Secret History of the 1st Gulf War

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Week One: The 'Green Light'

"We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border
disagreement with Kuwait."
It is perhaps one of the most famous lines of the Persian Gulf War.
The venue was a July 25, 1990, meeting between U.S. Ambassador April
Glaspie and President Saddam Hussein.
In two years as ambassador to Iraq, it was her first private audience with
Saddam. And it was her last.
A week later, on Aug. 2, 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, and to some,
Glaspie's statement would symbolize appeasement in offering a "green
light" to invade.
Glaspie's statement, and her "belief" that Iraq did not want to have a war,
is cited as proof of ineptitude.
We now know that Glaspie presented exactly Washington's stance, and
was, in fact, a minor player in a long-standing White House policy of
support and accommodation for Iraq. Saddam Hussein may have been
given a green light to invade, but April Glaspie can hardly be blamed.

More Oil Than You Think

Where to start?
On Oct. 3, 1989, after assuming a host of covert Reagan-era
arrangements with Iraq that were intended to "balance" the Arab country
against fundamentalist Iran, President George Bush signed National
Security Directive 26 (NSD-26) "U.S. Policy Toward the Persian Gulf."
With regard to Iraq, the Top Secret directive stated: "The United States
should propose economic and political incentives for Iraq to moderate its
behavior and to increase our influence."
Reconstruction of Iraq's economy after eight years of war with Iran,
particularly in its oil sector, was seen as a way of securing "a U.S.
foothold in a potentially large export market." Saddam's nuclear,
biological and chemical weapons ambitions were recognized irritants, but
the administration thought commercial incentives would be more
attractive to Saddam than political ambitions.
By April 1990, when the Iraqi leader thrust himself into the public
limelight, announcing that Iraq would "make the fire eat up half of
Israel," the Bush administration had made quite an investment. The CIA
reported that month that "U.S. purchases of Iraqi oil have jumped from
about 80,000 barrels per day [b/d] in 1985-1987 to 675,000 b/d so far in
1990 -- about 24 percent of Baghdad's total oil exports and eight percent
of new U.S. oil imports." Iraq had become America's number two trading
partner in the Arab world, and was the largest importer of American-
grown rice. The Department of Energy had even purchased Iraqi oil for
use in the strategic petroleum reserve for a future war.
Yet there was also mounting congressional pressure to impose economic
sanctions on Iraq because of its human rights record, its weapons of mass
destruction programs and its increasingly hostile policy. Intelligence
specialists wrote of the country's increasingly precarious financial

position, and there were enormous financial improprieties in Iraqi
dealings, leading the Agriculture Department to recommend a cut-off of
Iraqi loans, as was mandated by law.
But the Bush White House would have none of it. In May, National
Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft personally asked Agriculture Secretary
Clayton Yeutter to stop any public announcement of a suspension.
Yeutter then overruled the Agriculture official administering the
program.
Administration spokesmen and apologists would later argue that their
Iraq policy had not contributed to the very capabilities American
servicemen and women would soon be facing. It is an argument that can
hardly be accepted. The Reagan and Bush administrations had authorized
$5.08 billion in loan guarantees to Iraq between 1983 and 1990.
Investigators later found that the Italian-owned Banco Nazionale del
Lavoro (BNL) issued another $4.5 billion in unauthorized loans, $1
billion of which were guaranteed by the Department of Agriculture.
Between 1985 and 1990, the Commerce Department approved 771
licenses for dual-use technology exports to Iraq, of which 82 went
directly to Iraqi military-related establishments. Fifteen times between
1983 and 1990, the U.S. government waived restrictions to allow items
that appeared on the State Department's restricted "Munitions List" to be
exported to Saddam. The United States might not have armed Saddam,
but it freed up resources that effectively achieved the same goal.

Talking Points

As April Glaspie rushed to her meeting with Saddam on July 25, 1990
(she had gotten only two hours' notice), the July 18th "talking points"
from Washington, now declassified, governed her discussions. "The
United States takes no position on the substance of the bilateral issues
concerning Iraq and Kuwait," it directed. The day before the snap
meeting, in fact, Glaspie got yet another secret cable from the State
Department. "The U.S. is concerned about the hostile implications of
recent Iraq statements directed against Iraq's neighbors," it read. Yet it
repeated the now standard "we take no position" line, merely imploring
Iraq to be mindful of the fact that use of force was contrary to the United
Nations charter.
Were threats against Iraq emanating from other quarters? On July 19,
then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney was quoted publicly as saying
that the U.S. defense commitment extended to Kuwait during the Iran-
Iraq war was still valid. Later that day Pentagon spokesman Pete
Williams said that Cheney's remarks had been taken "with some degree
of liberty." Five days later, when Secretary of the Navy Lawrence Garrett
told a congressional committee that "our ships in the Persian Gulf were at
a "heightened state of vigilance," his spokesman said that he had made a
mistake.
The day before Glaspie's meeting, State Department spokeswoman
Margaret Tutweiler said "we do not have any defense treaties with
Kuwait, and there are no special defense or security commitments to

