10

THE PLAN

RAMSTEIN, GERMANY
MARCH 21, 2002

The screen went dark, the lights of the conference room came up, and I stood at the head of the table. It was late afternoon on Thursday, March 21, 2002, the end of a long day working Iraq options with CENTCOM’s component commanders at NATO’s Warrior Prep Center across the autobahn from Ramstein Air Base. Outside, the hillsides of the Saarland were budding into spring green. But the sterile, windowless conference room could have been on the equator or at the South Pole.

This was the first time my ground, air, naval, and Special Ops commanders had sat down with my staff directors and me to discuss the shape and scope of a possible military operation to remove the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Gene Renuart and Jeff Kimmons had done a masterful job outlining the current iteration of the Commander’s Concept. Seven lines of operation, nine slices representing Iraqi centers of gravity.

I had summarized my discussions with the President and the NSC in Crawford and at the White House: If the President ordered CENTCOM to war, the operation would not be a reprise of Desert Storm. We would go into Iraq fast and hard, not slow and heavy, launching as simultaneously as possible from as many countries as American carrot-and-stick negotiators could deliver.

“The President hopes war will not be necessary,” I said. “The NSC believes bilateral and international diplomacy might work.” I shook my head. These officers had to understand the true nature of our responsibility. “The civilian leadership will negotiate, at the UN and with heads of state and ministers around the world. For them, military planning is a prudent step. It’s our job to do that planning.”

I let them absorb my words.

“Guys,” I said, “there’s a burglar in the house.” They all understood the Special Ops expression: You didn’t roll over and go back to sleep when there was an intruder downstairs with a gun. This was an urgent mission, one that would require their complete focus. “We need rock-solid planning—joint planning for joint execution.”

I looked around the conference table. We were wearing “Euro-casual” civvies for security reasons, but each of us had a small nametag on his sport coat or sweater. “I see Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps on your name tags,” I said. “But the tags I want to see will read JOINT—all the Services acting together as one.

“Up in Paktia Province the other day, soldiers, Navy SEALs, Air Force crews, Marine Cobra pilots, and Bert Calland and Dell Dailey’s special operators were fighting, dying, and killing al Qaeda. There were no ground campaigns, air campaigns, or SOF campaigns. There was one integrated plan, and our people fought as a joint force.”

That drew a look of satisfaction from the component commanders.

“If we have to fight in Iraq,” I told them, “we’ll do it as a joint team. We will not take orders from the Service Chiefs in Washington. I will take my orders from the Secretary of Defense… and you will take your orders from me. No time for Service parochialism.”

I held up my hand. “One last point. What we discussed today goes no further than the people in this room. This command does not leak. We are military professionals, not a bunch of self-serving assholes.”

I could see that my message had registered.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go get a beer and eat some schnitzel.”

The session had gone well, I thought. The commanders recognized the tough job that lay ahead. And I believed they understood my feelings about joint warfighting… and leaks.

But one morning in early May back in Tampa, my Public Affairs director, Rear Admiral Craig Quigley, brought me a copy of a Los Angeles Times story by William Arkin that was loaded with leaked details about the Ramstein conference and our Iraq planning. According to Arkin’s unnamed Pentagon sources, the planning was “simplistic and myopic.” Arkin also criticized the iterative planning process (which had “emerged in February,” he wrote), citing “senior Defense Department officials, civilians who are not tied to any individual service.” The anonymous Pentagon sources had accused CENTCOM of gross incompetence, strategic ineptitude, and ignoring the “successful elements” of Desert Storm, the Kosovo air campaign, and operations in Afghanistan. The story contained Top Secret compartmented information, including options for simultaneous land and air operations from several directions.

“This would be funny,” I told Craig Quigley, “if it weren’t for all the references to ‘Top Secret, Polo Step’.” Polo Step was the sensitive planning compartment’s code name.

It was obvious that someone who had been with me in Ramstein had reported the content of our meeting to an unnamed member or members of the Pentagon community, and that person had leaked his guts out, sniping at the planning options we’d been developing— options that apparently didn’t comport with his views. “[T]he emerging Iraq plan was never officially brought into ‘the tank,’” the article read, “for discussion among the heads of all the services.” Unmitigated bullshit, I thought. On March 29, we had briefed the Service Chiefs—in the Tank. We’d seen the normal amount of service-parochial kibitzing, but Dick Myers had kept the Chiefs on a tighter rein, and it had been a productive session.

I wouldn’t let my anger over this interfere with my job, of course. But I would let the SecDef know what I thought of these Pentagon leakers, who were jeopardizing America’s sons and daughters.

“Mr. Secretary,” I told Rumsfeld the next afternoon, “if I sound angry, it’s because I am.” I reminded him of just how much compartmented material had appeared in the Arkin story. “I’d like everyone in OSD and the JCS who knows the details of our planning process to be polygraphed—and prosecuted if they’re discovered to have leaked Top Secret information.”

Rumsfeld let me cool off. “It’s unbelievable,” he said.

“Mr. Secretary, Washington, D.C. is the only vessel on this planet that leaks from the top.”

“I’ll work on it, General.”

Over the next few days Rumsfeld held “Come to Jesus” meetings with the Chiefs and the OSD staff, and I discussed my disappointment with the leak with the CENTCOM staff and my components. The leaks slowed down, and though a few “trickles” continued, they were never as damaging as the information that some self-serving bastard had fed to a reporter.

 

THE WHITE HOUSE SITUATION ROOM WAS PLEASANTLY COOL AFTER the sweltering August heat of downtown Washington. Colin Powell and George Tenet had just arrived; they’d both been caught in rush-hour traffic. All our shirt collars were damp with sweat.

“The Brits still classify Washington as a tropical hardship post,” someone quipped as Powell took his place beside the President.

Gene Renuart and I had come to the White House on this first Monday in August to brief the President and the NSC on the latest version of what had become OPLAN 1003V—no longer a concept, now a full-blown plan. We would summarize the progress we’d made since our meeting at Camp David in May, when I had described a series of military options to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

At that May meeting, in one of the most eloquent presentations I’d ever heard, Colin Powell had made a case that the world today was far different from what it had been in 1990–1991—when the coalition to remove Saddam from Kuwait had been formed. It would not be easy to build a large coalition, he argued, to line up a consensus in the UN for military operations. Colin’s presentation was not negative, not positive—simply a statement of reality as he saw it. As I listened, I was impressed by the balance of what I was hearing. The Secretary of State was issuing a caution—this won’t be easy. But there was no arguing, no hand-wringing. At several points during the discussion the President and Vice President Cheney had nodded their heads in agreement. “I don’t know whether or not we can get all the international support we need,” Powell said. “But we will try.” I agreed that the UN would be difficult, but I had been thinking hard about our coalition needs myself—and in my view the nations in the CENTCOM region would provide all the required—if not all the desired—support.

Between mid-May and late July, I had made three trips to the AOR, concentrating on infrastructure improvements and the buildup of our forces. I’d met with leaders in Qatar, Oman, the UAE, Bahrain, and Jordan. And, as always, I visited our troops in Afghanistan.

Lieutenant General Dan McNeill, Commander of XVIII Airborne Corps, had taken command of Task Force 180, our Coalition force, establishing his headquarters at Bagram Air Base. I had served with Dan in Korea during the 1990s; he was a seasoned veteran, and I was pleased to have him on the team.

President Bush had stressed his concern that we maintain momentum in Afghanistan—even if we executed the 1003V plan for Iraq. I agreed. “Mr. President,” I told him, “we will stay focused on Afghanistan, because strategically our operations there will be the ‘flank’ of Iraq.” Having discussed this with Secretary Rumsfeld, we agreed that our U.S. force level would remain about 9,500 troops unless there was a reason for change, at which point we would discuss it. Dan McNeill was exactly the man we needed on the ground, to keep the pressure on Osama bin Laden and the remnants of al Qaeda. As we moved toward war with Iraq, Dan joined the team, became a member of CENTCOM, and attended every planning session and briefing. After I introduced him to President Musharraf and Hamid Karzai, he established irreplaceable relationships with them and other regional leaders. Because of his efforts, our misison in Afghanistan never suffered.

Now, as the President and the NSC members listened, I announced the progress I had made.

“Mr. President,” I said, “if a decision is made to execute a military operation in Iraq, we will not have to go it alone. We have tentative agreements for access, overflight, basing, and staging across the Gulf.”

The room was quiet. I had discussed with regional heads of state and their defense ministers the upgrading of bases we used routinely for training and to stage forces for operations in Afghanistan. And, privately, I had informed them that we were improving infrastructure and posturing forces in case it became necessary to disarm Iraq by force. Kuwait had always been onboard; it was our anchor. Now we had the commitment of King Abdullah of Jordan and the Gulf state leaders to permit staging, basing, and overflight—for naval forces, strike and reconnaissance aircraft, refueling tankers, and SOF—at a number of strategic sites close to Iraq.

The Emir of Qatar, Sheik Hamad ibn Khalifa al Thani, had granted permission to base fighter aircraft at al Udeid, and to move our deployable command post to Camp As Sayliyah as soon as it was completed by our contractors in Florida.

I’d reminded the Emir that, at out first meeting after I’d become the CENTCOM commander, I had asked what I could do for him.

“Send me ten thousand American soldiers,” he’d replied with a smile.

On my most recent trip to Qatar, I fulfilled his request. “I may be two years late,” I told him, “but you will have your American troops.”

Colin Powell listened closely as I praised the American ambassadors in the region for their help in achieving the results I was describing. He smiled and credited his diplomats for all they’d accomplished. “Good folks,” he said.

“Mr. President,” I said, “as I’ve informed Secretary Rumsfeld, each regional leader understands that we are conducting contingency planning, that you have not made a decision to go to war.”

Rumsfeld nodded.

“With overlapping aircraft carrier ‘evolutions,’” I told the President, “as well as increased ‘training’ deployments of 3rd Infantry Division battalions to Kuwait, and the increased number of aircraft we have in Operation Southern Watch, we are close to having a force that could execute Red, White, or Blue Options, should it become necessary.”

