(6 of 6)
Most of all, as Cheney and Powell insisted to the point of monotony, a ground war would not be just a land battle but a combined land-air assault. They even talked of the ground campaign as a kind of supplement to a continued and intensified air war. The likely meaning: the aim of all the assaults would be to draw the Iraqis out from their fortifications and into a war of maneuver. Iraqis are not considered good at such fighting, and, more important, they would be doing it without vital air cover. Frontal attacks, where they occurred, would be preceded by heavy aerial bombardment and would be aimed at piercing holes in the lines, which the Iraqis would have to try to seal off by counterattack. That would require them to come out into the open and expose themselves to pitiless bombing and strafing.
Such tactics might indeed hold down allied casualties. But there is no getting around the fact that the toll of soldiers killed in a day of land fighting -- even the delayed, low-intensity mopping-up operation that some air-power advocates still foresee -- is likely to exceed by far the number of pilots lost in a month of the most ferocious bombing. Deciding whether and when to start a ground offensive inescapably turns into pondering a calculus of death.
CHART: NOT AVAILABLE
CREDIT: NO CREDIT
CAPTION: GULF CALENDAR