Aerial Bombardment Partially Failed, General Says

WASHINGTON, March 25 — The nation's top military officer acknowledged today that the Pentagon's strategy to shock the Iraqi regime quickly with a dramatic early air bombardment has not worked exactly as planned.

But Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that even if Saddam Hussein's regime was still standing after four days of intense bombing, control was slipping away from the Iraqi leadership as American forces closed in on Baghdad.

"If I were in Baghdad and I was looking south and I saw a U.S. Army division that is on the outskirts of Baghdad, I don't know that that would be shock, but I'd certainly be a little concerned," General Myers told reporters. "And they'll have a lot more to be concerned about shortly."

Three weeks ago, General Myers said the military would try to shock Iraqi leadership into submission with an attack "much, much, much different" from the 43-day Persian Gulf war in 1991. General Myers made no predictions, but said the goal was a "short conflict."

After six days, American and British warplanes and warships have launched several thousand bombs and cruise missiles against Iraqi air defenses, communication centers, headquarters, Republican Guard troops and other military targets. But at least until today, Mr. Hussein was still appearing on the official television, his government was still passing orders to its field commanders, and there were no immediate signs of the mass surrenders or defections many American officials had hoped for.

Since before the 1991 Persian Gulf war, proponents of air power have argued that wars could be won through the air by attacking enemy leaders, their communications and the power bases that prop their regimes. The surprise missile strike last Wednesday against Mr. Hussein and top Iraqi leaders was a bold attempt to end the war with one swift blow.

But air power experts say the Pentagon's continuing air campaign had fallen short in delivering a quick knockout blow.

"The main thing we've learned from this is that `shock and awe' hasn't panned out," said Robert A. Pape, a professor at University of Chicago and author of "Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War," citing the military's catchphrase for this air campaign. "The targeting hasn't broken the back of the leadership and it hasn't made the majority of forces not fight."

Mr. Pape said that over the last 17 years, this strategy has been tried six times and has been ineffective or backfired in each instance. He cited examples ranging from the 1986 strike against at the Libyan leader, Muammar el-Qaddafi, to the 1999 air campaign aimed at toppling the Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic.

Neither General Myers nor any of his civilian bosses explicitly said that an air campaign alone would bring down Mr. Hussein and his government. But military officials in briefings and interviews raised expectations that a huge display of precision bombing coupled with a broad psychological operations campaign might quickly shatter Iraqi government and its military high command.

Obviously, that could still happen, military officials said. It might just take more time than expected. Indeed, air strikes tonight knocked Iraqi television off the air, at least temporarily. Military planners had avoided striking the Iraqi broadcast center and other some other government ministries for fear of inflicting civilian casualties and damaging civilian buildings, and the desire to save the facilities for a postwar Iraq.

Looking back over the week, senior Pentagon officials acknowledged that punishing initial strikes fell short of their goal. "Did they the effect of tipping the balance?" said one official. "Maybe not. But they sure put them back on their heels."

The targets have included Mr. Hussein's palace guard, the headquarters for the Republican Guard, facilities for the Special Republican Guard, which has the mission of protecting the government and organizations charged with internal security, like the Special Security Organization.

Special Operations Forces have also called in air strikes against targets in western and northern Iraq, away from the main clashes in the south and central part of the country.

In the past two days, the air campaign has moved away from mainly pre-planned strikes against targets that support the regime's power to attacks on Iraq's forces, specifically the Republican Guard divisions that are Saddam Hussein's most loyal and well equipped military forces. More than half of the 1,500 attack missions flown over the past two days were against Iraqi troops.

This is part of Gen. Tommy R. Franks's strategy to soften up the elite Iraq armored forces before launching a major ground attack against the dug-in and dispersed Iraqi troops.

Even as a raging sandstorm grounded the Army's armada of Apache attack helicopters, allied warplanes carried out several hundred attack missions against Republican Guard armored divisions using satellite-guided weapons that are impervious to weather and that did not exist 12 years ago.

In the first gulf war, American ground commanders sought to destroy more than half the Iraqi armor before attacking with ground troops. Without divulging operational details, General Myers suggested that the threshold this time could be lower. "Their overall strength, their training, and their morale is different than it was in '91," General Myers said. "And we're going to take advantage of that in ways that I just can't go into.