10

THE GULF

1990–1991

Late in July 1990, Saddam Hussein, the ruler of Iraq, personally assured Hosni Mubarak, the president of Egypt, that despite the deployment south of Iraqi troops to the country’s border with Kuwait, he was not going to invade his much smaller neighbor. Foolishly, Mubarak believed Saddam. Why? Because, in addition to the Iraqi’s pledge, there was a tradition that Arab countries did not make war on fellow Arab nations. Saddam, of course, had lied. On August 2, 1990, one hundred thousand Iraqi soldiers, led by tanks of the Republican Guard, the Iraqi army’s elite force, crossed over the border, easily pushing aside Kuwait’s outmatched armed forces.

Once in control of Kuwait, Saddam increased the number of troops and again redeployed them south, this time to the boundary Kuwait shares with Saudi Arabia. Rightly alarmed, the latter’s rulers quickly agreed to consultations with America’s secretary of defense. This was Dick Cheney, who brought with him satellite images of Iraqi units massed along the border. These images confirmed the very real threat Saddam’s army posed to the Saudi kingdom.

King Fahd of Saudi Arabia was in a difficult position. He knew his conservative Islamic countrymen would object to American military forces being stationed in the kingdom. But the king also understood that the Saudi military was ill-prepared to stop the Iraqis should Saddam again order his troops into battle. The king and his advisors believed that if asked, the United States would come to the rescue of Saudi Arabia. No doubt, they were aware of a letter received earlier from an American president:

I wish to renew to Your Majesty the assurances . . . that the United States is interested in the preservation of the independence and territorial integrity of Saudi Arabia. No threat to your Kingdom could occur which would not be of immediate concern to the United States.

The president was Harry S. Truman. The letter was dated October 30, 1950, and delivered to Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, then king of Saudi Arabia. Much later, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan would write similar letters. These, like Truman’s, merely echoed a pledge made to the Saudis in 1945 by Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Why did American presidents make such statements? The answer is simple. The pledges reflect a simple, well-understood deal: in return for a Saudi commitment to provide a continuous supply of oil to America and the West at a reasonable price, the United States would guarantee the independence of the Saudi kingdom. It was an arrangement that served the interests of both countries.

Before requesting America’s protection, King Fahd laid down three conditions. The first was that U.S. forces would leave the kingdom when requested to do so by the Saudis. The second was that the Americans would not initiate combat operations without first obtaining his permission. The third condition, one on which the king placed great importance, was that American soldiers in Saudi Arabia would respect the Saudi way of life. With President George H. W. Bush’s concurrence, Cheney accepted the king’s conditions. The secretary of defense then set forth one of his own. He said that the Saudis would have to pay for the costs of maintaining U.S. troops in the desert kingdom. When the king agreed, the stage was set for the deployment of American troops to Saudi Arabia.

The first soldiers to arrive were from the 82nd Airborne Division, one of America’s most elite combat units. In 1990, the 82nd was the U.S. Army’s on-call division, constantly ready to ship overseas should the need arise. On August 7, one of the division’s three brigades flew to Dhahran, a Saudi city on the Persian Gulf that became the port of entry for soldiers ordered to Saudi Arabia. A week later, more than twelve thousand troops had arrived. These were complemented by U.S. marines, whose number eventually would grow to forty-two thousand.

While American military personnel were transported to Saudi Arabia by air, their equipment came by sea. The United States had prepositioned military equipment aboard ships stationed in several locations around the world. These vessels, and others, were ordered to the Persian Gulf so that fairly soon after the troops arrived, so did their equipment.

At first, as the buildup began, U.S. troops would not have been able to stop a determined Iraqi attack. Jokingly, the troopers of the 82nd called themselves “Iraqi speed bumps.” Their presence was symbolic. They represented America’s commitment to defend Saudi territory. As their numbers increased, and as military aircraft flew in, naval vessels took up station, and the U.S. presence in the Gulf region became formidable. By November, it had grown to comprise well over two hundred thousand men and women. That month, Colin Powell, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, America’s top military officer, told President Bush that the U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia were sufficient to defend Fahd’s kingdom. The operation to build up the force and make it ready to fight had been given the name Desert Shield.

In command of all U.S. forces in the Gulf was Norman Schwarzkopf. He was a four-star general in the American army, the highest rank possible (in World War II Congress had established five-star generals, of which during the conflict there had been only four: Marshall, Eisenhower, MacArthur, and Arnold). Officially, Schwarzkopf headed up Central Command. This was one of six joint commands the United States had established to cover large geographic areas. Encompassing nineteen countries, Central Command focused on the Arabian Peninsula and adjacent waters. At the time, it was the least prestigious of the six.

Schwarzkopf was a good choice for the job. During World War II his father, an army officer, had been stationed in Persia administering Lend-Lease aid to the Soviet Union. As a youngster, Schwarzkopf had spent time there, so he was knowledgeable of the Middle East geography and comfortable with Arabian culture. As chief of Central Command, Schwarzkopf would prove more than capable of handling the diplomatic chores of his position. And, as we shall see, he also knew how to plan a war.

Previously, Central Command had focused on a possible invasion of Iran by the Soviet Union. Prior to Schwarzkopf’s arrival that had been seen as the most likely scenario requiring a U.S. military response. Schwarzkopf, however, realized this scenario was no longer realistic. Once established in Florida, where Central Command was located, the general decided to have his planners take a new tack. “I was determined that the scenario . . . would be one in which the enemy was not the Soviet Union, but Iraq.”

