US attack on Iraq could leave Saddam in place

Instead of a massive Gulf war-style ground invasion of Iraq, US generals may be plotting a smaller-scale operation to cut off Bagdhad from the outside world, military experts say.

But that could mean leaving Saddam Hussein in place, at least for the short term, despite Washington's desire for a "regime change".

"We're getting reasonable signs on both sides of the Atlantic that something is afoot and something is moving," Major Charles Heyman, editor of defence journal Jane's World Armies, told Reuters in London.

"But it's not the 250,000-man assault that we have been led to think," he said. "I am still not seeing the signs that I should have seen right now for a very large scale deployment."

Heyman predicted that far smaller numbers of US and British-led troops would mount an operation to shut down all Iraqi airfields, ports and road links with the outside world.

Their goal would be to force Iraqi leaders to allow UN weapons inspectors to return to the country - not necessarily to topple its government.

"Obviously the ultimate aim would be regime change, but the immediate aim would be to ensure that whoever is in Baghdad, they do not have access to weapons of mass destruction," Heyman said. "It would certainly not mean a march on Baghdad that would throw out Saddam."

Since President George W. Bush declared in a speech that Iraq was part of an "axis of evil", speculation has swirled over whether he planned to finish where his father left off at the end of the Gulf war, and remove the Iraqi leader from power.

But although US officials have put themselves under strong political pressure to take military action against Iraq, their plans may fall short of ousting Saddam, at least for now.

If the US goal was to topple Iraq's government at any cost, regional experts say the only certain way to succeed would be to mount another full-blown invasion that repeated the Gulf war dictum of bringing to bear "overwhelming force".

"There's no way on earth that aerial power alone or special forces is going to unseat that regime," said Toby Dodge, Iraq specialist at the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

Military planners have flirted with the possibility of repeating the US success in Afghanistan, where special forces and air power helped a local opposition oust the ruling Taliban.

But that strategy does not seem applicable to Iraq, where Kurdish and Shi'ite opposition groups have not fielded the sort of credible, unified force that Afghanistan's Northern Alliance had deployed a short distance from Kabul.

"There was a lot of speculation early this year about using the Iraqi oppostion something like the way they used the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan," said Daniel Neep, Middle East expert at the Royal United Services Institute, a think tank specialising in military affairs.

"This has become more problematic over the last few months as people have realised that the Iraqi opposition is maybe a bit less united, and less easy to manipulate perhaps than the Northern Alliance."

But if the only surefire option to topple Saddam is a full-blown invasion, this would require the support of neighbouring Arab countries whose territory would be used as a launching point.

US diplomats should have been hard at work already winning pledges to host their troops. On the 1991 model, troops would deploy through the autumn for an attack in late winter.

"They haven't done the diplomatic work," said Dodge. Israeli-Palestinian violence has upstaged concern over Iraq, making it more difficult for Washington to win support from Arab allies leery of Saddam.

In 1990-91, US diplomats leaned heavily on Israel to avoid angering Arab public opinion while Washington set up a coalition to fight Iraq. This time around, the second Bush administration has been more supportive of the Israeli position, culminating with a call for the ouster of the Palestinian leadership.

"If you're going to invade Iraq, you wouldn't start by calling for the ouster of Yasser Arafat," said Dodge.