Ground Forces

WASHINGTON -- The minefields allied ground forces confronted on the offensive into Kuwait this week were penetrated with relative ease, using standard tactics and equipment.U.S. officers said that the minefields were not as sophisticated as had been believed at first and that U.S. intelligence about their locations was good.Mines remain a danger deeper in enemy territory, and hundreds of thousands of unexploded mines will probably cause lingering problems for years after the war is over. But the initial assault through the minefields went smoothly.

In announcing the administration's new Defense "guidance," President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta have - to their credit - avoided the historically oft-repeated pitfall of assuming that the conflicts of today portend the nature of the conflicts of the future. However, the vision they outline fails to realistically and specifically define just how the United States will, would, and could defeat a threat such as we have faced in Afghanistan and Iraq with the transformed, leaner force prescribed.

ON THE GROUND Thousands of Iraqi POWs, capture of port, oil fields FROM THE AIR Nonstop bombardment expands to northern cities IN THE STREETS In Europe, Mideast, U.S., massive crowds protest WASHINGTON - The United States unleashed a withering air assault on Iraq yesterday, striking Baghdad and targets throughout the country with 1,500 precision-guided bombs and cruise missiles in an escalating campaign to drive Saddam Hussein from power. As waves of ground forces headed steadily north toward Baghdad, the aerial strikes shook the ground in the capital, spewing orange flames and turning night to day with white-hot explosions amid flashes of anti-aircraft fire.

As defense strategists at the Pentagon carry out their review of how to make roughly $400 billion in cuts over 10 years, and Congress considers the possibility of reductions twice as large as required by the supercommittee's failure to reach agreement, one clear change in policy is appropriate: It is time to drop the longstanding assumption that U.S. ground forces must be capable of fighting two overlapping regional wars. Rather, ground-force planners should adopt a "1+2" framework, planning for one major war together with two smaller (but perhaps longer)

TOKYO - Japan decided yesterday to deploy ground forces to join the U.S.-led war in Iraq in what would be its most ambitious military operation since the end of World War II. After months of agonizing, punctuated by the weekend state funeral of two diplomats gunned down in northern Iraq, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's Cabinet approved a plan to send up to 600 troops to southeastern Iraq in a mission to last from six months to one year. The troops, though considered noncombat, will be the most heavily armed since Japan began tentatively dispatching its Self-Defense Forces overseas a decade ago. They will engage in humanitarian work, including establishing water and medical services, and rebuilding schools and other basic facilities.

WASHINGTON - A "very modest number" of U.S. ground forces are operating in northern Afghanistan, providing assistance to the anti-Taliban rebels and coordinating bombing runs with American warplanes, Pentagon officials said yesterday. "We do have a very modest number of ground troops in the country," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon, for the first time acknowledging that American ground forces are operating with the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. The "uniformed military personnel" are assisting the rebels with food, ammunition and communications, and providing U.S. pilots with detailed targeting information, said Rumsfeld, who briefed reporters with British Defense Minister Geoff Hoon.

WASHINGTON - In a potentially ominous turn of events for American forces in Iraq, a car bomb exploded yesterday with deadly force at a U.S. military checkpoint near the central Iraqi city of Najaf, killing four American soldiers along with the bomber. Iraqi officials were quick to bestow posthumous honors on the army officer they identified as the bomber, and they pledged that more suicide attacks would take place. Suicide attacks will become "routine military policy," Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan told reporters in Baghdad.

The reassuring word from Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Gen. Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is that the United States will resort to a ground war against Iraq only "if necessary." This welcome phrase, offered repeatedly, is especially welcome from General Powell, an Army man who in the past has bridled at Air Force boasts about being able to finish off Saddam Hussein's forces all by itself. He warned in December that any war with Iraq could be messy, requiring a U.S. ground assault all the way to Baghdad.

WASHINGTON -- U.S. and allied air forces have begun to redirect their operations against Iraq and mount heavy bombing raids on troop concentrations in and near Kuwait.Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed the expected spread of the air campaign southward from the Baghdad area yesterday after he and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney had conferred with President Bush at Camp David.He did not, however, give any indication whether immediate, heavier pounding of the elite Republican Guard armored forces and lesser Iraqi troop formations foretold an early resort to U.S. ground attacks.

WASHINGTON - The Army is concerned that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's vision for a 21st-century military will mean deep cuts in ground forces and a secondary role for the service in combat operations. Active-duty and retired Army officers, as well as their congressional allies, also fear that the future military that Rumsfeld is working to shape could result in hazy marching orders, longer missions with questionable outcomes and a greater risk to troops. They say that long-range bombers, pilotless spy planes and Navy ships firing precision weaponry might come to dominate the future military - at the expense of ground forces.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A U.S. airstrike accidentally killed eight members of a Kurdish security force and injured another six who were manning an observation point near a political office in the northern city of Mosul, Iraqi officials said yesterday. The U.S. military said that five, not eight, Kurdish police officers died in the attack, which it said had been aimed at bomb-makers affiliated with al-Qaida. U.S. military officials also said that three American soldiers had been killed yesterday during combat in western Anbar province.

