Later on, when I was CENTCOM commander running air attacks against Iraq, my familiarity with master air attack plans came in very handy. Not a bad piece of acquired knowledge for a Marine infantrymen.
DURING THE WAR, Iraq struck Israel with Scud missiles. Because of their range and their potential lethality (they could carry nuclear, biological, or chemical warheads), Scuds can be delivery systems for weapons of mass destruction. Actually, their uncertain accuracy and Saddam's well-founded fear that using his WMD would provoke even worse retaliation limited the Iraqi Scuds to use as terror weapons. Though they did little damage, the terror they caused was very real; and the Israelis were outraged. It doesn't take much to provoke the Israelis into acts of retaliation. As Saddam knew very well, an Israeli retaliatory air attack on Iraq stood a strong chance of causing the breakup of the Coalition President Bush had carefully constructed. We wanted to prevent that.
Iraqi Scuds were first launched at Israel on the afternoon of January 17. EUCOM immediately dispatched a U.S. Army Patriot unit to Israel. And an Israeli battery that was then training stateside was rushed home and put into operation; a Dutch battery also joined the force. The operation, called "Patriot Defender," was under the command of a superb U.S. Army colonel, Dave Heebner (later a general).
The Patriots in Israel were then linked to our early warning facilities, whose hub was in the U.S. This system was a complicated, jerry-rigged affair: from satellite indications of missile launchings, to the U.S. base for analysis and determination of the missile's flight path, to the EUCOM command center, and then to the Patriot unit. In seven to eight minutes, the Patriot batteries could be cued to the incoming Scuds for engagement and destruction. Seconds later, the Patriots began actual engagement.
Because of the continuing questions about Israel's commitment to stay out of the fight, a decision was made to send a not-too-senior general officer from EUCOM to Israel to check on our Patriot unit and to provide a friendly presence to reassure the Israelis.
I jumped at the opportunity and was on a jet to Tel Aviv a few hours later.
I moved in with the Patriot unit . . . actually lived in the tents with the young troops in the Patriot battery, observed their operations in the command and control vans, and watched them go through their procedures when they shot.
I also spent time at the Israeli battery, and of course paid calls on a number of senior Israeli commanders . . . not always an experience I'd care to repeat. In their view, America was holding them back from the retaliatory attack that was their right and their obligation. They were incredibly determined and incredibly frustrated, and they really beat up on me about it. Though they understood why we'd asked them to refrain from retaliating, this did not sit well with them, and I felt they would not sit back much longer.
Meanwhile, the Patriot crews had learned from each Scud attack.
There've been a lot of misconceptions about the Patriots and their capabilities . . . and about their perceived failures. Some reports even claimed--falsely--that they didn't work at all, as though all the Scud warheads got through untouched. Let's set the record straight.
First, the Patriots were designed to be point defense systems. That is, they were built to protect small areas like air bases or command centers. So if you're at air base X, and you have your Patriots there, and the Patriots intercept and stop an attacking missile, fine. But whatever's in the sky still has to come down. When all the junk left over from the Patriot and the attacking missile doesn't crash down on the air base, that's a success. But our Patriots had to defend the Tel Aviv-Haifa megalopolis. (We set up our batteries there; the Dutch battery was sent to defend Jerusalem.) When all that junk scatters over a metropolitan area like that, you've got problems. People say, "Wait a minute. What the hell? You obviously didn't vaporize the thing. And a piece the size of an engine block just came through my roof." I don't want to deny this guy's distress. His complaint's legitimate. But we should also be aware that a Scud warhead going off in the same place would have ruined his day even worse.
Second, these were new systems. When the Patriots first went in, we had never used them in battle. The crews had to learn how best to engage them. They made mistakes. For instance, at first they put them on what you might call "automatic mode" (which is the fastest way to get missiles into the air against attacking missiles). But when they were on automatic, some of the Patriots were launching on atmospheric clutter. The lessons learned from these Patriot Gulf War experiences led to many needed improvements in the system.
