Day number one—D-Day—was electric. We had unleashed a barrage of forty Tomahawk cruise missiles from four ships and two submarines, and an initial air strike led by two F-117s targeting Iraqi leadership just outside of Baghdad. F/A-18 Hornets launched from the USS Constellation struck targets around Basra. A second wave of aircraft took off from the USS Abraham Lincoln and other platforms in the Persian Gulf, safely returning after successfully completing their bombing runs.
Coincidentally, on the same day, we also launched Operation VALIANT STRIKE against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the Sami Ghar Mountains east of Kandahar in Afghanistan. As a result of intelligence gleaned from interrogations of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (who was captured in Pakistan just a few days earlier) and other al-Qaeda operatives, a combined force of around six hundred special operators and conventional troops zeroed in on targets where they confiscated weapons and rooted out al-Qaeda and Taliban forces.
While I won’t go so far as to say that the mood in the room was euphoric, I would categorize it as more than cautiously optimistic.
In contrast to the elation we felt the first day, day number four (March 24) felt more like a swift kick to the gut. Three entirely unrelated operations had gone afoul—and it was my responsibility to report the grim details.
Thirty-three AH-64D Apache helicopters of the Army V Corps, 11th Attack Helicopter Regiment had taken off on a late-night mission to attack and destroy a battery of T-72 tanks and artillery of the elite Medina division of the Iraqi Republican Guard; our belief was that doing so would clear the way for the 3rd Infantry Division’s advance into the suburbs of Karbala.
Approaching the target area, they came under heavy antiaircraft and artillery fire—not entirely unanticipated—but then, taking them completely off guard, there was an eruption of small arm and RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) fire from the surrounding residential areas. Bombardment was hurled at them from every direction. One chopper was hit, then another, and a third. Within minutes, every single Apache incurred some level of battle damage—one so severe that it was unable to remain airborne. While the other aircraft limped back to base, the two pilots of the downed Apache were on the run, doing their best to escape and evade. Their aircraft became the focal point of live news interruptions beamed across Iraq by its state-run TV network. Not long after, the broadcasts were picked up by CNN. The chopper was surrounded by mobs of joyful Iraqis, two of whom danced with Kalashnikov rifles waving over their heads, two more brandishing our soldiers’ helmets.
It wasn’t much later that the disabled AH-64D burst into flames and was for all intents and purposes demolished—along with it all the classified equipment it held within. A demolition like that was a textbook example of what’s supposed to happen when a target is struck by one of our long-range ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) missiles. Our successful launch of that missile was about the only part of that sequence that one might categorize as a “success.”
Like the helo that was plucked from the sky, so too were our hopes that the pilots could escape their pursuers. It didn’t take long for Iraqi TV to cut in with yet another breaking news event: The two Army aviators had been captured. Now prisoners of war, they were paraded on Iraqi TV, a clear violation of the Geneva Convention. Contemptible? Of course. But not particularly surprising since playing by the rules had never been a part of Saddam’s modus operandi.
In the days to come, there’d be hearty debate as to whether the Apaches should be used for deep penetration and attack missions such as this, without the benefit of fixed-wing escorts flying overhead or preparatory artillery to provide cover and reduce their vulnerability. We did end up pulling back on that particular tactic, but even today, you can still hear the issue hotly debated.
The whole thing was widely covered by CNN, who had a reporter embedded with the command and control helicopter. That piece of the pie prompted stimulating discussion surrounding First Amendment challenges. Reporters were allowed to be embedded only after they had signed off on stringent rules governing what they could and could not divulge—for instance, anything related to tactics or locations was strictly forbidden. The last thing we needed was for this to become a source of intel for the enemy, so anything that came close to jeopardizing the safety of our troops would be dealt with harshly. To their credit, I’m not aware of any instances where the embeds violated these guidelines. But we did end up with certain situations where worldwide television audiences were viewing events in near real time, sometimes even before our own intel officers had secured the information. It paved the way for a whole new way of newscasting.
Upon completion of my briefing, there was extensive discussion about how and why the attack unfolded the way it had. The Army wasn’t happy with me for reporting the event in the first place and the Air Force wasn’t happy with me for not exposing all the disappointing details.
I’ve generally found that when two sides of an argument are mad at you, you’re probably doing or reporting the right thing.
My second report of the day involved an A-10 mission gone wrong. It occurred at a bridge in the western Iraqi town of Rutba, not far from the Syrian border. The objective was to destroy the bridge. Once the bridge was identified, the pilot made the appropriate passes to ensure that the target was clear, then he flipped the master switch to ARM, rotated the knob to designate the appropriate missile pylon, carefully lined up the bridge in the head-up display, and finally squeezed the consent switch on the control stick, prompting the missiles’ solid propellant to ignite and begin its seven-second journey to the bridge, leaving a long trail of smoke in its wake. About a second after ignition, a small bus came into view as it turned onto the bridge and began to cross it, stopping at the very instant the missile made contact. In a massive fireball, five Syrian civilians were killed and at least another ten seriously wounded.
