thedrifter
04-14-03, 08:28 AM
The Secret War
It’s been the best-covered war in history. But the key to success was what we didn’t see: Special Forces, psyop, the air war—and the utterly inept Iraqi Army
By Evan Thomas and Martha Brant
NEWSWEEK
April 21 issue — Know thine enemy is a cardinal rule of war. Ignorance was costly for American soldiers fighting guerrillas in Vietnam. Before plunging into Iraq, U.S. psychological-warfare operators studied certain cultural stereotypes.
ONE WAS THAT young Arab toughs cannot tolerate insults to their manhood. So, as American armored columns pushed down the road to Baghdad, 400-watt loudspeakers mounted on Humvees would, from time to time, blare out in Arabic that Iraqi men are impotent. The Fedayeen, the fierce but undisciplined and untrained Iraqi irregulars, could not bear to be taunted. Whether they took the bait or saw an opportunity to attack, many Iraqis stormed out of their concealed or dug-in positions, pushing aside their human shields in some cases—to be—slaughtered by American tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles. “What you say is many times more important than what you do in this part of the world,” says a senior U.S. psy-warrior.
American armed forces have long tried to overwhelm the enemy. Outsmarting them is a relatively new idea. “We’re going to mess with their heads,” a senior Pentagon official told NEWSWEEK before the war began. But even the most gung-ho Bush administration officials were surprised by the suddenness of Saddam’s fall. So were the commanders on the ground. Inside a drab, dun-colored tent within a drab, dun-colored warehouse at Central Command headquarters in Doha, Qatar, resides the “brain” of the American war machine, the Joint Operations Center, the “JOC.” The tent (surrounded by barbed wire) is stuffed full of high-tech equipment, computers and giant plasma screens that show the battlefield in real time. The commanders in the JOC kept waiting for the battle that never came.
SILENT AMAZEMENT
Surely, they figured, once the invaders reached the outskirts of Baghdad, Saddam would unleash his arsenal of chem-bio weapons. But there was little organized resistance. Senior officers at their laptops watched in silent amazement as an American armored column raced straight into the heart of Baghdad at 40 miles an hour. Col. Steven Pennington, the operations chief on duty at the time, muttered aloud, “Like a hot knife through warm butter.” (Gloating is frowned upon in the JOC. Cheers broke out only twice during the three-week war: for the rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch and when the statue of Saddam was pulled down on Wednesday afternoon. Gen. Tommy Franks, the CENTCOM commander, came by to hand out cigars.)
Freedom, at least for a time, may bring chaos and civil war to Iraq. Lawlessness (or “untidiness,” as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called the mayhem and looting in Baghdad) will reign until American troops can restore order and the Iraqis can form some kind of government. The sight of mobs stealing everything that moved from Baghdad’s hospitals, right down to the operating tables, was not encouraging. As a grand strategy to protect America from terrorism and transform the Middle East, the liberation of Iraq remains a bold, high-risk —gamble. But as a show of military prowess, Operation Iraqi Freedom has been an astonishing success.
The keys were the speed, nimbleness and precision of U.S. forces—and the utter ineptitude of the Iraqi Army. Thanks to the journalists embedded with the Coalition ground forces, television viewers saw the bravery and discipline of U.S. and British soldiers. What they could not see was the clever secret war fought by Special Operations forces and the CIA, and the devastating aerial bombardment that flattened Saddam’s best soldiers before they could fire a shot.
INSECURE NEIGHBORS
Other despots watched America’s swift behemoth, the Bush administration hopes, with suitable shock and awe. While marching on to Damascus or Tehran remains, for the time being, a neoconservative fantasy, Bush aides are happy to inject a little insecurity into Iraq’s neighboring tyrants. Certainly, if they fight as badly as Saddam, they are doomed.
