Going Door To Door

By Mark Thompson/Washington

Corporal Abraham Hernandez remembers his death as "humbling." It happened during a Pentagon war game last month at an abandoned Air Force base in the California high desert. Hernandez was hit while he and his Marine platoon were trying to secure a landing zone for a helicopter that was bringing in troops to help take the "city." The enemy, masked by surrounding buildings and sandbag bunkers, fired on the group. The laser-activated beeper on Hernandez's belt went off, signaling that he had been killed in action; 22 of his 27 fellow platoon members suffered the same fate. All in all, it was a rough day for the Marines. "It was very difficult to find a place to hide," says Hernandez. "If this had been real life, this would have been as far as I'd have gotten."

The mock battle, conducted amid 1,000 buildings in the biggest urban-war exercise the U.S. has ever held, confirmed what the Pentagon already knew: America may have the world's most fearsome military, but it is ill equipped to wage war in cities. The nation's recent triumphs--in Afghanistan, Kosovo, the Persian Gulf--were mostly air wars, carried out by American pilots far above the tangle of gritty city streets. On the ground, the Americans face enemies with the home-field advantage and lose their edge in state-of-the-art weaponry. In last month's exercises, for example, the Marines were unpleasantly surprised to learn that their high-tech, heat-seeking sights don't work through glass, meaning they can't peer through windows and into rooms where the enemy lurks. "There is no technological magic wand you can wave over these problems to make them go away," says Marine Major Dan Sullivan, who is leading the corps's efforts to improve its ability to conduct urban warfare.

That's why if the U.S. takes on Iraq, America's military planners will do whatever they can to avoid fighting in the streets. In their most optimistic scenarios, the war will begin once again in the skies, with satellite-guided bombs that are far "smarter" and more plentiful than the laser-guided bombs used in 1991 during the first war with Iraq. Washington would initially try to take out air-defense and command-and-control sites. Next to go would be Saddam's palaces and other symbols of his power, such as television studios and transmitting towers used to fill Iraqi airwaves with his words and image. Other early targets would include the mobile missile launchers in western Iraq capable of lobbing Scud missiles--perhaps laden with biological or chemical weapons--toward Israel. During the previous war, the U.S. failed to knock out a single Scud launcher. This time, with improvements in satellites, drones and intelligence, it should fare better.

After the aerial pounding, the U.S. (with whatever allies it could muster) would shift to a ground war, probably launched from Kuwait and other gulf states from the south and from Turkey, as well as three bases in the U.S.-friendly Kurdish part of Iraq from the north. This phase would probably begin with U.S. forces' seizing the cities of Basra in the south and Mosul in the north. President Bush has not decided what size force should invade Iraq. The military prefers to send in about 250,000 troops, but some Administration officials think only about 80,000 would be needed.

The U.S. has plans for what not to attack: Washington wants to leave enough of the key military-communications network intact so that the Iraqi military wouldn't lose contact with the capital and follow its standing orders under such circumstances to launch biological and chemical weapons. The U.S. also would spare, as far as possible, the 300,000-strong regular Iraqi army in the hope that it would end up siding with American forces and forming the foundation for a post-Saddam military. Once U.S. forces captured major cities in northern and southern Iraq, ground troops would advance to Baghdad for the expected end-game. And there, if Washington's war planners had their way, Saddam's regime would collapse, and victory would come swiftly. If Saddam fled to, say, his hometown of Tikrit, 100 miles north, his army might well give up the fight. The optimists' final scenario: allied caravans rolling through Baghdad, greeted by thousands of liberated, cheering Iraqis (an updated version of Paris' liberation after D-day).

But warriors do not always get to choose their battles. And while the U.S. has managed to avoid a protracted urban skirmish during the past decade, Saddam wants to provoke just such a fight. If the Bush Administration's goal is Saddam's ouster--and if Iraq's soldiers dig in for the battle--the U.S. may be unable to avoid an armed clash in Baghdad.

This is American planners' worst fear. City combat blunts the U.S. military advantages of speed and knowledge. What the Pentagon calls "urban canyons" offers hideouts for foes and civilians as well as sniper nests and underground lairs from which combatants can strike. Buildings create vast "dead spaces" for an enemy to exploit out of the sight of those trying to kill Saddam. They hinder communication and hamper anything flying low, like helicopters, spy drones and warplanes assisting forces on the ground. In cities, mobility and maneuver--two tenets of U.S. ground-combat strategy--hit a dead end.

