Arkin, William M. - Gulf War - Secret History Vol.2

7/25/2019 Arkin, William M. - Gulf War - Secret History Vol.2

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The Gulf War: Secret HistoryW eek 11 t h r oug h W eek 20

by William M. Arkin

Week 1 through Week 10

Week 11 through Week 20(below)

Week 21 through Week 30

Bio of William M. Arkin

Week Eleven: Aerial Assassination

On Oct. 6, 1990, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Colin Powell called Gen.Norman Schwarzkopf at his Central Command headquarters in Riyadh totell him that the Joint Chiefs, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, and"possibly the President" needed to be briefed on the state of offensiveplanning for Iraq.Under its United Nations mandate, the United States and the alliedcoalition were still defending Saudi Arabia. Though offensive groundwar planning had begun on Sept. 18 in a secret planning cell laternicknamed the "Jedi Knights," even the Saudi government was unawareof the effort.

By contrast, development of an offensive air war was merely an officialsecret. Two days before Schwarzkopf held his initial meeting with hisArmy planners, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael J. Dugan had toldreporters from The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times - andtherefore, the entire world - all about air campaign planning in the BlackHole. Saddam Hussein is "the focus of our efforts," Dugan said,describing the "decapitation" mission to get the Iraqi leader and the airoffensive that would be unleashed if war erupted.

For the White House, then furiously piecing together an internationalcoalition and still far from commanding either congressional or publicconsensus favoring military action, Dugan's talk of an offensive - letalone aerial assassination - was an unforgivable slip of the lip.The day after Dugan's comments appeared in print, Cheney promptlyfired the chief of staff. But in a way, Dugan did Washington a hugefavor. What followed was the complete smothering of any discussion oracknowledgment of that true goal of the air war - to take out SaddamHussein by smart bomb, air-to-ground missile or commando raid.Dugan's admirers in the Black Hole and the Pentagon air planning cell,Checkmate, quietly redoubled their efforts in hopes of proving their

Page 1 of 30The Memory Hole > The Gulf War: Secret History: Week 11 through Week 20

4/23/2003http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/gul -secret02.htm


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popular chief correct. Gen. Schwarzkopf and his top commanders alsohad Dugan to thank: No one wanted to be explicitly directed to pursue anobjective they might not be able to accomplish.

The Origins of Don't Ask, Don't Tell

The White House meeting on Oct. 11, 1990, was likely the mostimportant single event in shaping the war that was to come. Keeping itlow-key, Schwarzkopf sent Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Robert Johnston, hischief of staff, and Brig. Gen. Buster Glosson, head of the Black Hole, tobrief President Bush on the ground and air efforts.To Schwarzkopf, and most who have written about this meeting, the onlything discussed was the concept for a single U.S. Corps attack into theheart of Kuwait. Schwarzkopf didn't think he had sufficient forces for alow-risk ground offensive, and he read Johnston the riot act before he leftSaudi Arabia stressing that what was being briefed was the best thatcould be done with the forces available.

It is no wonder that the possibility of significant casualties in the "OneCorps Concept" drove the discussion to other alternatives by the variouscivilian leaders present, including an "Inchon-like" envelopment. Bushand National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft were both appalled bythe plan that was presented. The meeting of Oct. 11 precipitated not onlytalk of the famous "left hook" ground offensive further to the west butalso was the genesis for deploying the Army's VII Corps from Europe, adecision that would be announced Nov. 8.But there was also Glosson's brief. He discussed the three phases of theair war: Phase I would strike targets in Iraq; Phase II would gain airsupremacy over the Kuwaiti theater; and Phase III would attack Iraqiground forces. Glosson anticipated U.S. losses of 40 aircraft, and 400 to

2,000 Iraqi civilian casualties.Though it had been less than a month since Dugan's firing, decapitationof the Iraqi leadership had quietly disappeared from view. The officialbriefing on Phase I discussed the twin goals of destroying Iraqigovernment "command and control" and disrupting the ability of theregime to communicate with the Iraqi people. Fifteen "leadership" targetshad thus far been chosen. The president said for the record that pursuingSaddam could not be an objective.In the words of the Gulf War Air Power Survey, "The guidance thatGeneral Glosson carried away from the October 1990 briefing was thatthe president did not support trying to kill Saddam Hussein overtly."

But not one target was ever changed, not one iota of the air campaignplan was revised. For Glosson and his men, the primary objectiveremained to kill Saddam.

The Leadership Hunt

Checkmate in Washington became the command center for theleadership hunt. Small cells at CIA, the National Security Agency andthe Defense Intelligence Agency collected together tidbits that might




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guide a silver bullet. Because the assassination objective was sosensitive, and because Col. John Warden, the Checkmate head, worked ina highly chaotic and ad-hoc way, the organization became its ownintelligence shop, identifying potential leadership-related targets andinterviewing sources who might be able to help. As part of its planning,Checkmate also ran a simulation to target the U.S. capital, analyzing the

most sensitive and vulnerable chokepoints in an attack on the federalgovernment, and then attempted to select Baghdad equivalents to achievesimilar "paralysis."As of Aug. 2, 1990, there were 126 Iraqi leadership and military supporttargets, and 201 command, control, and communication (C3) targets inthe DIA's databases. From a computer printout of 90 potential"government control" targets in DIA's Automated Installation File,Checkmate and the Black Hole chose a dozen civilian, military, andintelligence organizations to bomb.By striking Saddam Hussein's sanctuaries, and by attacking headquarters,ministries and military commands, the hunters also believed they coulddefeat Iraq without ground fighting, or secondarily, induce a coup orrevolt with the same result.Washington was aware of the covert operation, and attacks in theleadership category provoked considerable debate between planners andsenior decision makers in the Pentagon.Some key policy makers argued that decapitation was a potentialviolation of the Ford Administration's Executive Order prohibiting U.S.government involvement in assassination. Government lawyers freshlyresearched international law to determine Saddam's status as a target.Even the International Committee of the Red Cross stated that "organsfor the direction or administration of military operations" were legitimatemilitary objectives. If President Bush approved the designation of

Saddam Hussein as a target by the President, the lawyers concluded, theExecutive Order would be waived.But there would be no such designation. Reservations continued to beexpressed in Cheney's office about targeting Saddam, but nothing wasactively done to discourage any such action. The air war objectiveofficially became elimination of government control, with the hope thatbombing might generate internal strife.Meanwhile, some hawks in the administration thought that finedistinctions such as decapitation versus incapacitation were self-defeating, arguing for an even greater assassination attempt. Their viewwas firmly rejected in the White House. Bush and Scowcroft may have

officially rejected the assassination objective, but they also adopted theair warriors' belief that the United States would be able to dictate whowould be in power after the Iraqi army was defeated on the battlefield.

The Double Plan

Thankfully for the aerial assassination planners, the coalition war was notthe only war. As the plan for an offensive against Iraq was revealed, andas the international community gave their consent to attacking Iraq, two




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separate war plan documents were written: a "combined," that is,coalition plan, and the second, a "U.S.-only" war plan. The plans wouldhave significant differences regarding the emphasis on targeting Iraqileadership.The classified war plan meant for foreign consumption designated"leadership, command and control" as one of three centers of gravity,

while the U.S.-only plan (stamped "NOFORN," for "no foreigndissemination") designated a more precise locus: Saddam Hussein. Thenumber one campaign objective in the combined plan was "destroy Iraq'smilitary capability to wage war."The U.S. plan was more precise: "Neutralize Iraqi leadership andcommand and control." But even the U.S.-only plan sometimes provedtoo candid for broad distribution within the U.S. military. So while thedraft U.S. plan in December 1990 identified "Saddam Hussein" as atarget, the U.S.-only Operations Order (OPORDER) finished in January1991, softened the language to read, Iraqi "national command authority."Though Saddam was in the bullseye, still no one wanted to set forth anassassination objective that might not be achieved. Gen. Schwarzkopf'sfinal U.S.-only operations order (OPORDER) issued on Jan. 17, 1991,reflected the double talk. The first military objective designated was"attack Iraqi political/military leadership and command and control." Thekey word was "attack." It was the only time the word was used todescribe an objective in Operation Desert Storm. For every other task,the goal was to "destroy."Double-speak or not, the effort remained unchanged. Glosson and hismen had Saddam Hussein's buildings in their cross hairs. NSAeavesdroppers were cued to watch the highest-level communicationsnetworks for tip-offs of Saddam's location. Intense scrutiny was given toVIP aircraft and helicopters at three Baghdad airports. Dugan revealed

that Israel had advised that "the best way to hurt Saddam was to targethis family, his personal guard and his mistress," and input continuedfrom Israeli intelligence. The U.S. Special Operations Command,working with the CIA, planned "direct action" missions to targetSaddam, even capture him, closely studying palaces and bunkers inBaghdad and Tikrit.If someone got lucky, no one would complain. "At the very top of ourtarget list were the bunkers where we knew he and his seniorcommanders were likely to be working...." Schwarzkopf later wrote inhis 1992 memoir, "It Doesn't' Take a Hero" (Bantam Books, New York)."If he'd been killed in the process, I wouldn't have shed any tears."