Kuwait." Assistant Secretary of State John Kelly told the House Foreign
Affairs Committee on July 30 that the United States was not obligated to
come to the military aid of Kuwait if Iraqi forces crossed the border.
Did the U.S. military leadership think an Iraqi invasion likely?
Conventional wisdom right to the 11th hour was that if the Iraqis moved
south, they would perhaps take the Bubiyan and Warbah islands off the
Iraqi coast, and possibly the southeastern sector of the Rumaylah oil
fields, which extended into Kuwait.
Up to the very last minute, while analysts at the Defense Intelligence
Agency (DIA) and CIA argued that a full-scale invasion seemed
imminent, U.S. military leaders didn't believe it. Lt. Gen. Thomas Kelly,
director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Gen. Colin
Powell: "They're not going to invade. This is a shakedown."
On July 31, Chairman Powell chaired a meeting in the "tank," the Joint
Staff's secure conference room, to discuss the situation in Iraq. Gen. H.
Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of the U.S. Central Command, which
is responsible for the region, had flown up from his Tampa headquarters
to give his assessment of the situation. DIA hard-liners said there was
little doubt that an attack into Kuwait was imminent. Schwarzkopf didn't
agree. Like Kelly, he thought Saddam was bluffing, seeking to extort
concessions from Kuwait. A senior Kuwaiti military official had told
Schwarzkopf that they weren't even going to go on alert so as to not
"play Saddam's game and give him an excuse to attack."
According to an Air Force oral history, "Heart of the Storm," when the
meeting broke up, "The mood around the table was `Ho hum, thanks for
the briefing, Norm. We'll try to attend your retirement next summer.'
Seven thousand miles away in sand and darkness, Iraqi tankers were
fueling for the push into Kuwait. When dawn broke, they would be
rolling south."

Week Two: The Threat to Saudi Arabia

At 11 p.m. on Aug.1, 1990, Col. John Mooneyham, chief of the U.S.
military liaison office in Kuwait, got a telephone call from several
Westinghouse Co. civilian contractors who were manning a radar
observation balloon south of the Iraqi border.
The radar image, they said, was clear: a massive armor formation
resembling an iron pipe several kilometers long was rolling downhill
toward the Kuwaiti border. Mooneyham advised them to cut the tether to
the aerostat radar and move out smartly.
Two hours later, three Iraqi Republican Guard divisions crossed the
border. The Tawakalna mechanized and Hammurabi armored divisions
conducted the main attack along the four-lane Highway 6 from Safwan.
The Medina armored division crossed further to the west, through the
Rumaylah oil fields.

Soon Iraqi warships appeared off the coast, some firing shells into
Kuwait City. Iraqi special forces commandos using helicopters and small
craft assaulted the city, keying on government buildings such as the
foreign and defense ministries, and the emir's Dasman and Bayan
palaces. At daylight, Iraqi ground attack MiG-23 Flogger and Su-25
Frogfoot jets entered the battle, bombing Kuwait's two airfields.
Within five hours of crossing the border, the two main divisions had
linked up with the commando units, and Iraqi forces had secured the
Kuwaiti capital.

What is your final destination?

It wasn't as if Iraq faced any opposition. Kuwaiti forces had gone on full
alert on July 17, but Emir Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmed al-Sabah subsequently
ordered his troops back to their garrisons, fearful of provoking Saddam
Hussein.
And Kuwaiti forces were hopelessly outmatched anyhow. One of
Mooneyham's deputies, Army Lt. Col. Fred C. Hart, a liaison officer to
Kuwait's armed forces, later said in a personal account of the invasion
that the ruling family was "comfortable with this small force and felt they
had no real cause to have a large or modernized Armed Forces." The
reason, Hart said, was that the al-Sabah family believed "a small, poorly-
trained and equipped force was less of a threat" to Iraq than a
professional military force. The Kuwaiti Air Force got more defense
dollars "because you can't occupy a palace with a fighter jet," Hart
recalled Kuwaiti officers saying.
Hart's eyewitness account, written while a student at the U.S. Army War
College following the Persian Gulf War, was never officially released by
the Army but has circulated on the internet.
Of Kuwait's three Army units, Hart recalled after the war, only the 35th
Armored Brigade moved to block the Iraqi invasion. Kuwait Air Force
(KAF) A-4Q Skyhawk and French Mirage F1 pilots flew sorties against
attacking Iraqi units, but within a day and a half, the planes had retreated
to Saudi Arabia or Bahrain after their two home bases were overrun.
By mid-day Aug. 3, Iraqi forces had taken up positions south of Kuwait
City. Iraqi tanks continued south along Kuwait's coastal highway to
occupy the emirate's main ports. An Iraqi force pursued elements of the
35th Brigade into the neutral zone north of Saudi Arabia.
"I don't think there's any question at all that he [Saddam Hussein] would
have eventually attacked Saudi Arabia," Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf
would tell David Frost in a PBS interview at the end of the war. "Nobody
on our side knew his intent; we had to assume that if he was militarily
capable of something, he might do it," Schwarzkopf would later write in
his autobiography, It Doesn't Take a Hero (Bantam Books, New York,
1992). Gen. Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
later said that at this juncture, everyone was "scared to death" of the
possibility of an Iraqi invasion of Saudi Arabia.
On the day before the invasion, U.S. intelligence agencies estimated that
Iraqi forces between Basra and the Kuwaiti border numbered 150,000