Commanders in urban environments can't survey the entire battlefield and instead see only bits and pieces; it's like playing chess while viewing only four squares on the board. This battlefield compression means that low-ranking corporals and sergeants--not colonels and captains--must often make life-and-death decisions. These choices come fast and furious when you're fighting downtown: 90% of the targets are less than 50 yards away and seen for only seconds. Killing innocent civilians--or your own men--is a risk that goes with the terrain. A quarter of all explosive rounds turn into duds when they glance off walls and roofs. Helicopters can get tangled in overhead wires and crash. And America's most promising gizmos--robots that can crawl from building to building, miniature drones that can spy around corners, acoustic sensors capable of taking out snipers--are still unproven. The hottest "new" technology at last month's war game: John Deere two-seat Gator tractors, which can zip through narrow passageways bringing ammo and supplies to the front and returning with casualties.

Undeterred, Pentagon planners are poring over maps and plotting potential invasion routes along Baghdad's streets and even through its sewers. The sprawling capital is marked by broad boulevards, labyrinthine alleys and 5 million people. Missile batteries surround the city, along with most of the 15,000-man elite Special Republican Guard. "If they come, we are ready," Saddam told a British newspaper last month, reportedly from a bunker beneath Baghdad. "We will fight them on the streets, from the rooftops, from house to house."

Saddam's rhetoric is probably overblown. Iraqi soldiers may well surrender as readily as they did in 1991 after 38 days of heavy bombing. But the Iraqi leader, intelligence officials believe, is shrewdly calculating that the U.S. military brass--and the American public--cannot stomach the prospect of sizable losses in such an exchange. Think back to the debacle in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993 (chronicled in the movie Black Hawk Down), when 18 U.S. troops were killed, prompting a quick American withdrawal from that African nation. In Iraq there is the added risk that Saddam will use biological or chemical weapons against American troops. U.S. military leaders say 30% of street-fighting combatants tend to end up as casualties. The Pentagon wants to drive that figure down to 10%.

Any invasion of Baghdad would most likely start under cover of darkness. U.S. troops, brought in by helicopters, would seek a secure foothold from which to expand their presence in the city. The biggest advantage U.S. troops would have in downtown Baghdad would be their night-vision devices, giving them a greenish but clear-eyed view of a nighttime world. Once inside Baghdad, the Americans would start clearing buildings one by one, from the top floor down. They would probably use the technique that Israeli forces employed during fighting earlier this year in the West Bank's Balata refugee camp. Once inside a building, Israeli forces moved to the next one by cutting holes in the adjoining walls. That kept the Israeli troops largely inside and safe from Palestinian sniper fire. The U.S. has a wide range of wall-breaching weapons, ranging from M-1 tanks to exploding tape to crowbars. Traveling through walls, though time-consuming, also helps troops elude the booby traps that are often rigged to doors and windows.

There is also an entirely different tactic the U.S. could adopt in taking on Baghdad. Robert Scales, a retired major general who used to run the U.S. Army War College, says the Americans should avoid door-to-door battles and instead cordon off the capital with a loose chain of tanks and armored vehicles. This porous ring would allow civilians to flee the city center, where Saddam's soldiers--and perhaps the Iraqi leader himself--would be holed up, anxiously waiting for a "mother of all battles" that would never materialize. "You can be patient, with a minimum loss of life," says Scales, "or you can rush in and kill a lot of people on both sides."

Baghdad would seem particularly vulnerable to such a wait-it-out strategy. It is not even close to being self-sufficient. If U.S. troops cut off the supply of water, food, electricity and communications, civilians would no doubt quickly begin fleeing to the safety of refugee camps set up outside the cordon. The U.S. military could wait for the white flag of surrender to flutter outside the range of most of Saddam's weapons. Armed with intelligence gleaned from fleeing refugees, the Americans could attack key targets inside the city with long-range weapons. Such a siege could help nurture one prized U.S. goal: Saddam's falling at the hands of his own people. "Baghdad is one of those classic cities that happen to contain all the kindling necessary to spark a revolt," says Scales. "You'd have the ruling elite and the army cheek by jowl with the people, who despise both the elite and the army." --With reporting by Matt Rees and Aharon Klein/Jerusalem

With reporting by Matt Rees and Aharon Klein/Jerusalem