***

Two factors explain why General Schwarzkopf identified Iraq as a threat to U.S. interests within the lands assigned to Central Command. The first was the ruler of Iraq himself. Saddam, a thug, was someone who had little respect for the lives of others. Ruling through fear and intimidation, he considered war a tool of statecraft and was unfazed by the resultant loss of life. Moreover, Saddam was unpredictable. What made no sense to an American general such as Schwarzkopf might well seem appealing to the leader of Iraq.

The second factor causing Central Command to redirect its war plans was the Iraqi army. With 1.1 million men under arms, this was the fourth largest army in the world. Well equipped with tanks and field artillery, the army numbered far more than the defense of Iraq required. Additionally, Saddam’s army was battle-tested. It had fought—and fought well—an eight-year war with Iran. Its units, especially the Republican Guards, were comfortable with combat, not just with parades in Baghdad.

One aspect of Saddam’s military was of particular concern to Schwarzkopf, indeed to any opponent of the Iraqi army. This was its possession of chemical weapons and the willingness to use them. Saddam had employed such weapons against his own people. No doubt, he would be willing to use them in a battle against an enemy force. When the Gulf War began in 1991, nothing worried Norman Schwarzkopf more than the chemical weapons he expected the Iraqis to use against his troops.

Having had their numbers increased shortly after the invasion of August 2, by the following January the Iraqi forces in Kuwait numbered 545,000. This was no token force. It was equipped with several thousand tanks and more than three thousand pieces of artillery. Many of the tanks were Russian-built T-72s. While not the Soviet Union’s top tank, the T-72 was well armored, had a powerful main gun, and in trained hands was a weapon to be reckoned with.

Saddam’s army in Kuwait was positioned to repulse any effort to dislodge it. Most of the troops were massed along Kuwait’s border with Saudi Arabia. Others fortified the Kuwait coast. There also were Iraqi troops in the west, but Saddam did not expect an attack from that direction because an invading force would have to maneuver through miles and miles of desert, something the Iraqi leader thought would be extremely difficult.

The Iraqi army considered itself expert in defensive warfare and with good reason. In the war with Iran, the Iraqis had constructed an array of integrated defensive positions that effectively repulsed many an Iranian assault. In Kuwait, in preparing for a possible attack from the south, the Iraqis built extensive fortifications. They laid down minefields. They rolled out barbed wire. They established supply depots. They constructed oil-filled trenches (to be set afire when the enemy approached). They dug antitank ditches. And they bulldozed large sand berms behind which partially hidden T-72s were deployed. Further, and importantly, they prelocated artillery “kill zones” onto which would rain massive amounts of explosives from the much vaunted artillery of the Iraqi army. Together, these obstacles created a military barrier that no invading force could take lightly.

In front of and behind these fortifications, Saddam’s general established two lines, or belts, of men and machines. The first line, nearest the border with Saudi Arabia, consisted of second-tier infantry units. The second line of defense was made up of better equipped armored divisions and artillery brigades. The infantry’s job was to slow down and disrupt the invaders, who then, mired in the obstacles constructed, would be destroyed by the firepower of the second line. In reserve, behind the tanks and artillery pieces, were the Republican Guards. These elite troops would be directed to spots where needed and would finish off any of the enemy who somehow survived the devastation wrought by the network of Iraqi defenses.

As the Iraqis concentrated on strengthening their position in Kuwait and Norman Schwarzkopf assembled a force capable of defending Saudi Arabia, President Bush and his Secretary of State, James A. Baker, in Washington, focused on diplomacy. Their efforts had two targets: the United Nations and those countries that might join the United States in ousting Saddam from Kuwait. In these efforts, Bush and Baker displayed great skill and met with considerable success.

At the United Nations the Security Council acted promptly. It passed a resolution on the day of the invasion itself condemning the Iraqi action. In time, fourteen additional measures would be agreed to. These resolutions tightened the pressures on Iraq, which found itself increasingly isolated. Iraq’s standing in the world was hardly helped when Saddam Hussein announced that Westerners in Iraq would be held hostage and placed next to possible military targets as “human shields.”

The most significant Security Council resolution was passed on November 29. Frustrated by Iraq’s intransigence, the U.N. council authorized the use of force to eject Saddam’s troops from Kuwait if the Iraqis did not leave the country by January 15, 1991. With this resolution Bush and Baker had the international community’s permission to go to war.

The president and the secretary, however, realized that should the United States be the only nation besides Saudi Arabia to do battle with Iraq, the Arab world might well view the Americans as Westerners typically taking advantage of Arab nations, all for the sake of oil. To counter this interpretation, Bush and Baker worked hard to build a coalition of nations allied to rid Kuwait of the Iraqis.

They started with Egypt, whose president was more than willing to help, given the blatant lie Saddam had delivered. Other Arab states in the region also signed up. These included Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. Also joining the Coalition were two nations whose borders touched those of Iraq. These were Syria and Turkey. The former’s participation was a surprise as it traditionally had (and still has) little love for the United States. Syria actually provided troops to Schwarzkopf’s command, though at the last minute it declined to have them participate in the Coalition’s offensive operations.

Turkey’s participation in part was made possible by James Baker’s visit to Ankara, where he enlisted the Turks’ support. A key aspect of this support was permission for the Americans to use the air base at Incirlik, which meant that Saddam had to watch his northern borders and not fully commit military assets to either southern Iraq or Kuwait.

Of course, Bush and Baker targeted America’s traditional allies as well. The result was that Australia, Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom joined the Coalition. So did Czechoslovakia and Poland, Morocco and Pakistan. In total, the two men, again demonstrating considerable skill, assembled a coalition of thirty nations intent on responding to the Iraq invasion. One of these nations was France, which deployed an armored division to the Gulf.

Perhaps the most important American ally willing to fight alongside the United States was Great Britain. Then possessing a first-rate military, Britain sent tanks, troops, and aircraft of the Royal Air Force. Eventually, British personnel in the Coalition would number some forty-five thousand men and women.

The British also committed naval vessels to the Coalition. Among these were ships essential to success in confronting the Iraqis, but in an arena of warfare that the U.S. Navy had neglected. This arena was mine warfare. The vessels were the Royal Navy’s Hunt class boats, perhaps the most sophisticated coastal mine-hunting ships in the world. As the Iraqis had laid more than twelve hundred mines in the confined waters of the Persian Gulf, the British boats became indispensable.

***

By the fall of 1990, it had become apparent that diplomatic efforts to have the Iraqis leave Kuwait peacefully were not succeeding and likely would not be successful. The Americans began to plan an offensive strategy to remove Saddam’s troops by force of arms.

The plan of attack was to be called Desert Storm. However, the number of U.S. troops then in the Gulf, approximately two hundred thousand, was deemed by Schwarzkopf to be insufficient. He wanted more soldiers and greater firepower. The four Americans making the decisions in Washington—Bush, Baker, Cheney, and Powell—gave him what he sought. Reserves were called up, and combat units stationed in Germany were dispatched to Saudi Arabia.

Among these units were two U.S. Army armored divisions. They were equipped with the finest tank in the world, the M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tank. Previous American tanks had been outclassed by enemy machines. Not so with the Abrams. It was a high-tech wonder. The tank’s armored protection was highly advanced, its gun and ammunition were extremely lethal, and its fire control system unequaled. The M1A1 was a superb weapon of war. Its only drawback was fuel consumption. An Abrams tank got 1.8 miles to the gallon.

Joining the two armored divisions from Germany were additional units, including one, the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, that we shall hear of later in this narrative. Together, these forces, soon to include a British tank division, were called VII Corps (in U.S. Army terminology, a corps is two or more divisions and is commanded by a lieutenant general). Eventually, VII Corps would comprise 146,000 men. Its job was to smash the most powerful units of the Iraqi military, the Republican Guards.

A second U.S. Army corps also was assembled. This was XVIII Corps. It too was a powerful unit. As with VII Corps, it was equipped with artillery, infantry, tanks, and helicopters. Placed to the left of VII Corps, this strike force would have a different task, one calling for a quick flanking operation rather than a head-on direct assault.

Of course, the buildup of forces was not limited to ground troops. Aircraft too were deployed. These included the most advanced machines the United States Air Force possessed. One of these, the F-117, was an extraordinary tool of aerial warfare. True, it was small and not very fast. But by the use of exotic materials and radical design, the aircraft was invisible to radar. This meant that at night the F-117 was able to fly undetected to its target and back. In the plan General Schwarzkopf and his air commander, Lieutenant General Charles Horner, were devising, that target was Baghdad.

Also included in the air campaign being put together were aircraft belonging to the United States Navy. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait conjure up images of desert sand and oil derricks, not of ships at sea. Yet Kuwait has a coastline and the Saudi Kingdom is flanked by two bodies of water, the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. Both would host American aircraft carriers.

The warships ordered to the region were not limited to carriers and minesweepers. They included cruisers, destroyers, frigates, and the always essential supply ships as well. They also included one type of vessel that all navies, save one, had long retired from service.

On October 14, 1990, the USS Missouri departed Long Beach, California, and steamed toward the Persian Gulf. She was a battleship, first commissioned in 1944. Heavily armored and packing nine enormous guns, the Missouri was the one of four Iowa class boats that had been modernized and returned to sea during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Each had served its country well. Sent to the Gulf, the Missouri and her sister ship the USS Wisconsin would provide fire support to Coalition forces attacking Iraqi positions.

As Schwarzkopf received the troops and firepower he needed to conduct offensive operations, the ever present problems associated with assembling, maintaining, and training a large military force became critical. Logistics, the military art critical to battlefield success, was a constant concern to the Central Command leader. Troops arriving by air had to be reunited with their equipment that had come by sea. Tanks painted in dark green had to be repainted in desert sand. Soldiers had to be fed and housed. Medical facilities had to be established and sustained. Everyone in Saudi Arabia had to be issued gas masks and protective gear. By the time Schwarzkopf went on the attack, Central Command personnel numbered approximately six hundred thousand. Keeping them healthy and training them for desert warfare was a logistical challenge of the highest order. Fortunately for the American general, he had on his staff a little known officer who was a genius in the field of logistics.

The officer’s name was William “Gus” Pagonis. A major general in the army, Pagonis planned, bargained, and borrowed in such a manner that the massive American effort in Saudi Arabia never once ran out of gas, literally or figuratively. So well did Gus Pagonis perform his duties that during the Gulf War he received his third star, making him a lieutenant general. His was the only battlefield promotion made during the conflict.