Saddam’s only prayer was to exact so many casualties that the United States would back off. This was never a realistic hope: President George W. Bush was clearly determined to eliminate Saddam, whatever the cost. But privately, administration officials worried that the price in American soldiers could be high. Saddam could have slowed and bled the invaders any number of ways. He could have blown the numerous bridges an advancing army must cross on the road to Baghdad. He could have destroyed dams and flooded plains, funneling armored columns into artillery ambushes. He could have attacked the enormous traffic jam that inevitably formed as the Coalition forces pushed off on D-Day or as the forces bunched up at bridgeheads. He could have created an inferno (and an economic disaster) by igniting oil wells in southern Iraq. He could have rained poison gas on American troops. Despite ample time to prepare, he did none of these.
Why? About two weeks into the war, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offered one explanation: “Either he [Saddam] is dead or he’s alive, and the world’s worst general.” Intelligence officers were still debating Saddam’s fate late last week; intercepted radio traffic suggested that some of his lieutenants thought he was dead, but he might have fled to another country or have been holed up in his hometown of Tikrit. It’s still possible that Saddam was killed by the “decapitation strike” on the Iraqi leadership on the first night of the war or the one in Mansour last week. If he survived, he might have been injured or unhinged. In any case, after three decades of shooting the messenger, he was not likely to hear bad news from the sycophants around him.
AMERICAN HIGH-TECH VULTURES
Saddam ran his military the way Stalin ran the Red Army. Local commanders took the initiative at the risk of a firing squad. The wiser course was to wait for orders from the top. But communications were poor to nonexistent between the regime and its shattered armies in the field. The Iraqis knew enough to fear American warplanes circling overhead, high-tech vultures looking for an electronic signal. To turn on a cell phone was to invite a smart bomb on one’s head. As the bombing intensified, the Iraqis were reduced to communicating by bicycle messenger.
Saddam’s commanders were essentially clueless about the progress of the American advance. TV viewers in the United States were amused and appalled by the ecstatic lies of Saddam’s minister of Information, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf. How could “Baghdad Bob” possibly declare that the American “criminals” and “stooges” were being crushed and humiliated—even as the tanks of the Third Infantry Division were rolling up the streets of Baghdad, visible to the world on CNN? But one high-ranking U.S. officer suggested that al-Sahaf may not have been spouting mere agitprop. Living and working in Saddam’s never-never land, Saddam’s top flunkies may have been genuinely ignorant about the progress of the American invaders.
American command-ers, by contrast, have never been so well equipped to cut through the fog of war. As the war began, General Franks declared that Operation Iraqi Freedom would be “a campaign unlike any other.” It was a surprising boast coming from a low-key officer known to dislike the swagger of his predecessor, Gen. Norman (Stormin’ Norman) Schwarzkopf. Franks was regarded as a “grunt’s general,” not a high flier or a maverick or even a particularly creative leader. But the war plan he hammered out, after a lot of probing questioning from Rumsfeld, was inventive and freewheeling.
SECRET AGENT MEN
Stealth and speed were critical. Special Operations forces and the CIA played a still shadowy but vital role in Operation Iraqi Freedom. A senior CENTCOM official spoke to NEWSWEEK about the military’s “inoculation strategy,” which boiled down to killing or disabling Saddam’s forces before they could wreak havoc. Secret operators roamed Iraq for months before the war. Some were Arabic, many were Hispanic disguised to look like Arabs and some darkened their faces and beards with dye. They performed essential reconnaissance, like measuring water levels so that CENTCOM planners could gauge the scale of flooding if a dam was breached.
Bribery was an effective weapon. Large cash payments persuaded some oilfield operators to shut down wells so that they could not be set afire. Surprise attacks were even more important. Military officials hinted at commando raids to stop the Iraqis from blowing bridges and dams. The night before the war, Navy SEALs seized a key Persian Gulf oil platform, a kind of giant gas station for fueling tankers. Sneaking up in the dark by boat, the commandos overwhelmed the sleeping guards before they could shoot back or detonate high explosives. According to one CENTCOM source, the ground invasion was moved up 36 hours when intelligence officials reported that Saddam had ordered his lackeys to torch the southern oilfields.
continued.......