Since 9/11, the NSC had absorbed a lot of detailed military information. But they were in for a lot more.

“The 3rd ID,” I continued, “is a mechanized infantry unit with organic armor and artillery and years of desert experience rotating its brigades through Kuwait. It does not seem to alarm the Iraqis that Division units are arriving on Kuwaiti training ranges with additional MLRS launchers and attack helicopters. Their intelligence is simply not sophisticated enough to pick up on such incremental changes.”

“Understand completely,” the President said.

“We’ve flown over four thousand sorties over Iraq since January,” I said, consulting my notes. “And Iraqi air defenses have targeted our aircraft or violated the no-fly zones fifty-two times. That’s double the rate of last year.”

“Would it make sense to reduce our risk by cutting back on the number of sorties?” Condi Rice asked.

“Condi,” I answered, “at some point it might make sense to cut back, but not yet. We want to continue to use response options to degrade the Iraqi Integrated Air Defense System. If it ever comes to war, we’ll want their IADS as weak as possible.”

The next charts showed the peaks and valleys of our force flow. “In a month,” I said, “we will have the lead elements of a Running Start force in place.”

“But these steps are not taking us beyond a point of no return?” Donald Rumsfeld asked.

“No, Mr. Secretary.”

The next chart was headed REVISED TIMING. “With current base and infrastructure enhancements,” I said, “the anticipated duration of the first three phases of the overall operation has been revised to a 45-90-90 timeline.”

In other words, we could begin operations by deploying forces while launching an air and SOF campaign to shape the battlespace— all of which would take about forty-five days. During that time, we would target Iraq’s suspected WMD sites, Republican Guards formations, and command and control facilities, and prevent their use of Theater Ballistic Missiles. Ground forces would begin to arrive and move through their staging areas—in Kuwait and possibly in Turkey—into Iraq; their initial combat operations would carry on for the next ninety days. And our “decisive offensive operations” would then be conducted for a maximum of three months, to “complete regime destruction.” Obviously this 45-90-90 would be followed by a much longer Phase IV. “I don’t know how long,” I added.

“We call it the Running Start because the units reaching the theater would not wait for follow-on forces to arrive, but rather would proceed directly toward their objectives.”

“General Franks,” Dick Cheney asked, “would the major objectives of the Running Start remain unchanged?”

The answer was yes. “Both the strategic objective of regime change, and our operational objectives of securing the oil fields and water infrastructure, while preventing Saddam’s use of long-range missiles—and WMD—are unchanged.”

My next chart was entitled HYBRID CONCEPT, a combination of the GENERATED and RUNNING START options. Like the other concepts we had considered, Hybrid had four phases. The initial deployment in Phase I would be greatly accelerated by a massive airlift, using the Civilian Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) to augment our military transport capabilities. Tens of thousands of troops would be moved to the war zone within a week. And less than two weeks later they would be matched up with their equipment, which would be shipped by sea. This buildup of forces would be protected by a combat air umbrella of eight hundred strike planes from carriers and land bases around the Gulf. In Phase II, we would launch air and Special Operations Forces into Iraq for about two weeks to destroy key target sets and set conditions for deploying heavy units. Then the heavy units would launch their operations in Phase III, which could last up to ninety days, and would complete the destruction of the Iraqi military.

“The Hybrid is a bit sequential,” I explained, “and we favor simultaneous ops from as many directions as possible. But the value of the concept is that it gives the President the option to wait for a buildup of forces…or to attack earlier if he chooses.

“If we use the Civilian Reserve Air Fleet, Mr. President,” I added, “it certainly will be a quintessential CNN moment. But it will not commit the country to war. We will have tipped our hand, but we will not yet have started shooting.”

President Bush considered this a moment. “Good,” he said. “We’re not going to war unless we have to.”

“A rapid force deployment,” I continued, “enhances our military capability on Iraq’s borders, and also assists in placing diplomatic pressure on Saddam’s regime.”

The NSC members were poring over the HYBRID CONCEPT chart, and I wanted to make sure they understood the flexibility of the model. “This is not etched in stone,” I explained to the President. “There are lots of possible variations. But the basic idea is that— once we have the required infrastructure in place—we can expand our troop level very rapidly, move into kinetic operations at any point of your choosing, and push follow-on forces behind the lead units.”

President Bush nodded again.

I turned to the STRATEGIC RISKS chart. “As we’ve discussed, Saddam Hussein could try to desynchronize our attack by launching missiles at his neighbors. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Israel could be targets, with Israel being the most dangerous to us from a strategic perspective.”

To counter this threat, I explained, deploying Patriot PAC-3 missiles to the region would be a prudent step. This upgraded variant of the Patriot offered significant protection from Scuds and other Theater Ballistic Missiles, and could augment the new Arrow 2 anti-TBM missile the Israelis were fielding. “If we deploy the PAC-3 now, Mr. President, we can mitigate, if not eliminate, the problem.”

The President was listening closely. “Tommy, how are you doing with the Baghdad problem?”

“Fortress Baghdad” was an ongoing concern among the civilian leadership; I had been huddling with my senior staff on the matter for weeks. Overhead imagery and electronic intelligence confirmed that the Republican Guard divisions and Special Republican Guard units positioned in and around Baghdad would be vulnerable to air attack with Precision Guided Munitions. We were working on what I called an “Inside-Out” approach: Instead of attacking from the outside of the defensive cordon around the capital, we would destroy the enemy inside the cordon by relentless air attack, working from the center outward. The more concentrated the Republican Guard positions were, the more vulnerable they became. And attacking in and around Baghdad had the added benefit of making the city “inhospitable” to forces looking for a place to hide. As Eric Antila had told me thirty years before, “Rats never swim toward a sinking ship.”

But the concept needed more work, so I gave the President a cautious answer. “I’m optimistic that we will have a practical solution to the problem soon, Mr. President. And I’ll bring it to Secretary Rumsfeld as soon as we have something solid.”

Like the “Challenges” I posed to myself on my daily three-by-five cards, this room offered me no shortage of brain-teasing questions:

“What if the Iraqis block their oil pipelines to Jordan, Syria, and Turkey?”

“Is a northern front from Turkey a real possibility?”

“What happens if Saddam uses WMD on our troops?”

“Might he blow up Iraq’s water infrastructure?”

All good questions, and we discussed each in turn. None of them would be fully answered in this session, but now that so many issues were on the table, the principals would contemplate and suggest possible solutions in the months ahead. This was a thoughtful collection of players: I sensed more teamwork among them all than our national media would ever admit.

As the discussion slowed, I introduced a collection of difficult problems under a single heading: CATASTROPHIC SUCCESS.

If Iraqi resistance did “fracture” quickly, as I thought possible—or if a military coup toppled Saddam’s regime at the onset of the campaign, or early uprisings developed among the Shiites and the Kurds— what would we do?

“We would continue the operation,” Donald Rumsfeld said, “to restore and maintain order until the Iraqis can govern themselves.”

To a person, the NSC concurred.

I briefed the room on targeting, starting as usual with the basics. Using imagery of important regime buildings in central Baghdad— including Baath Party headquarters and the command center of the Mukhabarat Special Security Organization—I explained how destroying these structures would blind and paralyze Saddam’s inner leadership circle.

“We know where they are,” I said, “and we know who works there.” Killing regime leaders and destroying their command and control apparatus would be a priority. This would not be like searching for Mullah Omar in a warren of mud-brick or cinderblock compounds in Kandahar. TLAMs, JDAMs, and the whole alphabet soup of available Precision Guided Munitions would be our weapons of choice. These targets lay close to upscale apartment buildings and private homes; many belonged to regime leaders and sympathizers. But Iraq’s apolitical, educated elite—the physicians, engineers, and managers who would be needed to rebuild their country—also lived in these neighborhoods.

“CENTCOM’s targeteers are working hard on the problem,” I assured the NSC. “The target sets on the Regime Leadership slice are a tough nut. But we’re going to crack it.”

My final chart was potentially the most important: PHASE IV STA-BILITY OPERATIONS.

“The Generated and Running Starts,” I explained, “and the Hybrid Concept all project Phase III ending with a maximum of two hundred and fifty thousand troops in Iraq. We will have to stand up a new Iraqi army, and create a constabulary that includes a representative tribal, religious, and ethnic mix. It will take time.

“And well-designed and well-funded reconstruction projects that put large numbers of Iraqis to work and quickly meet community needs—and expectations—will be the keys to our success in Phase IV.”

“We will want to get Iraqis in charge of Iraq as soon as possible,” Don Rumsfeld said. On hearing his words, heads nodded around the table.

“At some point,” I said, “we can begin drawing down our force. We’ll want to retain a core strength of at least fifty thousand men, and our troop reductions should parallel deployment of representative, professional Iraqi security forces. Our exit strategy will be tied to effective governance by Iraqis, not to a timeline.”

I saw further nods around the table. And then Condi Rice tapped her watch; we were out of time.

President Bush thanked me warmly as the meeting concluded. “See you soon,” he said.

Colin Powell was friendly as we shook hands on leaving the room. But it was obvious that something was on his mind.

 

I DIDN’T HAVE TO WAIT LONG TO FIND OUT WHAT IT WAS. ON Thursday, September 5, the day before I was scheduled to fly to Washington for another NSC briefing on Iraq—to be followed by weekend discussions at Camp David—Colin called me in Tampa.

“Tom, I’m sorry to interrupt you because I know how busy you are,” he said, a gentleman as always. “But I want you to hear this from me up front.”

Colin had concerns. He was from a generation of generals who believed that overwhelming military force was found in troop strength— sheer numbers of soldiers and tanks on the ground. As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during Desert Storm, General Colin Powell had seen the number of coalition ground forces rise to more than five hundred thousand. Indeed, this principle of overwhelming force was often referred to as the “Powell Doctrine.”

I had a lot of respect for Colin Powell—even as I’d come to believe that the days of half-million-strong mobilizations were over.

