Washington ? In a strategy Pentagon officials are calling “shock and awe,” U.S. forces plan to drop 10 times the bombs in the opening days of the air campaign in Iraq than they did in the first Persian Gulf war, officials said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the commander who would lead the war, Gen. Tommy R. Franks, met Wednesday at the White House with President Bush. Last week Franks reviewed his war plan with commanders at his Gulf command post and Tuesday he met with top Defense Department civilian and uniformed leaders.

If Bush orders the invasion of Iraq, the powerful airstrikes with thousands of bombs and missiles would be combined with quick ground assaults — a combination aimed at overwhelming President Saddam Hussein’s defenses, keeping him from mustering catastrophic retaliation and convincing his forces they can’t win, Pentagon officials have said.

They said Wednesday that part of that plan was to launch an initial air bombardment using 10 times the number of precision-guided weapons fired in the opening days of 1991 war. Targets include Saddam’s military and political headquarters, air defenses, communications facilities and systems he could use to launch chemical and biological weapons the Bush administration says he has.

“If asked to go into conflict in Iraq, what you’d like to do is have it be a short conflict,” said Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers. He spoke Tuesday in an interview with American newspaper reporters.

While fewer than 10 percent of the bombs dropped during the last Gulf War were precision-guided, more than 80 percent of the ordnance dropped this time would be guided by lasers, satellites or video cameras, Myers said in an interview with WMAL radio Tuesday night.

Improvements in U.S. aircraft and other advances mean five times as many bombs can be launched today with the same number of aircraft, another official said.

Officials said a goal in selecting targets for the threatened war was to try to limit civilian casualties and do as little damage as possible to civilian infrastructure. Aside from lessening the impact of the war on Iraqis, that would lower the amount of reconstruction needed afterward and emphasize the point with the Iraqi population that the war is not against them, but their leader.

In the first Gulf war, Baghdad put its losses at 75,000 to 100,000 soldiers killed in action and 35,000 to 45,000 civilians killed by allied bombing.

Members of VFA-37's Ordnance Control load a missile onto an FA-18 Hornet on the flight deck of USS Harry S. Truman. The Truman left port in December for deployment in the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf. U.S. officials said Wednesday that an attack on Iraq would have 10 times the bombs dropped in the opening days of the Persian Gulf War.

The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency estimated 100,000 Iraqi soldiers killed and 300,000 wounded, and up to 3,000 Iraqi civilians killed by bombing. It said accurate information was so scant these figures had error factor of at least 50 percent.

Of more than 540,000 Americans deployed at the peak of the fighting, 148 were killed and 467 wounded. Twenty-four British servicemen were killed as well as two Frenchmen, an Italian and 39 allied Arabs.

Meanwhile, the American propaganda war continued. U.S. Central Command said it had dropped 420,000 leaflets in the no-fly zone over southern Iraq, urging Saddam’s troops to desert and alerting Iraqis to radio frequencies where they can here anti-Saddam programming.

And American land, air and sea forces already in the Gulf region or ordered there has now topped 300,000 as time ticks down on a decision on whether to use force to disarm and overthrow Saddam.

In addition to more than 100,000 the U.S. troops based in Kuwait and every other country on the Arabian Peninsula except Yemen, there are five aircraft carrier battle groups nearby, each with about 50 strike aircraft aboard and including 30 to 40 vessels armed with Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles.

A sixth carrier, the USS Nimitz, is heading to the Gulf to relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln.