Clinton Calls Iraq Strike a Success; Some Civilians Hit : Persian Gulf: President expresses regret over deaths but says he feels ‘quite good’ about damaging raid on intelligence complex. Crowds in Iraq demand revenge.

WASHINGTON — President Clinton and his top military strategists proclaimed success Sunday for the attack in which 20 of 23 cruise missiles hit and heavily damaged Iraq’s intelligence complex in Baghdad.

Despite the clear military success of the strike against the nerve center of President Saddam Hussein’s intelligence network, Pentagon officials said three of the Tomahawk missiles went astray and apparently slammed into surrounding residential neighborhoods. Iraqi television said at least eight civilians were killed.

“It’s clear that it was a success,” Clinton told reporters as he headed for church. “I feel quite good about what has transpired, and I think the American people should feel good about it.”

Clinton expressed regret at the civilian casualties but added, “I think we had minimal loss of life, and we sent the message we needed to send.”

The Pentagon said four of the missiles that landed in the giant intelligence complex missed their specific targets but that the other 16, carrying a combined total of eight tons of high explosives, destroyed the headquarters wing of the facility, knocking out communications, records and computers.

“Damage was very extensive to the main target,” Defense Secretary Les Aspin said. “There is no question that the strike was a success. . . . It is definitely out of business when you see the photographs.”

Senior officials said the missile barrage early Sunday morning completed the U.S. retaliation for a failed Iraqi plot to kill former President George Bush during a visit to Kuwait in April. They said that no additional attacks are planned unless Hussein commits another provocation.

But in Baghdad, crowds of demonstrators demanded a repayment in blood. The Reuters news agency reported that 10,000 mourners turned out for the funeral of six of the civilian casualties, shouting, “Vengeance, Vengeance, Saddam.”

The crowd also chanted, “Clinton, pay attention; we are the people who toppled Bush.”

Hussein’s ruling Revolutionary Command Council called the raid “cowardly aggression.” But European countries--including Russia, which expressed reservations about a similar raid last January--applauded the U.S. action.

Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that Iraq has little capability to inflict direct damage on the United States and its allies, but he said that the U.S. military is ready to handle any attempt at retaliation.

“I haven’t a clue as to what the Iraqi military regime may or may not do, but you can be sure that we are considering every possibility, every contingency, and we’ll be ready to deal with it,” Powell said in an interview with CNN. “We will have available to us in the region whatever force seems to be appropriate to the circumstances.

“I’m not terribly concerned about the use of Iraqi air power,” Powell said. “They have demonstrated their relative impotence previously. He has some ground forces available to him. I don’t know whether he would launch any kind of ground offensive anywhere, but we’re watching that, and I think we can deal with that. And the beauty of U.S. naval forces is that they are quite flexible.”

He said the carrier Theodore Roosevelt has been ordered to move within range of Iraqi targets.

Nevertheless, a senior Administration official conceded that Iraqi troops, concentrated in the northern part of the country, could strike into the designated Kurdish enclave, exacting retribution against people whom the United States and its Persian Gulf War allies have promised to protect.

The cruise missile attack apparently took Iraq by surprise. Michael Cramer, the Pentagon’s director of intelligence, said that Iraqi forces dispersed their army and air-defense units and equipment shortly after the missiles began to fall, a maneuver that he said “can only be described as somewhat time-late.”

Unlike the last U.S. cruise missile attack on Iraq, staged three days before Clinton replaced Bush in the White House in January, the Administration quickly admitted that three of its weapons, each carrying 1,000 pounds of explosives, veered off into civilian areas. During the previous raid, the Pentagon refused to acknowledge that it had caused civilian damage until reporters found pieces of the U.S. missile in the shattered lobby of a Baghdad hotel.

“We tried to conduct the strike in a way that would have minimized collateral damage, but there were civilian casualties,” Powell said on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press.” A number of U.S. strikes have caused civilian deaths and injuries during and since the Gulf War; many key Iraqi strategic targets are situated in the middle of residential areas.

Marine Lt. Gen. Jack Sheehan, the Pentagon’s operations chief, said three misses out of 23 shots was within the range of “probable error” for the Tomahawk, a tacit acknowledgment that military planners had expected some civilian toll.

In the January attack and at times during the Gulf War, Tomahawks were believed to have been knocked off their computer-guided courses by a hail of Iraqi antiaircraft fire. On Sunday, Pentagon experts acknowledged that they had tried to minimize the risk of ground fire by programming the entire volley of missiles to land in a span of five minutes.

Nevertheless, the Pentagon’s Cramer said that there is no way to know if antiaircraft fire caused any of the three missiles to miss their targets. Iraqi television claimed to have shot down one of the subsonic, winged missiles.

A Pentagon official said the military chose the missile to avoid risks to U.S. pilots even though manned bombers generally have greater accuracy.

In an effort to get the most favorable response from the story, the Administration dispatched many of its top diplomatic and military officials to the Sunday morning television interview programs. Secretary of State Warren Christopher appeared on ABC, Aspin was on CNN, Powell was on both CNN and NBC, and Vice President Al Gore was on CBS.

And, perhaps with an eye to critics who had earlier accused the Administration of waffling and backtracking on Bosnia-Herzegovina and other issues, the officials who spoke for publication Sunday clearly were singing from the same page, frequently using the same words to defend the action.

A senior Administration official said the President chose the intelligence complex specifically to “focus the attention on Saddam Hussein and what he did” in the assassination plot.

Nevertheless, despite the damage, the intelligence complex can be rebuilt, and in the meantime, Iraqi spymasters and terrorists can operate out of other quarters. The same complex was bombed during the Gulf War in 1991.

Cramer conceded that Iraqi intelligence will probably recover from the assault.

“We believe that at least as regards this headquarters, much of their communications capability, records, computer support, as well as their operations center all suffered major damage by this strike,” Cramer said. “Now, that doesn’t mean to say . . . that there aren’t alternate facilities . . . that the Iraqi intelligence service can go to and employ. But this is their headquarters, by far their most important facility, and it has suffered a major setback.”

Although officials said no additional strikes are planned, Aspin warned that the United States reserves the right to take military action if Iraq continues to flout the U.N. Security Council resolutions that marked the end of the war.

He said the thwarted attack on Bush “is not the only thing on the agenda.”

Aspin and Powell both dismissed suggestions that the missile attack should have been aimed at killing Hussein to finish his reign once and for all. Aspin said that assassination of foreign leaders is contrary to U.S. law and, besides, would pose almost impossible tactical problems.

“Hitting a person with a Tomahawk is not a very efficient operation,” Aspin said, noting that the weapon takes hours to reach its target and “people move.”

Foreign governments generally approved of the attack on Baghdad, but Egypt and Turkey both complained that Washington has not taken similarly forceful action to protect besieged Muslims in Bosnia. Egypt and Turkey have predominantly Muslim populations.

U.S. officials insisted that the situations in Iraq and the Balkans are so different that comparisons cannot be made.

Attack on Iraqi Intelligence Offices

Most of the buildings that housed the offices used by Iraq’s intelligence leaders were flattened by the U.S. missile attack, according to the Pentagon.

Iraqi intelligence service headquarters: Sixteen of 23 Tomahawk cruise missiles hit buildings in this area.

Four landed in the compound, but did not hit their intended target and three landed in two residential areas between 100 and 500 yards outside the compound.

Range: About 710 miles

Power system: Turbo-fan engine

Cost: About $1.3 million each

Warhead: Conventional 1,000 pound. Also can be armed with nuclear warhead

Speed: About 550 m.p.h.

Source: Jane’s Weapon Systems, Pentagon