“I’m going to critique your plan up at Camp David,” he said. “I’ve got problems with force size and support of that force, given such long lines of communication.”

All right, I thought. He’s honest enough to put his cards on the table. We had basic differences in strategic thinking; fair enough. At least he was giving me a warning, rather than blindsiding me in front of the NSC and the President. “Thank you, Mr. Secretary,” I said. “I’ll do my best to answer your concerns.”

I sat a moment at my desk. Colin Powell was the free world’s leading diplomat. But he no longer wore Army green. He’d earned his right to an opinion, but had relinquished responsibility for the conduct of military operations when he retired as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1993.

I picked up the Red Switch and spoke to Don Rumsfeld. “I appreciate his call,” I said. “But I wanted to tell him that the military has changed since he left it.”

Rumsfeld chuckled. “You could say that, Tom. But just be calm and professional. Answer his comments, point by point. If Colin has doubts, I want him to get them on the table in front of the President and the NSC. Otherwise, we’ll look like we’re steamrolling.”

 

I BRIEFED THE NSC—MINUS PRESIDENT BUSH—IN THE SITUATION Room in the White House on the morning of September 6, describing what I would discuss with the President the next day at Camp David.

After the meeting, Rumsfeld came over. “We’ll be riding up to Camp David with Vice President Cheney in his helicopter. I’ll give you a lift to the helipad at the Observatory.”

The Vice President’s residence is on the grounds of the Naval Observatory on upper Massachusetts Avenue. At the helipad we boarded Marine Two for the flight to Camp David. It was a pleasant flight, west-northwest out of the District, over the thick traffic of the Beltway and into Maryland’s Appalachian foothills.

The drill for overnight guests at Camp David was interesting. White House staff took our bags, and we were each assigned a golf cart with a small laminated map mounted on the dash, indicating the route to our cabins. Camp David is a rolling, thickly wooded area, with narrow, curving blacktop lanes—not the best-marked routes in the world. Since my days as an Artillery officer candidate at Fort Sill, I’d taken pride in accurate map reading. But I’ll be damned if I didn’t get lost trying to follow the line diagram of the route from the helipad to my cabin.

“Don’t tell the President,” I joked to the efficient young Secret Service woman who eventually guided me to the cabin.

At the Saturday morning discussion, Colin Powell did raise his concerns. Soft-spoken and polite, ever the diplomat, he questioned the friendly-to-enemy force ratios, and made the point rather forcefully that the Coalition would have “extremely long” supply lines. “These are issues we should consider,” he said.

Thanking him for his thoughts, I used a detailed map to introduce the concept of five simultaneous operational fronts. “We aremoving into a new strategic and operational paradigm here, Mr. Secretary,” I said.

An early sketch of the five-front concept that became the basis for Operation Iraqi Freedom.

As Powell listened intently, I continued. “By applying military mass simultaneously at key points, rather than trying to push a broad, slow conventional advance, we throw the enemy off balance. We saw this in Afghanistan—fast, rapid maneuver. This creates momentum. We put our forces deep into the enemy’s territory, moving so quickly that the Iraqis will not have time to react. When they finally do move, they become targets for the air component and precision artillery fires. Speed and momentum are the keys.”

Colin Powell didn’t debate the brief I gave, and he didn’t ask any more operational questions. I don’t know whether I satisfied his concerns, but it was important that he forced the detailed discussion in front of the national security team, including the President.

Don Rumsfeld looked around the pine-paneled room as the session wrapped up, and thanked me for the presentation. “I want all of you to be comfortable with this plan,” he said.

As I left Camp David, I felt good about the work we had done.

 

GENE RENUART AND I RETURNED TO MACDILL LATE ON Tuesday, September 10.

The day before, we’d briefed Dick Myers and the Service Chiefs in the Tank. All in all it was a good session—probably because Dick was working hard to build consensus, and also because Don Rumsfeld had let it be known he expected the Joint Chiefs to be joint. Although the Chiefs still found it hard to think beyond the boundaries of their individual services—especially when it came to procuring weapon systems and maintaining their authorized “end-strengths”— repeated reminders from Rumsfeld and Dick Myers were slowly forcing them to build the “transformational” national defense that Donald Rumsfeld envisioned.

One positive outcome of my trips to the Tank that summer was that the services were dredging through their budgets to produce the funding needed to upgrade basing and infrastructure in the region. To four-stars jealously guarding their appropriations, this was about as pleasant an exercise as multiple root canals. As a result, though, CENTCOM got new ramp space at airbases in Oman, Qatar, and Kuwait. We increased the number of Army forces in the region. The SOF got upgraded helicopters. And the Navy increased the tempo of aircraft carrier and TLAM shooters in and out of the Gulf and Northern Arabian Sea.

Since our planning called for the majority of Coalition ground forces to stage through Kuwait, the tiny nation was suddenly set to become one of the largest American bases in the world. Seaports, fuel pipelines, additional water capacity—a major consideration in the virtually rainless Gulf—and basic camp construction were all under way.

On my latest visit to Riyadh, I’d confirmed that the Saudis weren’t willing to host another Desert Storm coalition. But neither would they create a diplomatic crisis by ordering the Coalition military units already working in the Kingdom to leave. This meant that we could continue operating the Combined Air Operations Center at Prince Sultan Air Base—and, unknown to the media, conducting Combat Search and Rescue and Special Operations recon work out of a small airbase north of the Tapline Road, near the border of Iraq’s western desert. If we could keep those two important sites operating, and continue flying refueling tankers and recon planes out of Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia would make an important contribution to freeing Iraq— without jeopardizing its position in the larger Muslim world.

With most of the staff work completed on both the “generated” and “running start” options, the 1003V Hybrid plan became the focus of our attention. It was becoming more detailed each day, as CENTCOM’s targeteers refined intelligence and reached new estimates on the Iraqi order of battle. It was no surprise that the six Republican Guard divisions had received the largest allocations of fuel, ammunition, and spare parts. Although our HUMINT on the units was sketchy, technical intelligence revealed them to be the most powerful, best-equipped divisions in the Iraqi military, with combat-readiness levels of more than 90 percent. As they moved from field training to garrison duty, the Republican Guard seemed likely to hold the main defensive line on the outskirts of Baghdad.

“You know,” I told Jeff Kimmons as we reviewed the latest satellite images of the Al Nida Republican Guard Armored Division moving back to its laagers and maintenance bases south of Baghdad, “the guys in that outfit have never been exposed to precision targeting.”

“They’re not going to enjoy their first exposure,” Jeff said.

In fact, the upgrades we’d made to our ground-based indirect fire systems since Desert Storm had transformed our medium- to long-range artillery into all-weather standoff weapons that would be a great complement to the air component’s guided munitions.

The best thing the Republican Guard could do for us, I realized, was to dig in around Baghdad and form a static, Soviet-style “ring of steel” defense. Once kinetics began, they wouldn’t have time to evade our precision firepower by dispersing. And if they did manage to spread out, they would lose their cohesiveness and the effect of their own massed firepower. Their T-72s had been upgraded with thermal sights, and these tanks fired a variety of Russian wire-guided missiles. But we were at least one generation ahead of them in precision ordnance, and a quantum leap beyond them in combined arms maneuver tactics and joint operations. In fact, the Iraqi military had virtually no joint characteristics; their air force was small and obsolete, and their helicopter gunships would amount to nothing more than targets to our F-16s and F/A-18s.

Weapons of mass destruction remained the enemy’s hole card. We could defend our troops, but we would never preempt regime use of WMD, because intelligence on the threat was not actionable: We knew the Iraqis had WMD, but we didn’t know where it was being hidden. If ever we needed human intelligence, it was now. I knew George Tenet would do his best with the assets he had, but there was no time to undo decades of damage to America’s espionage capabilities. Sun Tzu was as right today as he had been 2,500 years ago: Spies are useful everywhere.

As we studied the emerging picture of the enemy, the 1003V Hybrid plan was evolving into a practical war plan that would soon be ready if the President ordered us to fight. Each team contributing to the OPLAN knew it by a different name, to minimize the risk of leaks. In Europe, for example, the Army V Corps team hammering out the tactical and logistical challenges of launching a main effort attack from the Kuwaiti border to Baghdad, called their exercise “Imminent Victory.”

The V Corps wargamers’ work helped us estimate vital time-and-distance factors, the meat and potatoes of tactical planners. How fast and how far could an armor brigade advance along the paved road network of the Euphrates Valley, or through the open desert farther west, given varying levels of enemy resistance? Equally important, how fast and how far could specific Iraqi army formations move, under constant air attack, to counter our advance? In the fall of 2002, these were theoretical questions. But I had to assume that these computer war games would become tank tracks in the dusty soil of Iraq sometime in the future—perhaps the near future.

A picture was forming in my mind: Army, Marine Corps, and British armor battalions moving north at maximum speed, converging on the Iraqi regime’s centers of gravity: Basra in the south, Baghdad in the country’s center. As my father used to say when he approached the problem of clearing land, “You kill the roots, Tommy Ray, and the tree will fall.”

At an earlier CENTCOM huddle with my subordinate commanders, I had reminded them of a basic tactical principle: speed kills… the enemy.

General George Patton—one of America’s most innovative field commanders—had recognized the importance of maneuver speed during his dramatic breakthrough and offensive across central France in 1944. He had used the same principle to turn the U.S. 3rd Army north, 90 degrees off its axis of advance, into the flank of the German juggernaut in the Battle of the Bulge. Patton understood that the ultimate objective of any campaign is the enemy’s center of gravity. Indeed, the only time Patton’s army bogged down was when it laid siege to the heavily fortified German garrison at Metz. World War II gave us a colorful tanker’s adage for this principle of maneuver: “Haul ass and bypass.”