The full story of the assassination campaign will never be told byhistorians. Much of the discussion and preparations took place only oversecure telephones and was never put to paper; documents were laterdestroyed. Even to this day, principals involved in the planning willdiscuss the matter only off the record. Yet an incomplete telling shouldnot obscure a far greater enduring reality: The jihad against Saddam wasnever more than a clash with Saddam's buildings.




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Week Twelve: Deciphering the Mind of Saddam

Beware the "red eye," Iraqis warn. It is a euphemism for the Iraqiintelligence service (or Mukhabarat), whose letterhead logo portrays theindigenous "hubb-hubb" bird, a bird that has no eyelids and sleeps withits eyes open.

It is a very effective bird.Throughout the fall of 1990, as the Bush administration worked todevelop an American and international consensus, Saddam Hussein'spolice state kept U.S. and coalition decision-makers in the dark withregard to their adversary.Thus when Kuwaiti resistance reported Saddam's first visit to occupiedKuwait City on Oct. 3, 1990, the tidbit was consumed to divine what theIraqi leader was up to. But it was not just news that became intelligence.The press reported that Saddam Hussein marked his visit by ordering theexecution of 200 Iraqi commandos for their failure to capture the Emir ofKuwait during the invasion, and the visit became another event to

demonize Iraq.Saddam's purges were notorious, and the red eye was anything butharmless. But there was a certain blowback in anti-Saddam propaganda,a self-consumption that would not only influence public consent for theuse of force, but also have an impact on the Washington leadership andeven find its way into Air Force bomb damage assessments.

Synchronize your Watches

Like most stories of the brutal Iraqi president, there was more a grain oftruth in the October execution story. But were the specifics to bebelieved?

U.S. intelligence sources say that contrary to the reporting of Kuwaitiresistance, fall 1990 executions in Kuwait City appeared to be directedagainst renegade soldiers who were pillaging and plundering withoutpermission. Typical of Iraq, there were rules and bureaucracy even in thelawless spoils.What is more, U.S. intelligence analysts say, though the Emir escapedand the invasion was anything but clockwork, Iraq's own Top Secret"lessons learned" reports after the "Yom al Nedaa" invasion -- documentscaptured by the U.S.-led coalition after the liberation of Kuwait -- showmore a comedy of errors rather than purge-inducing dereliction by theIraqis. In the case of the assault on the Emir's palace, it appeared that

regular Army and special forces failed to account for the one-hour timedifference between Iraq and Kuwait during the invasion, thereby missingtheir linkup.So executions may or may not have occurred on Oct. 3, and SaddamHussein may or may not have even been in Kuwait.But that was the least of the execution and purge stories that would runthrough the media after Iraq's invasion. Take, for instance, thereplacement of chief of the Iraqi General Staff Lt. Gen. Nizar 'Abd al-Karim al-Khazraji in October 1990. Writing in The Wall Street Journal,




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Middle East analyst Laurie Mylroie said Gen. Colin Powell's Baghdadequivalent had been purged "because key aspects of the invasion hadgone awry. Iraq's forces had failed to capture the top three members ofKuwait's royal family, leaving a legitimate government intact."According to the same report, 120 Iraqi officers were executed by afiring squad for opposing the invasion, including the leaders of an

armored unit that had mutinied in protest. The Cairo press furtherelaborated that the officers included Maj. Gen. Kamal Abdul-Sattar andAir Force Brig. Gen. Saleh Mohammed Taher, among 16 others it nameddown to the rank of captain.The interpretations were wholly erroneous. Political crony al-Khazrajiwas replaced with a military specialist for rational reasons once itbecame clear to Baghdad that Iraq might have to fight the United States.In the words of the U.S. Air Force's independent Gulf War Air PowerSurvey (GWAPS), Saddam Hussein chose Lt. General Hussein RashidMuhammad al-Tikriti, "one of Iraq's most outstanding soldiers," to bechief for his military skill. Similarly, in December, the GWAPS says,Saddam replaced aging Defense Minister Gen. 'Abd al -Jabber Shanshal,another political Ba'ath party hack, with Lt. Gen. Sa'di Tu'ma 'Abbas al-Jabburi, "an experienced and capable commander."

The Mystery Man

Even in the inner circles of the intelligence community, no one reallyknew Saddam. The CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency produced anumber of psychological profiles of the Iraqi leader, and an Israeliintelligence profile was translated for American use. Yet after CentralCommand CINC Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf received a psychologicalprofile briefing from the CIA in December, he thought the presentation

was disjointed, "allowing the listener to draw any conclusions that hedesires."So without any texture for the Iraqi leader's thinking or strategy,Saddam's seemingly irrational behavior became a backdrop to explainwhat could not otherwise be understood in American geopolitical theoryor with hard data. Analysts comforted themselves with the explanationthat Saddam must be irrational to have invaded Kuwait and to haveplaced his forces in such a losing position. According to one intelligencereport, Saddam's "limited and superficial understanding of his westernadversaries" was responsible for his miscues.The assumption of Iraqi error stuck at the highest levels in the U.S.

government, even influencing American negotiations. "Please, do not letyour military commanders convince you that the strategy used againstIran will succeed," Secretary of Staff James Baker told Tariq Aziz attheir ill-fated meeting in Geneva in Jan. 1991. "We heard your statementsthat if a conflict takes place there will be many casualties. We believe,however, that this will not happen ... because of the superiority of theinternational community forces. We are the ones to decide the terms ofany conflict, not you," Baker warned.Saddam had warned U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie and other officials




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that Iraqi forces would produce thousands or American casualties shouldthey be attacked, but as the balance of forces shifted over five months ofOperation Desert Shield, the Iraqi leadership developed additionalstrategies. They included missile attacks on Israel, the Khafji groundinvasion, and a "scorched earth" policy in Kuwait to upset the coalitiontimetable and fracture the alliance. It was the only way to "defeat" the

United States.And if all else failed, the Iraqi strategy was to win by losing: To suffermilitary defeat at the hands of the best the whole world could throw atpoor little Iraq rather than to withdraw under pressure from the UnitedStates and the United Nations. "We would rather die than be humiliated,"Saddam Hussein said a few days after the invasion.

Information Blowback

The war would become one of propaganda and counter-propaganda, withmanufactured "disinformation" always trumpeted to fit the portrayal of

Iraq as a dire threat to the West's lifeline and Saddam Hussein as themodern-day Adolf Hitler.Many of the military purge stories would later prove false orunsubstantiated, some planted by the Iraqi exile community or westernintelligence agencies. One story in particular shows the dangers ofassuming any knowledge of what was really going on in Baghdad. Theday after Iraqi aircraft flew to Iran during the air war, the Soviet pressquoted "officials" as confirming that Saddam had ordered the executionof his air force chief and chief of Iraqi air defenses, Lt. GeneralMuzahum Sa'b Hassan.The tibdit was picked up by U.S. Air Force analysts looking for evidenceof their success.

In the daily Jan. 31, 1991, Top Secret "BDA Desert Storm: Operator'sLook," Checkmate air war analysts reported that there were "indications"that bombing had made the Hussein regime concerned for its survival.Their evidence? A coup attempt that reportedly resulted in the executionof the air force chief of staff, and an order that only loyal troops couldremain in Baghdad, Checkmate concluded. The source? A rumor fromMoscow that the air force and air defense commander had been executedon the day aircraft started to flush to Iran.On Feb. 1, 1991, after the U.S. media picked up the Moscow reports, thePentagon officially denied that the Iraqi air commander had beenexecuted.

On April 22, 1992, a year after the war, the Iraqi air force head gave anassessment in the Iraqi press of air defense performance in Desert Storm.It was Lt. General Muzahum Sa'b Hassan.