During the time of the American buildup an amusing incident took place at Schwarzkopf’s headquarters in Riyadh. As noted earlier, the Saudis had agreed to pay for the stationing in country of American troops. One evening in late October the general was handed a piece of paper by a Central Command staff officer. It was a check from the Saudis drawn on an account at Morgan Guarantee Trust in New York. Signed by Prince Khalid bin Sultan al-Saud, the top Saudi military commander, the check was in the amount of $720 million.

While the buildup gained momentum, General Schwarzkopf wanted to concentrate solely on preparing the Coalition’s plan of battle. Of course, he was not able to do so. Other duties interfered, such as meeting with congressional delegations or heading off cultural problems with the Saudis.

The general was not alone in having to deal with distractions. The United States ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Chas Freeman, cabled the State Department in Washington as follows:

We understand the need to build and maintain congressional support. . . . It does not necessarily follow that Washington should treat Saudi Arabia as if it were an exotic game park with a four-star general and an ambassador as park rangers. . . . There must be a pause in trekking to Saudi Arabi. . . . Give us a break.

By “Washington” both men were referring to political leaders who felt compelled to descend on Freeman and Schwarzkopf “to see for themselves” what the situation was in Saudi Arabia. These included U.S. senators and representatives whose support was essential to sustaining American involvement. Apparently, the visits paid off. On January 12, 1991, by which time Secretary Baker’s efforts to resolve the crisis diplomatically clearly had not succeeded, Congress passed a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq. The vote in the House of Representatives was 250–183. In the Senate the vote was much closer: 52–47.

Despite these forty-seven votes, and what they represented, most Americans strongly supported President Bush’s firm stand against the Iraqis, as did Colin Powell. He was pressuring Norman Schwarzkopf to come up with a detailed plan of attack.

In devising such a plan, the Central Command chief had to consider as well when an attack should be launched. Two factors affected the timing of an offensive. The first was Ramadan. This was to begin in March and last a month, during which time Arab troops in the Coalition might not fight. The second was that after Ramadan, the temperature in the desert would adversely affect the performance of both machines and men. So Generals Powell and Schwarzkopf, with the approval of the president and the secretary of defense, decided that unless a last-minute diplomatic solution was realized, Coalition forces would strike on January 16, one day after the deadline given to Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait had expired.

Such a diplomatic fix did not emerge. James Baker did meet in Geneva with the Iraqi foreign minister on January 9. But the Iraqi official made unacceptable demands, which the American secretary of state promptly rejected. That meant that eight days later, U.S. military forces in the Gulf, along with their Coalition allies, went to war.

***

Essentially, there were three ways to invade Kuwait. The first was to land troops on the country’s coast via an amphibious landing. The second was to attack directly north from Saudi Arabia. The third was to swing Coalition troops around to the west and strike eastward from inside Iraq.

General Schwarzkopf rejected the first approach. He believed that, given the extensive fortifications and minefields the Iraqis had put in place, an assault from the sea would result in heavy U.S. casualties. However, the general kept twenty-four thousand marines on ships in the Persian Gulf and had them practice amphibious operations. These exercises, along with the presence of two American battleships, convinced the Iraqis that Coalition forces would be storming ashore in a manner reminiscent of the Marine Corps’s World War II campaigns. Schwarzkopf wanted to deceive the Iraqis and he did. They kept seven divisions focused on an operation that never took place.

The second way to assault Kuwait, striking north from Saudi Arabia, was also an option the Central Command chief wanted the Iraqis to believe he was employing. Schwarzkopf placed a large number of Coalition troops, including those from Arab countries, on the Saudi-Kuwait border. These forces as well as an American unit in fact would conduct a direct assault into Kuwait, thereby reinforcing the general’s intent to have his enemy perceive that this was the principal avenue of attack.

The approach Schwarzkopf adopted was the third option. He decided to have his most powerful strike force, VII Corps and XVIII Corps, at the last minute redeploy several hundred miles west, move into Iraq, and strike to the east. This was the now famous “Left Hook,” which the general revealed to his commanders at a meeting in Riyadh on November 14. The plan was audacious, although the inability of Iraqi forces to conduct reconnaissance meant Saddam’s troops were unaware that Schwarzkopf had repositioned his troops.

Given the boldness of the plan and the size and experience of the Iraqi army, Coalition casualties in Desert Storm were expected to be heavy. Estimates on the high side numbered 7,000 dead and 13,000 wounded. To accommodate the latter, Central Command had established several hospitals and had made available, according to an official U.S. Army history, 13,350 beds for medical use. The U.S. Navy also prepared for casualties. At the time, the American naval service possessed two hospital ships, the Mercy and the Comfort. Both were sent to the Gulf.

Prior to the ground attack, Schwarzkopf’s plan called for an extensive aerial assault. This was to strike strategic targets throughout Iraq, gain control of the skies above the battlefield, and pound the enemy troops in Kuwait. Saddam and his generals had no idea how destructive this assault was to be.

