The Killing Ground

Unreadiness is only the first kink in the plan. Land battle in the desert has always meant severe logistical strains (box, page 33). Until they get to the Euphrates, Schwarzkopf's forces will be depending on a supply line up form Saudi Arabia for every drop of water. A modern tank division uses 600,000 gallons of fuel a day--twice as much as Gen. George S. Patton's whole Third Army needed each day in World War II. As of Jan. 15, European military sources say, Schwarzkopf had only 50 percent of the munitions he wants.

The Arab allies are also a question mark. The Syrian mechanized division has already been shifted from the immediate combat area because of concern over its willingness to fight, according to Egyptian military officials. It is now well to the west of other Arab forces. U.S. ground commanders say Syrian and Egyptian forces operate according to Soviet doctrine, which calls for them to advance more quickly; they could get ahead of the pack, endangering units to their right or left. "There's a lot of Pickett's Charge quality to their tactics," says a U.S. Army colonel, referring to the disastrous rush by Confederate troops into Union lines at Gettysburg. One of the Army planners' biggest fears is that allied forces might accidentally start firing on one another because of communications problems among multinational troops operating frequently at night.

But perhaps the biggest imponderable facing Schwarzkopf is the human factor. Says Edward Foster of the Royal United Services Institute in London: The ground phase of the war depends more on morale, training and momentum. It will be our armor plate and human bodies against those of the opposition." U.S. troops are trained volunteers who think of themselves as professional soldiers. But whereas the Iraqi forces have spent eight of the last 10 years living through the deprivation and violence of near-constant war, Americans are accustomed to economic prosperity and regular weekend passes. Except for some officers who fought in Vietnam, their combat experience is limited almost entirely to drills. The ferocity of AirLand Battle, in which hundreds or even thousands of Americans could be either wounded or killed, will tax their morale. Last week some Marine units were visited by a military psychiatrist who attempted to prepare them for the psychological side of battle.

Meanwhile, the Republican Guards are dug in deep--dozens of feet below the ground in some cases, with much of their munitions, including tanks and antiaircraft batteries, protected in bunkers. They are getting blasted by round-the-clock B-52 bombing strikes. Air-war advocates say the onslaught could break their will, just as Egyptian forces were made to surrender in the Sinai desert by Israeli airstrikes in the 1967 war. But the Republican Guard may not crack quickly. "You can pound them with [massive raids] and do lots of damage," says retired Marine Gen. Bernard M. Trainor, who spent two months covering Iraq's troops in the Iran-Iraq War as a New York Times correspondent, "but these are Iraqi nationalists and they'll fight."

However the battle ultimately takes shape, Saddam's objective is not to limit his own troops' losses: he sacrificed more than a hundred thousand lives against Iran and seems willing to do so again. Instead, he will seek to maximize the casualties inflicted upon his enemy. To him, apparently, American public opinion itself is the war's center of gravity. Trainor says Saddam formed his contempt for United States staying power in 1983, when President Ronald Reagan pulled American peace-keeping forces out of Beirut after losing 241 Marines in a suicide truck-bomb attack. The Iraqi dictator is seeking to make the coming ground struggle "the mother of all battles." Norman Schwarzkopf and the U.S. military see their chance to exorcise the ghosts of defeat in Vietnam once and for all.

THE GROUND WAR STILL TO COME: A LIKELY SCENARIO