Week Thirteen: Cheney's Private Scud War




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"Okay, Buster, can I tell Arens that he doesn't have to worry about thoseScuds pointing at him out of H2 [an airfield in western Iraq]?" Secretaryof Defense Dick Cheney asked at the Oct. 12, 1990 White Housebriefing."Yes sir, you can," Air Force Brig. Gen. Buster Glosson replied.Cheney was the Bush administration's point man in keeping Israel out of

any war with Iraq. Israel's concern about Iraqi chemical and nuclearcapability was deadly serious given Iraq's record and Saddam Hussein'sthreats. Less than two weeks prior to the Iraqi invasion on Aug. 2,Cheney had met with Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Arens to discussnew intelligence on Saddam's weapons program. Since the invasion, hehad been in constant contact, assuring Israel that the United States wouldneutralize Iraq's missile threat.For Arens, assurances weren't enough. In his autobiography ("BrokenCovenant," Simon and Schuster, 1995), Arens would describe Cheney as"reticent" and evasive and lashed out at the Bush administration forneglecting America's most faithful Middle East ally during the buildup ofOperation Desert Shield. What Arens didn't know was that behind thescenes, Cheney was fighting his own war to impress upon the U.S.military in general -- and Glosson in particular -- the political imperativeof neutralizing Iraq's missile capability.It was one war that Cheney ultimately would lose.

Counting Scuds

The SS-1c Scud-B is a vintage-1960's Soviet missile, originally designedto deliver a nuclear warhead to a maximum range of 170 miles. TheDefense Intelligence Agency (DIA) estimated that Iraq had some 600 ofthe 37 foot-long, 14,000-pound missiles prior to the Iran-Iraq war. But

during the 1980's, Iraqi technicians were able to produce their ownlonger-range versions by cannibalizing the original missiles, sacrificingalready limited accuracy and payload in favor of an extra 300 kilometersthat would bring the weapons within range of Israel and Tehran.In a two-month period in early 1988, Iraq initiated the so-called "war ofthe cities," firing some 181 Scuds at the Iranian capital. The attacks weredevastating Even with missiles having only a three-kilometer accuracy,they reportedly caused almost one third of the city's residents toevacuate.In early 1990, imagery analysts detected construction of five launchingcomplexes in the western Iraqi desert, a move that would bring all major

Israeli cities as well as nuclear facilities in the Negev Desert withinrange. After the invasion, Iraq installed six additional fixed launch padsat Wadi al Jabariyah, bringing the total Israel-oriented installations to 28,with 64 launch pads.In addition, mobile Scud units were thought to be dispersed to a halfdozen installations in western and southern Iraq. Intelligence analystsestimated that Iraq had anywhere from 20-35 mobile launchers. Thesewould obviously be more difficult to destroy, especially since by lateAugust, the bulk of them had been evacuated from their support bases to




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dispersal areas.

An Insignificant Weapon

In August, Cheney directed the intelligence community to keep all IraqiScud sites under continual surveillance. But the secretary was evidently

the only high-level U.S. official who was deeply concerned about theIraqi missiles.Just prior to the White House meeting with Glosson, the DefenseIntelligence Agency asked Central Command in Saudi Arabia if it wouldagree with its recommendation to reduce coverage of Iraqi Scud sites tofree up intelligence resources. Gen. Schwarzkopf regarded the inaccuratemissiles with their small warheads as "militarily irrelevant," so it is nosurprise that Brig. Gen. John ("Jack") A. Leide, Schwarzkopf'sintelligence chief, agreed with the DIA.From the Air Force's perspective, the Scud missile was also irrelevant.Lt. Gen. Charles ("Chuck") Horner, Glosson's boss, thought the missiles

were "lousy weapons." Glosson as well believed the Scuds were "notmilitarily significant."Checkmate, the Air Force's targeting cell in the Pentagon, had put noIraqi Scud missile targets in the initial Instant Thunder attack plandeveloped in August. Although Horner added a new category just forScud missiles to the original ten strategic target groups, the Gulf War AirPower Survey would later conclude that "the records suggest thatplanners and commanders in the Gulf neglected to push preparations foran aggressive anti-Scud campaign to the full extent because theyregarded Scuds as a weapon of little military consequence."The pressure from Washington, nevertheless, was relentless. Not onlydid Cheney bring up the effort against Scuds at every briefing, but

starting in September, his office began pushing for contingency planningfor a ground attack -- "Operation Scorpion" -- to take out the H2 and H3Iraqi airfields and surrounding Scud sites west of the Euphrates river.Schwarzkopf and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Colin Powell, committedto their evolving invasion plan for Kuwait, furiously fought off any suchscheme, confident that the Scuds would be promptly dealt with byairpower.On Oct. 12, the day after the White House briefing, Cheney formallyordered the preparation of options for a western Iraq attack. And twoweeks later, the Joint Staff informed DIA that Cheney wanted imagerycoverage of the 28 fixed Scud launcher sites in western Iraq at least every

other day.Finally, Powell says, Schwarzkopf "got the message" and directed theCENTCOM Black Hole targeting staff to plan to stop, or at least try tosuppress, Iraqi fixed and mobile missile launches.

Mobile missiles

The Black Hole focused the choreography of the first 24 hours of the airwar on destruction of the fixed sites in western Iraq, since pre-surveyed




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Week Fourteen: Schwarzkopf's Secret Team

Some called it "the Starship Enterprise," others "the Black Ops Group."Officially, it was the Special Technical Operations branch of the

Operational Plans Division of the J-3 Operations Directorate of U.S.Central Command (CENTCOM).Manned by officers from three services, all with the highest securityclearances conferred by the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies, theSTO, as it was called, served as Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf's secretteam, connected via a communications network with 12 other STOcenters worldwide, including the top banana of U.S. military covertoperations, the J-39 STO of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington.Schwarzkopf would rely upon his STO to plan for the deployment anduse of futuristic and secret technologies, and to coordinate "specialaccess" or "black" programs available to his command. But more

important, CENTCOM could tap his secret warriors to conduct "off line"projects where he didn't want anyone, even inside the system, to knowabout them or to meddle.Even 10 years later, STO officers decline to go on the record about theirPersian Gulf War operations. Despite the fact that their most sensitiveefforts never materialized (and many others have been written about orsince been declassified), the secret warriors adhere to their convictionthat a capability revealed is one begging for enemy countermeasures.They can't talk about it, but like most key officers in the topheadquarters, especially in the black world of special operations, theybelieve they played a major role in winning the war.

Silver Bullets

"Use all available firepower," Schwarzkopf said to the STO on Aug. 9,1990, "hold back no silver bullets." At the evening meeting, the STObriefed Schwarzkopf on the outlines of their "Operation Wolf" -- a"retaliatory strike plan" should Iraq seize the U.S. Embassy or attackSaudi Arabia. Schwarzkopf had asked his planners to look at limitedattacks, a task also being undertaken by Lt. Gen. Charles ("Chuck")Horner's CENTAF air force planners.The STO had six major Top Secret special access programs to work with.They were so secret that many officers in the CENTCOM staff weren't

even cleared to know about them. These were weapons that could not befully incorporated into conventional planning. One, the F-117A stealthfighter, then under the codeword Senior Trend, would soon come out ofthe "black," being such a central element of the coming air war. Others,such as the Navy's Tomahawk sea-launched cruise missiles and the AirForce's air-launched cruise missiles were also SAP's because of someunacknowledged or secret features.The STO assisted in planning, targeting, and bomb damage assessmentfor the SAP programs. During the fall of 1990, they also waded through a




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mountain of "special" programs and capabilities in the hands of theservices. Every program manager and every defense contractor wanted toget their weapon into the fight. The STO system was flooded withproposals and briefings. The STO eventually would work on bombingelectricity with "carbon fiber" warheads, drone programs, biologicalweapons target analysis, lasers, and the "Rivet Fire" electronic

countermeasures system. Other politically sensitive projects such asdevelopment of a second front in the air war out of Turkey anddiscussions and exchanges with Israel and Iran, fell within their purview.