I completed the report and the room fell silent. There were no excuses, and no rationalizations. I waited an extra moment before continuing with my next report.
My final report focused on a devastating friendly fire incident that resulted in the deaths of at least ten marines. In the midst of a brutal battle on the ground, two A-10s from the Pennsylvania Air National Guard spotted what they believed to be enemy vehicles near a bridge just outside of the southern Iraq city of Nasiriyah. Following protocol, they established radio contact with the battalion’s forward air controller to confirm that the targets were, in fact, the enemy. Unaware that U.S. Marines had made it that far north (in this case to gain control of the critical bridge), the Bravo Company controller cleared the pair of attack aircraft to take out the “enemy” vehicles, which turned out to be our own amphibious assault vehicles of Charlie Company. For fifteen minutes, the two Warthogs circled the bridge and unleashed an overwhelming salvo of 30 mm Gatling gun fire, precision bombs, and ultimately Maverick missiles. Multiple passes, devastating consequences. Before the A-10 pilots were finally commanded to cease fire, at least ten United States Marines had been killed.
The following day, President Bush showed up at the Pentagon to attend the secretary’s morning meeting. Make no mistake about it: he was intimately involved every day, with Generals Myers and Pace delivering personal updates in the Oval Office or by VTC at least daily, and frequently two times a day. But his coming to the Pentagon gave him a chance to delve into greater detail and deliberate with the Joint Chiefs, and every bit as important, it gave him an opportunity to “rally the troops” and make it crystal clear that he was 100 percent with us. As the photographers left the room (being a SCIF, a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, only two were allowed in to snap a few shots for dissemination to all the media outlets), I could see the president glance at the red OBSERVE COMSEC sign beside the heavy door as it was sealed, then he turned and looked each one of us in the eye and delivered what appeared to be totally off-the-cuff remarks about the pride he felt for the men and women of our armed forces, giving of themselves in the interest of protecting our liberty. What began as a “
good old boy” country chat soon transitioned to an eloquent discourse on our great country and those who fight to protect her. There was not a soul in the room who did not feel the sincerity of the president’s inspirational charge.
Once the war started, the White House kept us busy working closely with the National Security Staff on efforts to identify WMD, secure conventional munitions (leading to another Senate testimony that would come back to bite me in the butt), and get a biometric capability established in Iraq. I worked closely with Condi Rice and Fran Townsend on all these fronts. Fran and I established a particularly close relationship, and we’re still friends today. She served as the president’s top advisor on counterterrorism, so the two of us worked hand in hand on counterterror issues related to the pursuit of bin Laden and other high-value targets.
Two other areas are worthy of mention, and these are both examples of how Major General Stan McChrystal (Vice J-3, my deputy) stepped up to the plate and took over for me in areas in which I had little time to service myself.
In the case of the war, it quickly got to the point where we felt that daily face-to-face congressional briefings were in order as well as daily media presentations, something that to my knowledge had never been done before. But it’s a great indication of the lengths to which we went in order to build a strong, collaborative relationship with our legislative colleagues—one of complete cooperation and transparency. This is one of so many areas in which I found Stan to be worth his weight in gold. Six days a week, he would head over to the Hill to brief Congress on the real-time operational details of the war. The briefings would be hosted by the respective Armed Services committees, but any member with the appropriate level of clearance was welcome to attend. (The information we shared required a Top Secret clearance.) Stan, along with Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Colonel William Caniano, an Army intelligence officer on the Joint Staff, would first head to the Capitol for the Senate brief, which would be moderated by Senator Warner. From 9:00 a.m. to 10:15 a.m., after a quick overview by Stan, the members would have the opportunity to ask questions—follow-ups on the “hows” and “whys.” Let’s not forget that Congress has immense control of the purse strings, so it was certainly in everybody’s best interest that they had a thorough understanding of exactly how the taxpayers’ hard-earned funds were being used to save lives and defeat the powers that were driven to destroy the “great Satan,” as Saddam called us.
Following the seventy-five-minute session, the trio would gather their backup material and hightail it across the Capitol to the House side, then go down the stairs that led to the underground labyrinth of tunnels that connects the Capitol with the various House and Senate office buildings, as well as the Library of Congress. While all three would have preferred a fast-paced walk from the Capitol to the Rayburn House Office Building, timing dictated that on most days they hopped the underground train in order to arrive at Rayburn in time for the House briefing, which ran from 10:30 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. The small, open-air, single-car tram reminded me more of something you might see at Disneyland, but it sure was an efficient way to transit from one building to the next, particularly during Washington’s often inclement weather.
After about a week into the sessions, I asked Stan how they were going. “You know, sir, it’s a funny thing,” he began without missing a beat. “These meetings are well-attended by members from both sides of the aisle. Most voted for the war, but a few of them against it. I never thought I’d see them all agree on anything.” I wondered where he was going with this. “But to a person, we’re getting only positive feedback. They appreciate the candor and the no-holds-barred forum seems to make them feel even more personally involved in the decision-making process.” He cracked a slight grin and concluded, “Word on the street is that we’ve become the ‘go to’ event.” One certainly couldn’t ask for more than that.
