The Commanders

by Bob Woodward

  The room fell silent.

  Then Schwarzkopf spoke up. “That’s a worst case planning model,” he said. “It isn’t a prediction. I don’t make predictions.”

  The Pentagon leaders also had a chance to visit troops in forward positions. Powell was treated like a Pope returning to the village where he had been the parish priest. Mobbed for autographs, he scribbled his name on anything available—magazines, Saudi currency, a skateboard. He helped one soldier lift a sandbag, wished Merry Christmas all around, and posed for photographs. He visited the 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division, a special air assault unit. Fourteen years earlier, Powell had commanded the 2,000-man brigade. Now he told the men he knew and understood the uncertainty of their assignment—the waiting, the long nights, the churning in the stomach.

  To all those who made inquiries about their future, and to many who did not, Powell repeated four words: “Be ready for war.”

  • • •

  On Friday, December 21, Bush invited the ambassadors from each of the countries in the 28-member coalition to the White House. After the meeting, he took the group for a tour of the White House Christmas decorations.

  Prince Bandar was the last to leave.

  “Are you in a hurry?” Bush asked.

  “No.”

  “Come say hello to Barbara.”

  Bandar wished the First Lady a Merry Christmas, then went with Bush to the Oval Office, where the two men stepped outdoors to talk.

  “Is he crazy?” Bush asked about Saddam.

  The two men had discussed the same question before. In their regular conversations over the months, Bandar had told Bush about Saddam’s paranoid obsession with his own personal security, and Bush had heard many other such stories. Bandar was still convinced that if Saddam had to choose between his own neck and leaving Kuwait, he would act to save his neck. Saddam did not want to die. He was not a martyr.

  Bush also asked, “Does he know what he is up against?”

  For several months, Bandar had privately been saying to Bush and others that the quality of the Iraqi military was greatly exaggerated. He still felt that Saddam could be defeated in two weeks.

  Bandar noticed that Bush was stiff. He sensed a massing of determination in the body language. None of the loose, flappy awkwardness. There was no smile. Though Bush’s eyes were cool and calm, he seemed to be carrying some inner weight. When Bandar looked more carefully and deeper, the eyes looked scary. In the Middle East, there was a saying that a quiet man should not be made angry because he will be hard to handle. For months, Bandar had seen both the public and private anger building, resulting in an eerie accumulation of willfulness.

  “If he does not comply,” Bush said of Saddam, “we’ll just have to implement the resolutions.”

  Bandar nodded, thinking to himself: this is serious, he’s going to do it.

  • • •

  Meanwhile, CIA Director Webster was assembling a pre-Christmas Special National Intelligence Estimate designed to provide the best forecast of whether Saddam would pull out of Kuwait before the January 15 deadline. In discussions among the various intelligence agencies, Webster, the CIA and the State Department’s intelligence branch had concluded that once Saddam realized the size of the force arrayed against him and the determination of the United States and the allies, he would withdraw.

  At DIA, Pat Lang registered a strong objection. In his view, it was a repeat of the classic mistake made prior to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Again the intelligence officers were mirror-imaging, looking at the world through their own limited Western perspective, pretending if they were Saddam they would recognize the overwhelming military might poised against Iraq and the determination of the international coalition. Since it was logical for Saddam to come to this conclusion, he would see the light and withdraw.

  Lang suspected the opposite. He was pretty sure that Saddam was focused mainly on the size of his own force, and on his own determination. DIA Chief Soyster and the heads of the four separate military intelligence services agreed with Lang. They insisted on inserting a written dissent in several footnotes in the intelligence estimate. It was published and sent to President Bush.

  In an interview with Time magazine shortly before Christmas, Bush was asked if there would be a war.

  “Oh, God,” he said, pausing and then reflecting the majority view in the intelligence estimate. “My gut says he will get out of there.”

  • • •

  Cheney and Powell returned from the Gulf and flew up to Camp David to brief the President on Christmas Eve. Scowcroft and Gates were also there.

  It was true that the ground forces would not be ready until February, Cheney reported. In fact, he was not yet fully satisfied with the Phase Four ground plan. But the air campaign was ready, and he was pleased with the details.

  Both Cheney and Powell said that it was entirely possible to start and sustain the air campaign before the ground forces were in place. Schwarzkopf had been aiming at the diplomatic deadline of January 15.

  By then Schwarzkopf and the troops would have gone through Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s in the desert. They would have lived with the 45-day “pause for peace” with no results. Some would have been in the desert five months. January 15, an implied date certain, had been a real morale booster.

  Bush said they should think seriously about starting the air campaign at the best and soonest point after January 15, if Saddam had not withdrawn.

  It was agreed that Powell would talk with Schwarzkopf and obtain his recommended execution date and time, based on the moon and the weather forecasts.

  Powell already had the draft of a top-secret warning order to send to General Schwarzkopf. According to JCS publications, a warning order is “a preliminary notice of an order or action which is to follow.” Once sent, it would direct Schwarzkopf to be fully prepared to carry out the war plan.