From Wolf to Postman

In early directions to the STO, Schwarzkopf mused that the centerpieceof Operation Wolf should be to "fix Saddam.""I want to isolate Saddam in Baghdad so it causes a popular uprising thatremoves him as Iraq's leader," Schwarzkopf said at one point.Here was one of the dangers of "special" planning and musing without

accountability. STO officers took Schwarzkopf's emphasis to mean thathe wanted to target the Iraqi leader himself. They thus initiated a parallelenterprise to the aerial assassination plan that was to be developed by theBlack Hole in Riyadh and Checkmate, the Pentagon's air warfareplanning cell.The STO effort became known as the Command and Control Counter-Measures Program (C2CM) under the codename "Postman." Itsostensible function was to cut the lines of communication from Baghdad,particularly to the Iraqi General Forces HQ Forward in Basra.Given that the STO's first mission after the Iraqi invasion was work withthe Joint Special Operations Command at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina (theheadquarters for "Delta Force") in planning an evacuation by force of the

U.S. Embassy in Kuwait City, it was no surprise that planners focusedmuch of their interest in these types of "direct action" and extractionoperations. Underground communications cables were mapped to lookfor vulnerable nodes to cut or tap into, and Iraqi bunkers were scrutinizedto "map" the Saddam regime leadership's whereabouts.Two bunkers north of Baghdad, the hardest and most sophisticated inIraq, called Taji 1 and 2, attracted much attention from the intelligenceagencies and the STO. After Schwarzkopf had a early conversation withGen. Carl Steiner, the commander of the U.S. Special OperationsCommand (USSOCOM) in Florida, joint work began on a plan to seizethe bunker in a deep strike with Army Special Forces troops and

Rangers.Though none of the Postman plans were ever implemented, there weresuccessful spinoffs, such as the successful covert operation to extractmilitary and intelligence personnel from Baghdad after all of the peoplehad been moved to the Iraqi capital from Kuwait City.

Authorized to Do What?

The core of the STO's work, at least according to officers who were in




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Riyadh, continued to be the effort to go after Saddam.Officers insist that they were just carrying out Schwarzkopf's orders,though to many insiders, the STO appeared to be zealots mounting theirown operations. In September, as they pressed the CIA for more andmore information about Saddam Hussein and his habits, the agency gotsuspicious and sent an unusually stiff warning to Riyadh. "Susan," the

CIA liaison officer in Riyadh, precisely conveyed in a meeting withCENTCOM officials "The Director of Operations of the CentralIntelligence Agency asks that I inform the Central Command STOofficers that Presidential Executive Order 12333 prohibits theassassination of a foreign country's head of state.""He also wants to make it very clear that the CIA will not be a part of anyplan by Central Command to attempt to assassinate Saddam Hussein,"she added.Participate or not, as the planning progressed and the air war started,others in the agency would "help" as much as they could.The final Top Secret SAP to emerge for Postman was nicknamed the"Saddamizer," a 5,000-lb. bunker-busting bomb that would be deliveredon the penultimate day of the war to penetrate the two Taji bunkerswhich had proven impervious to earlier attacks with 2,000-lb. bombs.The STO was asked to suggest an appropriate target, and later manyaccounts would point to the Feb. 27, 1991 attacks as proof of aCENTCOM plan to kill Saddam. What STO officials knew, however,and few others were privy to, was that "all -source intelligence,"intercepted signals and human agents, indicated that Taji 1 and 2 wereactually unoccupied; even above-ground guard posts had beenabandoned.But the new weapon had to be used.

Week Fifteen: An Election Special

As Congress adjourned on Oct. 28, 1990, President George Bushintensified his campaigning and fund-raising for Republican candidatesfor Congress. The fight with Iraq, he said at a press conference, "isn'tabout oil." Rather, he said, it is about "naked aggression that will notstand."

Bush reminded the electorate of the plight of the besieged U.S. Embassyin Kuwait City and of Iraqi atrocities: "I don't believe that Adolf Hitlerever participated in anything of that nature."Still, he would later say in his autobiography, "A WorldTransformed" (1998, Knopf), "I wanted to keep the crisis out of thedomestic political process as much as possible, and I made a point ofemphasizing the bipartisan support for our efforts in the Gulf."President Bush also had a secret. At a White House meeting on Oct. 31,he had formally approved the deployment of the U.S. VII Corps from




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Europe based on a new offensive ground war plan for wresting Kuwaitfrom Iraq. Concerned about adverse public reaction, the president alsodecided to delay making the decision public until after the congressionalelections. Was it bipartisanship or manipulation?

An Unhelpful Meeting

When the president sat down with the congressional leadership on Oct.30 to discuss the Gulf, House Speaker Tom Foley handed Bush a lettersigned by 81 Democratic members raising concerns about rumors of animminent offensive."We believe the consequences would be catastrophic," they wrote,"resulting in the massive loss of lives, including 10,000-50,000Americans." Saying they were "emphatically opposed to any offensivemilitary action," they warned that "Under the U.S. Constitution, only theCongress can declare war."Rationalizations about the reasons for going to war had shifted with the

desert sands, from "our jobs" to "our way of life" to "our freedom" and a"new world order." No one questioned that naked aggression had indeedoccurred."The country and Congress are not prepared for offensive action," saidSenate Majority Leader George Mitchell. The country, Rep. Les Aspinsaid, had "moved away from a more hawkish position with the lastmonth.... The crisis lacks freshness and outrage."All agreed that the news media already were providing exaggeratedcoverage for anti-war demonstrators in the absence of other news. Noone was saying the president should decide on the basis of publicopinion, but many urged him not to use force, even if the hostages wereharmed. "I want to plead with you personally before you take the country

into war," Foley concluded.

Left Hook Approved

With "that unhelpful meeting as background," National Security AdviserBrent Scowcroft would later write, the core group met the sameafternoon to discuss the use of force. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. ColinPowell had returned from an intense session in Saudi Arabia with Gen.H. Norman Schwarzkopf and his Jedi Knight planners convinced that thetwo-U.S.-Army-Corps option for an offensive could succeed.

"Tell me what you need for assets," Powell told Schwarzkopf. "We willnot do this halfway."Schwarzkopf renewed his request for a two-division heavy corps fromGermany, but that wasn't good enough for Powell. "I agreed and said wewould add a third division from the United States," Powell later wrote inhis autobiography, "My American Journey" (1995, Random House). "Wewould also send another Marine division. I beefed up his request foradditional fighter squadrons. Aircraft carriers? Let's send six. We hadpaid for this stuff. Why not use it?"




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Powell called the Oct. 30 meeting in the White House situation room the"most crucial" of the prewar phase. The "group of eight" minus DanQuayle, who was out of town, agreed to give Schwarzkopf his forces.

This Will Not Stand

With the force level and strategy decided, the question still loomed abouta deadline for Saddam Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait."I realize that if we do give Saddam some kind of a deadline, we are ineffect committing ourselves to war," the president said. "I also realizethat by making such a threat and by preparing for it, we may alsoincrease the odds that Saddam agrees to a peaceful solution. Indeed itmay be necessary to push matters to the brink of war if we are toconvince Saddam to compromise.""An ultimatum, plus major forces buildup, would make it clear we'reserious," said Secretary of State James Baker. The secretary had beenpushing for continued U.N. approval of coalition operations and argued

that November was the best time to seek a Security Council resolutionauthorizing the use of force to eject Iraq from Kuwait. That month, theUnited States would be in the rotational presidency of the council, crucialfor getting things done. In December, the presidency would rotate to asmall country named Yemen, which had consistently supported Iraq.The press line, the participants agreed, would be that troops continued togo into the theater, but that the White House was reviewing the situation.Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney wanted to announce the decisionimmediately. Baker argued for Nov. 5, after he had an opportunity to getagreement from Saudi Arabia. But the president decided to wait untilafter the Nov. 6 congressional elections.Bipartisanship or not, when the White House announced on Nov. 8 that

Bush planned to add more ground, naval and air forces to those alreadydeployed, to create what he called "an adequate offensive militaryoption" to drive Iraq from Kuwait, there was an outcry from Congress,the pundits and increasingly the public.We'll never know whether a pre-election announcement would havechanged anything in the public's mind. Over the next few weeks, debateabout the War Powers Resolution, fighting for Kuwait, the UnitedNations, the "Vietnam Syndrome," environmental disaster and, finally,Iraq's timetable for obtaining nuclear weapons would make November1990 the most contentious month of the entire Persian Gulf crisis andconflict.

Week Sixteen: The Special Forces Mystique

With the Oct. 1990 decision by the Bush administration to doubleAmerican forces, one segment of the American military was left in the




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lurch. This was the special operations force -- The Army Green Beretsand Delta Force, Navy SEALs, Air Force and Army special operationsaviation units and a variety of commando groups -- who had deployed toSaudi Arabia and Turkey right after the invasion of Kuwait, only to findtheir contingency planning increasingly circumscribed as the marchtoward war became inevitable.

