Dugan’s original remarks were unusually blunt. “If push comes to shove, the cutting edge would be in downtown Baghdad,” he told reporters on a flight from Saudi Arabia in September. “The way to hurt you is at home; it’s not out in the woods somewhere.” He then carried the Air Force doctrine of deep strikes at enemy “centers of gravity” to its logical ultimate: “If for any reason [Saddam] went away, it is my judgment that those troops [in Kuwait] would. be back in Iraq in a matter of hours, in disarray.” According to intelligence sources, Saddam was spotted at the Amiriya bunker in the later stages of the Iran-Iraq War. He was observed there again at the beginning of February. And the Los Angeles Times reported that a house in an adjoining complex was often used by Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat.
Push has now come to shove. And while the allies long ago abandoned any effort to seek out Saddam personally, “leadership targets” are still high on the air campaign’s list of objectives. The idea is to provoke the military high command and Baath leaders into overthrowing Saddam. They alone have access to the heavily guarded dictator. “You have to make it personal,” said one gulfwar planner. “You have to convince those around Saddam that, unless they stop him, they personally are at risk.” If last week’s attack on the Amiriya facility brought the risk home, that was part of the plan.
The raid itself was a model of execution. Plans provided by a Swedish contractor who renovated the bunker in 1985 allowed the allies to identify its weak points: the ventilation shafts. These became the targets for a pair of 2,000-pound, delayed-fuse penetration bombs. Only one bomb actually found its shaft. Slipping past the structure’s 10-foot-thick concrete ceiling and steel reinforcement, it detonated inside. The allies were unprepared for the presence of so many innocent family members. Asked whether the victims were in fact dependents of Iraq’s ruling elite, one visibly shaken Pentagon source said, “I don’t know. [Burned] women and children all look much the same, don’t they?”
U.S. officials continued to insist that the underground bunker was an Iraqi command-and-control center. Intelligence sources told NEWSWEEK that only the top two levels sheltered senior military commanders and Baath officials, along with their families. Beneath them was a secret basement filled with equipment for communicating with Army leaders at the front. Last week the Iraqis flooded the secret basement to prevent reporters from seeing it after the bombing. There was no giveaway radio gear atop the bunker, the sources said, because the Iraqis routinely locate antennas away from the source of transmission, in order to confuse aerial and electronic intelligence. At Amiriya, they allegedly sent signals from the bunker to remote broadcast facilities by coaxial cable. Allied officials were unsure how far the Amiriya raid degraded Iraqi command and control. “We know they’re using alternative command bunkers,” said a source. “But it’s a matter of inference which bunker is acting as the node.”
Concern for finding that “node” raised the possibility of further raids on shelters and increased civilian casualties. And if those casualties produce no internal movement to overthrow Saddam, they are likely to provoke a backlash against the leadership of the gulf coalition instead. “Another mess like [the Amiriya raid],” said a military source, “and Baghdad will be off-limits.”
