American Heroes

by Oliver North

  Monday, 2 December 2002

  President Bush:

  "The inspectors are not in Iraq to play hide-and-seek with Saddam Hussein."

  None of this background moved the Europeans to action, but it did convince a majority in Congress. On 10 October 2002, a bill authorizing the president to use military force against Iraq passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 296 to 133. The Senate voted for the measure 77 to 23. Still, the UN refused to "resolve" that the use of military force was necessary to bring Saddam into "compliance."

  Instead, on 8 November the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1441, requiring Iraq to provide weapons inspectors with "immediate, unimpeded, unconditional, and unrestricted access" to suspected weapons sites. The resolution also created yet a new entity to determine whether Saddam was breaking the rules—the United Nations Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC). By December the "weapons inspectors" were supposedly hard at work and declared that they had "earned the cooperation" of the Iraqi regime and had even gone "unannounced and unopposed" into one of Saddam's palaces.

  Hans Blix

  Heading the UNMOVIC "inspection teams" was Hans Blix, a Swedish diplomat and outspoken opponent of military action aimed at removing Saddam. The ever-so-courteous, always smiling Blix insisted on inspecting Iraq from his luxurious UN offices in New York City. It was, after all, holiday season in the Big Apple. And in Iraq, it was Ramadan, a tough time of the year to get a glass of wine and good cheese in a Muslim country.

  But it wasn't just his penchant for the good life that raised concerns about Blix. He had earlier served as director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency during the very years that Iraq's blooming nuclear weapons program went undetected.

  In his zeal to avoid offending the brutal regime in Baghdad, Blix referred to them as his "hosts." He minimized the involvement of experienced American and British inspectors with UNMOVIC because the Iraqis complained that they were "too aggressive in their disarmament searches." To replace U.S. and British experts on nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, Blix launched an international affirmative action hiring program to recruit Chinese, Russian, and Chilean inspectors—but few with specialized expertise in the arcane sciences of "bugs, gas, and nukes."

  One of the few Americans he did find attractive enough to put on his team had a two-year, community college degree in security management. His résumé included sadomasochistic sex groups, teaching courses on "sex slaves," and proficiency in "bondage" techniques. Given what we now know of Saddam's torture chambers, one wonders at the reaction of the Iraqi despot when he learned of this particular inspector's extracurricular activities.

  There is considerable question as to whether the UNMOVIC "inspection team" would even have known what they were seeing if Saddam had left it all on display. Dr. Raymond Zilinskas, at the time director of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, told me, "If UNMOVIC lacks specialized scientific expertise in biochemistry, nuclear physics, microbiology, and 'weaponization' of biological and chemical agents, the inspectors might never know what the Iraqis have or don't have."

  "Dr. Z" had been to Iraq before, as a bio-weapons expert with the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM). In 1994 he inspected sixty-one Iraqi biological research and production facilities and built a database on Iraq's "dual use" biological equipment. When I asked if his advice had been sought for UNMOVIC, he replied, "No."

  On 5 February 2003, with tens of thousands of U.S. and British combat troops and aircraft already in Kuwait and more on the way, Secretary of State Colin Powell made a dramatic speech before the United Nations, laying out the case for military operations to remove Saddam Hussein. With George Tenant, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, seated behind him, Powell used satellite photos, diagrams of chemical and biological weapons facilities, and transcribed intercepts of Iraqi communications to describe the threat posed by an Iraqi despot armed with weapons of mass destruction.

  Former Secretary of State Colin Powell makes his case before the U.S. Security Council, 5 February 2003

  In his "bill of particulars" against Saddam's brutal regime, Powell emphasized that Saddam had already used these weapons against Iran and his own Kurdish population in northern Iraq. The intelligence on Saddam's chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs was ambiguous, as intelligence often is. But at its core, the case against Saddam rested on the need to prevent the Iraqi dictator from ever using these kinds of weapons again. This justification for military action would prove to be the first mistake of the campaign to bring down the "Butcher of Baghdad." It was also unnecessary because there were plenty of other reasons to remove this brutal regime.

  By the time Colin Powell made his presentation, everyone knew that in 1993 Saddam had tried to assassinate former President George Bush and the emir of Kuwait. The UN and our Congress were aware that the Iraqi dictator had long provided material assistance to radical Islamic terrorist organizations such as the Palestine Liberation Front and the Abu Nidal organization and that he had granted refuge to Abul Abbas, the mastermind behind the hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro and the murderer of Leon Klinghoffer. Saddam had publicly bragged that he was paying a $25,000 cash bounty to the families of Palestinian suicide terrorists.

  The U.S. Congress and the UN both had a detailed British government report on crimes and human rights abuses in Iraq. The conclusions were horrific: "Torture is systematic. . . . Executions are carried out without due process of law. . . . Relatives are often prevented from burying the victims and have even been charged for the bullets used." An appendix chronicled some of the methods of torture, including rape, eye-gouging, piercing hands with an electric drill, acid baths, and electric shock.

  When Operation Iraqi Freedom was finally launched on 20 March 2003, it was—in the words of one of the Marines I interviewed for FOX News—"the most telegraphed punch in military history." Saddam Hussein had been given more than seven months to destroy, remove, or hide anything he wanted before U.S. and British troops arrived on his doorstep.

  After the shooting stopped, top U.S. weapons inspector David Kay reported that his investigators had uncovered widespread evidence of unreported biological and chemical weapons programs that had been concealed from UN inspectors. In the words of Dr. Kay: "Iraq's WMD programs spanned more than two decades, involved thousands of people, billions of dollars, and were elaborately shielded by security and deception operations that continued even beyond the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom."

  The report stated that "over two dozen laboratories that were hidden in the Iraqi intelligence service . . . had prohibited equipment, and . . . at the minimum, kept alive Iraq's capability to produce both biological and chemical weapons." But Dr. Kay also noted that much of the evidence of WMD "was irretrievably lost" because prior to the war there was "deliberate dispersal and destruction of material and docu-mentation related to weapons programs."

  Critics who com-plain that Iraq became "the central front in the war on terror" miss the gruesome point that it is much easier to kill and capture terrorists if there is a central front. In short, though it isn't politically correct to say it, it's better to battle terrorists in Baghdad than in Boston.

  In 2002, Iraq had more than a dozen facilities capable of producing chemical weapons

  PREPARING FOR THE ROAD TO BAGHDAD

  On the flight line in Kuwait

  My "embed" orders from FOX News came in the form of an e-mail on 4 March 2003. Two days later I was in Kuwait joining a team of FOX News professionals who were already there. Griff Jenkins, my indomitable cameraman, field producer, and friend, had preceded me by several days. He met me at the airport. That night we were warmly greeted by Don Fair, the hard-nosed FOX bureau chief in Kuwait. Don took us to the rooftop "studio" he had set up atop the Marriott Hotel.

  Two other FOX News "embed teams"�
�Greg Kelly's and Rick Leventhal's—had been on site for almost two weeks. They were already getting used to the routine of nightly air-raid and chemical attack warnings as Saddam fired SCUD missiles into the country he had once occupied. After my first trip to the hotel's crowded basement "bomb shelter," I decided that the next time I heard the siren wail, I would go to a safer place—our far less crowded rooftop "studio"—instead of heading to the cellar. Eventually others caught on to my trick, and it got to be overcrowded on the roof. I took to sleeping in the bathtub with my gas mask at my side.

  Several days were consumed with briefings by Central Command public affairs officers, medical officers, and military lawyers. More than seven hundred U.S. and foreign correspondents had applied for credentials to cover what everyone believed would be the imminent beginning of hostilities.

