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extrait d'un article paru dans le THE NEW YORK TIMES November 10, 2002
War Plan in Iraq Sees Large Force and Quick Strikes
his article was reported and written by David E. Sanger, Eric Schmitt
and Thom Shanker.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 - President Bush has settled on a war plan for Iraq
that would begin with an air campaign shorter than the one for the Persian
Gulf war, senior administration officials say. It would feature swift ground
actions to seize footholds in the country and strikes to cut off the leadership
in Baghdad.
The plan, approved in recent weeks by Mr. Bush well before the Security
Council's unanimous vote on Friday to disarm Iraq, calls for massing 200,000
to 250,000 troops for attack by air, land and sea. The offensive would probably
begin with a "rolling start" of substantially fewer forces, Pentagon
and military officials say.
(...)
The military plan calls for the quick capture of land within Iraq, which
would be used as bases to funnel American forces deeper into the country.
That approach is intended to relieve some of the diplomatic pressure created
by massing troops and initiating attacks from neighboring nations, including
Saudi Arabia.
Under the plan, United States and coalition forces could operate out of
such forward bases in northern, western and southern Iraq, building on lessons
learned in Afghanistan, where the military seized a similar outpost south
of Kandahar.
(...)
The Army is loading tugboats, forklifts and other cargo-handling equipment
onto the Tern, a giant cargo ship in Hampton Roads, Va., that is bound for
the gulf to prepare ports for the arrival of tanks and other armored equipment.
(...)
Heavy equipment recently deployed to the gulf region will remain while inspections
get underway, officials said. But troops and ships sent for exercises or
regular duty might rotate with fresh forces if it appeared that the inspections
were moving ahead without obstruction.
The plan still has some moving parts, senior administration officials said,
but it calls for 200,000 to 250,000 troops - several Army and Marine divisions,
aircraft carriers and Air Force wings. The only ally expected to contribute
significant ground forces is Britain, with several thousand troops expected
to participate.
(...)
The entire troop total may not necessarily be in the region when the offensive
begins. The bulk of the force would probably stand ready in case of battlefield
setbacks and be poised to occupy parts of Iraq as soon as resistance ends.
Under the plan, the air campaign would be less than the 43 days of the first
gulf war, and probably under a month, military officials said.
In the opening hours of the air campaign, Navy and Air Force jets, including
B-2 bombers carrying 16 one-ton satellite-guided bombs and B-1 bombers carrying
24 of the same weapons, would attack a range of targets from military headquarters
to air defenses. Only 9 percent of the weapons dropped in the gulf war were
precision-guided; this time, the figure would be well in excess of 60 percent,
allowing more effective bombing with fewer total aircraft, officials say.
The campaign would quickly seek to cut off the country's leadership in Baghdad
and a few other important command centers in hopes of causing a rapid collapse
of the government, officials said.
As in Afghanistan, Special Operations forces would infiltrate Iraq early
in the campaign to designate targets, to destroy sites holding weapons of
mass destruction, and to seize other objectives to prevent Mr. Hussein from
slowing the American assault by flooding the marshes in southern Iraq or
igniting the country's vast oil fields, officials said.
(...)
"While we would not want to kill many Iraqi soldiers, if they stupidly
fight, we will," a senior military official said.
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