***

The first aircraft, six U.S. Army Apache helicopters, lifted off in the early morning hours of January 17 (in Washington, D.C., it was mid-afternoon of the 16th). They struck Iraqi air defense radars just inside the border, thereby creating a corridor through which Coalition planes could safely enter Iraqi airspace. More than six hundred planes took part in this first day of the attacks. They struck targets throughout Iraq, hitting the enemy’s command posts, its communications network, and suspected nuclear, biological, and chemical facilities. Among the American aircraft employed were the F-117 Nighthawks. These aeronautical marvels flew to downtown Baghdad and dropped their bombs on target, neither detected by Iraqi radar nor hit by the erratic gunfire the defenders threw up into the night sky.

Only four Coalition aircraft were lost that first night. Throughout the air campaign—which lasted forty-four days—losses were slight. In total, fewer than forty planes were downed by enemy action. Given that Coalition air forces flew 44,145 combat sorties during the war, the number of aircraft lost was minimal.

One reason for the air campaign’s success was the dismal performance of Saddam’s air force. Though well equipped and by no means small, the Iraqi air arm was outmatched by its counterparts from Great Britain, the United States, and Saudi Arabia. Air forces of the latter two countries flew the F-15 Eagle, then the world’s premier fighter aircraft. The Eagles accounted for nearly all of the thirty-four Iraqi machines downed in combat. However, most of Saddam’s pilots declined to fight, and more than 120 flew their planes to Iran, where they and their aircraft were interned.

Coalition aircraft controlled the skies above both Iraq and Kuwait. One attack on the former received much publicity as a large number of civilians inadvertently were killed. The target was a reinforced concrete bunker in Baghdad the Iraqis used as a military command center. An F-117 destroyed it with two 2,000-pound “smart bombs.” Regrettably, the night of the attack, and unbeknownst to the Americans, Iraqi civilians were inside using the facility as an air raid shelter. Some four hundred individuals, including children, lost their lives. Saddam’s propaganda ministry made certain the world knew of the incident.

The use of these smart bombs was a hallmark of the Gulf War. These were bombs that were able to strike their targets with great accuracy. In previous wars bombing strikes were hit-and-miss affairs. Collateral damage often was heavy, because many of the bombs would miss their intended targets. Technology changed that. Targeting systems and the bombs themselves became precision weapons. They now could hit what they were aimed at. This meant not only that nearby buildings and people were left untouched, but also that fewer planes needed to be involved in the attack, thereby reducing the risk to the attacking force.

In the 1990–1991 war against Iraq, smart bombs received their baptism of fire. They also gained considerable public attention as television audiences in the United States and elsewhere became accustomed to viewing Iraqi targets being blown apart by a single bomb. In fact, while smart bombs were employed in the battle against Saddam, their number was limited. Most of the destruction from the air came from old-fashioned, unguided “iron bombs.”

One of the new precision weapons first employed in the Gulf War was the Tomahawk cruise missile. Essentially, this was a flying bomb. Launched from a ship it flew at subsonic speed over a long distance and, with a sophisticated guidance system, exploded directly on its target.

During the first night of the air campaign, January 17, six Tomahawks were fired by the battleship Missouri, which was positioned in the Gulf several miles southeast of Kuwait. Across the Arabian Peninsula, in the Red Sea, the USS San Jacinto, an American cruiser, launched Tomahawks as well. Surface ships were not alone in using the missile. On January 19, 1991, an American attack submarine fired a Tomahawk at a target in Iraq. This was the first time in history that a submerged warship had sent off a cruise missile in wartime.

On that first day of air strikes, 122 Tomahawks descended on enemy targets. In total, 282 of the sea-based cruise missiles were dispatched during Desert Storm. Each Tomahawk cost approximately $1.2 million. Several were shot down by the Iraqis. To save money and to not deplete the navy’s supply of the weapon, General Powell ordered Schwarzkopf to halt their use, which he did. More than one admiral believed Colin Powell, an army officer, did so because of the favorable media coverage the U.S. Navy received from the success of the Tomahawk.

Cruise missiles were not part of Saddam’s navy. Less favored by the Iraqi leader than his army and air force, the Iraqi sea service consisted mainly of small missile boats. The boats were well armed and posed a threat to Coalition warships operating in the Gulf, so they drew the attention of British and American naval commanders. On January 29, near the Kuwaiti island of Bubiyan, aircraft from American and British ships destroyed a large number of the Iraqi boats. The action has been given the name “the Bubiyan Turkey Shoot” for it was a lopsided affair. All the Iraqi missile boats were put out of action, as were thirteen other Iraqi vessels. With Saddam’s surface ships no longer a concern, Coalition maritime commanders could breathe easy. But the Iraqi minefields remained a problem. On February 18, they scored a success. Two American warships struck Iraqi mines. Damage was such that both vessels had to withdraw from the battle zone.

One additional naval action deserves mention. To protect Coalition warships, Dutch, Australian, and British ships were assigned air defense duties. This they did well, especially the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Gloucester. On February 25, the Iraqis fired two Iranian-built Silkworm missiles at American warships that were shelling Iraqi positions ashore. One of the American vessels was the Missouri. As the missiles closed on the battleship and its escorts, one of them fell into the sea, causing no damage. The other proceeded on course. Gloucester then fired two Sea Dart missiles, one of which destroyed the remaining Silkworm. The postscript to this episode is that the Missouri then located the Silkworm’s launch battery and, with its big guns, blew it apart.

***

As the air strikes continued, Iraqi military assets inside Kuwait increasingly were targeted. The goal was to reduce their combat effectiveness by half, especially the T-72 tanks, which the Iraqis possessed in great number. Whether the air strikes accomplished that goal remains in dispute, although no doubt exists that the Iraqi army’s inventory of fighting vehicles was greatly reduced.

