Baghdad: The Urban Sanctuary in Desert Storm

Abstract

Abstract : WITH THE EARLY morning attack on the Al Firdos (Amiriyah) shelter on 13 February, Gen Colin Powell thought that Baghdad bombing had run its course. What's the value of making the rubble bounce, he told his staff. We have got to review things to make sure we're not bombing just for the sake of indiscriminate bombing. What an odd and inaccurate image for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to hold. If ever there was a bombing campaign that was not indiscriminate, it was Baghdad in Operation Desert Storm. Yet for all the visibility of the Iraqi capital, and for all the briefings--public and classified--General Powell could not see what was happening. Years later, in his autobiography, he would still ask if air power needed to pound downtown Baghdad over a month into the war. Airmen might lament Powell's infantry bias, but such an institutional explanation glosses over far more important matters. If Desert Storm was the first information war, as some claim, the Air Force stumbled badly. Even the highest military and civilian decision makers evidently did not understand the bombing campaign. Moreover, disproportionate attention focused on Baghdad--an otherwise statistically minor part of the air war-bred misguided assumptions about targeting and strategy, ones that persist to this day.