To make matters even more difficult and complicated: The Iraqis were often shooting their Scuds at greater ranges than they were designed for (the Iraqi scientists had hot-rodded modifications that allowed them to reach Israel from western Iraq; some of their Scuds landed in the Mediterranean). But since the Scuds weren't designed to take that kind of stress, they frequently broke up into hundreds of pieces during their descent.
When the lieutenant in the van saw these breakups in his scope, he had to make a choice fast: "What do I shoot at?" He'd pick out a likely piece in all the clutter, and shoot at it. If he didn't pick the warhead, then it would continue on and blow up somewhere in Israel.
I know what the guys in the vans had to deal with. I saw the tape replays of previous engagements.
But these were very resourceful guys.
Later on, as they studied the tapes (they replayed them over and over), they came to realize that it was possible to distinguish the warhead from the clutter. The warhead, they began to see, continued to travel at its original velocity, while the other pieces slowed down. This was not at all obvious to an untrained eye. The difference was almost imperceptible. I couldn't see it. These sharp young soldiers could.
Once they had that little gleam of an advantage, they began to be able to pick out the warhead and hit it. And as time went on, they got even more proficient.
All the noise about the shortcomings of the Patriots did not affect the Israeli public. The Patriot soldiers were their heroes. You could see Patriot logos on signs everywhere; and "Patriot" became the name du jour for all sorts of new products (I saw an advertisement for Patriot condoms). Now that the Israeli Patriot crews were the darlings of the people (my Israeli air defense officer escort, Colonel Romen Moshe, told me), everyone in the Air Force wanted to join the unit, which upset the pilots (who always consider themselves the elites in any air force).
Another learning experience for me took place at an Israeli military base where top Israeli missile experts had been gathered and set up at what they called "the Scud Farm." The experts would go out the instant a Scud impacted, gather up all the pieces they could find, and bring them back and reconstruct what they could. (It was amazing how fast they could do that.) They'd lay them out in a large open area outside like a big 3-D jigsaw puzzle and study the configuration of the missile. There were several possible variations. What they learned gave them insights into Iraqi missile capabilities and how to counter them.
On a tour of the reconstructed Scuds at the Scud Farm (a few partially reconstructed Patriots were also there), I was given insights into what they had learned. "Look," they said, pointing to a collection of Scud pieces, "here Saddam tried to enlarge the warhead." And pointing toward another set: "In this case, he tried to increase its fuel capacity and give it more range."
The Iraqis were running all kinds of science projects, using a long-obsolete Soviet missile as their test bed.
The last shot they took at Israel used an all-concrete warhead, which hit somewhere in the more or less trackless southern desert. Everybody laughed. "Well, Saddam is shooting a practice round," they said. "He's desperate. He's run out of warheads."
A scientist at the Scud Farm showed me a map on the wall with all the trajectories of the Scud shots. All of them were aimed in the general direction of Tel Aviv or Haifa except this one. It had a really weird trajectory, and they were seriously concerned about it. Rumors later floated that an Israeli nuclear plant facility was the actu
al target. If the concrete warhead had penetrated the plant's containment shield, there could have been a terrible catastrophe.
A few days into my trip, I had visited all the Patriot batteries except the Dutch battery on a hill outside Jerusalem. "While you're here," my Israeli escort suggested, "you ought to visit the Dutch battery."
"Sure," I said. "It would be a great experience for me." I had never been to Jerusalem before. Here was an opportunity not only to show the flag for the Dutch but to encounter the spiritual home of my own religion.
But when I checked in with the U.S. Embassy to get their okay for the visit, the ambassador turned me down. There was a lot of sensitivity and tension in Jerusalem at that time. The Palestinians had supported Saddam; and the ambassador thought it was best to low-key the American presence until things got quieter in the city. He didn't want any Americans there, especially senior American military.
When I told that to my escort, the Israeli colonel, he was incensed. "The hell with that," he announced. "That's like saying we can't protect you. This is our country. We can take you to Jerusalem. You're safe with us. No problem."
