96                                 U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-I 991

    U.S. intelligence sources significantly overestimated the size of Iraqi military
forces, the complexity of their minefields and obstacle belts, and their ability to
execute war, according to new details emerging from captured Iraqi combat
documents,  prisoner interviews and battlefield assessments     by  allied com-
manders.
    Iraqi military logs seized from bunkers across the desert and debriefing of
senior Iraqi officers taken prisoner during the war indicate that the Iraqi military
had positioned no more than 350,000 troops in Kuwait and southern Iraq when
the war began in mid-January--far fewer than the 540,000 troops cited repeatedly
by Pentagon officials at the time.
    The 540,000 figure was the full-strength level of the Iraqi military units that
U.S. intelligence assumed were deployed in the Kuwaiti theater of operations.
But many front-line Iraqi units were manned at only 50 percent of their full
strength, and in the rear even the best artillery units were operating with little
more than two-thirds of their troops, Iraqi documents show.    Elite Republican
Guard units in southern Iraq reportedly were the strongest, with approximately
80 percent of their force in place, officials said.
    In addition, photographic intelligence from satellites, spy planes and remotely
piloted aircraft exaggerated the severity of the minefields and obstacle belts that
lay between the allied forces in Saudi Arabia and the frontline Iraqi troops
across the border in Kuwait, making trenches and other barriers appear far more
formidable than they were, according to military authorities.  U.S. intelligence
assessments based on the performance of Iraqi forces during their eight-year war
with Iran also overestimated the ability of Iraqi troops to effectively use the
sophisticated artillery, tanks and other weaponry in their arsenal, military of
officials learned.
    "They built these guys to be a monster," said Maj.Gen. William Keys,
commander of the U.S. Marines' 2nd Division.    The burly general added that
even the physical size of the Iraqi soldiers had been exaggerated in his mind.
"I thought they were bigger people."
    Operation Desert Storm's 100 hours of ground combat turned out to be two
wars--a one-two punch by   Marines who   surged up the middle with what
amounted to a right jab into the Iraqi midsection, and a left hook by U.S. Army
and allied forces carrying out the most massive armored flanking attack since
World War II that is the subject of part two of this series.

                          "They Can't Hit Me.

    It was not until after Christmas, five months after Iraq invaded Kuwait, that
the initial inflated assessment of the Iraqi military began to be punctured by the
reconnaissance and Special Forces teams that had set up in grungy guard posts
along the border and in cramped underground holes in Iraqi-held territory.
    The border teams fired round after round into Kuwait in artillery probes and
discovered that the Iraqis--for all their much-acclaimed artillery prowess--could
not accurately pinpoint American positions to return fire.    The Marine com-
mander, Lt. Gen. Walter Boomer, recounts that after two weeks of these probes,