The Commanders

by Bob Woodward

  Powell was the only other witness. He had spent the day before, Sunday, rewriting his testimony. His staff had not quite captured his thinking and he wanted to explain it exactly. Nunn’s hearings were very important, Powell felt, providing the major public forum for the debate on Bush’s Gulf policy.

  Powell took the opportunity to criticize those who believed that airpower alone could drive Saddam from Kuwait. “Many experts, amateurs and others in this town, believe that this can be accomplished by such things as surgical air strikes or perhaps a sustained air strike. And there are a variety of other nice, tidy, alleged low-cost, incremental, may-work options that are floated around with great regularity all over this town.” He said an air-only strategy could not guarantee success because it would leave the initiative to Saddam. Basic Army doctrine stressed taking and holding the initiative, fighting on terms favorable to the United States. Powell was a believer. “One can hunker down, one can dig in, one can disperse to try to ride out such a single-dimension attack. . . . Such strategies are designed to hope to win, they are not designed to win.”

  He did not come down on either side of the key question before the committee, how long they should wait to see if economic sanctions would work. “In the final analysis, how long to wait is a political, not a military, judgment.”

  At the conclusion of Powell’s statement, Nunn asked him about a recent interview given by General Schwarzkopf. He had said that time was on the side of the United States and the coalition, as long as the sanctions remained in place. Nunn quoted Schwarzkopf saying, “If the alternative to dying is sitting out in the sun for another summer, that’s not a bad alternative.” What do you think? Nunn asked Powell.

  “I wouldn’t criticize General Schwarzkopf,” Powell said, “or in any way disagree with him. What I would say is that we don’t know if the sanctions will work. . . .”

  “If we have a war,” Nunn said sharply, “we’re never going to know whether they would have worked, are we?”

  “Well—” Powell began.

  “That’s the major point here,” Nunn interrupted. “I mean, the way you find out whether sanctions work or not is to—is to give them enough time to work.”

  Later in the hearing, Senator Cohen quoted former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger: “High military officers have an innate awe of their commander-in-chief and it tempts them to find a military reason for what they consider to be barely tolerable. And contrary to some of the public mythology, they rarely challenge the commander-in-chief. They seek excuses for support, not to oppose him.” What did Powell think of this? Cohen asked. “Do you stand in awe of the commander-in-chief?”

  Powell replied, “I am not reluctant or afraid to give either the Secretary of Defense, the President or any other members of the National Security Council my best, most honest, most candid advice, whether they like it or not. And on—on some occasions, they do not like it.” Turning to Cheney, who was by his side, Powell asked, “Isn’t that right?”

  “I will confirm that,” Cheney answered.

  There was laughter.

  “Which part, sir?” Powell asked.

  “All of it, Colin,” Cheney replied.

  • • •

  On Sunday, December 16, Bush left Camp David for the White House where he had to do a taping of a public television interview with David Frost, to be broadcast January 2. He had a copy of a new Amnesty International report on human rights violations carried out by the Iraqis in Kuwait since the August invasion. In the helicopter on the way down to Washington, he opened the 79-page report. It said that the torture and murder were “entirely consistent with abuses known to have been committed in Iraq over many years.” It was standard language for an Amnesty International report, even for those on some of the key U.S. allies, but Bush was horrified by the graphic accounts included.

  “Oh, David,” he told Frost several hours later, “it was so terrible, it’s hard to describe.” Bush explained how Barbara had read two pages and said she could not read any more. “The torturing of a handicapped child. The shooting of young boys in front of their parents. The rape of women dragged out of their homes and repeatedly raped and then brought into the hospital as kind of basket cases. The tying of those that are being tortured to ceiling fans so they turn and turn. The killing of a—of a Kuwaiti and leaving him hanging—this is a picture of this one—leaving him hanging from a crane and so others will see him. Electric shots to the private—shocks to the private parts of men and women. Broken glass inserted in—jabbed into people. I mean, it—it is primeval. And I—I’m afraid I’d get very emotional if I described more of it.” But Bush went on, describing how a 15-year-old boy had been beaten on the bottom of his feet, and how the Iraqis pulled out the fingernails of their victims.