 

ONE YEAR AND ONE DAY AFTER THE 9/11 ATTACKS ON AMERICA, I joined the rest of the world in tuning my television to the image of the U.N. General Assembly Hall. The hall was filled to capacity, with some delegates wearing their distinctive national dress: flowing robes, turbans, a variety of Islamic headgear. Almost to a person, however, it was a somber audience that had gathered to hear President Bush’s address.

In starkly eloquent words, the President recalled the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Yet despite our successful military campaign in Afghanistan, he said, the world was still “challenged today by outlaw groups and regimes that accept no law of morality and no limit to their violent ambitions.”

The President quickly turned his focus on Iraq. He reviewed Saddam Hussein’s defiance of the series of U.N. resolutions that dated back to the Gulf War ceasefire—resolutions that required Iraq to account for and destroy its weapons of mass destruction, stop human rights abuses against its citizens, and accept internationally recognized rule of law.

Then he cited a report from the U.N. Commission on Human Rights that found that Iraq had subjected “tens of thousands of political opponents and ordinary citizens” to arbitrary imprisonment and summary execution. He also cited U.N. Security Council resolutions that demanded Iraq renounce terrorism, but which Saddam Hussein had consistently defied, plotting the assassination of regional leaders and harboring al Qaeda terrorists known to have escaped from Afghanistan.

As to weapons of mass destruction, the President said that Iraq had expelled UN inspectors—but not before they had discovered grim evidence of the regime’s ongoing WMD program.

“From 1991 to 1995,” President Bush told the General Assembly, “the Iraqi regime said it had no biological weapons.” But he noted that after the defection of a senior Iraqi weapons official, this was exposed as a lie. Saddam’s regime then “admitted to producing tens of thousands of liters of anthrax and other deadly biological agents for use with Scud warheads, aerial bombs, and aircraft spray tanks.”

George Bush paused for emphasis.

“U.N. inspectors believe Iraq has produced two to four times the amount of biological agents it declared,” the President stressed, “and has failed to account for more than three metric tons of material that could be used to produce biological weapons.”

Bush continued to catalog Iraqi defiance of Security Council resolutions, including the expulsion of UN inspectors in 1998. In a series of hard-hitting, staccato paragraphs—each leading with the phrase “If the Iraqi regime wishes peace…”—Bush called on Saddam Hussein and his government to comply with all Security Council resolutions and cease its illicit trade in oil, which diverted funds from the people in defiance of U.N.-mandated sanctions.

“The President ended by saying, ‘Events can turn in one of two ways.’ If the international community failed to act, the Iraqi people would continue to ‘live in brutal submission,’ and Saddam’s regime would continue to threaten stability in the Middle East.”

But if the international community met its responsibilities, he concluded, “the people of Iraq can shake off their captivity,” and one day “join a democratic Afghanistan and a democratic Palestine, inspiring reforms throughout the Muslim world.” He evoked a transformed Middle East, where honest government and respect for women and the “great Islamic tradition of learning can triumph.”

Speaking slowly and deliberately, President Bush called upon the international community to act. “We cannot stand by and do nothing while dangers gather. We must stand up for our security, and for the permanent rights and the hopes of mankind. By heritage and by choice, the United States of America will make that stand. And, delegates to the United Nations, you have the power to make that stand, as well.”

The applause was unenthusiastic, and many delegates sat motionless. I clicked off the TV before the network could chime in with their views on what the President had said. In my opinion, it didn’t matter how the General Assembly or the media reacted to George Bush’s speech. He was throwing down the gauntlet, putting the world on notice that the United States would “stand up for our security.”

I found the President’s emphasis on Iraq’s human rights abuses, and the dangers of its weapons of mass destruction potential, equally persuasive. With the exception of North Korea, no other contemporary state had systematically brutalized its citizens with such ferocity. The atrocities of Saddam Hussein’s execution squads put them in the same category as the Hutu militias in Rwanda and Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge.

And the United Nations inspectors’ warning that Iraq had failed to account for thousands of liters of weaponized anthrax, and tons of precursor chemicals, was especially alarming. When I’d taken command of CENTCOM, the CIA had briefed me on Iraq’s biological weapons, which they described as potentially the most dangerous facet of Saddam’s WMD program. Anthrax spores were easy to conceal and transport. A small seed culture of spores could be transformed into a powerful bio arsenal, using only a few hundred kilograms of growth medium.

Two years earlier, George Tenet had testified before Congress that al Qaeda was actively seeking to acquire chemical weapons. The warning hadn’t aroused much media interest until Coalition forces in Afghanistan found an al Qaeda videotape that showed a group of dogs being gassed in a closed room. As the first puff of pale white vapor reached the chained animals they went into spasms, collapsed with their legs twitching violently, and died within seconds. A few months later we found that experimental gas chamber at the al Qaeda Duranta Camp near Jalalabad.

And while many al Qaeda leaders had been killed, others had sought sanctuary in Iraq. The question was: Had terrorism and WMD already joined? If not, how long could it be before they did?

I didn’t know the answer. But I was concerned with the question—which I didn’t think our patchwork intelligence architecture could answer without putting troops on the ground.

 

WHILE I WAS TRAVELING IN THE AOR IN SEPTEMBER, THE NSC released its National Security Strategy statement, which expressed the administration’s new doctrine of preemption. The President had first articulated this concept at his West Point graduation speech in June. Now a mature policy, the doctrine stated that the United States, as a sovereign nation, had the right to employ the anticipatory use of force to preempt a threat to its security.

The media immediately speculated that war with Iraq was inevitable—even imminent.

I knew better. But I also realized, as I read the NSC statement in the windowless cabin of Spar 06, that President Bush had virtually cleared the decks for action, putting the world on notice that America would act decisively in its own defense.

If we’d had such a strategy in place years earlier, I realized, we might have been given the authority to remove the Taliban from power, and destroy al Qaeda in Afghanistan, before the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

 

IN LATE SEPTEMBER I RETURNED TO THE GULF. ONE OF MY FIRST stops WAS Qatar, where I met with Sheik Hamad, the Emir, in an elegant seafront Emiri Diwan palace. The conversation focused almost exclusively on Iraq.

“Saddam can never be trusted,” the Emir said. He adjusted his white kefiya and stroked his mustache. “General Franks, you have the opportunity to save the Iraqi people.”

“Sir,” I answered. “President Bush has not yet chosen the course of war. But if he does, we will be ready.”

 

THEN I CALLED ON LEADERS IN JORDAN, YEMEN, PAKISTAN, AND Turkey. And I visited coalition troops in Afghanistan, where Dan McNeill updated me on his operations along Pakistan’s border. Pervez Musharraf was cooperating and our troops were keeping pressure on al Qaeda. We had seen no reporting on Osama bin Laden, but I was convinced that the coalition was pushing as hard as possible to locate him.

I met with King Abdullah II at Amman’s Baraka Palace. He smiled, reaching across the inlaid rosewood table to shake my hand. “Did you bring any Texas barbeque with you?” he teased. “You always promise, but you never deliver. You spoiled me in Tampa. I love that barbeque.”

Once more, I was impressed by the King’s openness and honesty. Since the death of his father, King Hussein, Abdullah had worked to improve Jordan’s pro-Western position, despite a majority Palestinian population and the unending rancor of the Intifada. Jordan remained balanced between the menace of Iraq and the explosive Arab-Israeli conflict. Now I was going to ask him to support a Coalition that might be required to disarm Iraq and depose Saddam’s regime.

As we met, a joint Anglo-American resolution calling on Iraq to accept rigorous, unrestricted weapons inspections from the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) was under heated discussion in the Security Council. George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair were demanding a resolution with teeth, one that would subject Iraq to “serious consequences” if it did not comply.

On November 8, 2002, the U.N. Security Council finally adopted Resolution 1441, which recognized “the threat Iraq’s non-compliance with Council resolutions and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles poses to international peace and security.” This resolution repeated the “serious consequences” Iraq would face if it did not cooperate fully with UN weapons inspectors, who would begin arriving in Baghdad later that month.

Bush had already won overwhelming Senate authorization to employ force against Iraq if it continued to defy the international com munity. And on this day in Amman, I was betting that force would be required.

“General,” the king said, “I must protect my nation’s interests. But I assure you those interests coincide with America’s. You can count on Jordan.”

“Your Majesty,” I answered, “we will not forget Jordan’s friendship.”

That day I knew I was in the presence of a friend—and that, if we went to war in Iraq, there would be a western front.

 

THE PRESIDENTIAL RESIDENCE IN SANAA WAS LESS SUMPTUOUS than Abdullah’s Baraka Palace. But President Ali Abdullah Saleh was just as welcoming. After the attack on the Cole, and especially since 9/11, Saleh had shifted Yemen’s foreign policy away from radical Arab states toward the West. But he had kept open his lines of communication with Libya and Syria… and with Saddam Hussein.

Saleh had rugged Bedouin features and a clipped mustache, but he wore Bond Street suits. He could have been a CEO or a successful banker—which, I suppose, did describe some of his duties. During my last visit to Sanaa, he had told me: “I speak frequently to Saddam. He always asks about General Franks.”

“I hope that you tell him I am a great soldier and that he should trust me,” I said with a smile.

The president opened his hands, an Arab gesture of agreement. “Of course, General. What else would I tell President Saddam?”

I sipped at my aromatic Yemeni coffee, waiting for him to continue.

“You know, General Franks,” he said, “you had better be careful if you intend to attack Iraq. Saddam has very powerful forces.”

Our complex game was under way. I knew that Saleh and Saddam had once been close, so my host was dutifully conveying the Iraqi dictator’s message. But I also believed Saleh was anxious to improve relations with the West. He would act as a conduit to Saddam.

“I realize that, Mr. President,” I said. “His forces are very powerful. But his intelligence services are not very good. So, if it comes to war, maybe I’ll attack from the west.”

He nodded, but did not speak.

“And maybe I will also attack from Turkey,” I added. “Both the Jordanians and the Turks are our friends, you know.”

He smiled and sipped his own coffee. We waited in silence.

After a moment, President Saleh spoke. “Do you have any message you would like me to pass to Saddam?”

