My American Journey

by Colin L. Powell

  Dick Cheney and I went to Riyadh on December 19 to size up the state of readiness and report back to President Bush. After we met with Norm and satisfied ourselves that all was proceeding on schedule, we visited the troops. At one stop, we stood alongside sleek F-117A Stealth fighters, surrounded by Air Force personnel and soldiers. Dick gave a talk both blunt and inspirational. The troops were going to stay here until Saddam left Kuwait, he said. “We can’t say, okay, you can keep twenty percent of what you stole.” Saddam had to leave or be driven out. In accomplishing the mission, however, our forces would get everything they needed, he promised. We were stinting on nothing. He asked if anyone had any questions for us. Such an offer would have been inconceivable in the Iraqi army, or in most armies, for that matter—ordinary soldiers given an opportunity to question their nation’s top defense officials.

  A pilot asked me about airpower. “Airpower will be overwhelming,” I said, “but in every war, it’s the infantrymen who have to raise the flag of victory on the battlefield.”

  “How long is it gonna take?” another GI asked.

  “Wars are unpredictable,” I said, “and I’m not a bookmaker or a fortune-teller. But I’ll tell you this. We are not going to be bogged down.” The President had already promised that the Persian Gulf would not become another Vietnam.

  After the massing we had witnessed of planes, tanks, artillery, armored vehicles, ammo dumps, and hundreds of thousands of troops, I found it hard to believe that Saddam, at the last minute, would not fold. If he had any military men on his staff with an ounce of guts or sense, they would have to tell this nonsoldier, nonstrategist that his way was madness. Still, madmen have ruled nations before and have pulled the roof down on their own people.

  On Christmas Eve, immediately upon getting back from Saudi Arabia, Cheney and I flew to Camp David and were taken to rustic Holly Cabin. Already there were the President, Brent Scowcroft, and Scowcroft’s deputy, Bob Gates. We sat before a roaring fire while Dick and I briefed the President on the readiness of coalition forces and the latest edition of the strategy. George Bush was under enormous pressure, and I could see it in his taut features. He was trying to balance Arab states, Israel, Western allies, the Soviets, Congress, and the American public, like a juggler spinning plates on the tops of poles, wondering how long he could keep everything in the air.

  Between his impatience and Norm Schwarzkopf’s anxieties, I had my own juggling act. Norm displayed the natural apprehensions of a field commander on the edge of war, magnified by his excitable personality. I had to reassure him constantly that he would not be rushed into combat. At the same time, the President was leaning on me: “When are we going to be ready? When can we go?” Dealing with Norm was like holding a hand grenade with the pin pulled. Dealing with the President was like playing Scheherazade, trying to keep the king calm for a thousand and one nights.

  The discussion this day at Holly Cabin inevitably got around to casualties. No figure is harder to divine through the fog of war. The worst-case scenarios were frightening, our troops advancing against hundreds of thousands of entrenched Iraqis, a sea of mines between them and the enemy, ditches full of oil that were to be set ablaze as our men advanced, and hanging over our heads the unknowable elements of chemical and biological warfare. Military pundits all over town had their predictions, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen thousand. A respected think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, produced a projection of fifteen thousand U.S. casualties. The grim guessing game turned grimmer when word got out that the Defense Department had ordered fifteen thousand body bags. Actually the order had nothing to do with Desert Shield. It was generated by a computer at the Defense Logistics Agency as a possible need over an indefinite future. Cheney had pressed Schwarzkopf, and Norm was no more eager than I to project the unprojectable. But he finally came up with a figure of five thousand casualties.

  I completely rejected the highest estimates. They were extrapolated from old war game formulas in which the U.S. and Soviet armies would grind each other down in Europe. That was not our strategy. First, we planned to punish the Iraqi ground forces with an air offensive of an intensity the world had never witnessed. The air war was to be followed by a ground campaign employing not World War I-style infantry charges but swift, heavily armored units engaged in the left hook around the Iraqis’ lightly defended Western flank. I resisted giving anything as slippery as casualty estimates to the President, and so far had managed to avoid specifics. But, when pressed to the wall, I finally came in below even Schwarzkopf’s estimate, at three thousand killed, wounded and missing.

  Still a sobering figure, I thought, as I studied the President’s face that Christmas Eve. From his questions and demeanor, I concluded that George Bush no longer wanted an Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait. Over the past four months, Saddam’s occupation had visited terror on the Kuwaitis—murder, theft, rape, the destruction of museums. If the Iraqis withdrew now, it would be with impunity for their crimes. A pullback would also mean that Saddam would leave Kuwait with his huge army intact, ready to fight another day.

  We also talked that night about the controversy raging in Congress over whether to wait for sanctions to work or to go on the offensive. The President listened distractedly. Suddenly, his words brought us up short. “I’ll prevail,” he said, “or I’ll be impeached.” I interpreted this to mean that he had completely resigned himself to war. If he won, Congress’s opinion would not matter; and if he lost, he was prepared to lose the presidency.