The special operations forces (SOF) developed plans for sabotage,hostage rescue, and even an independent operation to assassinate SaddamHussein in Baghdad.But Washington decision-makers were wary of any provocations thatmight provoke a premature war with Iraq, and Gen. H. NormanSchwarzkopf, the theater commander, had an enormous distrust ofspecial forces. Only with the Iraqi firing of Scud missiles after the start ofthe air war would SOF mount significant covert operations, as U.S. andBritish commandos infiltrated into Iraq hunting down mobile launchers.But those operations were never anticipated in the planning for the war.Some excellent accounts of SOF in the Gulf War have been written, mostnotably Douglas Waller's "The Commandos" (New York Simon &Schuster, 1994). Though Schwarzkopf would do his darndest to constrainthe special operators, when it was all over, he typically developedamnesia and call them "unsung heros." It is an accolade that serves toobscure a debatable contribution.

Pacific Wind

SOF were on the ground four days after the Iraqi invasion, initially madeup of Army Green Berets and covert operators, but soon enough joinedby Army special operations aviation units, Navy SEALs and SpecialBoat Units, and Air Force special operations squadrons.

The elite of the elite, the highly classified Joint Special OperationsCommand (JSOC), parent command of the famed Army "Delta Force"anti-terrorism unit, also deployed.A small Delta contingent supplemented Schwarzkopf's protection detail,providing bodyguards who would never leave the general's side.JSOC also worked with the Joint Staff special operations division and theCIA on Top Secret "Pacific Wind" contingencies to rescue Americanhostages inside the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait City. A mock-up of theembassy was reportedly constructed at a remote area of Eglin Air ForceBase in Florida, and operatives were prepared to infiltrate Kuwait withconcealed transponders and other gear. CIA Arab national agents were

also slipped into Kuwait to develop contact with the embassy, and buildlinks with the Kuwaiti resistance to facilitate operations behind enemylines.Meanwhile, Navy units conducted security missions along the Kuwaiticoast starting on Aug. 23, and Navy SEALs conducted nightly waterpatrols. By October, SEAL platoons and Saudi naval commandosmaintained a continual presence north of Ras Al-Khafji, the closest townto the Kuwaiti border, and one that became a no mans land in a bufferzone between coalition and Iraqi forces. Troops of the Army's 5th




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Special Forces Group, in cooperation with Saudi paratroopers, mannedobservation posts further west along the Kuwaiti border to provideborder surveillance and early warning of any Iraqi attack."Pacific Wind" never progressed beyond the planning stage, asWashington feared that a mission gone bad could erupt into a full-scalewar at the wrong time. Washington also restrained SOF covert plans to

build a resistance and guerrilla movement inside Iraq. The Saudi royalfamily wanted no part of an effort to arm fundamentalist Shiites insouthern Iraq, let alone the Kurds in the north, acts that could lead to abalkanization of Iraq and an eventual threat to the Sunni Moslem hold inthe rest of the Gulf.

Protect My Forces

By November 1990, moreover, the active Kuwaiti resistance largelyfound itself contained by the Iraqi occupiers, limiting SOF options insidethe country. Schwarzkopf significantly constrained any cross-border

efforts, also to limit any chances of a provocative act. The general wasparticularly distrustful of SOF independent operations. His feelingsextended back to his experiences in Vietnam and Grenada, where heexperienced SOF operations that seemed to always require emergencyassistance of conventional forces, thus draining the capabilities neededfor the main event.Any important role for SOF, in Schwarzkopf's mind, would be limited tosupport for his conventional battle plan. As an offensive ground war planunfolded, Schwarzkopf's priority was in using special forces in liaisonwork and training of Arab military forces who were members of thecoalition.Starting in September, almost the entire 5th Group became involved in

this program, and CENTCOM requested an additional battalion of the 3dSpecial Forces Group to carry out any long-range patrol work north ofthe border. To be fair to the special operators, though, Schwarzkopf alsoregarded air and naval power also as merely support for the all-importantground war.The air and ground war plans solidified in November and December. Themain SOF role would be in support of a pre-H-hour attack of Iraqi airdefense ground control intercept sites to facilitate F-15E Strike Eagleattacks on western Iraqi Scud launch sites and combat search and rescueinto Iraq to pick up any downed coalition pilots.The one exception in the use of SOF for true unconventional warfare was

in the case of the British Special Air Service. By coincidence,Schwarzkopf's British counterpart in Saudi Arabia, Sir Peter de laBilliere, had once commanded the SAS regiment, and de la Billierequietly lobbied the American general to get his SOF into the fight. De laBilliere proposed sending in small SAS teams into far western Iraq toharass Saddam's force and distract their attention from the main event inKuwait. It was just the operation, supporting Schwarzkopf's ground war,that had appeal to CENTCOM.




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I Killed A Tent

Despite post-war claims, neither the SAS nor their Delta counterpartswere trained or prepared to go into operations against mobile Scudlaunchers once Iraq started firing the missiles. When the air war brokeout, the first SAS troops were covertly inserted into Iraq on Jan. 20, but it

wasn't until three or four days later that they were retasked to targetmobile Scuds.On Jan. 28, according to various accounts, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen.Colin Powell had to personally order Schwarzkopf to unleash British andAmerican SOF in western Iraq in a full-fledged Scud hunt. The first U.S.mission against the Scuds took place on Feb. 7, involving 16 Deltacommandos.How much would the SOF aid in the hunt for mobile Scuds? Firingspeaked on Jan. 26, long before they got into the fight, and there is nopost-war evidence that a single Scud launcher was destroyed on theground as a result of coordinated air and ground efforts.

Despite the arrival of the covert cavalry and a bunch of post-warbravado, coordination between coalition aircraft flying Scud patrols andteams on the ground was virtually non-existent at first.In one case, an American fighter destroyed a Bedouin tent encampmentin the belief it was attacking a mobile launcher unit cleverly disguised tolook like an Arab encampment. The encampment was indeed disguised;it was one of the CIA Arab teams set up in the desert to help with pilotescape and evasion.

Week Seventeen: The Mobilizer

"Those who would measure the timetable for Saddam Hussein's atomicweapons program in years may be underestimating the reality of thesituation and the gravity of the threat," President George Bush toldassembled soldiers during his Thanksgiving 1990 visit to the troops inSaudi Arabia. "Every day that passes brings Saddam one step closer torealizing his goal of a nuclear weapons arsenal," Bush said, "and that'swhy more and more your mission is marked by a real sense of urgency."Public opinion polls showed increasing division over a potential war, and

the president's Nov. 8 announcement to double forces and shift tooffensive action saw in an immediate plummet in presidential popularityto an all-time low.The mood had actually been shifting for some time. In a privateconversation, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Colin Powell and CENTCOMcommander Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf discussed the recent airing ofKen Burn's Civil War series on public television, which they boththought had a sobering effect on public opinion.Soldiers in Saudi Arabia, Schwarzkopf told Powell, were also getting




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testy with the waiting game. Stories were increasingly appearing abouttheir concerns and conditions as more and more news media flooded intothe Gulf. The griping was typical to be sure of any military deploymentand war. But absent other stories, they filled a vacuum and put a humanface on Desert Shield.October polling, however, also showed that Americans were particularly

fearful of the potential threat from Saddam's nuclear weapons. WhiteHouse political advisers concluded that weapons of mass destructionwere a "hot button" issue, urging administration focus as a potential keyto rebuilding public support. This was done.The effect was immediate. On Monday, Dec. 3, USA Today released apoll indicating that Bush's approval rating had climbed six points fromthe week before.

A Gulf with the People

"We could face an Iraq armed with nuclear weapons," national security

adviser Brent Scowcroft declared after the Bush speech. "It's only amatter of time until he acquires nuclear weapons and the capability todeliver them," said Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney.Throughout the fall of 1990, U.S. officials oft repeated their publicwarning that the American response to an Iraq chemical attack would bemost severe. Cheney was most explicit at the end of October "The U.S.military has a wide range of capabilities that could be brought to bearagainst Iraq, should Saddam Hussein be foolish enough to try to usechemical weapons on American forces," he said. "I wouldn't want tospecify beyond that.""I am going to preserve all options," President Bush said in a CNNinterview on Nov. 16.