I’d already floated my most important message, but it couldn’t hurt to punctuate it with an expression of resolve. “Please tell him that you know me very well, and that I am a serious man. Saddam should cooperate with the United Nations immediately if he truly loves his country.”

As Spar 06 lifted off over the stony ochre hills of Yemen, I knew that President Saleh was probably chatting with Saddam on a Soviet-era secure telephone. Ali Abdullah Saleh was a friend…of sorts. I knew he would faithfully convey to Saddam, his old comrade, the information I had offered.

If we were going to have the advantage of operational surprise— which would be critical if we went to war—deception would be key.

And Ali Saleh would be one valuable tool in creating that deception.

 

MY MEETING IN ANKARA, TURKEY, WITH GENERAL HILMI Özkök, Commander of the Turkish Armed Forces, was interesting, if less productive than those with my contacts elsewhere in the region.

The General was a thoroughly professional officer—fluent in English, with years of experience in NATO. He was part of a new Turkish military that had relinquished its traditional role of political intervention through coups. Today he was receiving a pair of American four-stars in high-stakes negotiations. As always in Turkey, though, the atmosphere was subdued, indirect.

My colleague at the meeting was NATO’s top uniformed officer, Air Force General Joe Ralston, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. Technically, I was on Joe’s turf—Turkey was part of European Command—but he was there for more than protocol reasons. I wanted access to Northern Iraq to stage the 4th Infantry Division, the mirror image of the 3rd ID that would spearhead ground attack operations from the south. Joe was there to help me make the deal.

I took the lead in arguing the case for Turkish cooperation. General Özkök listened patiently.

He pursed his lips in discomfort when I finished. “General Franks, General Ralston,” he said formally. “Your points are very well taken. Saddam Hussein is a threat to the stability of this region. But we must wait until after next week’s election to approach my new government.”

I got the feeling that the General, a secular man who enjoyed a glass of wine, was not an avid fan of the Islamist administration that was almost certain to take over in mid-November. But these were new days in Turkey. If the country’s bid to join the European Union stood any chance of succeeding, he knew that the military must refrain from politics.

Secretary Rumsfeld had authorized Joe and me to sweeten the deal by alluding to possible economic aid that the country badly needed. But the General was in no position to move the question. “I cannot promise the new government will agree, even though your arguments are persuasive.”

I sympathized with the General. Whatever his new government decided, I was optimistic that Turkey would continue to grant the Coalition basing for U-2 reconnaissance flights over Iraq, as well as combat aircraft operations out of Incirlik Air Base. And I remained hopeful that Turkey would also allow Coalition SOF to stage from its territory, provided their operations were not made public, even if we were not permitted to stage a large conventional force there. This arrangement would be similar to the one we had made with President Karimov in Uzbekistan during operations in Afghanistan.

As we prepared to leave the General’s office, he thanked us for coming. “Let us hope war can be avoided,” he said.

“Of course, Sir,” I answered. “Nobody hates war like a soldier.”

 

ON FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22, I WAS PREPARING FOR ANOTHER TRIP. This one would take me from the Horn of Africa to Kyrgyzstan, across 160 degrees of longitude and ten time zones. I was looking forward to the trip because I would spend Thanksgiving with the troops in Afghanistan. But I had one reservation: In recent months, Donald Rumsfeld had been decidedly cranky each time I was away on an extended trip to the AOR.

“Tom,” Dick Myers told me, “if he thinks you’re out eating goats’ eyeballs in some sheik’s tent, he starts asking, ‘Where’s Franks? I want to talk to General Franks.’”

“Dick,” I joked. “There’s a new invention called a telephone.”

“Well, Tom,” he’d advised, “just stay in touch. You make him feel good—and he likes to know where you are and what you’re doing.”

“You bet, Dick,” I’d said. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

Before I left for Bahrain, I briefed the Secretary on our force request and timing considerations for the Hybrid 1003V plan. Military units are comprised of both people and equipment. And time was required to prepare both of these elements. Since World War I, the convention of the “warning order” or “alert order” had become institutionalized. CENTCOM did not alert troops. We presented formal requests to the Secretary, and Rumsfeld, through the Chairman, would identify units and task the Services and other CINCs to provide the forces.

I transmitted CENTCOM’s official request for deployment of the “Pre–N-Day” force—the troops the President would commit to the region long before any decision to go to war. This initial deployment would occur as a series of training exercises and force enhancements, due to increased Iraqi opposition in the no-fly zones.

Even though it was only the first phase of a much larger deployment, the request was impressive—a total of 128,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. They would be in the Gulf by February 15, 2003.

I also requested at this time that the Pre–N-Day force be augmented, beginning on N-Day, by Special Mission Units and additional Navy and Air Force personnel, to bring the force total to over 200,000 before G-Day. And, because our Hybrid plan drew on both the Generated and Running Starts, I asked that the Pentagon also alert the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), as well as follow-on support units and additional SOF, to be prepared for deployment no later than March 20, 2003.

This would raise the total force to 210,000 troops in what would become the Iraq Theater of Operations.

“Are you satisfied with this force structure, Tom?” Rumsfeld asked. He’d begun calling me Tom when Cathy and I started going out to dinner with the Rumsfelds in January 2002. Cathy always called me Tom, and before long Don Rumsfeld did, too.

Rumsfeld liked to eat at Washington’s restaurants—on the early side, not fashionably late. For one thing, he was an early riser like me. For another, dining before the trendy crowd filled Sushi Ko or the Palm also kept the tourists at bay.

The Secretary and I did have different tastes in food, however. One night, at the Old Ebbitt Grill near the White House, I ordered calves’ liver with bacon and onions—a childhood staple from my Oklahoma and Texas days, because liver was always cheap.

“This is great, Mr. Secretary,” I’d said. “You really ought to try some.”

“No thanks,” he said, finishing his second dozen Blue Point oysters. “I’ll stick with these.”

That night I’d reached for the check, but he took it from the waiter. “Come on, Sir,” I said. “Let me buy a meal for a change.”

Rumsfeld shook his head. “Wouldn’t be right,” he said, handing over his credit card. “Subordinates shouldn’t have to pay.” He grinned. “Besides, I have more money than you do.”

Those nights out with Don and Joyce Rumsfeld had cemented a bond of trust and friendship that was to grow between us.

By day, of course, we were all business. I glanced again at the Top Secret deployment request before handing it to the SecDef. “Mr. Secretary,” I said, “we wanted a credible standing force, one that would give weight to our diplomacy. This is the best that Gene Renuart’s Fifty-Pound Brains can produce. I think they did a damn good job. I’d go to war with this force structure.”

“You may have to, Tom.”

 

WE LEFT FOR THE AOR TWO HOURS LATER, AND ON THIS TRIP I got to know my new Director of Strategic Communications. Jim Wilkinson was a bright and personable young Texan, a Naval Reserve officer on loan from the White House, where he’d been handling public affairs for President Bush. I’d asked Donald Rumsfeld and his public relations assistant, Torie Clark, for a skilled PR man as the buildup for a possible major operation in Iraq progressed.

“I don’t deal well with the media,” I’d told the Secretary. “That’s more Norm Schwarzkopf’s style. I need someone press-savvy to help me navigate the rapids.” The Secretary had smiled… and two weeks later I had Jim Wilkinson.

Jim looked a little like Tom Sawyer, without the fishing pole. But he proved to be one of the most astute press handlers I could have hoped for. He arrived in Tampa spring-loaded with a brilliant media relations plan that he’d worked out with Torie Clark.

She and Rumsfeld had hatched something innovative for print and electronic media coverage of the operation, should we go to war. When I heard the term “embedded media,” it sounded dangerous. Assigning newspaper and magazine writers and broadcast correspondents to combat units could present problems: transportation, support, and liability. And there were concerns about operational security, in this age of satellite phones and Internet video cameras.

But when Torie and Jim briefed me on the details of the program, I saw it as a winner. One of the reasons the press coverage in Afghanistan had been so error-ridden and mediocre—and often anti-military in its bias—was that the journalists had been kept away from combat operations. Instead, they had to depend on leakers for their stories—the kinds of leakers responsible for those famous sixteen AC-130 gunships prepping Objective Gecko.

If the media were actually living and marching with the troops, on the other hand, they would experience war from the perspective of the soldier or Marine. “At least they’ll get their facts straight,” I said. “Besides, the American people deserve to see the professionalism of their sons and daughters in uniform.”

One aspect of the embedding program that won over commanders was the weeklong course in Joint Military Contingency Training for Media that the Pentagon was conducting at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia. It was billed as a boot camp that would teach reporters how to stay alive in combat—and how not to become a burden to the units to which they were assigned. The training itself became a media event, with Marine gunny sergeants and Army NCOs in DCUs and Kevlar helmets sweating squad-size groups of journalists up through the briars of Cardiac Hill. There were mock gas attacks with smoke grenades, and ambushes with “aggressors” firing deafening bursts of blank cartridges from M-60 machine guns.

“L.L. Bean is doing big business,” Jim Wilkinson told me. “You’ve got newsies sitting around Nathan’s on M Street comparing the merits of cleated boot soles and cargo pocket trousers.”

When the program was announced, some Army battalion and brigade commanders complained about the prospect of “babysitting” a bunch of reporters. But when the word spread that the Marine Corps—probably the most PR-wise branch of the military—was seeking “embeds,” the Army joined in the competition for the best print and broadcast reporters.

And as the process unfolded, it became clear that the traditional distrust and animosity between the military and the media was breaking down. I heard reports that journalists who had moved to Camp Pendleton, Fort Stewart, and Fort Bragg were already talking fondly of “my outfit.” This same spirit was spreading on the ships and air bases where reporters were embedded. There was a certain Ernie Pyle spirit developing—reporters bonding with the soldiers and Marines, the troops teaching “their” journalists how to heat an MRE pouch on the engine block of a Humvee and the best way to treat blisters. I pictured the contemporary equivalent of Staff Sgt. Kittle or Corporal Sam Long showing grads of Columbia Journalism School the essential items to carry in a butt pack.

