -- in other words, ready to fight.
WHAT'S THE RUSH?
A considerable body of U.S. political and military opinion, however, favors holding off not for weeks but for months, if not forever. The argument, in essence: Baghdad Radio was telling the truth when it said Iraq is waiting eagerly for an allied ground offensive. Saddam's strategy has always been to inflict unacceptably heavy casualties on allied forces, and mowing them down as they move through minefields and across ditches filled with burning oil offers his only chance to do so. But why play Saddam's game? Air power is the allies' overwhelming advantage; it should be used to the maximum extent possible.
En route to Saudi Arabia, Cheney identified as "the No. 1 priority" expelling Iraq from Kuwait "at the lowest possible cost in terms of loss of U.S. life." That is precisely why a land offensive should be put off, argues the bomb-for-months school; prolonged bombing holds the best hope of saving allied soldiers' lives. The more tanks, troop bunkers and supply trucks that can be destroyed from the air, the less bloody an eventual ground assault will be. For Iraqis too, in fact: the pounding they are taking hunkered down in foxholes and bunkers is minor compared with what they will face if they have to come out into the open to fight allied attackers.