"This is not a security issue," I protested, giving him the ambassador's position as best I could. "It's political sensitivities."
"Well, to hell with that," he said, all fired up. "It's an insult to us." And then he took the issue up with his bosses, who agreed with him: They all wanted Zinni to visit Jerusalem. It had become a matter of face to them.
At this point, I said to myself, "Hey, Zinni, the Israelis are already angry and poised to attack, and you're down here to keep them happy." For the past few days, we'd worked our tails off and I'd subjected myself to a lot of slings and arrows to keep them calm and now this Jerusalem thing could maybe get them upset. I knew I had to go to Jerusalem, but I also knew I had to minimize my footprint there.
"Look," I told the Israelis, "I'll go to Jerusalem, but we have to do it without stirring up anybody. We just visit the battery and come back."
"Not a problem," my escort said. "We'll drive out very quietly, visit the battery, and that's it."
We took our trip out to the Dutch battery on February 28, and it went without a hitch. We met the commander and talked to the troops. Since no Scuds had been fired at Jerusalem, they hadn't seen action, so they didn't have a lot of operational information; but it was a good, friendly meeting. The view from their hill overlooking Jerusalem, however, was spectacular. This was the first time I'd seen the Old City of Jerusalem, and the religious and historical significance hit me powerfully.
As Colonel Moshe and I were chatting about this, he said, "Let's go down to the Old City."
"No, I'd better not do that," I thought to myself. "I'm already out here when I shouldn't be; I shouldn't push this thing."
"Look," he said. "Nobody's around. I'll take you to West Jerusalem; the Jewish section. You can see the city's empty."
He was right. Everything was quiet. People were all indoors, hunkered down.
"Listen," he said. "We go into the Old City, go to a cafe, have a little coffee or something, and it'll all be okay."
And that's what we did. We found a little cafe, with all its doors closed and its windows shuttered and taped in anticipation of Scud shots; but we could still get coffee.
We were sitting there with our cups when the end of the war hit.
It was like an angel had passed overhead. Suddenly, there was a rumbling sound. It quickly grew louder, and before we knew it thousands of people burst outdoors and came into the streets yelling. Everybody in West Jerusalem was in the streets cheering. We were swarmed (I was in my Marine cammies). Women ran up and kissed us. "The war's over!" they screamed. "The Iraqis have just surrendered!"
Pretty soon a camera crew showed up. I tried to duck out and get back to our car, but it was no use. When they saw my general's star, they had to ask me who I was and why I was here. I explained as best I could; but of course the embassy had their TVs on; and there was Zinni in Jerusalem where he was not supposed to be.
On the way back to Tel Aviv, I received a call from the embassy telling me to go right to the airport and leave. I notified our aircrew, picked up my gear, said a quick good-bye to the troops, and headed for the airfield.
Israel is the only country I've ever been thrown out of; but I couldn't think of a better place other than Jerusalem to be at the moment the Persian Gulf War ended.
OPERATION PROVIDE COMFORT
Back in Stuttgart, the command was celebrating. And when I came in, so was our staff; they were elated but exhausted. The nearly yearlong twenty-four-hour manning of the CAT and the Battle Staff had drained all of us. Everybody in the EUCOM J-3 shop was just beaten . . . worn thin. And yet there was still a lot to do before we could shut down the Battle Staff and the CAT and get back to normal. We kept targeting a stand-down date, but it kept getting delayed.
Finally, on Friday, April 5, we came to the point when we thought we could actually shut it down.
There was one possible hang-up to that. A situation was developing on the Iraqi-Turkish border that merited concern (much of the following information we did not learn until later): Urged on by promises of U.S. military support (that subsequently was not provided), the Kurds had mounted a revolt against Saddam, which Saddam had brutally crushed. The Iraqi military had then pushed the panicked Kurds into the mountains along the Turkish border, slaughtering many in the process. Just about the entire Iraqi Kurdish population was involved in this exodus; hundreds of thousands of refugees were now pouring over the border, few carrying more than the clothes on their backs, all of them in dire straits. The Turks (who had had a bad previous experience with Kurdish refugees, and have a Kurdish problem of their own) refused to let the refugees down from the mountains; and the harsh winter conditions were threatening to devastate these traumatized masses.
