By John Diamond
Chicago Tribune
March 10, 2001

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is considering a plan to scale back enforcement
of the no-fly zones over Iraq, with the internal debate centering on how, and how far, to pull
back, knowledgeable defense officials said.

Military and political concerns brought about the reassessment of U.S. strategy, these
officials said.

U.S. commanders are concerned about the growing risk to U.S. and British pilots flying
against improving Iraqi air defenses. They are getting frustrated over the daily
cat-and-mouse game that has done little to diminish Iraqi military power. Amid these risks,
allied support for the U.S. and British patrols has almost vanished, and Iraqi leader Saddam
Hussein is using the patrols to portray the United States as a bully.

"How can we do this with less?" said one senior Pentagon official, describing the question
top Bush administration officials put to the experts at the  Pentagon.

Military advisers--led by Army Gen. Tommy Franks, head of the U.S. Central Command,
the military headquarters responsible for the Persian Gulf region--are preparing papers for
presentation to top Pentagon officials on how to reduce the commitment to the no-fly zones,
the official said.

Franks testified this week in a closed hearing of the House Appropriations defense
subcommittee.

The goal would be to continue to place military pressure on Iraq but not lock U.S. and
British forces into daily patrols that often lead to missiles  being fired at the aircraft and the
planes returning fire. This cycle of conflict has been going on almost continuously since late
1998.

Under the proposed strategy, Hussein "doesn't get to jerk us around," the senior Pentagon
official said.

Another defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that under the existing
system of patrols, Hussein "was the fiddler and we were dancing to his tune. When we break
out of the tit-for-tat cycle, we break out of his cycle. It allows us, diplomatically, not to
appear impotent and to be merely reacting."

The United States, along with a diminishing group of allies, has been  patrolling the skies
over northern and southern Iraq since shortly after the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

In the north, the patrols protect the Kurdish population from attack and oppression at the
hands of Iraqi forces. In the south, they protect Shiite Muslim Arabs and also give the United
States early warning of threatening Iraqi troop movements in the direction of Kuwait or
Saudi Arabia.

In recent years, Pentagon officials say, Iraq has taken the initiative by engaging in "shoot
and scoot" skirmishes that put U.S. pilots at risk without inflicting serious damage on Iraq's
military. Also, Bush administration  officials argue that the no-fly patrols impose a burden
on U.S. forces not matched by significant benefit.

A reduction in the air patrols would spark criticism on Capitol Hill, where some lawmakers
already are concerned about what they view as an easing of economic sanctions on Iraq. And
Pentagon officials predict that Hussein would portray any scaling back in air patrols as a
propaganda victory and present himself as having faced down a superpower.

As a result, a reduction in air patrols is being tied to a broadening of the options for
launching air strikes at suspected weapons research and production facilities in Iraq. The
point of the shift would be to retake the initiative, to strike at Iraq "at a time and place of our
choosing," as one defense official put it, and not be locked into forcing pilots to shoot only in
self-defense.

Secretary of State Colin Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this week that
a review of the air patrols and easing of sanctions would not occur in a vacuum.

"As part of this approach to the problem, we would also make sure that the Iraqi regime
understood that we reserve the right to strike militarily any activity out there, any facility we
find that is inconsistent with their  obligations to get rid of such weapons of mass
destruction," Powell said.

Options being weighed at the Pentagon include reducing the number of sorties over northern
and southern Iraq to a bare minimum, and cutting back on the number of days a month that
the patrols are flown. Other possibilities include leaving the northern zone to the British and
having U.S. aircraft concentrate on the south, where the threat of Iraqi offensive military
action into neighboring countries is greater.

Another option is to develop an "over the horizon" strategy, in which U.S. and British
warplanes would remain in the Persian Gulf region poised to strike at Iraq but would not
patrol daily.

The options under consideration were described by two defense officials who spoke on
condition of anonymity.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is leading the policy review but has not spoken
publicly about the options.

Powell describes the review of the air patrols as one of three major "baskets" that make up
the Bush administration strategy toward Iraq. The other two are increasing support for Iraqi
opposition groups and reducing the sanctions on Iraq to concentrate on preventing
weapons-related materials from getting into the country.

A reduction in the enforcement of the no-fly zones would seem to run counter to President
Bush's avowed desire to increase pressure on Iraq and Hussein's regime. But it would fit into
a broader Bush administration priority of  reducing U.S. military commitments overseas and
easing the tempo of operations for U.S. field units.

Bush's Iraq policy appears headed away from direct military involvement and toward
expanded U.S. support for opposition groups that eventually may pose a challenge to
Hussein's regime.

Paul Wolfowitz, chosen by Bush to be the Pentagon's No. 2 official, publicly criticized
Clinton administration policy on Iraq, including the "pinprick" air strikes that resulted from
the no-fly zone enforcement.

At his confirmation hearing, Wolfowitz spoke of "not simply limiting ourselves to air
power," and said "every time there's a military strike, Arab governments suffer criticism
from their own people."

A key goal of the Bush administration is to reverse what officials see as Hussein's
propaganda edge. The Iraqi leader has used casualties from air strikes and purported victims
of the economic sanctions to whip up anti-American sentiment among Arabs.

By trimming back sanctions and eliminating the almost daily air strikes that have been
largely ineffective, the Bush administration hopes to put Hussein on the defensive. The
military pressure on Iraq would continue with less frequent, but more powerful, strikes
aimed at Hussein's suspected weapons facilities.

The Bush administration hopes that focusing attacks on weapons facilities would blunt the
propaganda edge Hussein seizes when rural Iraqi civilians are injured in strikes on remote
air defense batteries.

Despite repeated small-scale strikes in the northern and southern no-fly zones, Iraq has
managed to improve its air defense system to the point that U.S. pilots and commanders are
increasingly worried about the possibility that a U.S. or British pilot will be shot down.

A key purpose of last month's strike on a series of targets, several of them around Baghdad,
was to damage Iraqi air defense command centers being modernized with the help of Chinese
contractors.
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The Kurdistan Observer
www.kurdistanobserver.com