Pounded from the air, Saddam responded in kind, but with a weapon far different than what Coalition forces were using. This was the Scud, a crude ballistic missile that carried a very small warhead and was not terribly accurate. As a military device the Scud was little more than a nuisance. But when launched at cities, it became a weapon of political terror, with great psychological impact.

The first Scuds were fired on January 18. They struck the Israeli cities of Haifa and Tel Aviv. By targeting the Jewish state, Saddam hoped to have the Israelis retaliate. Were they to do so, Arab nations in the Coalition would be seen as allied with Israel in a war against another Arab state. This would be unacceptable in the Arab world and would necessitate a withdrawal from the Coalition. Egypt and Saudi Arabia especially could not be seen as partnering with Israel.

Saddam’s strategy was clever, but it did not work. At the urging of President Bush and Secretary Baker, Israeli leaders refrained from responding. This represented a significant change in policy, as the Israeli position was to always strike back when attacked. Helping the Israelis exercise restraint was the immediate deployment of U.S. Army Patriot missiles to Israel. These were intended to shoot down any incoming Scuds. An additional incentive to the Israelis was the promise of additional military aid from the United States.

In total, Saddam launched eighty-six Scuds during the war. They caused very little physical damage, save for one strike. This took place on February 25, when a Scud hit a U.S. army barracks in Dhahran. Twenty-eight Americans were killed, and almost a hundred were wounded.

Numerous Patriots were fired in attempts to destroy the incoming Scuds. At the time, the American missiles were seen to be successful. In fact, they were not. Often the Scud broke apart as it nosed down on the target, and the Patriot might hit one of the pieces, with the rest, including the warhead, landing on the city below. The Patriot’s value lay less in its actual ability to intercept the Scud than in the belief, at the time, that it was able to do so.

The best way to stop the Scuds was to prevent their launch. British and American Special Forces, therefore, operated inside Iraq trying to destroy their launch sites. Stationary Scud batteries were put out of commission. But mobile facilities (essentially trucks with Scuds) proved difficult to locate, so many remained untouched.

Political pressure to halt the Scud attacks was immense. Coalition aircraft devoted considerable resources to hunting the missiles, with results far from satisfactory. Despite the large number of warplanes allocated to finding them, the Scuds never were put out of action.

As Coalition planes each day struck targets in Kuwait and Iraq, diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis continued. One last such effort was made by Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, who dispatched a special envoy to Baghdad. This, like other diplomatic initiatives, failed. Days later, when Saddam rejected President Bush’s final ultimatum to withdraw from Kuwait, the time had arrived for Coalition ground forces to enter the fray. They attacked on February 24, 1991.

Schwarzkopf had deployed forces along the Saudi border with Kuwait. Adjacent to the Persian Gulf were troops belonging to Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Farther west was a second group of Arab soldiers. In between were two divisions of United States marines, supplemented by a U.S. Army armored brigade. Still farther west was Schwarzkopf’s “iron fist,” VII Corps and XVIII Corps, which included the British and French armored units. In its totality, the Coalition’s army—some 620,000 soldiers—was one of the most powerful military forces ever assembled.

Early on the 24th, across a 270-mile front, Coalition troops went on the offensive. Tanks plowed through sand berms, troops carved pathways through the minefields, helicopters flew low firing rockets, artillery lit up the sky (the U.S. 1st Infantry’s artillery delivered more than six hundred thousand bomblets within a period of thirty minutes). At the receiving end of this massive firepower were the Iraqi defenders. Poor souls, they were overwhelmed. Some chose to fight and they were killed. Many more simply gave up, and lived. On that first day of combat, some thirteen thousand surrendered.

Along the coast, Egyptian and Saudi troops (and a few Kuwaiti soldiers who had escaped from the Iraqis) made good progress. Supported by naval gunfire, these troops engaged their foe and beat them back. They would be the first Coalition units to enter Kuwait City.

To their left, the U.S. marines also made good progress. By the second day, after beating off Iraqi counterattacks, they were but ten miles from the Kuwaiti capital. Unusual for the marines, they had fought several tank battles, taking on the Iraqi T-72s. By the time the marines had secured Kuwait’s international airport, more than three hundred enemy tanks no longer were in service.

To help convince Saddam’s generals that the main thrust of the Coalition forces would be a northward strike into southern Kuwait from Saudi Arabia, Schwarzkopf had directed that those U.S. troops in the west not part of the Left Hook also attack the Iraqis directly opposite them. This took place and was carried out by the American 1st Infantry Division. Its commander, Major General Thomas Rhame, wanted to win quickly and with, he joked, “enough of us left to have a reunion.” The division accomplished the former and no doubt later enjoyed the latter.

The most striking element of Norman Schwarzkopf’s plan of battle—and the most risky—was the flanking maneuver required of his two most powerful units. They were to charge into the southern Iraqi desert then turn ninety degrees and hit the Republican Guards from the west. The two units, VII Corps and XVIII Corps, were well equipped for the job. As has been noted, they were armed with tanks, helicopters, and artillery, all of which were high-tech and deadly.