Early on the fifth, we got a call to tell us that Secretary of State James Baker had become concerned about the refugees and wanted to take a firsthand look. (He was already in the region.) He flew into Turkey, and we provided him with a pair of Navy CH-53 helicopters to carry him out to the camps where the refugees had collected.
We were monitoring this developing situation, but it didn't take up very many pixels on our screen.
Later that day, a call came from the Joint Staff at the Pentagon. "Maybe you ought to keep the CAT in place," they advised us, "in case Baker wants to take some action." So we were ready to keep the CAT going. But then they came back: "No, forget it. It's no big deal. Baker's gone up in the helicopters. Nothing much is going to come of it."
That meant we could close down the CAT at last. "At the end of the workday--normal hours," Snuffy Smith announced, "we're going to shut down the CAT." The exhausted staff was in heaven after two solid years of double duty.
Then Snuffy took me aside. "Get Debbie," he said. "I'll get Dotty"--his wife--"We're going down to Pietro's." Pietro's was a little Italian restaurant just outside the gate, one of our favorite places. "We're going to have a big dinner and get shitfaced tonight. Have a good time and celebrate the end of all the crises."
That sounded pretty good to me. In some very real ways, going out to Pietro's was like getting released from prison. Not just because we'd been working hard. Security on the base had been iron tight. Except for flying off to do our jobs, we'd been locked in: German police had discovered terrorists observing General McCarthy's house (located in a nice neighborhood in town where Americans had been living for a long time). This raised serious security fears. There had also been peace demonstrations, and some of the demonstrators had managed to get inside the base. The resulting precautions were necessary, but a burden: All the officers were issued .45s; and guards armed with machine guns had been placed all around the base.
This was going to be the first time we could just go out and relax since the war started (though we still had to have a security detail outside the gates).
Pietro, the owner, and everybody else at the restaurant were all d
elighted to see us; it had been a long time; everybody was laughing and in high spirits. There were mandolin players; and we sang along with them. We were enjoying a splendid Italian feast; Snuffy and I were drinking a lot of wine; and we were feeling really good.
All of a sudden, the door swung open and the colonel that runs our command center rushed in. "Sirs," he told us, "you have to get back to the base right away. The director of operations at the Joint Staff wants to talk to you immediately. It looks like you need to launch an operation ASAP."
"Holy shit," I said to myself. It was the middle of the night, and we were feeling no pain; but we dropped everything, got our wives out of there, and hurried back to the command center.
When we called the director of operations, this is what we learned: Secretary Baker had spent the day observing the Kurdish refugees, and he was appalled. The refugee situation was developing into a terrible catastrophe. There were already tens of thousands of people collected in makeshift camps; and hundreds of thousands more were in the mountains moving in. Worse, the Kurdish authorities were pointing the finger at George Bush for encouraging them in their revolt. The Bush administration potentially had a lot of egg on its face. If something wasn't done fast, things were going totally to hell.
We were ordered to have relief supplies on the ground in thirty-six hours.
This seemed like an impossible task, given the remote locations where the ravaged people had clustered and the lack of forces in position to react immediately; but we put our heads into the problem.
The first thing we did was call Jim Jamerson at USAFE to give him a heads-up: His guys had to rapidly develop a plan for a humanitarian airlift. Jamerson, who had just returned from commanding JTF Proven Force in southeast Turkey, instantly began piecing together a force to move back into position and conduct airdrops to the refugee sites. The mission would be organized very like Proven Force. Though he'd have a different mission and different kinds of airplanes, the structure and the staff control would be the same. And knowing the area was going to be a big plus. "We'll need C-130s and helos to carry the stuff; and they will need escorts to fly with them. Where will we get all of that? Can we get enough parachute riggers? Where can we get the food?" We spent all that night trying to answer questions like these . . . and at the same time getting the CAT back up and running.
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