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February 12, 2003 22:37

What's the Rush on Iraq?

By David H. Hackworth

Unless Saddam runs, war with Iraq is a done deal. Our fist is moving into place and will strike soon with unparalleled fury. By the time the shock waves settle, Iraq's elite units will have been relegated to a junkyard of death and destruction.

Insiders tell me that our field generals are superconfident this op will truly be a walk in the sun. But an Army major in Kuwait who's seen the battle plan, participated in the war games and watched the rehearsals says: "I'm worried to death. These guys act like this is a desert training exercise at Fort Irwin, Calif. ... that everything will go exactly according to their perfect brilliant plan."

I'm not concerned that our smart aerial weapons won't deliver or our ground troops won't bring 10 Richter earthquake pain to the Iraqi army. But as President Bush told the nation, the Iraqi army has weaponized chemical and biological munitions and will use them. And knowing the fallout from Desert Storm - close to 200,000 Gulf War Illness casualties - that worries me a lot.

True, my Uncle Roy's scarred body and mind that I saw as a kid might have something to do with the sinking feeling in my gut. German mustard gas struck him in the trenches of France in 1918, after which he was walking dead until he mercifully checked out. Or maybe experiencing the bloody effects of war as either a participant or observer during the past 64 years has dampened my warrior spirit. Whatever the cause, I place a high premium these days on caution and thinking out the consequences that the untested, the young and the protected tend to ignore.

Having interviewed scores of our combat soldiers in the past month - many of them deployed in the Gulf desert or moving in that direction - I share their unanimous lack of confidence in their ability to fight on a battlefield contaminated with bio/chem agents. Weapons so terrible that after the carnage wrought on tens of thousands of soldiers in Uncle Roy's War-to-End-All-Wars, they were banned as too horrendous even for the brutal business of war.

Our guys laying their lives on the line don't think they can fight in their protective gear, which they characterize as cumbersome, spacesuit-restrictive and hot - especially in what's already one of the world's hottest places. Imagine the fear. One slight cut in your protective suit and you're dead. Imagine clearing a minefield laced with barbwire, loading a cannon or assaulting a bunker while peering through steaming goggles.

Soldiers also have little trust in the detection gear designed to warn them that bio/chem agents have blown into their chunk of the sandbox. A sergeant says: "The M8 detector didn't work when I was in Desert Storm, and 12 years later it still doesn't work. Even cleaning fluid sets it off."

Troopers in Kuwait worry that they haven't seen decontamination gear and wonder where the uncontaminated water will come from to drink and to decontaminate them and their gear.

Besides a lack of confidence in their gear, most say they're not trained to fight and survive in a bio/chem environment. A sergeant in the 82nd Airborne Division, who's on his way to the battlefield, says: "We should be doing a lot more NBC (nuclear, biological and chemical) training. My leaders talk about it, but that's about where it stops."

According to Pentagon spokesman Maj. Chris Conway, "Combat-maneuver units go to MOPP-4 - fully suited up including protective mask - from anywhere between 45 minutes to five hours during a typical 14- to 21-day training rotation at Fort Irwin."

A trooper who trained there told me: "I don't want to risk my life on that small amount of NBC training. It's little more than a pencil drill. You know, check the square."

If I were president, I'd put the war on hold while combat and supporting units outfitted in protective gear were pounded with nonlethal chemical agents in simulated desert battle conditions for at least a week - to prove they could survive.

If we can put the shuttle on hold after the death of seven astronauts, we can delay a war with possible catastrophic casualties until we know our warriors are able to make it through a sure-to-be-poisoned battlefield.

http://www.hackworth.com is the address of David Hackworth's home page. Send mail to P.O. Box 11179, Greenwich, CT 06831. Look for his new book, "Steel My Soldiers' Hearts," (Rugged Land LLC, New York City).