troops and more than 1,000 tanks, supported by at least 10 additional
artillery battalions. Hundreds of logistics vehicles were moving men and
massive quantities of munitions and supplies south right after the
invasion. By Aug. 6, intelligence was reporting elements of at least 11
divisions either in or entering Kuwait. Though there was no firm
evidence that an invasion of Saudi Arabia was Saddam's intention, no
one wanted to be caught flat-footed a second time.

Tanks a Lot

But as Lt. Col. Hart reported from his vantage point inside Kuwait City,
"Saddam's forces had reached their logistics culminating point and his
units would have to live off the land." Iraqi units immediately began
scavenging food and water in Kuwait, confirming the lack of in-depth
supplies.
There were a lot of other signs that Iraq's performance in the invasion
had hardly gone like clockwork. The emir and the crown prince of
Kuwait escaped to Saudi Arabia, we now know, because the Iraqi
operation to seize the emir failed when Baghdad planners failed to
recognize a one-hour time difference between Kuwait City and Baghdad.
Thus the seizure operation became an uncoordinated attack by special
forces and the Republican Guard units that failed to capture the senior
royal family members.
When Iraqi armor made it to Kuwait City, Hart later wrote, they decided
to push their tanks and tracked vehicles through the city instead of
circumventing the built-up urban area. As a result, the heavy units
became bogged down and often lost. This permitted the bulk of the
Kuwaiti 15th Brigade, located south of the city near the Al Ahmadi oil
fields, to escape to Saudi Arabia. Despite the fact their command had not
been placed on alert, some 30 Kuwaiti fighters still managed to fly to
safety. And Iraq's naval force also failed to prevent two Kuwaiti missile
boats from escaping the harbor.
The intelligence system might not have wanted to focus on this evidence,
given valid concerns of Iraq's short-term intentions toward Saudi Arabia.
But there were also reports that Kuwaiti military units succeeded in
inflicting damage on Iraq that made it seem as if the vaunted and battle-
hardened force was less formidable than its equipment inventories
suggested.
The KAF claimed that its airplanes destroyed 37 Iraqi helicopters and
shot down two Iraqi fighters in two days of battle, and killed numerous
enemy armored vehicles on the ground as its aircraft flew to safety.
Three Kuwaiti air defense units equipped with U.S. Hawk surface-to-air
missiles reported that they shot down 23 Iraqi aircraft and helicopters.
Were the Kuwaiti claims valid? Who had time to validate them? Analysts
from the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) and Defense Intelligence
Agency evaluated the Iraqi force as more than sufficient to conduct a
successful follow-on attack into Saudi Arabia's oil-rich Eastern Province.
The White House was told that Saddam Hussein intended to further his
advance into Saudi Arabia, and the Saudis didn't particularly want to

quibble, given that the Iraqis never made an attempt to contact the Saudi
government to express otherwise.
At the end of the war, U.S. Army intelligence would learn from the seven
Iraqi general officers that were captured in the ground campaign that
Hart's skepticism on the ground in Kuwait City was closer to reality than
the tale told from satellite images.
"Regardless of how difficult and frustrating the mobilization and
deployment of U.S. and coalition forces may have seemed to us, ours
was a clockwork operation compared to that of the Iraqi Army," a now
partially declassified CENTCOM debriefing summary says. "Most
infantry divisions were sent to the Kuwait theater undermanned, short of
equipment (or with poor equipment), and with little to no idea of what
they were to do upon arrival in their areas of responsibility, other than to
dig in and await orders."
It was a terrible quandary, and one that would confound U.S. intelligence
through the war and beyond: not knowing in the least what Iraq's
intentions were, and having to rely on mechanistic interpretations of the
enemy's military capabilities based upon huge numbers of hardware and
an enormous military infrastructure.