MISGAV AM, Israel -- Thousands of Israeli troops backed by armor advanced deeper into Lebanon yesterday, crossing the Litani River in the south as a smaller force mounted an operation in the Bekaa Valley between Beirut and Syria. The ground offensive moved at least 12 miles across the border, by far the deepest such penetration in a campaign that began three weeks ago. The offensive was undertaken by the largest Israeli force assembled inside Lebanon since the outbreak of the fighting with Hezbollah guerrillas.

The state is threatening to evict several nonprofit organizations, including a regional food bank and a nursing home, operating on the grounds of the former Crownsville state psychiatric hospital, in a dispute with Anne Arundel County over the future of the property, which the county says it cannot afford to take over. A top Ehrlich administration official told Anne Arundel County Executive Janet S. Owens in a letter obtained yesterday by The Sun that the impasse over who will pay $25 million for environmental cleanup will force the state to clear the land for possible sale.

What the United States called a campaign of shock and awe against Saddam Hussein's Iraq is being criticized by Human Rights Watch as an invasion that used two "misguided" military tactics, resulting in hundreds of civilian deaths. The report by HRW, a human rights group based in New York, criticized the United States and Britain for using cluster weapons in populated areas and for 50 bombing strikes that were intended to kill Iraq's leadership but instead killed civilians. Cluster bombs killed or injured more than 1,000 civilians, according to HRW estimates.

TOKYO - Japan decided yesterday to deploy ground forces to join the U.S.-led war in Iraq in what would be its most ambitious military operation since the end of World War II. After months of agonizing, punctuated by the weekend state funeral of two diplomats gunned down in northern Iraq, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's Cabinet approved a plan to send up to 600 troops to southeastern Iraq in a mission to last from six months to one year. The troops, though considered noncombat, will be the most heavily armed since Japan began tentatively dispatching its Self-Defense Forces overseas a decade ago. They will engage in humanitarian work, including establishing water and medical services, and rebuilding schools and other basic facilities.

WASHINGTON - In the midst of a blinding sandstorm, Iraqi armor forces moved under its seeming protection to strike at American forces on the approaches to Baghdad. But the powerful radar of a JStars surveillance plane penetrated that swirling, dun-colored cloak to spot the enemy force, quickly passing its coordinates to a B-52 bomber. A wave of precision-guided, 500-pound bombs incinerated a number of the armored vehicles as the others quickly retreated, a defense official said. An all-seeing American eye on the Iraqi forces and thousands of these satellite-guided weapons during the past three weeks quickly eroded the enemy's fighting power.

As defense strategists at the Pentagon carry out their review of how to make roughly $400 billion in cuts over 10 years, and Congress considers the possibility of reductions twice as large as required by the supercommittee's failure to reach agreement, one clear change in policy is appropriate: It is time to drop the longstanding assumption that U.S. ground forces must be capable of fighting two overlapping regional wars. Rather, ground-force planners should adopt a "1+2" framework, planning for one major war together with two smaller (but perhaps longer)

Three weeks after the proclamation of victory in the Persian Gulf war, it becomes ever clearer that the peace cannot be won unless Saddam Hussein is removed from power. So long as this ruthless dictator controls the remnants of the Iraqi army, he can inflict terrible punishment on Kurds rebelling in the north and Shiites in revolt in the south. These two very different population groups are probably less able to hold the country together than the centrally located Sunnis. But if a Sunni government remains the answer, it will have to be far more democratic and broadly based than the military clique, mainly drawn from the town of Takrit, that produced the Saddam regime.

WASHINGTON - In a potentially ominous turn of events for American forces in Iraq, a car bomb exploded yesterday with deadly force at a U.S. military checkpoint near the central Iraqi city of Najaf, killing four American soldiers along with the bomber. Iraqi officials were quick to bestow posthumous honors on the army officer they identified as the bomber, and they pledged that more suicide attacks would take place. Suicide attacks will become "routine military policy," Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan told reporters in Baghdad.

ON THE GROUND Thousands of Iraqi POWs, capture of port, oil fields FROM THE AIR Nonstop bombardment expands to northern cities IN THE STREETS In Europe, Mideast, U.S., massive crowds protest WASHINGTON - The United States unleashed a withering air assault on Iraq yesterday, striking Baghdad and targets throughout the country with 1,500 precision-guided bombs and cruise missiles in an escalating campaign to drive Saddam Hussein from power. As waves of ground forces headed steadily north toward Baghdad, the aerial strikes shook the ground in the capital, spewing orange flames and turning night to day with white-hot explosions amid flashes of anti-aircraft fire.