By late November, Torie advised me, there could be as many as six hundred embeds accredited to the Command. “If we conduct this operation, General,” she said, “it’ll be the best-covered war in history.”

On the plane ride out to the AOR, I told Jim Wilkinson with mock gruffness that riding herd on this gaggle of reporters would be his responsibility. “I don’t give a rat’s ass what you do with ’em,” I said, “just keep them out of my hair.”

Jim was no more impressed by star-quality journalists than he was by four-star generals. That was one of the reasons I liked him— besides the fact that he was a Texan who enjoyed the occasional cold beer. But he predicted we’d all get along just fine. “You’re going to learn to love the media, General,” he told me. I never did, but I did come to trust Jim Wilkinson.

 

THE JOINT OPERATIONS CENTER AT CENTCOM’S DEPLOYABLE Command Post in Qatar was in a doublewide trailer, about as long as the permanent facility back at Tampa, but a lot narrower. This JOC also had a more industrial feel, with air-conditioning ducts and fiber-optic cable bundles exposed overhead. Like the JOC at MacDill, this operations center—a sealed rectangular “shelter” within the echoing expanse of a huge green warehouse at Camp as Sayliyah—was softly lit and strangely quiet, even though it housed a hive of eighty-four officers and senior NCOs working their computer consoles and phone networks.

“Let’s run the Romeo Tango Four-Six switch check one more time with feeling,” a lanky colonel from J-6 Communications Director Brigadier General Dennis Moran’s shop announced. A last check to validate the most intricate global military communication system in history.

Moran had dark circles under his sunken eyes; like the rest of us, he was running on caffeine and adrenaline. On display nearby was a greeting card somebody had adapted to the mission at hand: crossing out the word “Christmas,” the joker had penciled in a new message: “MERRY MOTHER OF ALL WARGAMES.”

Exercise Internal Look 03 was one of the most elaborate simulations any combatant command had ever conducted. And it had proven a very valuable, if exhausting, rehearsal of the Hybrid 1003V OPLAN.

The exercise was a “rock drill,” a term with its origins in the Civil War, when officers placed stones on the ground to represent friendly and enemy positions. Instead of chunks of rock, we used computerized simulation vignettes to test our plan for practicality. For four days and nights we simulated the first stages of Phase III—battalions and brigades of the 3rd ID and 1 MEF crossing the digital berm of the Iraqi border, as electronic TLAMs and strike packages from the USS Nimitz and Kitty Hawk pounded regime leadership target sets in and around a digital Baghdad.

The wargame unfolding on the wide plasma screens gave us detailed “Blue Force” tracking—a God’s-eye view that revealed the progress of our units against combinations and permutations of preprogrammed enemy resistance. This was the Information Age’s contribution to the science of war. The CENTCOM staff’s cumulative decades of experience provided the art of war.

I was as tired as everyone else, but pleased with the exercise. The simulations allowed my component commanders and me to fight a vividly realistic, but bloodless, campaign. As expected, problems had emerged: communications bandwidth problems, misinterpreted orders, timing-and-distance issues, seams between elements of the joint force. And the list went on.

The old saw from Fort Monroe, “Peace is hell,” had never been more appropriate. So was the adage “Train hard, Fight easy.” We were knocking the rough edges off a very complex plan. And getting some scraped knuckles in the process.

But the exercise was delivering the goods. In military jargon, this intricate simulation was “validating” the strategic assumptions we’d constructed in the Hybrid 1003V plan.

It was a complex plan. Our ground offensive would proceed along two main avenues of advance from the south, each route having several axes. Army forces, led by the 3rd Infantry Division, would attack up lines of march west of the Euphrates River in a long arc that curved from lines of departure in Kuwait to reach Baghdad. The 1st Marine Expeditionary Force—divided into reinforced Regimental combat teams—would follow the road network along the Tigris River, farther east. The Army and Marines would link up to destroy any surviving Republican Guard units south of the capital. The 4th Infantry Division would advance south from staging areas in Turkey, provided we could persuade the Turks to lend us their territory for a few months. A division-plus-size British ground force would pivot northeast out of Kuwait and isolate Basra, forming a protective cordon around the southern oil fields. And U.S., Brit, and Australian Special Operations Forces would control Iraq’s western desert, preventing the regime freedom of action to launch long-range missiles toward Jordan and Israel.

On paper it looked like an attack against a numerically superior enemy with a relatively small offensive force. Was I tempting fate by defying the war college maxim that an attacking force should have a 3-to-1 numerical advantage over an entrenched defender? “Not a bit of it,” as my Brit friends would say. On the twenty-first-century battlefield, strength would derive from the mass of effective firepower, not simply the number of boots or tank tracks on the ground.

Our ground forces, supported by overwhelming air power, would move so fast and deep into the Iraqi rear that time-and-distance factors would preclude the enemy’s defensive maneuver. And this slow-reacting enemy would be fixed in place by the combined effect of artillery, air support, and attack helicopters.

Without question, our lines of communication would be long and exposed in places, stretching more than three hundred miles from the border of Kuwait to the outskirts of Baghdad. But the object was to destroy the Iraqi military’s will to fight. A larger, slower, methodical, attrition-based attack model could defeat the enemy in detail, and our lines of communication could be better protected with such a force. But the time it would take to stage and launch such a juggernaut would leave Saddam too many strategic options: He could use the time to destroy Iraq’s water or oil infrastructure, launch missiles against his neighbors, or use WMD against our troops—and his track record suggested he wouldn’t think twice about any of those options.

No, maneuver speed would be our most important asset. If high-balling armor units could sustain that speed for days and nights on end, they would own the initiative, and our momentum would overwhelm Iraq’s ability to react—tactically and strategically. We would not apply overwhelming force. Rather, we would apply the overwhelming “mass of effect” of a smaller force. Speed would represent a mass all its own.

In one of the Porta Potties outside the main Command Post in Qatar, someone had scrawled on the green plastic wall, “Franks is a speed freak.” I took a ballpoint and wrote, “You bet,” and then affixed my John Hancock: “Tommy R. Franks, General, USA, Commanding.”

The results of our wargaming convinced me that we could actually combine several phases of the campaign into a single, simultaneous effort, which would take much less time than the one hundred and eighty days I had envisioned. The result came to be known as “5-11-16-125”: five days to position the final airbridge after the President made a decision to launch the operation, eleven days to flow the final pieces of the “start force,” sixteen days of combined air and special operations attacks against key targets, and a total of 125 days to complete the destruction of Iraqi forces and the removal of the regime.

This was a true revolution in warfare.

I took great satisfaction in the jointness of the team I saw developing in CENTCOM. We had men and women in the As Sayliyah JOC, at Camp Doha in Kuwait, at the CAOC in Saudi Arabia, on the ships in the Gulf, at the Special Ops FOBs, and back in Tampa, and they all functioned as a unified team. An Army major could relay a request for close air support from a Marine captain on the ground to a flight of Air Force F-16 fighter-bombers. A senior Air Force NCO at U.S. Space Command in Colorado could serve a Special Forces A-Team’s requirement for reconnaissance satellite coverage. Navy ships could launch TLAMs on targets identified by a CIA Ground Branch operator.

“I like it,” I told the gang in JOC. “From where I’m sitting, you guys are beginning to look like genuine joint interagency warfighters.”

 

BACK FROM THE AOR, I BOUNCED AMONG CENTCOM HEADquarters in Tampa, the Pentagon, the White House, and Camp David. Now that the Hybrid concept had become OPLAN 1003V, it was all a matter of fine-tuning. Week after week, we wrestled the “what ifs”—considering contingencies as diverse as the loss of Turkey, the loss of Special Ops FOBs in Jordan, the loss of bases in Saudi Arabia, Fortress Baghdad, and Iraqi use of WMD.

As the military commander, part of my job was to project confidence. And that was not difficult, because I was confident.

But many in Washington were anxious. The U.N. inspectors, who had returned to Iraq in late November, were encountering a mixture of cooperation and blatant interference. When the Iraqis produced an ostensibly “full and final” WMD declaration as thick as ten Manhattan phone books, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz claimed that it proved his country had no weapons of mass destruction—despite the fact that the document was basically a collection of papers judged false back in the 1990s by the same U.N. inspectors to whom Iraq presented the declaration. For Saddam Hussein’s regime, time was running out.

None of us wanted to precipitate a war if diplomacy might still work. But we did want to build a military force in the region to add muscle to that diplomacy. And this involved a certain risk. So far, no one in Washington had leaked the specifics of our planning. Editorial and op-ed pages were debating the merits of preemptive military action, but there wasn’t much vocal opposition to our approach in either Congress or the media. And, as the window for diplomacy was closing, hundreds of reporters and correspondents were either already embedded with Coalition military units or awaiting assignment.

Our force level was mounting in the theater. By mid-January, it seemed probable that the President would commit the nation to war— sooner rather than later.

 

I MET WITH KING ABDULLAH II OF JORDAN IN HIS HOME IN AMMAN on the afternoon of Thursday, January 23, 2003. “General,” he said, “from reliable intelligence sources, I believe the Iraqis are hiding chemical and biological weapons.”

The Jordanians did have reliable intelligence sources in Iraq. I trusted them, and I trusted the king’s judgment. And I wasn’t surprised at what his sources had reported. I’d spent days and nights over the previous twelve years worrying about Saddam’s WMD program, and the effect that such weapons could have on our troops—or on my country. I thanked the king, left his home, drove to the hotel, and straight to the Comm room to pass the information I’d been given to Secretary Rumsfeld.

Four days later, on Monday, January 27, I was flying from Pakistan to refuel at Crete when my trip coordinator, Air Force Lt. Colonel Manny Chaves, tapped me on the shoulder. “Thirty-five knot crosswinds at Souda Bay, General,” he reported. “Looks like we’re going to have to head to Cairo.”