Week Three: Operation Stigma

When the first shots of Desert Shield were fired on Aug. 18, many of the
complications, internal and international, were hidden from public view,
such as the conflicts over the frenzied movements to hold Iraq, deploy
forces, build an international consensus and decide what to do next.
On Aug. 16, President Bush authorized U.S. naval forces to enforce
sanctions under Security Council Resolution 661, passed four days after
the Iraqi invasion. The resolution did not address the use of force, and the
Soviet Union expressed its view that it did not consider the U.N. Charter
or the resolution sufficient authority to do more than seek voluntary
compliance.
Washington itself was not clear. According to Marvin Pokrant's
wonderfully detailed Desert Shield at Sea: What the Navy Really Did,
when Gen. Powell issued the first order on Aug. 11, he used the word
"quarantine," a term that definitely connoted a belligerent stance,
evoking images of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Within hours, the order was
rescinded and quarantine was changed to "interception." Gen.
Schwarzkopf's headquarters in Tampa followed with its own order for
Operation Stigma, better known as maritime interception operations
(MIO). Tampa authorized the use of force.

Starting WWIII

Within hours of the commencement of Stigma, the cruiser USS England

had the first confrontation when it intercepted two small cargo ships, the
Al Abid and the Al Bayaa, in the Persian Gulf. The two Iraqi ships
claimed to be empty and refused to stop. The England asked what to do
next.
Vice Adm. Henry H. Mauz, the newly appointed naval commander in the
region, telephoned Schwarzkopf at Central Command (CENTCOM)
headquarters in Tampa, who said there was nothing in his Operation
Order or the U.N. resolutions that would suggest anything be done
against empty ships returning to Iraq.
"Let them go," Schwarzkopf recounts telling Mauz in his autobiography,
It Doesn't Take a Hero. "There's no use starting World War Three over
empty tankers." A few hours later, Powell was on the phone from
Washington: Secretary Cheney felt Schwarzkopf had failed to follow
orders. Well, Schwarzkopf recalls saying, "Now that you've made it clear
what you want, the next tanker that comes through, we'll blow it away."
Okay, they weren't tankers, and Schwarzkopf's own Operation Order
stated explicitly at the time that even empty ships were not to be allowed
to sail to Iraq. And according to Pokrant's account, "blowing away" was
hardly that simple. On Aug. 18, the day after the two Iraqi ships were
allowed to go, the England conducted the first boarding of a suspect
vessel. But this time, it was a Chinese-flagged ship, the Heng Chun Hai,
and though the England ordered the ship back to Iraq with its cargo,
higher authority overruled, and the ship was allowed to proceed to Qing
Dao without being diverted.
That same day, the destroyer USS Scott intercepted a Cyprus-flagged
ship, the Dongola, which was carrying caustic soda and aluminum sulfate
from Sudan to Aqaba, Jordan. The Dongola agreed to return to its port of
origin. But the governments of Jordan and Sudan both protested,
claiming that the ship was scheduled to pick up 800 Sudanese refugees
from Kuwait who were trying to get home.

First Shots

Late on Aug. 18, the frigate USS Reid intercepted the Iraqi tanker, the
Khaniqin, while in Iranian territorial waters of the Persian Gulf. Two
other tankers were also intercepted by other ships, but Mauz decided to
deal with the Khaniqin first. After a tense standoff, where the Iraqi
master originally agreed to return to Basra and then quickly got his own
new orders to go to Yemen, Reid requested permission to fire warning
shots if the Khaniqin did not slow, and then fired six 25- and 76-mm
rounds across the Iraqi ship's bow.
The Iraqi master sounded "terrified," the Reid commander reported. But
still, he refused to stop, and some crewmembers donned life jackets.
Mauz had the authority to disable uncooperative ships, but he again
phoned Schwarzkopf to ask whether higher authority really wanted the
Navy to shoot at a civilian ship. He worried about the efforts to build a
coalition.
Mauz and Schwarzkopf each had phones in both ears; Mauz was talking
to the on-scene commander, Schwarzkopf was talking with Powell.

Powell spoke to Richard Haass, the principle National Security Council
staffer dealing with Iraq. According to Pokrant's account, Haass
"believed that if the United States disabled a vessel or two without much
loss of life, it would not be a grave matter." The White House had
previously been told that disabling one or two ships might be necessary.
Schwarzkopf had already called Lt. Gen. Chuck Horner, the air war
commander and the senior officer in Saudi Arabia. "Put naval and air
forces on high alert, ready to launch retaliatory strikes," he ordered. The
Khaniqin master had notified Baghdad that it had been attacked, and
perhaps coincidentally, U.S. intelligence did not know the answer. Iraqi
electronic jamming also was reported for the first time during the
incident.
"There is absolutely nothing between you and 4,000 tanks on the Kuwait
border and they may be coming south tonight or in the morning," Horner
told the A-10 commander at about eight p.m., according to the book
Warthog: Flying the A-10 in the Gulf War. "If they do, you're going to
have to attack them with what you've got and try to delay them. I can't
tell you where to go or how to get away after that," he said.
"Yep, go ahead and do it," Schwarzkopf finally told Mauz. The destroyer
Goldsborough, which had taken over from the Reid, was directed to get
into position to fire into the stern if Iraq ignored a final warning. But he
still did not feel right about firing, and as darkness was approaching,
Mauz told Schwarzkopf that they would wait until morning rather than
risk a nighttime engagement.

