On the Ground in Kuwait

MICHAEL GORDON:

While there are a lot of forces here, there's a U.S. -led invasion force that at this point in time is poised to move north into Iraq. We've got a very large U.S. Marine force, a sizable army force. And there's also a considerable British force. But what I find really striking about this war is how different it is. I mean, last time the focus was on kicking out Iraqi troops, and evicting them from Kuwait to reclaim that territory. This time the battle really centers on Baghdad.

LT. GEN. WILLIAM SCOTT WALLACE:

Baghdad always, always been the center of power of this regime, and it's not surprising that he would try to retain that center of power by closing in his most loyal forces around that center of power and try to retain it.

MICHAEL GORDON:

— is the headquarters for the army assault into Iraq, and it's commanded by general William Scott Wallace who we interviewed.

LT. GEN. WILLIAM SCOTT WALLACE:

I see a foe that although maybe not as large, and maybe not as capable as he was during the last conflict, he has adapted to his environment considerably. He is a foe that is not, is not by any stretch of the imagine nation to be underestimated.

MICHAEL GORDON:

Basically what you're looking at in terms of the United States Army is a force that is very formidable, potent, got a lot of fire power, but is considerably smaller than the army force that was deployed in the last Gulf War and which is not going to be entirely ready in all of its elements when this kicks off. The army is pretty much locked into what is called a rolling start, beginning the fight while forces are just arriving. Now, Gen. Wallace told us that he's comfortable with that.

LT. GEN. WILLIAM SCOTT WALLACE:

From the very beginning, planning for this operation, we have understood that we're going to have to both fight and build up forces simultaneously.

MICHAEL GORDON:

Now, the Marines, it's very interesting situation here, the marine force, they call it the MEF, Marine Expeditionary Force, and what's really striking about the marine force is just how large it is, it sort of snuck in without a lot of notice, including by the international media.

LT. GEN. JAMES T. CONWAY:

Once the decision was made to deploy forces, I think it's fair to say that we got here quickly. It's what we provide for the nation, it's our expeditionary capability. And probably we're going to appear in about 45 days, we have amphibious forces from both coasts of the United States.

MICHAEL GORDON:

And they've amassed a bigger force than the army. There's maybe somewhere on the order of 65,000 marines. But the Marines basically come from the sea. And they're not the kind of force that traditionally conducts very very long thrusts deep into enemy territory. If you project a marine attack that goes from Kuwait to Baghdad, you're talking about an attack of 400 miles, which would be one of the longest land assaults in marine corps history.

LT. GEN. JAMES T. CONWAY:

So I think in this expeditionary age we're just demonstrating to the nation that we've got that kind of reach and can be employed if the president should decide.

MICHAEL GORDON:

We've got the fifth corps running the war, under Gen. Wallace, you've got Gen. Conway running the marine war, land war, and also having control over the British. But what they have to time is something they really didn't have last time, something called Seep Leg – a Coalition Forces Land Component Command. It's basically a land-war commander, Lt. Gen. David McKiernan.

MICHAEL GORDON:

What is it that you hope to accomplish by having a separate land commander that sit astride the army, the marine and also the British forces?

LT. GEN. DAVID D. McKIERNAN:

Well, I think there's two reasons why the paradigm is different than it was in Desert Storm. One is that CENTCOM and Gen. Franks are looking across his entire theater, his entire region. So he's got negotiations that are ongoing in Afghanistan, in the Horn of Africa, as well as the potential on the Arabian Peninsula. The second point is that we're a whole lot more joint than we were 12 years ago. Today what we have is a of much better integrated joint force. So everything from logistics, through war fighting, we can do in a join context here.

MICHAEL GORDON:

What the army has is a pretty considerable command center here at Camp Doha, north of Okay City, which they've been building for a while. And it looks a bit like what the Johnson Space Center might look like, you've got big screens on the board, lots of computers.

LT. GEN. DAVID D. McKIERNAN:

This one is a main command post where we have the technology that allows us to execute what we call battle command.

MICHAEL GORDON:

So the logistics are greater, the force is smaller, the task is harder in a sense because you're facing urban warfare.

LT. GEN. DAVID D. McKIERNAN:

It's a huge problem set for any military operation, how to conduct operations in urban terrain. Baghdad has got a large population, it's a large urban area.

LT. GEN. WILLIAM SCOTT WALLACE:

If there is to be a fight in and around Baghdad we're going to have to be very patient to establish the right conditions for us to engage in that fight. That means making sure that the air space over the top of Baghdad is available to our air force, so we can use the precision capability the airports to go after discreet targets within the city without doing extensive damage.

MICHAEL GORDON:

When you talk about being patient in the Baghdad scenario, are you talking about weeks or months?

LT. GEN. WILLIAM SCOTT WALLACE:

I'm talking a matter of days, but I'm not talking about doing the bum's rush into an urban population though, knowing exactly where he is pulling the strings from in and how he has pulled those strings will be very important.

MICHAEL GORDON:

But Saddam is confronting the United States with his a Stalin graduated, he's using that to frighten the United States from going to war, and what the U.S. Military is saying is they're not going to fight it like a Stalingrad, they don't want to fight block to block, they're trying to avoid all that, but what they want to do is target the key nodes of power or what they like oh to call the haves of gravity in military terminology and go after them in a very kind of focused way.