  Cheney and I helicoptered back to Washington late that night, and I got home in time to spend Christmas Eve with my family. It was a subdued holiday. My thoughts were with the families who had loved ones in the Gulf region on the eve of war. My mood was not lightened when I called my sister, Marilyn, to wish her and her family a Merry Christmas and learned that she would have to be treated for breast cancer.

  “Colin, I cannot tell you how difficult it is to tell you this.” The caller was a British colleague, General Sir Richard Vincent, vice chief of the defense staff.

  “Yes, Dick,” I said. “What is it?”

  “You see, Air Chief Marshal Patrick Hine met with the prime minister to brief him on the plan.”

  So far, no problem.

  “After the meeting, Paddy turned his briefcases and laptop computer over to his executive officer …”

  “And?” I held my breath.

  “It seems the executive officer parked his car and did a bit of shopping … and the briefcases and the computer were stolen.”

  “What was in them?” I asked with a sinking heart.

  “We’ve recovered the briefcases. No need to worry. But the hard disk in the computer may have contained the battle plan.”

  “When did this happen?” I asked, in disbelief.

  “That’s the second thing I dread telling you,” Vincent said. “About a week ago.”

  “A week ago!” I said. “And now you’re telling us!”

  Most alarming, the British tabloids had gotten hold of the story. For the next few days, we held our breath. My press officer, Colonel Smullen, monitored the British and European media for signs that the information had fallen into the wrong hands. Nothing appeared. Our thief was either a patriot, not about to divulge the secrets of her majesty’s government for personal gain, or a crook so out of touch he did not even read the news.

  Earlier in the year, Coretta King had invited me to be grand marshal for the parade in Atlanta marking the January 15 birthday of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. Then the political weather started to change. Blacks, who represented approximately 11 percent of the U.S. population over age sixteen, represented 26 percent of U.S. troops in the Gulf. Obviously, casualties would hit them proportionately harder than whites. A New York Times/CBS poll that month showed that only half of blacks, compared to 80 percent of whites, supported the liberation of Kuwait.

  Joe Lowery, of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, whom I had come to know during my
FORSCOM tour in Atlanta, called me. “Colin, you know I respect you, but …”

  “But what, Joe?”

  “There are those who think it might be inappropriate for a military man to serve as grand marshal for Dr. King’s parade.”

  The last thing I wanted was to have anything mar an event honoring the memory of this human rights crusader. As it turned out, I now knew that I was going to be tied up in Washington on the date of the parade anyway, and so I pulled out.

  On November 20, Democratic Congressman Ron Dellums from California and forty-four other members of the House filed suit in federal district court to prevent President Bush from initiating a war against Iraq without a congressional declaration. At about this time, Julian Dixon, a Democrat representing Los Angeles, grilled Dick Cheney and me, during one of our appearances on the Hill, about the high number of blacks in the war zone. Cheney answered the question, and Julian was ready to let the matter lie. But I wanted to clear up what I regarded as a serious misunderstanding. I said that I regretted that any American, black or white, might die in combat. But black fighting men and women, particularly in an all-volunteer force, would be offended to think that when duty called, they would be excluded on the basis of color. Go into the NCO club at Fort Bragg, I said. Tell the black sergeants there that we have too many of them in the Army. Tell them that they will have to stay behind while their white buddies go off to do the fighting. See what kind of reaction you get.

  The military had given African-Americans more equal opportunity than any other institution in American society, I pointed out. Naturally, they flocked to the armed forces. When we come before Congress saying we have to cut the forces, you complain that we’re reducing opportunities for blacks, I said. Now you’re saying, yes, opportunities to get killed. But as soon as this crisis passes, you’ll be back, worried about our cutting the force and closing off one of the best career fields for African-Americans. Do you want to have blacks in the military limited to the percent of blacks in the population, and throw the rest out? I don’t think so. But you cannot have it both ways—favoring opportunity for blacks in the military in peacetime and exemption from risk for them in wartime. There was only one way to reduce the proportion of blacks in the military: let the rest of American society open its doors to African-Americans and give them the opportunities they now enjoyed in the armed forces.

  At about the time I was having these discussions, I was gratified by the words of Gary Franks, a young representative from Connecticut, the only black Republican in Congress. Franks came up to me after I had briefed him and fellow freshman members on the situation in the Gulf that January. “I want to thank you for helping me get elected,” Franks said.

  “Me help you get elected?” I answered. “I don’t do politics.”

  He gave me a big grin. “In my district, it’s important for white voters to see that a black man can be competent in something besides civil rights. Thanks to you, they’ve seen a black man who could cut it in a white world. And that helped me.”

  I appreciated what Franks said, since I too had stood on the shoulders of blacks who went before me.