“Damn it,” I said. My unannounced arrival in Egypt would cause a spin-up at the embassy and probably in President Hosni Mubarak’s office. “Not a hard decision, Manny. Either crash into a Greek mountainside or head to Cairo.”

Hosni Mubarak was friendly as always. But he was clearly concerned with our military buildup and the tension in Iraq.

He leaned close and spoke to me in accented but readily comprehensible English. “General Franks,” he said, choosing his words carefully, as Abdullah had done. “You must be very, very careful. We have spoken with Saddam Hussein. He is a madman. He has WMD— biologicals, actually—and he will use them on your troops.”

An hour later, in the Embassy communications room, I passed this message to Don Rumsfeld.

 

THROUGHOUT OUR PLANNING OF 1003V, WE DISCUSSED PHASE IV—“the Day After.” A postwar Iraq might be modeled on post–World War II Japan or Germany. We considered the pros and cons of senior U.S. Army and Marine Corps officers and British military commanders working with Iraqi tribal sheiks all across the country. And we studied the feasibility of an interim government in Iraq formed with international support, along the lines of Hamid Karzai’s administration in Afghanistan.

As in Afghanistan, I knew that humanitarian assistance and reconstruction—linked to security—would become top priorities as soon as major combat operations ended. And our planning assumption was that we would guide the Iraqi interim government in building a military and a paramilitary security force drawn from the better units of the defeated regular army. These units would serve side-by-side with Coalition forces to restore order and prevent clashes among the religious and ethnic factions, just as the Northern Alliance and anti-Taliban Pashtun oppositions groups were forming a new Afghan National Army.

Reconstruction—including a host of New Deal–style public works projects—would be required to employ large numbers of Iraqis to jump-start momentum to build a “new Iraq.” With a disciplined, Arabic-speaking security force cooperating with the Coalition military, the stage would be set for reconstruction nationwide. Heads of households would have jobs, living wages to feed their families, and the chance to send their children to school, rather than putting them to work as child labor. Iraqis would have a stake in the future of a free Iraq.

There was no question: Phase IV would be a crucial period. Having won the war, we would have to secure the peace. And securing the peace would not be easy in a country that had been raped and massacred for more than three decades under Saddam Hussein. There were deep divisions among Sunnis and Shias, Kurds and Arabs, haves and have-nots; the region’s traditional tribal rivalries would be hard to overcome. It would take time—perhaps years. And the costs would be high, certainly in money and conceivably in lives.

There was no doubt about the actions that would be required. Coalition military leaders across Iraq would provide civil affairs expertise, governance assistance, security, and Humanitarian Assistance to millions of Iraqis. Our conventional forces and Special Forces

teams had the capability and expertise to accomplish these tasks, and Gene Renuart’s fifty-pound brains had done a masterful job in identifying and providing the resources to Coalition units to do the job.

Given our key policy goal of establishing a representative government in Iraq, though, it would be necessary to establish civilian control across the country as soon as possible. The questions were: How long would it be necessary to maintain military rule in Iraq? How quickly could the Iraqis take over? What form should a “Provisional Authority” take? These were tough questions, and there was no easy recipe for the answers.

On one hand, larger Coalition military forces and martial law might be required to stay in country for years, in order to preserve security. On the other, the Iraqis might claim their country as their own: they might welcome the liberation and organize themselves swiftly to control Iraq without Coalition help.

These problems commanded hours and days of discussion and debate among CENTCOM planners and Washington officials. If a true consensus leader—a kind of Iraqi Hamid Karzai—could be located, then a representative government might be possible in the short term. Majority and minority factions would be represented, and Iraq would become a model for the Arab-Muslim world. But where to find that consensus leader?

Many in Washington considered Ahmad Chalabi a likely choice. Chalabi had risen to prominence after Congress passed, and President Bill Clinton signed, the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. This legislation declared that it would be the “policy of the United States to seek to remove the Saddam Hussein regime from power in Iraq and to replace it with a democratic government.” The Act directed the President to designate one or more suitable Iraqi opposition organizations to receive assistance. Chalabi’s umbrella Iraqi National Congress, led mainly by anti-Saddam exiles, was designated such a group.

But Chalabi had his fervent detractors, in both the State Department and the CIA. They cited his trail of questionable financial dealings over a span of years in the Middle East, and doubted that he had maintained the close contacts inside Iraq that he claimed—especially because he had not lived in the country for over thirty years. In many ways, Chalabi suffered the fate of other exile-émigré leaders, from White Russians in 1920s Paris to the Gaullist Free French in England during World War II: No matter how sincerely he may have desired to liberate his homeland, he was badly out of touch with what it would take to do so. I met Chalabi only once, and while I was impressed by his sincerity, I was disappointed by his obvious view of his own importance, and his stated opinion that he could “easily” rally Iraq around himself. He might be a good man, but I knew enough about the difficulties Iraq faced to see him as naïve.

And many leaders in the region were uniformly set against Chalabi as an outsider, a “Gucci” leader who would never be able to unite the ethnic and religious factions. In Washington, the battle lines were drawn. With no Iraqi Karzai in evidence, the debate between the State and Defense Departments continued. Meanwhile, America drew closer to war. Iraq’s new leadership would have to be identified on the fly, even as the military liberation was under way. Perhaps an Iraqi general would step forward, or a figure from the educated elite.

However it played out, of course, a Provisional Authority would be required. As I read the newspaper stories—and watched the TV news channels wring their hands over the prospect that I would serve as the so-called “MacArthur of Iraq”—I weighed the obvious pluses and minuses of such an occupation:

• Improved security… under control of a perceived occupying bully
• Improved near-term efficiency… giving rise to longer-term dependency
• Improved ability to dispense reconstruction funding …with reduced ability to obtain such funding from the U.S. Congress or the international community

I could see no elegant solution to this very complex problem. Civilian control of government has long been an American value. How to move Iraq forward using this distinctly American model was problematic. One thing was certain, however: Phase IV would require civilian leadership. In addition to boots on the ground, we would need wingtips on the ground—hundreds, perhaps thousands, of civilians from America and the international community, from governmental advisers to eager investors.

Key to all of this, of course, would be security. But security would not be possible in Iraq without immediate reconstruction and civic action.

Then, on a warm Florida afternoon, Don Rumsfeld called. “Tom,” he said, “do you know Jay Garner?”

“Yes, Mr. Secretary,” I told Rumsfeld. “I love him. Great Army general.” I repeated one of my favorite stories about Lt. General Jay Garner: When he retired, a reporter asked him whether he would change anything about his life if he had it to live again. “Sure, I’d change a lot of things,” Jay answered. “But I’d marry the same woman, and I’d join the United States Army.”

“Good,” Rumsfeld said. “I like him too. How would he do as our senior man in charge of Iraqi occupation and reconstruction?”

“He’d be great,” I said. Garner had been very effective in preventing a humanitarian disaster among northern Iraq’s Kurds after Desert Storm in 1991. “Huge job,” I told Rumsfeld. “But Jay could do it if you trust him… and if he could get the right support from every agency of the U.S. government. That’s going to include levels of funding unheard of since World War II.”

“He’ll be your subordinate,” Rumsfeld said, “but he’ll be my man in Iraq.”

“That will work, but we’ll have to fight the problem of every bureaucrat inside the Beltway fucking with him if he’s perceived as a Washington guy rather than a Tommy Franks guy.”

“You are the commander,” the Secretary said. “He will work for you.”

Over the weeks ahead, Jay Garner and I would meet; he would build a team of specialists and experts from across the U.S. government, deploy the team to Kuwait, establish links with our commanders on the ground, and prepare to enter Iraq on the heels of our attacking troops.

Jay and his team spent countless hours with the CENTCOM staff and the key planners on the Joint Staff and in OSD, hammering out processes and procedures that would place U.S. Army civil affairs specialists in every province in Iraq. Secured by Coalition forces, these teams would work with Iraqis to build local governance in each major population center. And local Iraqis would represent every ethnic, tribal, and religious interest in the country in establishing national leadership. Jay and his headquarters would set up operations in Baghdad, co-located with our on-scene Coalition commander and would organize the required ministries—Oil, Defense, Constabulary, Treasury, and so on—to provide “provisional authority” during transition to a new Iraqi government.

But the challenge was daunting, and it was clear that certain practical steps would be required as soon as Saddam’s regime was removed:

• Securing massive funding for the immediate needs of the Iraqi people
• Hiring tens of thousands of Iraqi ex-soldiers, all of whom needed money to care for their families
• Identifying political leadership that would be trusted by Iraqis, and capable of assisting and ultimately replacing an occupying military force
• Implementing a de-Baathification policy that wasn’t so cumbersome that it essentially disenfranchised Iraq’s educated middle class
• Adjusting American expectations that the process would be fast and painless

The military coalition would liberate Iraq, set conditions for civilian authority to stand-up a provisional government supported by Coalition stability forces, and provide security until Iraq could field her own security forces—a common-sense approach to a complex problem.

Naming Jay Garner was a good first step, but it was only a first step. Washington would be responsible for providing the policy—and, I hoped, sufficient resources—to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people: jobs, power grids, water infrastructure, schools, hospitals, and the promise of prosperity. Iraq’s oil wealth would be shared by people who had experienced only abuse, sacrifice, and penury for more than thirty years.

The plan depended on two equal imperatives—security and civil action. Only if we achieved both could Iraq be transformed into an example of the power of representative government.

 

I WAS GLAD THAT WE HAD FINALLY REACHED THE STAGE IN THE iterations where a plan—not just a Commander’s Concept—was emerging. For one thing, we were finally able to move beyond the hypothetical environment we’d been working in for months, and start deploying ships, planes, and troops.

For another, I had already spent longer than I liked skirting the issue of a “war plan” in my dealings with the press.

At one press conference in Tampa on May 21, 2002, a reporter had asked me about the force level necessary for a successful invasion of Iraq. “My boss has not yet asked me to put together a plan to do that,” I had answered, and it was the truth. In May 2002, we were offering the President options, not a plan.