  Operating on the secure telephone, Powell asked Schwarzkopf for his recommended date and time, after the January 15 United Nations deadline. Schwarzkopf said 3 a.m. Saudi time on January 17. That would be 7 p.m. Washington time on January 16, just 19 hours after the U.N. deadline. It would be a moonless night, a crucial factor for the F-117A Stealth fighter bombers. Since these planes would be virtually invisible to Iraqi radar, there was no point in allowing the Iraqis to see them or any other planes in the moonlight. Indications were that the weather would be clear.

  Stormin’ Norman said that when the offensive had begun, he would change the name of the operation from Desert Shield to Desert Storm.

  Powell had the two-page warning order refined, specifying that Schwarzkopf be fully prepared to begin Desert Storm on January 17 at 3 a.m. It was hand-carried to several Pentagon officials for review, and a final version was readied to be sent out when the President gave his final authorization.

  • • •

  By December 29, Powell had received his authorization to send the warning order to Schwarzkopf. To maximize secrecy, he had a copy faxed to Schwarzkopf on a special top-secret fax circuit. It was designated “Eyes Only” for Schwarzkopf. That way only one copy would appear at Schwarzkopf’s headquarters. Powell did not want multiple copies spewing out in the Central Command communications center.

  The warning order went out on Saturday morning, December 29, with the communications date-time-group designator 29/1612 December 1990, meaning it was sent December 29 at the universal time of 1612, which is 11:12 a.m. Washington time.

  • • •

  In the afternoon of New Year’s Day, Tuesday, January 1, Bush returned from his Camp David holiday. That evening he met in the White House residence with Quayle, Baker, Cheney, Powell and Sununu.

  Bush directed that the NSC staff begin drafting a formal presidential order called a National Security Directive that would lay out the policy reasoning for going to war. Since this would be a historic document, he wanted it given the attention it deserved.

  Baker still wanted to make sure the President
exhausted all the diplomatic possibilities. He proposed that Bush make one more offer to Saddam for a meeting.

  Cheney worried about a last-minute trick. He felt strongly that the coalition was shaky. As he understood it, the coalition partners—particularly those in the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria and the smaller Gulf states—feared that the United States would find a reason not to act.

  Cheney didn’t think the decision to go to war had occurred in a definite moment or sequence of moments. There was no single discussion or meeting where it had been made. As best he could piece it together, however, by Christmas Eve it was close; by December 29, when the warning order was sent, it was solidified; and at this New Year’s Day meeting it was finally ratified.

  Since Baker’s Baghdad meeting had never come off—Saddam had said he could only see Baker three days before the deadline—Bush decided to propose publicly that Baker meet the Iraqi foreign minister in Switzerland during the period January 7 to 9, when Baker would be in Europe anyway. But there would be no negotiations, no compromises.

  • • •

  The next day, Wednesday, January 2, Scowcroft was somber. He began telling his trusted staff members that he was feeling fatalistic. It is going to be war, he said.

  Gates convened a deputies’ committee meeting. He said they had two tasks. First, Bush was going to offer a last Baker-Aziz meeting in Switzerland; they were to begin finalizing a draft letter from Bush to Saddam, which Baker would present to Aziz as a final declaration and ultimatum. Second, they were to begin drafting the National Security Directive, the presidential directive on war.

  Wolfowitz thought that the letter to Saddam might still make a difference. He found one draft done by the NSC staff rather mild. He and Admiral Jeremiah, Powell’s Vice Chairman, were eager to make it tougher. They proposed changes that the others on the deputies committee accepted. In its final form, the eight-paragraph letter said: “We stand today at the brink of war between Iraq and the world.” It stated that the future of Iraq was at stake and the failure to withdraw would mean “calamity,” “tragedy” and “further violence” for Iraq. The final sentence read: “I hope you weigh your choice carefully and choose wisely, for much will depend upon it.”

  At 8:45 the next morning, Thursday, January 3, Bush met again with the congressional leaders. He announced that he was making one last diplomatic effort: the Baker-Aziz meeting the following week. The President also made two strong references to the Amnesty International report he had read before the holidays, and he urged the congressmen to read it.

  The leaders told Bush that he still could not be assured of a majority vote in Congress authorizing the use of force after January 15.

  As they discussed the possible war, Bush said, “There is no Vietnam parallel.”

  Cheney reported that there were 325,000 troops in the Middle East now and another 12,000 were moving into Saudi Arabia each day.

  Privately, Cheney felt that the diplomatic window was still open a crack, and the President had to keep it open. If Saddam suddenly pulled out of Kuwait, the United States could declare a great victory. The administration could say: hurrah, the United States displayed determination, led the world, created the coalition, deployed the forces and drove the son-of-a-bitch out of Kuwait.

  But in Cheney’s view, now more than ever, it was not going to happen that way.

  • • •

  Bush convened his inner circle in the residential quarters again on Sunday night, January 6. Baker was already in Europe. Saddam had agreed to a Baker-Aziz meeting in Switzerland on Wednesday.

  The President said he wanted to get the Congress to authorize the use of force if possible. It was the one final box that had not been checked, the one piece missing from his overall strategy.