  The President had begun a custom of inviting the Gang of Eight to the White House after he returned from Camp David on Sunday evenings. We gathered there on January 6, 1991, and after dinner, he led us into a small office he used in the residential quarters. We had a decision to make, he said. In nine days the UN ultimatum for Iraq to leave Kuwait would expire. Secretary of State Baker was off to Europe, where he was going to meet in Geneva with the Iraqi foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, in a last-ditch attempt to get the Iraqis to go peacefully and stave off war. Also, in the week ahead, the House and Senate were going to debate whether to grant the President authority to go to war over Kuwait. Cheney thought opponents might defeat the resolution, and where would that leave the President? George Bush had said publicly that he welcomed the debate and was ready to run the risk that Congress might not approve. I myself favored having Congress take a stand. I had witnessed the contortions the government had gone through during Vietnam to avoid saying war is war (“killed by hostile action” instead of the blunter “killed in action,” and other transparent dodges). I also knew that whatever Congress decided, President Bush was not going to back down. The decision he wanted to make this night was when to go to war. He turned to me. “Seventeen zero three hundred, Mr. President,” I said—January 17, at 3:00 A.M. Riyadh time.

  The early-morning H-hour for launching the air war had been agreed on for some time. Striking in the dead of night gave our fighter-bombers enough time to get in and out of Iraq in near-total darkness. The hour was also selected to minimize collateral damage, since most Iraqis would be at home, not on the street or at their jobs. The date, however, provoked a debate. The UN deadline expired on the 15th, Washington time. So why not strike at 0300 on January 16? someone suggested. To others, that looked too calculated, as if we could not wait to start dropping bombs. On the other hand, we did not want to wait too long after the deadline for fear of losing credibility and having fresh political obstacles thrown up by congressional opponents. About two days, I argued, seemed a reasonable compromise.

  I found it interesting to contrast the moods of Schwarzkopf, the professional warrior, and Cheney, the resolute civilian, as the hour of battle approached. Norm continued to be edgy. He was the one with half a million lives depending on his judgment in the field. And he was testy by nature, short-tempered, doubtful that armchair strategists at home could grasp battlefield realities. The calm that descends on the eve of battle had not yet descended over Norm Schwarzkopf.

  Cheney, after one brief lapse, had again become the picture of self-possession. As D-Day approached, I invited him down to my office for lunch. He had had a coronary bypass and was following a strict diet, enforced by his secretary. We rarely got together in a social setting, and this day I thought he deserved a culinary break while we talked. I asked Nancy Hughes to order cheeseburgers. We went over the target list one last time. He seemed to have memorized it. The man had become a glutton for information, with an appetite we could barely satisfy. He spent hours in the National Military Command Center peppering my staff with questions. How do tanks work? Patriot missiles? How do you put together an air plan? What does armored infantry do on a battlefield? How do you penetrate a minefield? He left his briefers drained. But at the end of the day, we had a civilian Secretary of Defense who knew what he was talking about militarily. By the end of this cheeseburger lunch, I considered Dick’s education complete. My Joint Staff operations officer, Tom Kelly, organized a ceremony, and we presented Dick with a certificate stating that Richard Bruce Cheney was now an honorary graduate of all the war colleges.

  Of course, the cool Cheney, in Washington, enjoyed a layer of insulation. The uneasy Schwarzkopf had to direct people to fight and die on the scene.

  On January 15, as D-Day approached, I got an anxious call from my British counterpart, Sir David Craig. “Colin, do you still intend to bomb Iraq’s biological installations?” he asked. I said that we did. “Bit risky that, eh?” Craig’s concern was not baseless. Two days before, I had given the President our best military judgment. There was a risk in hitting these plants. The bombing would probably destroy any disease agents present. But it might also release them. It was a gamble, I told the President, but one we had to take. He was already agitated, and this added worry did not soothe him.

  I remained less concerned over possible Iraqi use of chemical weapons. Our forces would be wearing protective clothing, and many would be in fast-moving shielded vehicles. But the biologicals worried me, and the impact on the public the first time the first casualty keeled over to germ warfare would be terrifying. We could not retaliate in kind, since we were a signatory to international agreements banning biological warfare. Still, we had to be prepared for Saddam’s worst impulses. If we faced unconventional attacks, we had unconventional counter-strikes ready, even without resort to nuclear weapons. On the day the deadline was t
o run out, I started drafting a warning to Saddam. It read:

  Only conventional weapons will be used in strict accordance with the Geneva Convention and commonly accepted rules of warfare. If you, however, use chemical or biological weapons in violation of treaty obligations we will:

  destroy your merchant fleet,

  destroy your railroad infrastructure,

  destroy your port facilities,

  destroy your highway system,

  destroy your oil facilities,

  destroy your airline infrastructure.

  I saved the worst for last, and it was a bluff intended only to strike fear in him, an action that our lawyers would veto. If driven to it, I wrote, we would destroy the dams on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and flood Baghdad, with horrendous consequences. I started circulating the message through channels, but time ran out before it could be cleared. Its meaning, however, was not lost on our side. We would fight a conventional war, unless Saddam drove us to other means, which would be swift and crushing.