(3 of 6)
Many of Iraq's antiaircraft-missile batteries have been moved south to protect Baghdad and other sensitive sites, leaving ancient guns, and even rockets designed to kill tanks, to fire crudely at U.S. warplanes. Many guns and missiles still in the north have been placed in residential neighborhoods or amid historic ruins, where, the Iraqis know, Washington's sensitivities will keep U.S. bombs at bay. A handful of American planes are dropping some bombs crammed with concrete instead of explosives to minimize the chance of civilian casualties.
U.S. officers like to talk of the multinational effort under way at Incirlik, but it's a far cry from the 28-nation alliance that ousted Iraq from Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War, or even the 19-nation war in Kosovo. The current force of 1,274 includes 1,058 Americans, 179 British, and 37 Turks supporting about 45 planes. The Turks fly no planes into Iraq, and the British fly only reconnaissance planes there. When it comes to dropping bombs, it is an all-American show.
TRAVELING FIRST CLASS
Success and failure are harder to measure on the second front. A TIME investigation found that little if any of the $8 million Congress has already appropriated (in Economic Support Funds, separate from the Liberation Act money) to oust Saddam has ended up directly in the hands of Iraqi opposition groups. Rather, Capitol Hill investigators complain, much of the money has gone to high-priced public relations experts and consultants. A somewhat less than ferocious outfit called Quality Support Inc., of Springfield, Va., for example, has received $3.1 million to book hotel rooms, airline tickets and conference halls for opposition meetings. Of that, a State Department document estimates that Quality Support will spend about $670,000 for the seven-month lease at the Cavendish Square office and for three company staff members to work there. (Quality Support declined to comment on its contract.)
Money has gone to other projects that have little to do with overthrowing the Baghdad regime. The Middle East Institute in Washington is receiving $255,738 to host "thematic conferences" on what kind of government Iraqis should establish after Saddam's downfall. An additional $200,000 has been budgeted for an environmental study of Iraq's southern marshlands. "It's all just nonsense," says Francis Brooke, Washington representative of the Iraqi National Congress.
The CIA, which secretly plotted against Saddam before Clinton went public, is still picking up the pieces of its shattered operation. More than five years ago, the agency poured millions of dollars into a guerrilla force of the I.N.C., a loose coalition of Iraqi exile groups led by Ahmed Chalabi, a wealthy Iraqi Shi'ite and skillful political organizer. But with the White House nervous about being sucked into a contra-style insurgency war, the CIA pulled the plug on its support for Chalabi's guerrillas and turned to Iraqi officers in Saddam's inner circle who might topple him. That ended in an embarrassing debacle for the agency when Saddam uncovered the plots and crushed them. The CIA is trying to recruit new agents inside Iraq. But intelligence sources concede that it could take at least five years before that network would cause Saddam any worry.