PUBLIC AFFAIRS
Another area where Stan filled the void was in handling our public affairs; he became the face of the Pentagon on those days when the chairman or SECDEF were unable to tackle the daily press briefings. By the time one becomes a flag officer (a general or an admiral), most have had command positions that included speaking in front of large groups. We’ve been trained on what to say and how to say it. But saying a few words at a change-of-command ceremony is a far cry from walking into the Pentagon press room and facing a room packed with some of the most experienced—and respected—reporters in the world. Looking at those cameras—which are beaming live close-ups of you to a worldwide audience in the millions—even the least religious among us often utter a prayer that they don’t inadvertently misspeak and come across as incompetent or a fool. Stan’s a warrior, and I can guarantee you that he’d been much happier jumping out of airplanes than he was facing the Pentagon press corps. To quote him directly, “I wanted that role about as much as I wanted a root canal.” But with the help and support of DoD communications experts Victoria “Torie” Clarke (assistant secretary of defense for public affairs) and Larry DiRita (special assistant to the secretary of defense), he did a yeoman’s job and represented our military with an intelligence and competence that I had every confidence he would bring to the task.
Make no mistake about it, a carefully planned, well-executed public affairs campaign should be a key part of every commander’s arsenal. While the term “public affairs” may be a relatively new one, leaders have been aware of its importance for generations. Do you really think nineteen million women would have packed factories and shipyards to make munitions and war supplies had it not been for “Rosie the Riveter” becoming such a cultural icon during World War II? And as patriotic a figure as one might find “Uncle Sam,” it wasn’t until J. M. Montgomery sketched him pointing directly at us and added the line, “I WANT YOU for the U.S. Army” that World War I recruiting went through the roof. These are just a few examples of tools that were created to capture the public’s attention, engage them, and enlist their support. Even Abraham Lincoln was well aware how crucial it is to win the hearts and minds. “Public sentiment is everything,” he said in August of 1858. “With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed.”
Our own military doctrine teaches us that the primary means of garnering positive public sentiment is through the proactive release of accurate information to both domestic and international audiences. Fostering a transparent, collaborative partnership with the press—along with instituting a well-planned and intelligently orchestrated social media campaign—facilitates informed perceptions and undermines adversarial propaganda.
In 2014, President Obama reminded the graduating class of West Point cadets, “When we cannot explain our efforts clearly and publicly, we face terrorist propaganda and international suspicion, we erode our legitimacy with our partners and our people, and we reduce accountability in our own government.”
For this to work, our message must be honest, timely, and consistent. Without complete honesty, we lose credibility and support. The public understands why we must decline to answer certain questions when the answers might place our forces in harm’s way. But they won’t accept it if we lie to them. Whether it be the secretary of defense or the chairman, Stan McChrystal or me—having a credible spokesperson to serve as the “face of the Pentagon” is as important a piece of the battlefield as are airplanes and tanks and artillery shells.
I’ve always envied those to whom interplay with the fourth estate came so naturally. Don Rumsfeld was one of them. I don’t know that he’d admit it, but I think he looked forward to bursting through the doors of the press room and storming up to the dais for a bit of verbal jousting. He took a lot of flak for some of his quips but I think it’s because they just couldn’t keep up with him; he was so pointed and quick that sometimes his responses flew right over their heads. But he always had a purpose for whatever he was saying. The most classic example occurred when Jim Miklaszewski (NBC’s chief Pentagon correspondent at the time) brought up the fact that “there are reports t
hat there is no evidence of a direct link between Baghdad and some of these terrorist organizations.”
Rumsfeld looked him in the eye like a wise elder and started ruminating out loud, presenting a difficult-to-follow analysis that had the room full of educated journalists scratching their heads in wonder. “Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because, as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know that there are known unknowns. That is to say that we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.”
“Uh, excuse me,” the reporter interrupted, completely flummoxed, along with most of the others in the room. “But is this an unknown unknown? There are several unknowns, and I’m wondering if this one is an unknown unknown.”
In a manner that only Rumsfeld could get away with, he gathered his material, stared down the reporter, and chuckled. “I’m not going to say which one it is.” Of course the room erupted in laughter … but if they thought about it, he was right.
Another one who just seemed to “have it” was a familiar face to those of us who followed the first Gulf War, Army LTG Tom Kelly. As J-3 in the late ’80s and early ’90s, the big, blunt Irish tanker was instrumental in developing the battle plans for both Operation JUST CAUSE (the invasion of Panama) and DESERT STORM. Known for his wit and aggressive attacks against anyone he felt teetered too close to the line of operational security, his unique way of spinning a phrase combined with his gruff military bearing grew him quite an impressive following—so large that it landed him an appearance on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. When asked about the progress of the war, he once said, “Iraq went from being the fourth-largest army in the world to the second-largest army in Iraq in one hundred hours.”
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