The office buildings of the Baath Party were attacked extensively on the last day of the war.

The chief was fired for his impolitic comments and the assassination mission was suppressed from public view. But the intelligence community and the Air Force redoubled their efforts to identify residences and bunkers associated with the "central nervous system" of Iraq, that is, Saddam Hussein.

The air war objective officially became elimination of "government control" with the hope that bombing might generate internal strife and overthrow the Baath regime. Within the war planning office run by Gen..Glosson in Riyadh, however, the goal was to kill Saddam Hussein.

Of 260 strikes against "leadership" targets by the end of Desert Storm, about one-third were conducted during the first three days. The initial flurry carried with it the hope that a "surprise" bomb might reach the Iraqi leader.

A second spike of attention on leadership followed with the intent of dissecting the organs of regime control — secret police, Saddam Hussein's guard and the Baath party.

The Ministry of Industry rooftop

But these two efforts were undermined by focusing on an extremely small number of potential hiding places and on light bombing of the capital city.

A case in point is the Ministry of Industry and Military Industrialization, chosen because it was a key ministry and operated Iraq's weapons research and production complex.

Pilots called it a "Stevie Wonder" target, the perfect construction for smart-weapon attack, a high-rise concrete building in a restricted area, with little threat of collateral damage from errant weapons or pilot error.

The ministry was attacked by a lone stealth fighter on six nights between Jan. 28 and Feb. 8 and successfully hit in two of the attempts. On Feb. 10, four F-117s were sent back to "finish off" the target, producing a satisfying three hits.

My damage assessment of the ministry in 1991 exposed a weakness in the so-called "leadership" bombing plan. Five 2,000-lb. bombs did obliterate the 12th through 14th floors of the high rise, with decreasing levels of damage lower to the ground. Precision ensured little damage to the external structure or surrounding area. And the building was rendered unusable.

However the ministry was empty at the time of the attack. The minister and key staff had evacuated the building in the weeks before the U.N. deadline, moving computer equipment and important files to a back-up location. Stealth disabled an unoccupied building, not a nerve center in the Iraqi regime.