Discussions were being held between the decision-makers at the WhiteHouse, State Department, and the Pentagon over the deterrence policywith regard to an Iraqi chemical attack. Not wanting to make an explicitnuclear threat, the administration opted instead to leave the use questionopen. Secretary of State James Baker called the policy "calculatedambiguity," leaving the "impression that the use of chemical orbiological agents by Iraq could invite tactical nuclear retaliation."Calculated because at least President Bush, Scowcroft and Baker agreedthat nuclear weapons would not be used under any circumstance.According to Baker's account in his memoir "The Politics ofDiplomacy" (New York G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1995), the president

privately decided in December that U.S. forces would not retaliate withnuclear weapons even if the Iraqis used chemical munitions. "There wasobviously no reason to inform the Iraqis of this," Baker says.Yet an increasing drumbeat of chemical and nuclear talk throughNovember had led the administration to its widest gulf with theAmerican people. "The administration," said Cheney, "had not found asuccessful formula for speaking to the various publics out there." "Ihaven't done as clear a job as I might have of explaining this," Bush toldCNN on Nov. 20.




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A Credible Threat

To make a nuclear threat, the administration had to use caution becauseof a potential for both domestic protest and foreign policy repercussions.Prominent articles subsequently appeared in the news media attemptingto carefully explain U.S. government thinking on the impracticality or

inadvisability of using nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, administrationofficials tried to find diplomatic communications channels to quietly passon to Saddam the gravity of their concern in an attempt to make the Iraqidictator think that every U.S. military option remained open.Based on my interviews with Iraqi officials after the war, the possibilityof a nuclear war was exactly what the Iraqis thought, regardless of thesophisticated qualifications that appeared in the planted media stories.The Iraqis saw the careful explanations leaked to newspapers as merelywindow dressing to assuage nervous Western governments. To the Iraqileadership, American fear of chemical weapons, and of high numbers ofcasualties in a conventional war with Iraq, meant the true possibility of

nuclear escalation.

As incredible as nuclear use might seem, for the Iraqi government, thealternative American threat of toppling the regime was seen as a lessserious possibility. Throughout the fall of 1990, American officialsarticulated a grand strategy based on a traditional balance of power viewsurvival of an intact Iraq to protect the Gulf monarchies and a desire toensure against a power vacuum in Iraq for Iran to exploit. To Iraq,protection against the Persians, and Islamic fundamentalism, was seen ashistoric struggle.Besides, a decade of war, and hundreds of thousands of casualties, hadn'tshaken Saddam's rule. And the French and Soviet governments were

ensuring Baghdad that the United Nations mandate would never consentto the total defeat of the nation.

The Iraqi Bomb

The President's Thanksgiving rhetoric was partly based on a new analysisby the Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee, an interagencygroup of the U.S. government, which concluded in early Nov. 1990 thatwith a "crash program" Iraq could produce one or two "crude nuclearexplosive devices" in as little as six months to a year. The CIA hadearlier indications that the Iraqi nuclear program was more extensive, but

there was no hard evidence existed to tie together all the pieces.Intelligence collection accelerated, however, and the JAEIC reviewed itsearlier findings.Nuclear imagery expected of a modern Hitler fell nicely into place.Intelligence reports now speculated that Scud missile warheads, aerialbombs, cluster bomb sub-munitions, Iraq's "super gun," artillery, andspray tanks -- even "the proverbial terrorist with a vial" -- "could" deliverchemical and biological weapons. A Special National IntelligenceEstimate (SNIE) in October concluded that "Iraqi tactical use of chemical




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weapons is virtually certain if Iraq suffers serious battlefield defeats,"even predicting "Iraqi chemical attacks if Baghdad believes a Coalitionattack is imminent."Nuclear materials in Iraq's research reactors, and the few known nuclearweapons installations, took on an added importance. The CENTCOMBlack Hole air-war planning cell in Riyadh was told that the Iraqi

"capability to produce and use weapons of mass destruction" should bedestroyed "as early as possible" in the air war.The world never came close to seeing nuclear weapons used in the GulfWar, but a nuclear shadow hung over the conflict well into the aircampaign. Discussion of the use of nuclear weapons to respond to anIraqi chemical attack or to stave off massive casualties in a ground waremerged and reemerged.For those privy to the debate, there were two camps. Those mostunfamiliar with nuclear realities -- the capabilities and effects of nuclearweapons as well as basic nuclear policies -- tended to accept that nuclearuse would serve some positive aim. Those directly involved in nuclearaffairs, particularly at the highest levels, were far more skeptical aboutthe advisability of nuclear use.Even after the air war got underway and "conventional" armamentstechnology demonstrated unprecedented effectiveness against Iraq,nuclear weapons, real and imaginary, continued to provoke unexpectedemotion. In the first two weeks in Feb. 1991, as the ground war againloomed, a bizarre 45 percent of the American public said they supportedthe nuclear use to avoid the expected carnage of a ground campaign.For an object whose very existence rests upon clarity of purpose andintention and absolute control, speculation and ambiguity over thepossible use of nuclear weapons would be shockingly loose.

Week Eighteen: The Debut of Stealth

Baghdad, Pentagon planners assessed, was more heavily defended thanMurmansk on the Kola peninsula in the northern Soviet Union. Theyestimated the Iraqi capital had twice the density of the most heavily-defended NATO targets in Eastern Europe.Fifty-eight surface-to-air missile batteries comprising 552 launchers

ringed the Iraqi capital. Throughout the city, at military installations, ontop of civilian buildings, in open fields atop elevated emplacements, were380 anti-aircraft artillery sites comprising 1,267 guns.Washington computer simulations predicted that the manned Air ForceF-111F Aardvark and Navy A-6E Intruders originally called for in theInstant Thunder air war plan would suffer too great attrition from thedefenses, and consequently only the F-117A stealth fighter was chosenfor downtown duty.A star was born.




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Emerging from the Black

By August 1990, a total of 59 F-117 stealth aircraft had been purchasedby the Air Force, the last delivery made just a month before Iraq invadedKuwait. The single-seat bat-winged bomber was developed in the 1970'sunder a $7 billion prototype project codenamed "Have Blue." The famed

Lockheed Advanced Development Projects operation in Burbank, Calif.,nicknamed the "Skunk Works," was later awarded the Top Secret specialaccess "Senior Trend" production contract, and the first plane secretlyflew in 1981, 31 months after the full-scale development decision. TheAir Force Tactical Air Command's first operational F-117 unit, the4450th Tactical Group, quietly stood up at Tonopah, Nevada, in October1983.The unique shape of the F-117, and its advanced electronics and specialtechniques to "suppress" its own electrical and infrared emissions,provided the radar evading capability. According to a 1996 article inAviation History magazine, the stealth fighter's "radar cross

section" (RCS) measured between .01 and .001 square meters -- aboutthat of a small bird. Compared to a Vietnam era F-4 Phantom II fighter,which has a head-on RCS of 6 meters, the F-117 was assessed to be ableto get 90 percent closer to ground-based search radars, and 98 percentcloser to airborne radars before being detected.The night-time bombing and viewing system in the cockpit, muchimproved throughout the 1980s, was also rated by war planners as themost accurate in the U.S. military. The plane internally carried one ortwo laser-guided bombs for which the pilot required high fidelity target"materials" to find and hit precisely designated "aimpoints."Stealth's existence remained officially secret until November 1988, whenthe "Nighthawk" was unveiled. The planes were then employed in

combat during Operation Just Cause in Dec. 1989, the invasion ofPanama. Six Nighthawks made their way to Panama, two as backupaircraft, to support the aborted special forces operation to kidnap GeneralManuel Noriega. A total of two bombs were dropped, one in a field nextto the barracks of Noriega's elite troops, the second on a building in thebarracks compound. The mission was declared a success. Stealth had notbeen detected by Panamanian radar.

Ghosts of Desert Storm

On Aug. 21, 1990, two weeks after the Iraqi invasion, the first squadron

of 18 F-117s deployed to King Khalid Air Base at Khamis Mushait,6,800 feet up in the coastal mountain range near the Saudi-Yemeniborder. The Nov. 8 decision by President Bush to double U.S. forces inDesert Shield called for another squadron of jets, and a second contingentof 20 F-117s arrived in Saudi Arabia on Dec. 3.Though host to countless VIPs making their pilgrimage to visit the troopsduring Desert Shield, the planes continued to operate in relative secrecycompared to other aircraft. Air Force crews of KC-135Qs aerial tankerstasked with refueling F-117As on the first stage of their journeys to the




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Middle East during Desert Shield in August 1990, were reportedly notgiven refueling data on the airplane.But in the Black Hole, the F-117A would become the star, tasked to hittargets in every one of the 12 target categories. The entire choreographyof the first night blow against Iraq centered on two important themes"strategic" attacks on centralized air defenses and targets in Baghdad by

F-117As, and neutralization of air defenses in southwestern Iraq to allowF-15E Strike Eagles to penetrate undetected and attack Iraqi Scud missileemplacements.After the first night, the three dozen stealth fighters would crisscross Iraqand Kuwait, sent here and there to drop one or two of their bombs onselected aimpoints to achieve functional effect on the targets "X's markedoff a very long list," one air planner later said.