  The possibility of being exposed to chemical weapons was only marginally worse than wearing these protective suits in temperatures above 100 degrees

  The assembled hoard of reporters, producers, and technicians were all offered inoculations against anthrax and smallpox, two of the diseases Saddam was believed to have in his "bugs" arsenal. Then we were all led outside and issued chemical protective suits and gas masks. Suddenly the otherwise jocular members of the media were deadly serious.

  On 11 March we were given the opportunity to go out into the Kuwaiti desert to visit the troops we would be covering. Griff and I headed out to Tactical Assembly Area (TAA) "Ripper," temporary home to one of the U.S. Marine regimental combat teams (RCTs)preparing for the assault into Iraq. Ripper was a dusty, dun–colored, tent city parked on a barren, flat, wind-blown plain, lacking vegetation and any recognizable terrain features. Without a global positioning system (GPS) receiver, it would be impossible to know where you were or where you were going. It was the temporary home of the fabled 7th Marine Regiment that was expected to be the "tip of the spear" for the First Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF) in the upcoming attack.

  The weeks of waiting for the invasion to start were used wisely— here soldiers of the 3rd ID train in the Kuwaiti desert

  The Marines in this arid southwest Asian desert were blissfully unaware of the political machinations at the United Nations that had held them there for more than a month, poised like a diver prepared for a plunge at the end of the board. And they couldn't have cared less about the protestations of the "Blame America First" crowd in San Francisco or various European cities. They did know that the French had "wimped out" once again. One Marine quipped to a visiting journalist, "The French have always been there when they needed us."

  Despite the delay in getting done what they had come to do, it was apparent that these young warriors revered their commander in chief. And whether the nice folks at the UN or the critics in Europe or the anti-war activists in the U.S. liked it or not, they had a refreshing certainty about their mission—Saddam Hussein and the need to evict him from Iraq.

  Contrary to how they were being depicted, these troops weren't "poor, uneducated, minorities," as some liberal politicians had alleged in propounding a reinstitution of conscription. The all-volunteer troops at TAA Ripper were predominantly white, middle-income Americans. Minorities were then—and still are—under-represented in these units, and nearly 100 percent are high school graduates.

  Their "mission focus" wasn't because they had been "brainwashed" by their superiors. During a briefing by an intelligence officer, the troops asked penetrating questions and got honest answers about what they were about to face. Nor were they "bloodthirsty," as a foreign journalist described them to me. In fact, none of the soldiers, sailors, airmen, or Marines with whom I spoke told me they were "itching for a fight."

  What many of the media elites covering the preparations for the gunfight in Iraq missed is that no one who has ever really been to a war ever wants to see another one. And a remarkable percentage of the young men at TAA Ripper already had combat experience. One commander estimated that more than half of his officers and senior noncommissioned officers (NCOs) had served under fire before—in the first Gulf War, the Balkans, or Afghanistan—and in some cases all three. They knew better than any correspondent, reporter, or politician the true nature of war—that it is the most terrible of human endeavors.

  Yet, precisely because so many of them had so much combat experience, they were anxious to get on with the task at hand. They knew that the sooner it got started, the sooner it would be over. Many of them expressed frustration that what was supposed to be a "blitzkrieg" had become a "sitzkrieg."

  Soldiers from the 3rd ID zero their battle sights in Kuwait before the invasion

  And that wasn't the only problem with the delay. A "Recon Marine"—one of those whose job it was to penetrate deep inside enemy territory to scout out the routes, objectives, and enemy targets to be hit—said, "It's a new moon. We do our best work under conditions of marginal visibility. We don't like to operate when the moon is like a big light bulb in the night sky."

  Another concern was expressed by an NBC officer, one of those responsible for ensuring that the Marines survived an attack from weapons of mass destruction. His comment: "The longer we wait, the longer Saddam has to plot and carry out a chemical, biological, or nuclear attack. And the hotter it's going to be wearing those protective suits and masks."

