WASHINGTON, Aug. 8 (UPI) -- U.S. Central Command head Gen. Tommy Franks briefed President Bush this week about a scaled-down contingency plan to strike Iraq that calls for an invasion force of some 80,000 to 100,000 personnel including only 50,000 ground troops, administration officials said.
In this new proposal, an invasion would take place during November and December, administration officials, who asked not to be identified by name, told United Press International.
A spokesman for the National Security Council at the White House said they had no information on the meeting and could neither confirm nor deny that it had taken place.
But a well-placed Pentagon official said, "Franks was asked to brief. The president doesn't have time to bother what with he doesn't want to hear." This official asked not to be quoted by name or assignment.
Recent pressure from Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith to try and mount a scaled back invasion by October was turned back by staunch resistance from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, these sources said.
"The generals didn't like the Feith option," said Washington Institute for Near East Policy expert Patrick Clawson. "The Joint Chiefs were wishy-washy, and the Army was strongly opposed. The Marines liked the option and the timing, but didn't want to go against the Army, which is rapidly proving itself irrelevant to modern warfare."
In Franks' proposal the United States would launch initial air attacks by aircraft carrier-based aircraft and cruise missiles designed to paralyze Iraq's air defenses and command and control, the Pentagon official said.
A day later, he said, ground forces based in Kuwait would make an incursion into south Iraq to create a safe zone called "an air head," similar to a "beach head," the Pentagon official said.
Franks heads Central Command in Tampa, Fla., and is responsible for the U.S.-led offensive in Afghanistan. Central Command would also mount any attack on Iraq.
The source said once the "air head" was established, airstrips would quickly be built and U.S. ground force with armor would move in from Kuwait.
According to a former senior Pentagon official, who advised Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz on the plan, U.S. forces would use sophisticated psychological warfare operations to keep Iraq's conscript army in its barracks, while simultaneously, the U.S. ground forces would drive hard west of the Euphrates River.
"The Iraqi army would be urged to stay in barracks where it would be safe. If it came out, it would be slaughtered -- that would be the message," an administration official said.
The enemy may listen to this advice, the planners believe, since Defense Intelligence Agency analysts estimate that 450,000 Iraqi troops were killed in Operation Desert Storm, a former DIA analyst told UPI.
"This whole plan hinges on the ability to frighten the Iraqi military into staying neutral or switching sides," the former DIA official said.
This official, who asked not to be identified by name, said the ground forces, reinforced by an airdrop of the XVIII Airborne Corps, would appear in the suburbs of Baghad to entice into the open six key divisions of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard and a half dozen formidable Iraqi armored divisions which would then be destroyed by heavy air strikes by U.S.-based B-52s and B-1 heavy bombers.
The psychological warfare operation can only succeed, the sources agreed, if the United States first destroyed Iraq's communications. This would be done by using highly sophisticated electromagnetic pulse weapons that would jam or paralyze Saddam's command and control and also wipe out his communications so that the only broadcasts to be accessed by Iraqi troops would be U.S. propaganda programs.
Electromagnetic waves are like radio waves, only many thousand of times stronger. Usually produced by nuclear explosions, the new U.S. weapon uses chemicals detonated by a shaped charge, according to John Pike, military expert and president of Globalsecurity.com, an Internet Web site.
"The EMP weapon is also called a high-powered microwave weapon," Pike said.
These weapons are also expected to damage or paralyze the controls of installations that store or manufacture chemical or biological weapons, forestalling air attacks that could cause the release of harmful agents, Pentagon sources said.
But Pentagon officials said they expect "some degree of incessant chemical attacks" once the Iraqis find themselves under fire.
According to administration sources, the main reason for the November, December time frame is that weather in Iraq would be cool enough for U.S. troops be able to wear suits protecting them from chemical and biological weapons.
John Pike said initial U.S. ground forces personnel in Iraq are expected to be the 101st Airborne Division, the Third Mechanized Infantry Division, a brigade of U.S. Marines and a brigade of British troops. The total would be less than 50,000 ground troops.
"We have no word on any of that," a Pentagon official said.
An earlier Franks proposal, OpPlan 1003, which called for 250,000 ground troops and 15 air wings, has been put on a back burner because it was "basically a plan to defeat the Iraqi army, not cause a change in regime," Pike said.
In the new plan, the center of gravity is not the Iraqi military but Saddam himself, he said.
"He's right," said a Pentagon official. "This newer plan is designed to cause a coup, not cause a full-scale war."
But even advocates of the new proposal said that the United States must be ready to have large follow-on forces ready for deployment if needed.
"You are gambling that the appearance of the XVIII Airborne will cause the regime to collapse," said one U.S. government official. "If it doesn't you have to have the big hammer ready."