  Cheney was dubious. Absent Saddam’s withdrawal, it is very important that force be used after January 15, Cheney said. Mr. President, you have pretty well made that decision. Congress was never a sure thing. A no vote by “my former colleagues,” as he referred to them with mild sarcasm, would undermine everything. Cheney was deeply suspicious of the Democrats, who controlled Congress. He thought they would love to slam the door on the administration’s efforts.

  The administration, the coalition, the troops in the field could not afford a negative vote, Cheney said. He said he felt strongly that if the use of force turned out to be successful, if the objectives were achieved at the lowest possible cost and casualty levels, it wouldn’t matter what kind of debate or vote there had been in Congress. On the other hand, he said, if the military campaign came a cropper or the costs were extraordinarily high, it wouldn’t matter what Congress had approved in advance, they would be all over the President’s case anyway. He saw no gain and lots of risk.

  No one else said he shared Cheney’s deep reservations. The meeting was adjourned with the issue unresolved.

  The next day, January 7, Speaker Foley announced that the House would begin debate later in the week on a resolution authorizing the use of force. He personally opposed the use of force until economic sanctions were given more time, but he said that he believed the authorization would pass by a narrow margin. Senate Majority Leader Mitchell said the Senate would probably also begin debate on a resolution.

  Bush began calling Senate and House Republicans that night to obtain a head count. He personally typed out the draft of a letter he could send to the Congress requesting that both houses endorse the “all necessary means” language of the United Nations resolution. He then directed that his senior advisers and cabinet officers, and their top lawyers and legislative affairs directors, meet with him the next morning at the White House.

  Powell felt that it would be important to get congressional authorization. He was fearful of sending the troops to war without the explicit backing of Congress. He didn’t want the troops left dangling out there, knowing they were in a war even though the politicians called it something else. It had been a “police action” in Korea, a “conflict” in Vietnam. Both were unsatisfactory. A nation at war had to say it was at war and had to speak with one voice.

  Knowing Cheney’s view, Powell didn’t want to attend a large White House meeting where he would differ with the Secretary. So Powell called in his legal counsel, Army Colonel Fred K. Green, and told him to attend the meeting and report back.

  At 11 a.m. on January 8, Bush went to the Cabinet Room. Present were Cheney, Scowcroft and Sununu. Eagleburger was sitting in for Baker. Boyden Gray and the senior lawyers from the departments, including Fred Green of the JCS, were also there.

  Bush had a copy of his draft letter. He said that he was inclined to send it. The question was whether to remain passive or attempt to control the outcome with a specific administration proposal. Would he win, he asked the legislative directors for the White House, NSC, State and Defense.

  The consensus view was that he would. But it was not 100 percent sure. Head counts were being taken.

  Bush asked for another evaluation of his legal authority.

  William P. Barr, the Deputy Attorney General, said that in his opinion and that of the senior department lawyers, the President had full authority to conduct military operations as the commander-in-chief, regardless of whether Congress voted a resolution of support. The Constitution gives you the power to employ the forces, he said. The congressional role is to provide the forces and the laws under which they operate. The Congress has done that. If they do not like the way you are employing the forces, they can take away the money for them to operate. Barr said that he nonetheless thought the President should be active in seeking the most explicit declaration of support from the Congress.

  “Is your advice solely political?” one of Bush’s advisers asked.

  No, Barr said. War is in the gray zone. The war power is a shared power with Congress; the Constitution intends it to be shared. Congress has the power to declare war, but it usually has voted after the war has started. As with any shared power, your hand is strongest when the exe
cutive branch and Congress agree, he said. You would be in the least advantageous position if Congress does something inconsistent. An inconsistent resolution would not take away your power. Congress can only take away the money or disband the forces. Congress can put you in a difficult political position, so it’s worth being active to affect what they might do, the Deputy Attorney General added.

  Bush then asked each of the government lawyers present to speak. He wanted to be reassured about this constitutional authority. What were the alternative outcomes if members of Congress voted down a resolution, or talked themselves into a stalemate? Could the courts somehow become involved now or down the road?

  Though not immune from legal challenge, the lawyers said, the President was on solid constitutional ground. They basically affirmed Barr’s outline.

  Barr said that presidents from the beginning had acted unilaterally to employ the forces. In all there had been more than 200 occasions when presidents had done so, and only five declarations of war. The situation most closely resembling the current crisis was the Korean War, when Truman acted without Congress under a United Nations resolution somewhat similar to the current one.

  Scowcroft spoke in favor of going to Congress, and of submitting a proposed resolution. Even if he had constitutional authority, the President’s political authority would be vastly enhanced with congressional backing, Scowcroft said. The President would not want to start a war with a country divided.

  Cheney cautioned about sending the letter. The simple act of requesting the resolution would carry immense implications. No matter how the President’s letter was phrased, it would be interpreted to mean that the President thought he needed a vote. From ten years of experience, Cheney knew that Congress was not equipped to deal with such a large question in a short time. To go with the letter and lose would be devastating.

  Bush said he had to try. After sending the letter, they would mount a full-scale lobbying campaign. He said that he just could not believe that the Congress would leave the troops in the Gulf hanging.