  They weren't whining or complaining; their comments were just common sense. But even this was apparently misunderstood by some of those sent out to cover this high-risk venture. For reasons that escaped most Marines, the Pentagon provided press credentials to a significant number of foreign journalists. Unfortunately, many of the international media appeared to have an overt hostility toward the subjects they were sent to cover.

  One female correspondent from a European news service was overheard asking—or was it telling?—one of the Marines that she had "never seen so much bravado, machismo, or arrogance" in her life. The young NCO listened and appeared to mull over her grievance before replying, "Yes ma'am, that's why they call themselves U.S. Marines."

  FOX News cameraman Mal James became popular when he sent images of U.S. toops back home

  EMBEDDED—FINALLY

  Ready to begin the embed

  On 13 March we were at last loaded on Kuwaiti civilian buses, surrounded by armed Kuwaiti Interior Ministry troops and police to protect us from rumored Iraqi terrorist attacks. Then we were driven out to the units with which we would be embedded for the opening phase of hostilities. I incorrectly assumed that since I had been a Marine infantry officer, I would be assigned to cover a Marine or Army ground combat unit. Instead, I was told that I would be embedded with a Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron—HMM-268, the "Red Dragons." It turned out to be a fortuitous assignment.

  When Griff Jenkins and I arrived at HMM-268's forward operating base, we were immediately given a set of guidelines governing what we could and could not report. As in all past wars, someone "up the chain of command" had decided what the media could or could not say, print, or show their readers and viewers. All of us, in the Fourth Estate accompanying the combat units being assembled on the Iraqi periphery, were admonished not to report exact unit troop strength figures, any future plans, or details of various weapons systems. In deference to Kuwaiti sensitivities, we were also directed not to specify our exact location—Ali al Salim Air Base—until we had "departed" for Iraq. Instead, we were "asked" to euphemistically describe the Kuwaiti air base as "in the vicinity of the Iraqi border."

  Quite understandably, we were not permitted to report where we were going, or when. For some media people, these restrictions undermined what they considered the "freedom of the press." But most understood the rationale for these limitations and willingly complied. For those who found the burden of "self-censorship" too onerous, they could always "un-volunteer" and go home. That option, of course, didn't apply to another group of volunteers—the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines, more than 200,000 strong—who were deployed i
n the trackless desert along the Iraqi border.

  Two months before Griff and I joined them, the 250 Red Dragons of HMM-268 had been at Camp Pendleton, California, without any particular plans to travel. Then, on 10 January, the word came down: "Prepare your aircraft for immediate embarkation." Four days later the squadron's twelve CH-46 helicopters, their blades removed, were all packed and sealed, and on 15 January, the aging aircraft were lifted aboard a commercial ship in San Diego.

  Mal James took this photo of me in a CH-46 over Iraq

  Accompanying the "birds" was a detachment of a dozen HMM-268 Marines, led by a sergeant. "Now think of this," said 1st Lt. Ken Williamson, one of the squadron's pilots. "Here's a shipment worth more than sixty million dollars being signed for by a twenty-two-year-old Marine sergeant. Where else would you get that kind of responsibility at that age?" Where else indeed?

  The rest of the squadron departed California at midnight on 9 February. For reasons still inexplicable to this old Leatherneck, the U.S. Marines never go anywhere in daylight. When they arrived "in country" on 11 February, the entire unit—officers and enlisted alike—pitched in to "build tents and fill sandbags, more than twenty thousand, that first week alone," said CWO Sean Wennes.

  "Why so many sandbags?" asked one of the hoard of media that descended on this remote desert air base. "Because these tents don't even stop a sandstorm. They sure won't stop a Scud," replied Cpl Phillip Sapio. "Sometimes a sandbag is all you have between us and them." By "them," of course, the Marine meant the Iraqis, who had denied having any of the long-range weapons capable of carrying conventional, chemical, or biological warheads into the heart of this desert base.