I couldn’t request the Army to cut deployment orders and move equipment based on a concept. A plan was a different instrument altogether. A concept was theory. A plan was something we could execute.

In May 2002, we were still discussing theory; I had no executable document in my headquarters. Now we had finalized 1003V. We had a plan.

 

ON MONDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2003, I RECEIVED A LONG-AWAITED Defense Department Inspector General report that had been pending since October 2002. It stemmed from a complaint that a disgruntled officer serving on my staff had filed in October 2002.

At the center of his allegations was my wife, Cathy. Specifically, the officer complained that I had allowed subordinates on official duty time to provide personal services to Cathy; that I had violated military regulations by allowing Cathy to fly on government aircraft; and, most seriously, that I had breached Department of Defense security regulations by giving her unauthorized access to classified information.

I believed the charges were absurd. But I also recognized their dangerous potential to upset the command at a time of pressing activity in both Afghanistan and the Arabian Gulf. As soon as the allegations had surfaced, I’d called Donald Rumsfeld.

“Mr. Secretary, I don’t believe there’s anything to this, but I think every charge should be investigated thoroughly. If I have made any mistakes, I’ll own up to them. It’s important that the investigation be open and complete.”

“We’ll get the IG working on it. But I don’t want you sidetracked,” Rumsfeld had said.

“Let the chips fall where they will. I’ve got important work to do,” I’d said.

That had been in October, and since then the bureaucratic wheels had ground slowly. I knew from my own experience as a young major investigating general officer conduct that this level of investigation should have moved more quickly. But I had no control over the process.

The report, when it did come, was very thorough. The IG found no substance to the allegation that my staff had provided personal services to Cathy, and as to her accompanying me on trips to the AOR, the report noted no wrongdoing.

The most serious allegation was that I had allowed her to see Top Secret documents aboard the aircraft. This was in fact not true, but I could not prove that I hadn’t discussed such documents with my staff while she was present in the aircraft conference room. When the matter had been raised in 2002, Cathy had signed an “Inadvertent Disclosure Agreement” that prevented her from divulging any information she might have overheard. Coupled with the fact that she had had a Secret security clearance for more than two years, this satisfied me—and Donald Rumsfeld.

On my first trip to Washington after the IG report was released, I had discussed the matter with the Secretary.

“The more power and authority a person has, the more careful he must be,” he’d said. “Remember, perceptions count.”

“Got it, Sir,” I had said.

And with that, I proceeded to do my job.

 

ON WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2003, COLIN POWELL MADE HIS long-awaited presentation on the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to the United Nations Security Council. He had prepared for this event by studying agent reports, overhead imagery, communications intercepts, and other technical “collection” that the Central Intelligence Agency had compiled for his review. Powell had also pored over the voluminous reports of the U.N. weapons inspectors themselves, who had determined that Iraq had not accounted for massive quantities of biological weapons and precursor compounds for nerve gas such as Sarin and VX.

As the world watched, Colin Powell, with Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet seated behind him, made the case to the Security Council that, at best, Saddam Hussein’s regime had willfully deceived United Nations weapons inspectors since 1991—and were still doing so.

The Secretary of State used recordings of communications intercepts in which Iraqi military and security organization officers discussed hiding “forbidden ammo” from inspectors. He showed reconnaissance satellite images of suspicious industrial sites and suspected mobile bio-weapon laboratories.

He cited the links between Saddam Hussein’s government and an aligned al Qaeda terrorist-group Ansar al-Islam, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

“Ambition and hatred are enough to bring Iraq and al Qaeda together,” he emphasized.

Since Saddam Hussein “is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction… and make more,” Colin asked, “Should we take the risk that he will not someday use these weapons at a time and a place of his choosing, at a time when the world is in a much weaker position to respond? The United States will not and cannot run that risk to the American people.”

Some of the Security Council members endorsed his findings. France, Germany, and Russia did not.

As the Secretary spoke, I thought: This is a powerful presentation; there is no way we can leave the fate of our children and grandchildren to chance. To do so would be a mistake—of grave proportions.

 

JOHN ABIZAID WAS A BRILLIANT LEADER WITH A STRONG RECORD of combat leadership. He knew the region well and spoke Arabic. With him as my Forward Deputy in Qatar, and Rifle DeLong managing CENTCOM Main as my Rear Deputy in Tampa, I was able to move around the region, maintaining contact with key leaders, while shuttling to Washington regularly to confer with Donald Rumsfeld and the President.

On Wednesday, March 5, I had my last prewar meeting on Iraq with the President and the National Security team in the White House. Coalition ground, naval, air, and Special Operations forces in the region were growing rapidly, and now totaled more than two hundred thousand troops. An additional sixty thousand American and British combat and support units were en route to the Gulf.

By the third week of March, our total strength in all components—including our Gulf State Coalition allies in Kuwait—would number 292,000. Of these, there would be approximately 170,000 soldiers and Marines assigned to the Combined Forces Land Component Command (CFLCC).

“Mr. President,” I reported, “all key infrastructure improvements have been completed, and the required force is now in place in the theater.”

George Bush was focused—very serious. “Where are we with Turkey?”

It was one of our few remaining major concerns: The new Turkish government had, in fact, denied permission to pass the 4th Infantry Division through their territory into Iraq. But we had been given approval to overfly Turkey from aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean, and negotiations based on a multibillion-dollar aid package were still ongoing.

“The 4th Infantry, with all their equipment loaded on thirty-seven ships, is in the eastern Med, Sir,” I explained. “If the Turks change their minds, we will offload and be on Iraq’s northern border within ten days. If not, we will transit the Suez and offload the Division in Kuwait—probably after commencement of hostilities.”

Bringing in those combat troops would raise our Land Component strength by 15,000 soldiers. But the President, Rumsfeld, and I had discussed another equally important function of the 4th ID: to serve as a cornerstone of our deception plan. While the Division remained poised in the Mediterranean to fix enemy units in the north, we were passing information to the Iraqi regime through clandestine conduits that we had a secret arrangement with the Turks, who, at the last moment, would open their ports to the Division. And reconnaissance indicated that almost thirteen Iraqi divisions remained north of Baghdad: Saddam, it appeared, might be taking the bait.

Next, I explained the time phasing of combat operations. The latest aerial satellite imagery revealed a thin speed bump of Iraqi regular army forces between the Kuwaiti border and the cities south of Baghdad, where Saddam’s defense was structured in depth with the Republican Guard. This enemy force positioning was exactly as our intelligence planners had predicted: if our deception worked, we would be ready to initiate near-simultaneous air, ground, and SOF operations on the President’s order.

“Mr. President,” I concluded, “I would like forty-eight hours’ warning if you decide to execute this operation. That will give me time to get the Special Operators into western Iraq to close the Scud baskets.”

Rumsfeld, Cheney, Powell, and the President discussed giving Saddam Hussein one final ultimatum. Either he would leave Iraq voluntarily—together with his sons Uday and Qusay, who were their dictator father’s surrogates—or the Coalition would enter and remove them from power.

“Forty-eight hours,” President Bush repeated. “Two days. All right, Tommy, you’ll have the warning if it comes to that.”

 

I DIDN’T HAVE TIME TO PASS THROUGH TAMPA BEFORE HEADING BACK to CENTCOM Forward in Qatar. But I did speak to Cathy, Jacqy, and the grandkids on the phone.

“I’ll talk to you in a day or so, dear,” I told Cathy as the Pentagon sedan rolled up to Spar 06 on the ramp at Andrews.

My fingers went to the wedding ring Cathy had given me so long ago, and I felt a tear cross my face. I pulled a small Bible and a wrinkled American flag from my uniform pocket. The flag was one Jacqy had given me as I’d deployed to Desert Shield in 1990. After that war I’d returned it to her as a souvenir; now she’d sent it to me again for luck. And the Bible was a gift from Cathy’s grandfather, Jimmie Ellis, whom I had loved as the grandparent I’d never had, until his death in 1994.

I opened the Bible to my favorite scripture, Ephesians 6: 11–17. “Put on the whole armor of God… stand your ground…putting on the sturdy belt of truth… and the breastplate of God’s righteousness …use faith as your shield… and take the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.” How many times had I turned to this page? And how many more times, in the days ahead, would I call on my faith as a source of strength?

 

I SAT ALONE IN MY OFFICE IN THE PREFAB HEADQUARTERS NEAR THE JOC in the warehouse in Camp As Sayliyah, watching as George Bush addressed the nation and the world. It was before dawn on Tuesday, March 18, 2003, in Qatar, and primetime Monday night in the States.

The President traced the Iraqi regime’s “history of reckless aggression.” And then he issued the ultimatum we had discussed two weeks earlier in the White House.

“Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within forty-eight hours,” Bush said. “Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict, commenced at a time of our choosing.”

The clock was running. I was about to command troops in battle once more. But this time I would not ride in an APC through the jungle in Vietnam, or in a Humvee across the gravel beds of the Wadi al Batin. I would watch the battle on wide plasma screens, far from the rattle of the guns, the blast of shells, the screams of the wounded.

I would be physically safe—but I would share the fatigue, the elation, and the fears of my troops.

 

OUR FINAL PREWAR VIDEO TELECONFERENCE WAS ENDING ON THE afternoon of Wednesday, March 19, 2003.

“Mr. President,” I said, facing George Bush through the secure VTC link, “this force is ready. D-Day, H-Hour is 2100 hours tonight Iraqi time, 1800 hours Greenwich Mean, 1300 hours East Coast time.”

President Bush nodded to the members of the National Security Council seated with him in Washington, then turned toward me.

“All right. For the sake of peace in the world and security for our country and the rest of the free world…” He paused; his advisers listened intently. “…And for the freedom of the Iraqi people, as of this moment I will give Secretary Rumsfeld the order necessary to execute Operation Iraqi Freedom.

“Tommy,” the President added, his voice firm, “may God bless the troops.”

“Mr. President,” I answered, “may God bless America.”

I saluted, and the Commander in Chief returned the salute.