It’s been the best-covered war in history. But the key to success was what we didn’t see: Special Forces, psyop, the air war—and the utterly inept Iraqi Army
By Evan Thomas and Martha Brant
NEWSWEEK
April 21 issue — Know thine enemy is a cardinal rule of war. Ignorance was costly for American soldiers fighting guerrillas in Vietnam. Before plunging into Iraq, U.S. psychological-warfare operators studied certain cultural stereotypes.
ONE WAS THAT young Arab toughs cannot tolerate insults to their manhood. So, as American armored columns pushed down the road to Baghdad, 400-watt loudspeakers mounted on Humvees would, from time to time, blare out in Arabic that Iraqi men are impotent. The Fedayeen, the fierce but undisciplined and untrained Iraqi irregulars, could not bear to be taunted. Whether they took the bait or saw an opportunity to attack, many Iraqis stormed out of their concealed or dug-in positions, pushing aside their human shields in some cases—to be—slaughtered by American tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles. “What you say is many times more important than what you do in this part of the world,” says a senior U.S. psy-warrior.
American armed forces have long tried to overwhelm the enemy. Outsmarting them is a relatively new idea. “We’re going to mess with their heads,” a senior Pentagon official told NEWSWEEK before the war began. But even the most gung-ho Bush administration officials were surprised by the suddenness of Saddam’s fall. So were the commanders on the ground. Inside a drab, dun-colored tent within a drab, dun-colored warehouse at Central Command headquarters in Doha, Qatar, resides the “brain” of the American war machine, the Joint Operations Center, the “JOC.” The tent (surrounded by barbed wire) is stuffed full of high-tech equipment, computers and giant plasma screens that show the battlefield in real time. The commanders in the JOC kept waiting for the battle that never came.
SILENT AMAZEMENT
Surely, they figured, once the invaders reached the outskirts of Baghdad, Saddam would unleash his arsenal of chem-bio weapons. But there was little organized resistance. Senior officers at their laptops watched in silent amazement as an American armored column raced straight into the heart of Baghdad at 40 miles an hour. Col. Steven Pennington, the operations chief on duty at the time, muttered aloud, “Like a hot knife through warm butter.” (Gloating is frowned upon in the JOC. Cheers broke out only twice during the three-week war: for the rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch and when the statue of Saddam was pulled down on Wednesday afternoon. Gen. Tommy Franks, the CENTCOM commander, came by to hand out cigars.)
Freedom, at least for a time, may bring chaos and civil war to Iraq. Lawlessness (or “untidiness,” as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called the mayhem and looting in Baghdad) will reign until American troops can restore order and the Iraqis can form some kind of government. The sight of mobs stealing everything that moved from Baghdad’s hospitals, right down to the operating tables, was not encouraging. As a grand strategy to protect America from terrorism and transform the Middle East, the liberation of Iraq remains a bold, high-risk —gamble. But as a show of military prowess, Operation Iraqi Freedom has been an astonishing success.
The keys were the speed, nimbleness and precision of U.S. forces—and the utter ineptitude of the Iraqi Army. Thanks to the journalists embedded with the Coalition ground forces, television viewers saw the bravery and discipline of U.S. and British soldiers. What they could not see was the clever secret war fought by Special Operations forces and the CIA, and the devastating aerial bombardment that flattened Saddam’s best soldiers before they could fire a shot.
INSECURE NEIGHBORS
Other despots watched America’s swift behemoth, the Bush administration hopes, with suitable shock and awe. While marching on to Damascus or Tehran remains, for the time being, a neoconservative fantasy, Bush aides are happy to inject a little insecurity into Iraq’s neighboring tyrants. Certainly, if they fight as badly as Saddam, they are doomed.