Who Didn't Shoot John?

In Kennebunkport, Maine, Bush and his advisers huddled. On the one
hand they ran the risk of looking like "wimps"; on the other, they risked
looking bad in the eyes of the world. Secretary of State Baker argued via
phone from a fishing trip out west that he thought he could get a U.N.
resolution authorizing force. Bush agreed, and decided to let the ship go.
Schwarzkopf received a "frantic call" from the joint staff rescinding the
earlier order. All night, Mauz's staff was on the phone with
Schwarzkopf's staff in Florida, who wanted to know this and that, driving
the Navy officers nuts. In one instance, Tampa was told that the Navy
would reestablish contact with the Iraqi ship at dawn. Early in the
morning, a CENTCOM officer called, asking about the status of the
helicopter that would contact the Iraqi ship. The Navy officer told him it
was not dawn yet, and the Florida-based officer began to argue with him!
By his calculations, he said, it was definitely past dawn in the Gulf. Well,
the Navy officer responded, looking outside, it wasn't light yet. The
CENTCOM officer adamantly insisted that his calculations showed that
it was light.
On Aug. 19, interception operations were suspended and a flurry of
diplomatic activity followed until a new U.N. resolution 665 was
obtained on Aug. 25 calling on members to enforce sanctions by using
"...such measures commensurate to the specific circumstances as may be
necessary under the authority of the Security Council to halt all inward

and outward maritime shipping...."
In his autobiography, Schwarzkopf would claim that his was the cooler
head. And according to Bob Woodward's The Commanders, "Cheney
was concerned that some Navy officer way down the line was going to
start a war." But as Pokrant writes, "Several times on 18 August Mauz
had permission to disable Khaniqin but chose not to do so precipitously."

Week Four: Instant Thunder

On Aug. 20, 1990, at five minutes to 2 p.m., Air Force Col. John A.
Warden III stood before Lt. General Charles ("Chuck") Horner at Royal
Saudi Air Force headquarters in Riyadh, and committed professional
suicide.
Warden was a mid-level deputy director for warfighting concepts in the
office of the deputy chief of staff for operations and plans for the Air
Force Chief of Staff, a special cell called "Checkmate." He had been on a
roller-coaster ride since Aug. 6, four days after the Iraqi invasion of
Kuwait. On that day, Warden had gathered his staff to begin planning
what would become known as "Operation Instant Thunder," a strategic
air campaign to "incapacitate, discredit and isolate [the] Hussein regime,
eliminate Iraqi offensive/defensive capability ... [and] create conditions
leading to Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait" through long-range, pinpoint
bombing.
In 14 days, the sketchy initial Instant Thunder brief had been given to
Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, Gen. Colin Powell, and others in the air
force and military hierarchy. The plan had grown into two four-inch thick
binders laying out targets, attack routes, and choreography for a week-
long effort that its drafters said would defeat Saddam Hussein through
airpower alone.

Bent out of Shape

Horner by nature is irascible, imperious, and opinionated, an old salt of
an impatient fighter pilot. Schwarzkopf had told him on Aug. 6 that he
was requesting Air Force staff help to develop "punishment" attacks
inside Iraq while Horner's forward headquarters in Riyadh focused on
halting an Iraqi invasion of Saudi Arabia. Worried about Washington
"picking targets" a la Vietnam, where he had flown scores of combat
missions from Thailand, Horner was also hearing a groundswell of
irritation with Warden from his own subordinates.
Col. Warden could be his own worst enemy. When Lt. Gen. Jimmie
Adams, the Air Force operations chief, told Warden during a briefing to
drop the prediction of success against Iraq in 6-9 days and focus more on
destroying the Iraqi army, Warden dismissed his boss, telling him "sorry,
that's not what the Chairman wants."

