Invasion
'bloody mess'?

WASHINGTON - The U.S. would win a war with Iraq, but the battle and victory itself would have consequences that President Bush should think very hard about, a respected military analyst said yesterday.
"Could this be a bloody mess? Yes, it could," said Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "And what do we do after we win?"

In a briefing on his 100-page analysis of Iraq's military, Cordesman said war probably is necessary to deprive dictator Saddam Hussein of chemical and biological weapons and stop his drive to get nuclear weapons.

But Cordesman said he was troubled that the White House had yet to plan for a postwar Iraq and had done little to gauge the reaction of Arab allies and Iran.

Cordesman also presented a doomsday scenario of Israel retaliating with nuclear weapons if Iraq unleashed a chemical or biological attack against it.

"The history here is of a man who lashes out," Cordesman said of Saddam.

If Iraq attacked with weapons of mass destruction, and he were an Israeli, "I would not be paying attention to phone calls from President Bush" urging restraint, Cordesman said.

Cordesman's estimates, which are similar to those of the CIA and other analysts, put Iraq's troop strength at about 400,000, backed by about 300 aircraft, 2,000 tanks and 3,000 armored personnel carriers.

This force has been decimated by 10 years of poor maintenance, lack of spare parts and little training, Cordesman said.

"This is a relatively weak and divided military and under pressure it might collapse," Cordesman said, but attacking on a guess "is not the way you go to war."

His cautionary analysis is at odds with the views of Richard Perle and Kenneth Adelman, civilian members of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Review Board who have influence at the White House.