The role of XVIII Corps, and its 118,000 soldiers, was to race north from a point 350 miles inland to the Euphrates River and, once there, to (1) block the retreat of Republican Guard forces from Kuwait, and (2) then alter course and join the assault toward Kuwait City. With considerable skill and speed, the corps did both. One of its component units, the 101st Airborne Division, conducted the largest combat air assault in history when three hundred of its helicopters transported two thousand of its soldiers into battle.

VII Corps’s role was to smash the Republican Guard units in Kuwait. In February 1991 it fought a series of small but nasty engagements close to the Wadi al-Batin. This is a lengthy dry riverbed that essentially marks Kuwait’s western border with Iraq. Together, these engagements, at 73 Easting, at Medina Ridge, at Norfolk, and at other locations (including one designated Waterloo where British tanks defeated the Iraqis) have been given the name of the Battle of Wadi al-Batin. They were all limited in duration but violent in character.

Seventy-three Easting was simply a place on U.S. Army maps (initially such was the shortage of maps that the Pentagon’s Defense Mapping Agency had to produce 13.5 million of them). The desert terrain was so featureless that American units depended on artificially drawn grid lines to identify where they were and where they were going. In the Iraqi and Kuwait deserts there were no towns, rivers, or hills to serve as points of reference. Seventy-three Easting was inside Iraq, several miles north of VII Corps’s departure point. Late in the afternoon of February 26, the Corps’s forward reconnaissance unit, the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, did what it was supposed to do. It found the Iraqi Republican Guard armored units. These were dug in, with their tanks half-buried on the downward slope of a rise in the desert, waiting to ambush the Americans. It was a classic defense position, one the Iraqis believed would lead to victory.

It did not. The Iraqis were too far back and their aim was off. The Abrams fired on the move, making Iraqi artillery fire ineffective, and the tanks’ lethal shells blasted through the sand barricades, destroying the T-72s.

Douglas Macgregor, an American officer who fought in the battle, described the action. His account, while referring to the engagement at 73 Easting, applies as well to the other battles along the Wadi al-Batin. Writes Macgregor:

Metal smashed against metal as killing round after killing round slammed into the Iraqi army’s Soviet-made tanks. A few hours later, the few surviving Republican Guards, exhausted men in dirty green uniforms, huddled together as prisoners of war in the nighttime cold.

Macgregor also described the violent character of modern combat between tanks:

Armored warfare is hair-trigger fast, frighteningly lethal, and unforgiving. Men are vaporized, eviscerated, blown apart, asphyxiated, or burned to death when an incoming tank projectile or missile strikes, and the margin between victor and vanquished can be a fraction of a second.

The speed at which the “frighteningly lethal” combat between American and Iraqi tanks occurred at 73 Easting is illustrated by noting that the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment destroyed thirty-seven T-72s in less than six minutes. A somewhat similar outcome took place at Medina Ridge. There, the Iraqis lost 186 tanks in a matter of hours. The two battles and several others demonstrated the superiority of the Abrams and their crews. In total, during its eighty-nine hours of combat, VII Corps destroyed 1,350 enemy tanks and more than 1,200 armored personnel carriers, against the loss of four tanks and a small number of armored vehicles. Victory belonged to the Americans.

Schwarzkopf’s plan had worked, and brilliantly. The Republican Guards had been defeated. But they had not been destroyed. The Central Command chief thought he knew why. VII Corps had moved too slowly. During the battle, he had let his impatience be known to the VII Corps commander, Lieutenant General Fred Franks. Franks, a cautious field commander, had wanted to concentrate his assault forces and have them ready logistically. This took time. Moreover, he wanted to be sure that, once his soldiers pulled the trigger, they were not inadvertently aiming at fellow Americans.

Who was correct? Swiftness in battle is often a virtue. But so is preparation. Significantly, in his memoirs, Schwarzkopf backed off his criticism of Franks, writing:

I . . . also decided that I had been too harsh in my criticism of VII Corps’ slow progress during the ground battle. . . . Franks was a fine commander who had carried out his assigned mission as he had seen it. . . . What I did know was that we had inflicted a crushing defeat on Saddam’s forces and accomplished every one of our military objectives. That was good enough for me.

With the Iraqis’ defeat in battle and with their subsequent withdrawal from Kuwait, President Bush directed that a cease-fire be put in place. It took effect in Iraq on February 28. One highly visible event encouraged the American leader to believe the time had come to end the loss of life.

Highway 6 links Kuwait City and the Iraqi town of Basra. As the Iraqis were fleeing toward Basra on the highway, they were attacked by Coalition aircraft. The planes wreaked havoc on the Iraqis. More than fifteen hundred vehicles were destroyed, and initially the number of people killed, civilians among them, was estimated to be extremely high. Images of this “Highway of Death” were flashed around the world. The gruesome pictures suggested that the Coalition clearly had triumphed and that further killing would be inhumane.

Despite the cease-fire, one last firefight took place. On the morning of March 2, a Republican Guard unit, seeking to return home, fired on the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division near the Rumaila oil fields. The Americans did more than just return fire. They launched a full-scale counterattack. The result was the same as at 73 Easting and Medina Ridge. The Iraqis suffered heavy losses while the Americans lost only a single tank.