Saddam’s only prayer was to exact so many casualties that the United States would back off. This was never a realistic hope: President George W. Bush was clearly determined to eliminate Saddam, whatever the cost. But privately, administration officials worried that the price in American soldiers could be high. Saddam could have slowed and bled the invaders any number of ways. He could have blown the numerous bridges an advancing army must cross on the road to Baghdad. He could have destroyed dams and flooded plains, funneling armored columns into artillery ambushes. He could have attacked the enormous traffic jam that inevitably formed as the Coalition forces pushed off on D-Day or as the forces bunched up at bridgeheads. He could have created an inferno (and an economic disaster) by igniting oil wells in southern Iraq. He could have rained poison gas on American troops. Despite ample time to prepare, he did none of these.
Why? About two weeks into the war, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offered one explanation: “Either he [Saddam] is dead or he’s alive, and the world’s worst general.” Intelligence officers were still debating Saddam’s fate late last week; intercepted radio traffic suggested that some of his lieutenants thought he was dead, but he might have fled to another country or have been holed up in his hometown of Tikrit. It’s still possible that Saddam was killed by the “decapitation strike” on the Iraqi leadership on the first night of the war or the one in Mansour last week. If he survived, he might have been injured or unhinged. In any case, after three decades of shooting the messenger, he was not likely to hear bad news from the sycophants around him.
AMERICAN HIGH-TECH VULTURES
Saddam ran his military the way Stalin ran the Red Army. Local commanders took the initiative at the risk of a firing squad. The wiser course was to wait for orders from the top. But communications were poor to nonexistent between the regime and its shattered armies in the field. The Iraqis knew enough to fear American warplanes circling overhead, high-tech vultures looking for an electronic signal. To turn on a cell phone was to invite a smart bomb on one’s head. As the bombing intensified, the Iraqis were reduced to communicating by bicycle messenger.
Saddam’s commanders were essentially clueless about the progress of the American advance. TV viewers in the United States were amused and appalled by the ecstatic lies of Saddam’s minister of Information, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf. How could “Baghdad Bob” possibly declare that the American “criminals” and “stooges” were being crushed and humiliated—even as the tanks of the Third Infantry Division were rolling up the streets of Baghdad, visible to the world on CNN? But one high-ranking U.S. officer suggested that al-Sahaf may not have been spouting mere agitprop. Living and working in Saddam’s never-never land, Saddam’s top flunkies may have been genuinely ignorant about the progress of the American invaders.
American command-ers, by contrast, have never been so well equipped to cut through the fog of war. As the war began, General Franks declared that Operation Iraqi Freedom would be “a campaign unlike any other.” It was a surprising boast coming from a low-key officer known to dislike the swagger of his predecessor, Gen. Norman (Stormin’ Norman) Schwarzkopf. Franks was regarded as a “grunt’s general,” not a high flier or a maverick or even a particularly creative leader. But the war plan he hammered out, after a lot of probing questioning from Rumsfeld, was inventive and freewheeling.
SECRET AGENT MEN
Stealth and speed were critical. Special Operations forces and the CIA played a still shadowy but vital role in Operation Iraqi Freedom. A senior CENTCOM official spoke to NEWSWEEK about the military’s “inoculation strategy,” which boiled down to killing or disabling Saddam’s forces before they could wreak havoc. Secret operators roamed Iraq for months before the war. Some were Arabic, many were Hispanic disguised to look like Arabs and some darkened their faces and beards with dye. They performed essential reconnaissance, like measuring water levels so that CENTCOM planners could gauge the scale of flooding if a dam was breached.
Bribery was an effective weapon. Large cash payments persuaded some oilfield operators to shut down wells so that they could not be set afire. Surprise attacks were even more important. Military officials hinted at commando raids to stop the Iraqis from blowing bridges and dams. The night before the war, Navy SEALs seized a key Persian Gulf oil platform, a kind of giant gas station for fueling tankers. Sneaking up in the dark by boat, the commandos overwhelmed the sleeping guards before they could shoot back or detonate high explosives. According to one CENTCOM source, the ground invasion was moved up 36 hours when intelligence officials reported that Saddam had ordered his lackeys to torch the southern oilfields.
continued.......