Tactical Air Command (TAC), Horner's peacetime higher headquarter in
Virginia, was particularly bent out of shape by the Warden effort. TAC
officials agreed with Adams that Instant Thunder lacked "tactical
perspective" and didn't support ground operations - particularly defense
against Iraq's heavy divisions that then threatened Saudi Arabia.
It was an "academic bunch of crap," the TAC operations chief said. "I
like everything after the last slide," he told Warden's immediate boss.
TAC faxed a purloined copy of the 30-page Instant Thunder briefing to
Horner, along with its critique. "How can a person in an ivory tower far
from the front" know what needs to be done, Horner wrote in the
margins.
But it was not just the place of origin that displeased Horner; it was the
Warden plan itself.
"It developed the idea that air power was going to smash Iraq, and they
were all going to give up and go home," Horner said. "Well, that is pure
bull."

The Confrontation

From the very beginning of his briefing, Horner unnerved Warden. "Go,
go!" he said at first, waving impatiently at the slides, "I know all that."
Stonefaced, Horner listened to the Instant Thunder briefing, waiting until
the end. And then came the questions. How well do we understand Iraqi
command and control and leadership to sever the head from the body?
Why spend so much time trying to destroy rather than neutralize air
defenses? Why hit railroads or ports? "Is this a mulligan stew?" Horner
asked.
At each question, Horner interrupted Warden as he started to answer,
turning to one of his staffers and directing him to look into the matter. At
one point Warden pried his way into Horner's monologue, offering
assistance. "Not your job," Horner cut him off. "We'll make sure. You
made an academic study. I've got to make it reality."
Horner directed his staff to eliminate the timelines from Instant Thunder:
"They serve no purpose other than to advertise a totally unrealistic
completion date."
Warden again pushed the idea of the isolation of Saddam Hussein. "It's
not imperative to get him," he said. "We need only to isolated him for a
while."
And that was it.
"Our goal," Horner responded, almost shouting now, "is to build an A-T-
O." The air tasking order, the immediate defensive battle plan, was his
immediate concern, and unlike Warden, he didn't believe for a moment
that this was a mistake.
"You're being overly pessimistic about those tanks," Warden said at one
point in reference to Iraqi armor. "Ground forces aren't important" to
Instant Thunder. "I don't believe they can move under our air
superiority."
A hush fell over the room. Warden quickly took it back.
"I'm being very, very patient, aren't I?" Horner said to no one in

particular.
"Yes, sir!" came a chorus of voices.
"I'm really being nice not to make the kind of response that you-all
would expect me to make, aren't I?"
"Oh, yes, sir!"
"If your army is getting overrun," Horner scowled, "who gives a shit
what you take out deep?" And with that, to Chuck Horner, John Warden
ceased to exist.
Fading Memories
Warden was dispatched by Horner back to Washington. But he hardly
disappeared or became irrelevant: Checkmate quietly assisted Horner's
planners, who took the handoff on Aug. 20 and began to build the
ultimate air campaign.
Was it just a clash of personalities, and was Instant Thunder the actual air
war, even if it was under new guise and with a new master?
One possible answer exists in the target list. Instant Thunder had
identified 84 targets in Iraq. By Jan. 15, 1991, that number had grown to
487. At the end of the war, more than 1,200 had been hit.
In an interview from Montgomery, Ala., where Warden is now retired, I
asked him to reflect. We "knew at an acceptable level" Iraqi centers of
gravity in August, Warden says. I'm convinced that destroying those 84
targets would create "sufficient paralysis to take advantage of the
unraveling of the system," he says. Warden likens the impact of Instant
Thunder bombing to cutting off the top of an anthill; once you peel off
84 targets, then finding the next 100 is easier.
As Warden sees it, had Instant Thunder been implemented the first week
of September, the Iraqis would have had no preparation time. As a result,
he says, it could have had a more of a cataclysmic impact than in January
1991. "As we moved forward in time, the chances of successfully
executing the plan decreased," Warden asserts.
This seems to be just another airman who laments that he didn't get to
fight the perfect war. Yet many of Warden's confederates are not nearly
as convinced that the effects of airpower are understood well enough to
posit success in September. Says one senior officer from Checkmate, it
took ten times more than Warden predicted it would take to achieve
Central Command's goals. "We really overestimated our ability," he says.
"What we achieved was orders of magnitude faster than World War II or
Korea." But it was General Horner who was more realistic about what
should be expected from airpower.

