To find those needles in haystacks, U.N. officials have borrowed a modernized American U-2 spy plane. Meanwhile, the Security Council voted last week to condemn Baghdad for refusing to cooperate with inspectors. The Bush administration continues to threaten military strikes, and the Senate has already voted 97-2 to resume bombing if Bush believes it’s needed.
But would bombing work? The Pentagon’s experts have chosen about 200 targets, sources told NEWSWEEK. About one tenth of the warplanes used in the gulf war remain on alert in Saudi Arabia, and fresh coordinates have been fed into cruise missiles. “There won’t be any problem finding things worth hitting,” said one official.
The problem is finding everything worth hitting. “Smart” bombs aren’t much use if a target is moving. The 88 pounds of enriched uranium an Iraqi defector claims Saddam has produced would be about the size of a grapefruit. Nuclear triggers smuggled in from the West can be hidden in a pants pocket. Even Pentagon officials admit air-strikes could never completely wipe out Iraq’s secret weapons program. That’s why the targeting plan also calls for another round of attacks on Iraqi bunkers, “to remind them that they lost,” as one Pentagon aide put it.
The looming threat of a second strike is what has forced Iraq to permit U.N. inspectors to remain. A continuing U.N. effort at least keeps Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and missile programs in disarray. That’s not an ideal solution, but it may be the only realistic one.