Dropping Hyperbole on the Target

To truly understand stealth's contribution, one must carefully define what

a target is, and what a "hit" means. At each target, aimpoints would beselected, either to completely disable functions (such as in the case ofbridges and communications transmitters) or to cause "shock" effect thatwould disrupt or nullify the function of the object of attack withoutmassive physical damage.Though the reporting of stealth's performance during and after the warwould focus on its 2,000 lb. laser-guided bombs reliably hittingaimpoints to seemingly always cause the desired effect, hardly any targetwas only hit once. Take, for instance, the first target on the first night, theNukhayb air defense operations center in southwest Iraq. Two stealthfighters initially dropped bombs on the target on Jan. 17, but stealthreturned to Nukhayb two more times -- on Jan. 18 and 19 -- to re-bomb a

center widely reported as having been disabled in the first blow. Therestrikes were planned before definitive "bomb damage assessments"arrived in Riyadh.Gauging the "effects" of attacks, Black Hole planners would learn, wasfar more difficult than pre-war theory. For stealth, though, the publicreputation of accuracy was forged by the soon to be famous videotapesshowing the "results" of selected missions. "Fewer than one-tenth of 1percent" went astray, The New York Times would gush. Flying only 2.5percent of the total fighter/bomber force mission, the Pentagon wouldbrag, F-117s attacked over 30 percent of the strategic targets. "Thebottom line," said Brig. General Buster C. Glosson, chief of the Black

Hole strategic cell in Riyadh, "is that over 47 percent of the targetsdestroyed in Iraq were destroyed by the F-117As."The official results, of course, don't match the hyperbole, but that is notto say that stealth and other precision-guided platforms did not performhistorically once Desert Storm commenced. Like Nukhayb, most targetswere "fragged" to be hit multiple times. Planners doubled and tripledscheduling aircraft and missiles to ensure that they achieved the intendedimpact. But there is nothing particularly devious about taking suchprecautions, though it does tend to be a practice that completely




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contradicts later claims of instant "paralysis."

The Christmas Acceleration

In December 1990, the Black Hole revised the entire choreography of theair war, fearful that Saddam Hussein might quit at the first blow, or that

the United Nations or Washington might impose a cease fire. Theplanners wanted targets hit as soon as possible.According to an official Air Force history, "It seemed better to inflictsome damage on many targets systems/centers of gravity than to attacktwo or three and leave the rest untouched."Thus, two weeks before the air war would begin, a new plan emerged. Itwould compress six days of attacks into three, nearly doubling thenumber of sorties flown during the first 72 hours and emphasizingWashington's requirement that all nuclear, biological and chemical(NBC) targets be visited by the end of Day Two. "Visited" because it wasessentially the adoption of a veneer strategy the pre-Christmas

assumption was that eight F-117 stealth fighters would drop eight bombson a typical target in a single attack. Now the Black Hole wanted just oneor two bombs per target for "functional" impairment.Air Force Col. John Warden's original Instant Thunder plan called for theuse of precision-guided weapons and "bombing for effect" as well. Butthe late-breaking innovation -- the veneer attack of the entire existingstrategic target base simultaneously for shock effect -- transformed thewar from a discrete affair entailing Instant Thunder's 4,000 strikes on 84targets, to a daily massive strike of that magnitude across a target basethat had grown more than six times in size.

Week Nineteen: Gas and Bugs

During the 1980s, Army chemical weapons specialists would joke thatNBC-the military acronym for nuclear, biological and chemicalweapons-really stood for "nobody cares.""I was used to having soldiers do anything, up to and includingvolunteering for KP, to get out of having to practice NBC skills," saysone Army captain of her experience in the Chemical Corps in the 1980s.

Then NBC training became the number one attraction during DesertStorm "What a marvelous training motivator a bit of poison gas can be."As chemical troops and the military medical community scrambled to puttogether the pieces of a responsible chemical and biological defenseresponse, their enthusiasm never caught up with the lack of preparedness(and an enormous blind spot caused by horrific intelligence) as warloomed in December 1990. Though soldiers would initially pay closeattention to the proper fitting of their protective masks and suits, as timewent by the uneven application of the passive defense would have




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enormous reverberations. The Gulf War Syndrome would be born.

Weapon of the Past or the Future?

At the end of the Vietnam War, Army Chief of Staff Gen. CreightonAbrams disestablished the Chemical Corps as the service restructured for

a European war. Schools were closed, officers were integrated into theOrdnance Corps. Within combat units, chemical specialists wereassigned to administrative and training duties. But then came the Arab-Israeli war, and there was growing intelligence indicating a Sovietoffensive chemical arsenal. The Army reinstated the Chemical Corps in1979, and a long road began to return from the dead.How it was that by 1990, the U.S. military was still "unprepared for anopponent using World War I and II chemical-biological agents" is thesubject of Albert J. Mauroni's tight and precise book Chemical BiologicalDefense U.S. Military Policies and Decisions in the Gulf War (1998,Praeger). As Mauroni sees it, the 1980s emphasis on rapid deployment

forces and Central America once again conspired against integration ofchemical and biological weapon (CBW) capabilities into combat forces.European troops were better equipped and trained, at least for chemicalwarfare, but the initial forces deployed to the Gulf in Desert Shield werethe light troops of the XVIII Corps. U.S. Central Command(CENTCOM) recommended that soldiers deploy with three unopenedsets of protective clothing, a mask, filters, three Nerve Agent AntidoteKits (NAAKs) and three M258A1 skin decontamination kits, but, asMauroni recounts, "Army units would discover this goal could not berealistically met."Prepositioned stocks were found damaged by heat and petroleum;protective masks had dry-rotted. A mad scramble got underway to collect

sufficient and serviceable protective masks and suits. Still, a valianteffort was made to supply the soldiers, including the awarding ofnumerous emergency production and procurement contracts.The bottom line for chemical weapons was that detection and protectivemeasures were proven to be fairly effective.

Drop Your Drawers

Whereas warfighters thought that all they had to do was wear their suitsand masks to protect against the rapidly dissipating chemical agents, anduse their atropine injectors if exposed, Mauroni observes that when it

came to biological weapons, in Desert Shield it was clear that no oneunderstood vaccines.On Aug. 22, 1990, in response to intelligence assessments concludingthat Iraq had engineered biological weapons, the services' surgeonsgeneral agreed that U.S. forces should be vaccinated. They recommendedthat the entire force receive anthrax vaccine, and that those at greatestrisk receive botulinum toxoid as well. Though both had been used byresearchers and medical personnel over the years, there was no data ontheir effectiveness on a real battlefield. Thus began months of




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maneuvering and wrangling to obtain permission from the Food andDrug Administration for use of vaccines and other treatments.Meanwhile, there was an enormous problem of manufacturing sufficientvaccine for all CENTCOM forces. According to Mauroni, "no US firmwould take the millions of dollars offered to produce the vaccines andpretreatments." Because the items were legally "experimental," even with

government promises of indemnity, none of the companies "trusts that itwould be free of lawsuits after the conflict if the vaccines were thoughtunsafe."And the military did not have sufficient bio detectors to provide earlywarning of the presence of toxic agents. With a time frame of 45 minutesto an hour exposure under the best of circumstances, Mauroni isconvinced that without vaccines, large numbers of soldiers would havedied within two or three days of exposure. Unlike poison gas, anthraxand other biological agents are persistent. Chemical officers, Mauronisays, could make "plots" on the basis of wind patterns and create deadzones around biologically contaminated areas. Everyone would then haveto move out of the area, swap their protective suits and regroup.

Panic is Contagious

By mid-October, the joint chiefs agreed to request a waiver of "informedconsent" for pretreatments, treatments and vaccines. "If DoD held backon developmental vaccines and pretreatments to troops in the Gulf, andSaddam initiated CB warfare," Mauroni writes, "the outcry would havebeen deafening. DoD had to take the risk that the drugs would save livesif CB agents were employed."