Formal cease-fire talks took place on March 3, at an Iraqi airfield near the village of Safwan. Conducting the talks inside Iraq, Schwarzkopf believed, would emphasize to the Iraqis that indeed they had lost the war. Representing Saddam’s side was the deputy chief of staff at the Iraqi Ministry of Defense, a three-star general. For the Coalition the two senior officials were the Central Command chief and Khalid Bin Sultan al-Saud, Saudi Arabia’s counterpart to Schwarzkopf. To further emphasize to the Iraqis their defeat in battle, their delegation had to arrive at the airfield through a cordon of Abrams tanks while Apache helicopters circled in the skies above.

Discussion at the airfield centered on the return of prisoners, accounting of the dead, the identification of minefields, and the release of Kuwaiti citizens held by the Iraqis. In addition, there were to be restrictions upon the Iraqi air force, although, at the special request of the Iraqi three-star, Iraqi helicopters were given permission to fly. They were allowed to do so in order to be able to move people and supplies throughout the country. That Saddam later would employ these airships to repress groups in Iraq he did not care for was, for the Americans, an unintended result they came to regret.

U.S. casualties in the Gulf War were light, although sources differ as to the exact number. One reputable publication, produced by the Naval Institute Press of Annapolis, lists the total number of American dead at 304, of which 122 came about from combat. The rest were the result of either accidents or natural causes. Regrettably, of the combat deaths, 35 came from friendly fire.

The number of Iraqis killed is but an estimate. At least 10,000 soldiers and civilians appear to have lost their lives, although the number might well be greater. What is not uncertain is that in defeat the nation of Iraq saw many, many of its citizens pay dearly for Saddam Hussein’s folly in invading Kuwait.

Why did Saddam invade Kuwait?

Saddam believed that the lands comprising Kuwait historically belonged to the empires from which modern-day Iraq emerged. Moreover, he considered Kuwait to be an artificial construct of the British (which it was, although its legitimacy as an independent nation was recognized by most nations in the world). Additionally, Saddam claimed that the Kuwaitis, by drilling at an angle, were stealing petroleum from Iraq’s portion of the Rumaila oil field. This huge oil deposit lay beneath the borders that delineate Kuwait and Iraq. Perhaps equally important, Saddam wanted the access to the Persian Gulf which Kuwait possessed and Iraq did not. Then, of course, there’s the enormous debt Saddam had incurred as a result of his war with Iran. Arab nations, including Kuwait, had loaned Iraq large sums of money. The Iraqi leader argued that he had fought the war on behalf of his Arab brothers and that they, therefore, should reduce the debt, if not forgive it altogether. He particularly wanted Kuwait to forgive its share of the debt. Kuwait offered to reduce the amount owed, but not to eliminate the entire debt. This left Saddam angry with the Kuwaiti leaders, and his country in financial difficulty. What better way to solve the problem and other concerns than to remove Kuwait itself from the scene?

Why did Saddam believe the United States would not go to war over Kuwait?

He had good reason to so believe. America had been supportive of Saddam’s war with Iran, and when the United States ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, met with him prior to the Kuwait invasion, she, following State Department instructions, did not state with specificity what the U.S. response to an invasion would be. She said merely that the United States wished to see a peaceful solution to the dispute.

Yet Saddam, in his own mind, had a more compelling reason to conclude that the United States would stand idly by as Iraqi forces took control of Kuwait. He believed America and its citizens lacked the stomach for any military action likely to result in heavy loss of life. After all, had not U.S. marines ignominiously left Beirut after losing only two hundred of their men, when Ronald Reagan had deployed troops to the Lebanese capital? If the United States did send troops to aid Kuwait, Saddam foresaw “the mother of all battles” in which America would have thousands of men killed. Iraq, he knew, would accept such losses. He was convinced the United States would not.

Did the Iraqis have any realistic chance of winning the war?

No. Coalition forces, particularly those of the United States and Great Britain, simply outclassed Saddam’s military. In both equipment and personnel what the Coalition put onto the battlefield was superior to what the Iraqis possessed. American (and British) forces were well trained and well led. And, with their technological edge on the field of battle they crushed their Iraqi opponents.

Did the Iraqis fight poorly?

Certainly the Iraqi air force did. That some eighty-six thousand Iraqis were taken prisoner by Coalition forces suggests that Saddam’s army underperformed as well.

Why did Saddam not employ his chemical weapons?

Because the Iraqi leader was uncertain how the United States might respond. No doubt, the U.S. government conveyed to the Iraqi leadership that in the event of chemical attacks, America would respond in a manner that would bring enormous harm to Iraq.

Why did the Coalition forces under General Schwarzkopf, once the Iraqis had left Kuwait, not proceed to Baghdad and finish off Saddam and his regime?

It’s true that Schwarzkopf’s army could have continued on to Baghdad, destroying both the Republican Guards and Saddam’s regime. But that’s not what President George H. W. Bush had defined as his objective or what the United Nations had authorized. Moreover, most Arab nations, however much they despised Saddam Hussein, were uneasy with the prospect of an American army unseating an Arab government whose legitimacy they accepted. Had the Americans and British made known their intention to march on the Iraqi capital, the Coalition that President Bush and his secretary of state had so skillfully put together, would have splintered, thus jeopardizing the effort to remove the Iraqis from Kuwait.

Was there a lesson from the Gulf War that has ill-served the United States?

Yes. The Gulf War was won quickly and with little loss of American lives. Many Americans came to believe future conflicts would produce similar results. Yet all wars are different, and there can be no guarantee of either an easy victory or light casualties when the United States embarks on future combat operations.