  The President said that a more peaceful world was possible if the United States and the coalition stood up to Saddam. “It won’t happen if we compromise. When you have such a clear case of good and—good versus evil. We have such a clear moral case. . . . It’s that big. It’s that important. Nothing like this since World War II. Nothing of this moral importance since World War II.”

  “What will you do after the 15th?” Frost asked. “What is your inclination?”

  “Well,” Bush said, “I haven’t made a determination.”

  • • •

  Powell was determined not to be crushed or even nagged by ambivalence. He felt that Bush did not want to go to war if the objective still could be achieved by other means. He remained convinced that Saddam did not want a war with the United States, and he wanted to keep giving Saddam reasons to feel that way.

  But if there was a war, the United States had to win it. It was a David and Goliath match-up, with the United States as Goliath. If the U.S. military did not succeed in a pretty clear-cut way, it could be devastating. A spectacular victory was required. At stake was not only the nation’s foreign policy, but also the reputation and morale of the military for years, even decades, to come.

  On December 17, President Bush spoke twice to reporters. At the first session, he was asked what he was going to do after expiration of the deadline on January 15.

  “You just wait and see,” Bush said.

  At the second session that afternoon, a reporter asked why he was avoiding a specific threat of military force, why he had not come right out and said he would attack.

  “Because I’m not in a threatening mode,” Bush answered. “I don’t think any of us are. We are in a determined mode.”

  That day, Powell and Wolfowitz discussed Bush’s method of getting his message out. Powell was in real agony. Although he didn’t intend to, the President was sending mixed signals. In that single day he had blown hot, then cold. Explaining the policy and managing the message was very close to the single most important thing the President did, and Powell hated to see it botched.

  Powell and Wolfowitz went so far as to wonder whether they might be able to find a way to suggest a new communications manager for the White House.

  This period before the January 15 deadline was particularly critical. It was a war of nerves, and the President’s words were very important. First, Saddam had to be intimidated. Second, the Congress had to be kept on board. And third, if force had to be used, reasonably strong public support had to be maintained.

  Powell did not want to be forced into a war because of a monumental lapse in communication.

  • • •

  That week of December 17, Les Aspin went to the White House for a session with Scowcroft. Aspin’s House Armed Services Committee had just completed its own hearings on the Gulf policy. To Aspin, the problem was all about oil, nuclear weapons and aggression, and he had concluded he could support a war. If the United States didn’t use its military in a case like this, when might it be used?

  It was obvious to Aspin that Scowcroft had lost his patience with diplomacy. Saddam had said that he could only receive Baker in Baghdad on January 12, three days before the deadline. Bush had rejected this.
Saddam was jerking everyone around. There was no reason to deal with him, Scowcroft said. The four months of diplomacy and economic sanctions had failed. War would take less time than the exhausting and frustrating four-month dance they just had been through, Scowcroft said. He was now convinced that war would be a two- to three-week solution.

  Prince Bandar also stopped by to see Scowcroft that week. The Saudi ambassador knew that Scowcroft was a nearly perfect mirror of Bush. If Scowcroft was hot or cold on something, it meant Bush was the same.

  “Basically the President has made up his mind,” Scowcroft confided. Referring to the diplomatic efforts, he told Bandar, “These are all exercises.”

  • • •

  On December 19, Cheney, Powell and Wolfowitz arrived in Saudi Arabia for a detailed examination of Schwarzkopf’s war plan. The plan was complicated, with lots of military jargon, but Powell and the Joint Staff had tutored Cheney. Cheney admitted he was no war planner, but he said he wanted to make sure they could explain every detail to him. If there were things he didn’t agree with, they were going to have to convince him.