The Enemy Decides

Warden's was a brilliant conception and a bold start. Had he not taken the
reigns of leadership and designed his war in August 1990, many Air
Force veterans of Checkmate and Horner's staff believe today that it is
possible that "air-land battle" or some other 1980's design for the use of
airpower would have prevailed.
As Instant Thunder gained momentum, though, additional missions,
targets, objectives, and constraints were added. Somewhere in there were

the initial 84 targets and the original design. But the accumulation diluted
and masked Warden's shot at surgical paralysis. By the time
Schwarzkopf launched "Operation Desert Storm" so many more bombing
targets had been added that became impossible to ascribe effects only to
attacks in Baghdad or against specific targets.
Horner's own recollections of August 1990 are both charitable towards
Warden, and rigid on the enduring debate over strategic bombing.
Though he says now he could not fault Warden for the "glittering list of
targets he laid out," he says Warden's problem is that he saw war "in
terms of the SIOP," the Single Integrated Operational Plan model of
nuclear targets in the Soviet Union. "Execute this plan and the enemy is
defeated," Horner scoffs. "Well, good. But what if he decides not to be
defeated? What do we do then?"
What would Saddam do then? By January 1991, Horner would have so
many combat aircraft at his disposal that he could simultaneously fight
on the battlefield and oversee an essentially autonomous strategic air
campaign in collaboration with Warden's Checkmate.
But it is wrong for anyone to think that the plan that was executed in
early1991 was the plan that Warden had proposed in the searing days of
August 1990.

Week Five: The Bear

"I have always regretted the fact that I have a temper," General
Schwarzkopf told the
"http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/oral/schwarzkopf/7.html"
after the Gulf War, "but I also have, you know, great love and respect for
all of the people that have worked for me. I think like everything else,
this is one of those things that has been blown out of proportion."
Well, not so far out of proportion.
"Stormin' Norman" Schwarzkopf, commander in chief (CINC) of Central
Command, was described in the fall of 1990 as a "tough, gruff combat
leader," a soldier's soldier. Nicknamed "the bear" because of his size, the
56-year-old was mostly known by his staff as the grizzly variety.
Virtually every officer contacted today speaks of spending considerable
energy during the war trying to keep the bear at bay.
But Schwarzkopf also could be a teddy bear, emotional and charming,
exuding a dual personality that would come in handy when dealing with
a delicate political coalition, inter-service rivalries and broken
organizations. Various post-war accounts are split about the impact of
Schwarzkopf's despotic side. But while two charismatic generals--
Schwarzkopf and Colin Powell--were inspiring American culture for the
first time since the Korean War, God forbid anyone should tell it like it
was: Norman Schwarzkopf was a tyrant.

Stunned Mullets

CENTCOM was a relatively new and sleepy command prior to Desert
Shield, hardly elite in the U.S. military hierarchy, with a staff that many
would say were not up to the task of preparing for war. When
Schwarzkopf moved headquarters from Florida to Saudi Arabia on Aug.
26, his subordinates were naturally fatigued. But they were also
demoralized by months of pre-war tension and terror. "The Lucky
War" (an Army history of the Gulf War) summed up Schwarzkopf this
way: "He was.... a boss who 'shot messengers,' a big man whose
leadership style was that of a classic bully, a commander who employed
his size as a weapon of intimidation and tolerated neither fools nor
honest disagreement gladly."
The treatment was hardly reserved for lower ranks. Schwarzkopf was
particularly well known for bullying his intelligence chief, Brig. Gen.
Henry F. Drewfs, Jr., during morning staff meetings--so much so that the
Army general would be home by noon many days nursing a massive
migraine.
In August, Drewfs was replaced by Brig. Gen. John ("Jack") A. Leide.
"Schwarzkopf would cloud up and rain all over... Leide," Lt. Gen. Chuck
Horner would later say. Leide proved a tougher assailant. "With General
Schwarzkopf's temper if you knew what you were talking about and you
stood in his face and told him, you survived--if you didn't know what you
were talking about or you took him on when you were wrong, it was not
very pretty," said Horner.
Horner points out, as does Schwarzkopf in his own defense, that people
like Leide would go on to be promoted. Many participants involved in
making decisions during the Gulf War agree that although Schwarzkopf
was quick to express his displeasure, he also would tend to move on to
the next subject. He would not dwell on whatever prompted his
displeasure.
But there could also be major league grudges. After Schwarzkopf and Lt.
Gen. Harry E. Soyster, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, went
toe to toe on the nature of the Iraq threat to Saudi Arabia prior to the
invasion (DIA rejected CENTCOM's planning assumptions as too
pessimistic), sources say Schwarzkopf never spoke to his old friend
again.
In November, an old friend and subordinate, Lt. Gen. Calvin A.H.
Waller, was specially imported from Ft. Lewis, Washington as Deputy
Commander in Chief, CENTCOM to act as a buffer.
"To be perfectly candid and fair the atmosphere was a little tense,"
Waller would later say, "many people said to me when I arrived there
that many of the staff walked around with a stunned mullet look, sort of a
closed caption on their face, staring off into the wild blue yonder... not
quite knowing what to expect or what was going to happen."
Though he denied that this was the reason for his assignment to Saudi
Arabia, he said he uniquely knew "what was required in working with
Norman Schwarzkopf" after four assignments together. "The blood
would start around the shirt collar and then it would work its way up to

the jawline and then to the ears and by the time it got to the ears you
ought to watch out because there was going to be a minor eruption and if
it got to the top of the ears, watch out, because usually there was going to
be an eruption..." Waller said.
The bear wasn't the only one who needed to be caged. As Waller said,
the staff "needed a little tender loving care and a few pats on the back
and someone to let them know that they wouldn't suffer a severe sucking
chest wound if they made a minor mistake." (Calvin A. H. Waller, who
retired from the Army as a three-star Army General, died on May 9, 1996
of a heart attack in Washington, D.C. He was 58)