But then the decision was made to double the size of the force and the

entire plan was thrown into chaos. "Supporting one corps with biologicalvaccines and atropine injectors seemed within the realm of feasibility,"Mauroni says. "Vaccinating two corps would mean hundreds ofthousands of additional dosages, which were not available."Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney approved the bio-defense vaccineplan on Dec. 19, 1990. Vaccinations were to be given on a priority basis,with special operations forces being the first priority. The CENTCOMstaff also recommended that armored units that would lead the groundassault and important rear area targets (including the CENTCOM staff)should receive vaccines.

Birth of Gulf War Syndrome

Eventually 150,000 soldiers would be inoculated (some 8,000 againstbotulinum), the process starting just days before the initiation of the airwar on Jan. 17, 1991. Commanders found the decision not to inoculateeveryone especially painful. Mauroni quotes Maj. Gen. Binford Peay,commander of the 101st Airborne Division, as saying that the limitedvaccine plan was one of the greatest mistakes of the war. "In his view,there should have been enough vaccines for everyone or for no one,"




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Mauroni writes, "sharing an equal risk among all troops."It is no wonder then that many warfighters, Mauroni says today, "stillhave got to get more educated about chemical and biological threats." ToMauroni, chemical and biological defense is a tactical level question thatneeds to be addressed regardless of deterrence or arms control policies.Unfortunately, he says, the attitude is still "break glass in the case of

emergency."There is no question in Mauroni's mind that the lack of preparedness withchemical protective gear, the mad scramble to employ poorly tested andcertified vaccines and treatments, poor intelligence, an uncoordinatedpolicy and haphazardly explained and implemented protective andresponsive measures all ultimately contributed to why many believetoday that Gulf War Syndrome is somehow associated with Iraqi CBW.And, Mauroni adds, the failure of the medical community and theChemical Corps to clearly articulate how the anthrax vaccine should havebeen used is one of the biggest factors influencing those who questionmandatory vaccination today.

Week Twenty: Built to Survive

Driving to Baghdad on the winding, pockmarked two-lane road fromAmman, Jordan, one gets a sense of why Iraq is so different. Once theborder is crossed, the road becomes a four- to six-lane superhighwaythrough the western desert.As the Tigris and Euphrates basin -- and populated Iraq -- nears, there is

an increasing profusion of hearty bridges, grandiose buildings andfactories, and modern utilities. This is not just some evil empire. Fromhis assumption to power, Saddam Hussein built up the Iraqi civilian aswell as military infrastructure, including some of finest schools andhospitals in the Arab world.As a "target set" in the winter of 1990, Iraq was hardly some ThirdWorld paper tiger. Although the political rhetoric was that Baghdad wasimpoverished and desperate, eight years of war with Iran and Ba'athParty rule had also hardened the country with plentiful and redundantfacilities. It was both one of the challenges of targeting, and why, tenyears later, Saddam Hussein still survives.

Target Oil

Five of 12 target categories -- communications, electrical power,industry, oil, and transportation -- constituted Iraq's dual civilian-militaryinfrastructure. Oil was the defining element. Iraq's petroleum system, theU.S. Defense Department would say, was one of the world's mostmodern extraction, cracking and distillation industries, "befitting itsposition as one of the world's major oil producing and refining nations."




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Nine major petroleum refinery complexes gave Iraq a total 1990 refiningcapacity of some 200,000 barrels of crude per day. There were threelarge modern refineries one at Baiji north of Baghdad, one at Basra in thesouth, and the Doura refinery in suburban Baghdad.Whereas refineries were large, isolated, industrial complexes that couldbe easily attacked, in a purely military analysis, Iraq had a far more

important -- and daunting -- network of petroleum product storagefacilities that directly supplied the military. The country was estimated tohave 50 times more reserve oil, per person, than the United States itselfpossessed. Oil was also stockpiled in the field with the Iraqi army, atKuwaiti facilities, and at water storage reservoirs and undergroundfacilities.

Target Electrical Power

When it came to electrical power, there was no such resilience, nor theability to "store" back-up electricity should production and distribution

be destroyed. Iraq's modern electrical power network was dominated by20 generating plants connected through a network of 400-kilovolttransmission lines. The complex systems of generating plants,transformers, and distribution lines were designed to deliveruninterrupted service. Redundancies and protective systems were built into satisfy consumer demand, as well as to compensate for intermittentfailure. If one plant were to go down, excess capacity in others wouldtake up the slack. When a transformer or distribution station failed,currents would find their way through alternate routes."The dependence of highly industrialized states on electric power is sogreat that the consequences of an inadequate supply of electricity couldbe crippling to both civilian and military operations," a 1994 Air Force

report, "Dropping the Electrical Grid" would later observe. Col. JohnWarden of the Checkmate air campaign targeting cell called electricity"highly leveraged;" just a few weapons could do enormous damage. Thevery sophistication of grids aided attack Power is either supplied or thecustomer is blacked out! There was no such thing as getting just a littleelectricity.

Competing Desires

In the Black Hole cell in Riyadh and the Pentagon's Checkmate, targeterssought to focus attacks on oil refining and storage facilities, and not basic

production in the oil fields. Guidance from Washington was to minimizethe lasting damage to Iraq's economic infrastructure to ensure post-warrecovery. Brig. Gen. Buster Glosson, head of the Black Hole, issued"Target Guidance" in December 1990 instructing strikes within therefinery target subset against distribution points, but not the crackingtowers. Intelligence information was sought to determine whichdistillation and other refining areas produced military fuels, where aim-points were to be selected.On electricity, Glosson's Target Guidance called for attacks on




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transformer and switching yards and control buildings rather than ongenerator halls, boilers, or turbines. This would minimize recuperationtime after the conflict ended.The goal of Instant Thunder and the subsequent Operation Desert Stormstrategic air campaign was Iraqi strategic paralysis, a condition thatWarden postulated could be created for the first time through precision

bombing. Though the Iraqi leadership was at the core of the plan, smartweapons would allow key elements of the overall infrastructure to beattacked without the kind of World War II civilian damage that had longbeen a part of urban bombing.Strategic air war adherents would see the attacks as part of a continuum,but the competing objectives and limitations would severely test theirtheories. The primary objective in the minds of Black Hole andCheckmate targeters was still to bring down Saddam, and attacks on oiland electricity would be key to their objective. Both, planners thought,would have specific military impact, while at the same time contributingto a campaign to undermine the will of Iraqi population. "Hey, yourlights will come back on as soon as you get rid of Saddam," Glosson saidof the dual purpose of the electrical attacks and the impact on Iraqithinking. "I wanted to play with their psyche."

Paralysis

Iraq anticipated attacks on both target groups, and took precautions, asthe regime did with other target categories, by removing key electronicsand computing equipment from facilities to preserve it. The systems,then, were already stressed, and in many cases, working at degradedlevels by the time bombing began on Jan. 17. The expectation, of course,was a short war. Since Iraq was already cut off from exporting oil,

scaling back refining and electrical activity and production could easilybe accommodated, particularly as Iraqi industry, the largest single "draw"on electricity in the country, began to cease production in January 1991in anticipation of war.Before the Gulf War, Iraq's total electrical generating capacity was about9,500 megawatts, an enormous capacity for the country, which only drewabout one-third of that amount on a day-to-day basis. Similarly, therewas an abundance of oil. Even after substantial damage, the U.S.intelligence community estimated at the end of the war that Iraq retainedabout 55 days of oil supply at pre-war consumption rates.Oil and electrical attacks would later prove to be some of the most

efficient of the entire air war, but despite the rhetoric of systemicparalysis occurring through well-placed smart bomb strikes, anoverabundance of Iraqi supply and a host of unanticipated effects fromthe bombing would severely challenge the new strategic bombing theory.From day one of the air war, planners would discover the reality ofintegrated networks Virtually everything in Iraqi urbanized society --water purification and distribution, sewage treatment, heating and airconditioning, cooking, refrigeration, etc.-- was linked to electricity, notjust military and government objects. Attacks on the targets were thus




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indirect attacks on the civilian population, and would become highlycontroversial.Though weapons would work as advertised, targeting planners wouldalso have to learn from experience and not from theory what wouldindeed be the synergistic impact of facility destruction. One of thebiggest constraints that air commanders would soon find out was that

they really had no means to gauge whether the successful physical strikeswere having either the military or psychological effects that they hadlong postulated.


Arkin, William M. - Gulf War - Secret History Vol.2

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