  Eight reporters traveling with Cheney and Powell had a 30-minute interview with Schwarzkopf’s deputy, Army Lieutenant General Calvin A. H. Waller. Powell had placed Waller, a temperate man, at the Central Command to act as a calming influence on Schwarzkopf. Waller told the reporters candidly that the Army would not be ready for an offensive operation until early or middle February, and he couldn’t imagine that President Bush would order an attack before then.

  Asked what he would say if Bush asked him if he’d be prepared to attack on January 15, Waller replied, “I’d tell him, ‘No, I’m not ready to do the job.’ ”

  Waller’s statements were the major headlines the next day. Powell was furious. Every time the iron fist was shown to Saddam, something or someone came along to pull it back.

  Cheney felt that Waller, who had little experience dealing with the media, had been thrown to the wolves in the press. The interview should not have been arranged. Nonetheless, the remarks and the ensuing uproar served Cheney’s purposes, conveying the impression that it was not likely the United States would go to war until February. It would be just right if Saddam thought he could not be attacked until then.

  As far as Cheney was concerned, if Saddam was not out of Kuwait, they were going to have to begin the air war right after January 15, and the Air Force and Navy air would be ready then.

  During this trip, Powell, Cheney and Wolfowitz had time to talk in a more relaxed atmosphere. Powell said that, looking at the whole situation, he thought Saddam would pull his forces out of Kuwait at the last minute. When Saddam saw that he was facing some of the best forces the United States had created to fight the Soviet Union, he would back down. Saddam was a ruthless survivor who would do anything to hold power. They had seen it time and time again—most recently when he gave up all the territory he had taken from Iran during the eight-year war. Or two weeks earlier, when he had suddenly and unexpectedly released the 2,000 American and Western hostages.

  Cheney didn’t buy any of this. Look at the evidence, he told Powell and Wolfowitz. Saddam was still moving reinforcements into Kuwait, not taking troops out. There was not one concrete piece of evidence to support this optimism. It could become dangerous. Let this attitude of “gee-he’11-withdraw” linger too long, Cheney said, and the decision makers would be infected with wishful thinking. It was the wrong basis for policy. That was why he wanted to make sure that Schwarzkopf was ready for war and had made the plan sufficiently bold and imaginative.

  The three men spent a day and a half with Schwarzkopf. The first morning’s briefings were on intelligence, the readiness of the forces and logistics. Cheney fired away with questions. He didn’t want anyone making optimistic assumptions; he wanted to make sure the command was stocking up supplies for a long conflict. He wanted more bombs and munitions for the air war on hand.

  At the afternoon session, Schwarzkopf laid out the war plan. It was not a series of options from which Cheney and the President could select. Rather, it was one overall plan, based on the guidance he had received to use the maximum military force available and necessary to do the job. Like the earlier plan, it included three air phases followed by a fourth phase, the ground campaign. If any phase went better than expected, it was possible to move to the next target group sooner, speeding up the war.

  The first phase of the air campaign was directed at the Iraqi air defenses, airfields, 800-plane air force and Saddam’s command, control and communications network. One intelligence analysis had concluded that 80 to 85 percent of Iraqi airpower could be eliminated in the initial days, providing the United States attacked first and achieved “tactical surprise.”

  Wolfowitz wanted to make sure all the alternatives were addressed and considered. He knew that military officers often interpreted questions from civilians as a challenge to their authority, but he tried to draw Schwarzkopf out on the air campaign.

  Schwarzkopf said he feared that the political apparatus—the President, the Secretary or the Congress—would call a halt before he could achieve his objectives in either the air or ground phases.

  Wolfowitz tried to reassure the general, pointing out that the President and Cheney had said it would be politically acceptable for Schwarzkopf to take all the time the field commanders needed.

