U.S. Assessment of Air Raids Not ‘Fully Accurate’

WASHINGTON —  The Pentagon conceded today that it doesn’t have “a fully accurate picture” of the success of U.S. and allied air strikes against Iraq. The White House and Congress also voiced frustration at the lack of information.

“We’d like to have better damage assessment,” said presidential spokesman Marlin Fitzwater.

Even with his access to the most sensitive intelligence information, President Bush does not know much more about the effect of the bombing campaign on Iraq than the general public, Fitzwater said.

“He thinks people are getting as full a picture as we have,” the spokesman said. “He just wishes we had a better one.”

The White House also announced that Bush is sending Richard L. Armitage, a former assistant secretary of defense, to Jordan to confer with King Hussein. While the talks will primarily deal with refugee problems, Fitzwater said Bush is also concerned over the possibility that Jordan could be drawn into the war.

Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said today that Operation Desert Storm appeared to be “going very well.”

He cautioned, however, that the successes of the opening days of the war were creating “such high expectations of what the rest of the war is likely to be, that we can’t match them.”

He said “the losses have been so low they may have set an unachievable standard for the rest of the war.” He said it would have been realistic to expect loss of “somewhere in the range of 80 to 90 planes” at this point. “We’ve lost less than 20, not just the United States, but the whole allied coalition.”

Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams said today that there is not a huge gap between what the military is saying and what it knows about the damage.

“We don’t have a fully accurate picture” about damage, Williams said on NBC’s “Today” show.