The Brass

All of the senior officers would find their own ways to deal with the bear.
Most would make a cardinal rule of disagreeing with him only in private
and would use their subordinates to float trial balloons. "Reconnaissance
by fire," they called it, to feel out the CINC's views.
In some ways, senior officers point out, Schwarzkopf really had three
personalities: his public persona, his staff behavior in front of
subordinates and his "private" character. "Commanders in public are far
different than in private if for no other reason than they are often ham
actors," says one senior general officer. Schwarzkopf, he says, "acted like
a different person in public than he did in private. He was driven to be
remembered in a certain way and always was on stage when in public."
In private, this general says of his experiences dealing with Schwarzkopf
one on one, "he was intelligent, reasoned and quite open to ideas and
arguments."
In contrast to many Army, Navy and Marine Corps commanders, who
would all develop tense relationships with the CINC, Horner and his
strategic air campaign chief, Brig. Gen. Buster C. Glosson, had cordial
relations with Schwarzkopf, and unique personal access. The two briefed
the bear privately every evening, and they became deft at catering to his
mercurial demands (Glosson was particularly adept at passing late
breaking gossip from Washington).
Horner recounts one of his tactics: "One night early in January, we had
reports of helicopters coming across the border... [and] Schwarzkopf was
very confused, the more confused he got the madder he got, because he
wanted a straight story, and his staff kept calling me up" reporting back a
childhood telephone game of confused information. "Well, I was busy
trying to find out what was going on, so at 8 o'clock the hot line rang and
they'd all warned me, so I picked up the phone and I said, what in the hell
do you want? And he said, now Chuck, calm down!"
A Marine Corps post-war study on command and control quotes Brig.
Gen. Richard Neal, Schwarzkopf's operations chief, describing the
requirement for the top commanders themselves to have actual "face"
time with the CINC and not leave matter to subordinate staffers or liaison
officers. "Brigadier generals are link colonels, the CINC listens politely
to major generals, but you have to be a lieutenant general to be believed,"
Neal said.

Reagan-like in his simplicity, on some matters, the bear made decisions
based upon intuition--big picture decisions that would later distress his
own component commands. He seemed to fully appreciate the
psychological and unquantifiable impact of bombing, even if he didn't
understand airpower. And when the ground war would begin, he "read"
the Iraqi defeat, pushing to accelerate the army's advance. Okay, he didn't
see how weak the Iraqi's were before the ground war, nor could he ever
conceive that airpower had largely finished off Saddam's legions. He was
army and armor down to his skivvies: The Schwarzkopf history book
would have to be about ground war, which to the bear, was the only war
there was.

Week Six: General Order 1

"Second item," the Marine Corps chaplain said at his Sept. 8 briefing, "is
Jewish holidays. We intend right now no advertisements on it, verbal
only."
It was like a scene from "Guys and Dolls" where Nathan Detroit was
seeking the venue for an illegal dice game. With the Jewish new year
Rosh Hashanah approaching on Sept. 18, an abandoned warehouse in
Jubayl port had been chosen for secret services. The chaplain was urging
commanders to get the word out to American troops and civilians who
wanted to worship.
"We will need to have the help of everybody to pull this off," the
chaplain said.
In deployment to the "sandbox," as troops affectionately called Saudi
Arabia, soldiers coped not only with the stress and boredom of
impending warfare; they additionally suffered culture shock in defending
the Saudi kingdom. No doubt the Saudi decision to allow infidel forces
on their soil was a difficult one, and American commanders and
politicians bent over backward to assuage Saudi "sensitivities." But in
doing so, geopolitical interests outweighed American values. It is a
scandalous compromise that continues to this day.

No Fun, No God

On Aug. 30, Gen. Schwarzkopf issued General Order 1. "Operation
Desert Shield places U.S. Armed Forces into USCENTCOM AOR
countries where Islamic Law and Arabic customs prohibit or restrict
certain activities that are generally permissible in Western societies," the
order began. There would be no alcohol, no gambling, no pornography--
in fact, no "body building magazines, swim-suit editions of periodicals,
lingerie or underwear advertisement, and catalogues ... [that displayed]
portions of the human torso (i.e., the area below the neck, above the
knees and inside the shoulder)." As soldiers say, in other words, no fun.