  The President has said he does not want another Vietnam, Cheney reminded Schwarzkopf. The administration was committed. The military commanders would not have their hands tied. The President, Cheney and Powell had to sign off on the plan, but once it was approved, it would for the most part be in Schwarzkopf’s hands. The President would make the final decisions, such as when to launch the Phase Four ground campaign.

  Key portions of the ground campaign had been developed by half a dozen junior officers in their second year at the Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth. These majors and lieutenant colonels, nicknamed the “Jedi Knights,” had been sent to Saudi Arabia to apply the elements of advanced maneuver warfare—probing, flanking, surprise, initiative, audacity—to the war plan.

  Working in a small top-secret corner of Schwarzkopf’s headquarters, they had applied the principles of the Army’s unclassified 200-page operations manual. Chapters 6 and 7 on offensive operations were built around concepts established in General Grant’s 1863 Civil War campaign at Vicksburg. Instead of attacking directly into enemy fortifications, Grant sent his troops in a wide maneuver around the Confederate front line, and then attacked from the side and rear. This indirect approach was deemed the best way to beat Saddam.

  The initial terrain analysis had concluded that the ground in the Iraqi desert was too soft. But reconnaissance proved this wrong. The desert was in fact adequate to support a tank attack. A maneuver plan would work.

  Since Saddam had most of his forces in southern Kuwait and along the Gulf coast to the east, the ground plan called for moving the VII Corps several hundred miles in a wide arc to the west, and attacking through Iraq to hit the Republican Guard. It would amount to a gigantic left hook. Massive, swift, crushing tank attacks were central to the plan.

  Meanwhile, in a helicopter air assault, other U.S. forces would be dropped behind the Iraqi lines, where they would be unopposed.

  The idea was to force Saddam to move his hundreds of thousands of troops from dug-in positions so they could be picked off with superior U.S. air and ground fire.

  Marines would carry out a frontal ground attack at the Saudi-Kuwait border, attempting to breach and get behind the Iraqi lines there. Other Marine forces offshore would also do everything they could to make it appear as if they were going to launch a major amphibious landing on the Kuwaiti Gulf coast, where the Iraqis had built extensive defenses. But it would be a feint, designed to keep the Iraqis pinned down. The Marines would never land.

  “Here come my warlords,” Schwarzkopf said in introducing the Army and Marine ground commanders who gave the rundown on their units’ pl
ans. The most confident were the tank commanders. The commanders of the light forces appeared most worried.

  Cheney had many questions about the ground plan. With so many variables, chief among them how Saddam might move his forces around, it was going to be much trickier than the air war. The plan was dependent on achieving and holding air superiority, and on ensuring that Saddam did not have intelligence on the large-force movement to the west. There was also a huge logistical challenge: at least 100,000 men, as well as their equipment and supplies, would have to be moved several hundred miles in several days to the west—an almost impossible task. If Saddam did learn of the plan, he would not believe it could be done.

  There was much discussion of chemical weapons. It was a virtual certainty that Saddam would use them. When? How? No one knew exactly what supplies he had, but certainly they were vast. The military and psychological impact of a chemical attack was hard to measure.

  The Army had some new technologies. A radar “fire finder” allowed the United States to locate Iraqi artillery emplacements by establishing the trajectory of an artillery shot while it was still in the air. A computer solved the mathematical problem, instantly determining the point of origin. Before the enemy round landed, the U.S. forces would have a return barrage fired on that point, hopefully knocking out both the weapon and the Iraqis operating it. “We will teach them if you shoot your artillery, you die,” one of the officers explained.

  Since many of the targets, like communications centers and airfields, were fixed, the updated and revised air plan was much neater and more predictable than the ground plan. The planners had worked hard matching weapons to targets, Cheney could see.

  Cheney and Powell told Schwarzkopf to expect execution of the air phases soon after January 15.

  The Secretary and the Chairman received a highly classified medical briefing on anticipated casualties. The senior medical officer said they were planning on 20,000, including about 7,000 killed in action.