The Commanders

by Bob Woodward

But both men knew this was a historic document. They signed their full names.

  Powell had a copy faxed “Eyes Only” to Schwarzkopf on the top-secret fax circuit. In about 26 hours, Operation Desert Shield was to become Desert Storm.

  Until now, Powell had kept the decision secret from his staff. Now he called Tom Kelly in. The war begins tomorrow night, Powell said. Kelly, the former journalism major, would be the daily briefing officer for the press at the Pentagon, as he had been for the Panama operation. There was no telling how many daily briefings might be required. Answer questions but don’t make any news, Powell instructed him.

  Yes, sir, Kelly said. Though Kelly had not known for sure, he had become convinced over the last several weeks that there would be a war. The intelligence showed that Saddam was preparing. He was still extending his fortifications, digging in, sending in more troops. There was more oil in the Iraqi trenches for burning American tanks, more barbed wire, more mines, more bunkers. Kelly was amazed by Saddam’s apparent expectations. He seemed to think that the United States planned to let this become another Iran-Iraq War, with two ignorant armies throwing themselves directly into each other’s defenses for eight years. Imagine, Kelly thought, what Saddam and his generals would think if they glanced at the unclassified U.S. Army operations manual, with its emphasis on maneuver warfare.

  Kelly was astonished at the calm in the Pentagon. The Panama operation had seemed more chaotic to him. There was one similarity to Panama, however. Even with the months of preparation and the uncountable advantages of the U.S. and coalition forces, he was still not sure there wouldn’t be a screw-up. The old fear of failure had taken hold.

  Prince Bandar came to visit Cheney that afternoon.

  “Any word?” Bandar asked. “Are we days or weeks away?”

  Cheney smiled obliquely. It looks like a good week, he said.

  Bandar took this to mean soon, but as he later went over the conversation he could not be sure.

  • • •

  After many meetings and consultations with the news media, Pete Williams that day released the ground rules for reporters in the event of hostilities in the Persian Gulf. The 12 rules, listed on a single page, banned publication or broadcast of specific information the department wanted kept secret, including numbers of troops, aircraft, weapons, equipment and supplies; future plans and operations; locations of forces; and tactics. All combat reporting would be done by groups of reporters in pools, whose work would be subject to security review before it was released. No reporters would be allowed to rove freely in combat zones as they had in Vietnam.

  Kelly marveled at how Powell had controlled his piece of Desert Shield, the military planning and decision making. Much of the real business not done at White House meetings was conducted on “the magic telephone,” the latest generation of secure telephone. It linked only the President, the Vice President, Scowcroft, Sununu, Baker, Cheney, Powell and the CINCs, including Schwarzkopf. Powell’s big white console hooking him into this loop sat prominently on his office credenza. He made extensive use of it, ensuring that he was the military’s point man in Washington with the civilians. Using his own “magic” extension, Schwarzkopf played the same role in Saudi Arabia.

  To avoid a repeat of the military’s Vietnam nightmare—President Lyndon Johnson leaning over maps in the White House, circling specific targets—Powell had kept as much air-targeting information as possible out of Washington. The most up-to-date target list for the first day’s air strike was not even available to Kelly or his staff. Kelly had been told he would receive it the day after, with reports on what had happened. And the daily air-tasking orders, laying out all the planned air strikes, were not going to come to Washington in advance.

  Powell had used the service chiefs quite effectively, Kelly thought. He kept them informed so they did not feel out of it, but in fact they played almost no role in the decision making. Their influence hovered somewhere around zero, Kelly thought.

  General Vuono had helped in one sense, making sure that Schwarzkopf had the latest equipment. Sometimes it had to be forced on him. Vuono had insisted that more than 1,000 of the latest modernized tank, the M-1A1, be sent to the Army units that had already been deployed without this state-of-the-art model. Schwarzkopf had at first resisted because he wanted to avoid the disruption of switching to new equipment that the troops would have to learn to use. But the new tanks improved combat effectiveness and the confidence of the soldiers. The effective range of the M-1A1 was about double that of the best Iraqi T-72 tank. It would make the United States like a boxer with a six-foot arm. Schwarzkopf agreed to take the tanks.

  The Army chief had also pushed Schwarzkopf to accept a surveillance system called J-STARS (Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System). Brand new and untested in battle, J-STARS detected the movements of tanks and other ground vehicles, covering the ground the way AWACS planes covered the air. The two J-STARS units sent to Schwarzkopf provided a full ground radar picture of the terrain 100 miles into Kuwait and Iraq, virtually guaranteeing that the U.S. forces could not be surprised or outmaneuvered at the front by the Iraqis.

  • • •

  The next morning, January 16, before going into the Pentagon, Cheney packed a suitcase. He expected to spend several nights in his office. So as not to tip off his driver and security people, he decided to leave the packed bag at home. He could dispatch his driver for it as H-Hour approached.

  By the time Cheney arrived at the office, B-52 bombers had been launched from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, flying to the Gulf. They were to be refueled in flight during the 18 hours it would take them to reach their targets. These planes could be recalled. The decision had not yet reached the point of no return.

  Cheney had cleared his schedule, pushing budget and other matters to his deputy, Don Atwood. He picked up the hand-held remote-control unit for the television in his office and clicked it to CNN. He thought the first leak or hint that the air operation was under way would most likely come from the 24-hour news service.

  The Secretary wondered how well the U.S. forces would perform. At what cost? At what casualty level? He had received the estimates produced by various computer models, but he had concluded they were no more than guesses. There was no knot in his stomach. It was out of his hands.

  • • •

  That morning Baker summoned Bandar to the State Department to say it was a go that night: 7 p.m. here, 3 a.m. in Saudi Arabia.

  Bandar called King Fahd. After they’d chatted for a few moments, Bandar, trying to make it sound like an afterthought, said, “Our old friend Suleiman is coming at 3 a.m. He’s sick and I’ll ship him out, and he’ll get there at 3 a.m.”

  Bandar was amazed that it looked like the U.S. and the coalition forces were going to be able to achieve surprise. The reason, he concluded, was probably that the message to Saddam had been so mixed and confused over the months. George Bush apparently had been unreadable to Saddam. The ironic truth, Bandar felt, was that the war had been sealed by cultural misunderstanding.

  At 4:50 p.m., the first F-15 Eagles were taking off for their targets. They too could be recalled. Air-refueling tankers were up. More and more of the air war was moving toward the brink. Cheney saw that no one in the press was picking up on it. The news reporters were so bottled up by the rules, and there had been so much air activity over the previous months, that it all looked routine.

  The White House had assigned Cheney the responsibility of keeping the Israelis plugged in, but not so plugged in as to make them de facto members of the coalition. It was a delicate assignment. Saddam had promised to attack Israel in some way if the coalition attacked him, and the Israelis were entitled to a warning. But any Israeli participation in the war would have negative reverberations in the Arab world, and might weaken the coalition. At around 5 p.m., Cheney picked up the HAMMER RICK line, to call Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Arens with the first notification that the offensive was being launched.

  • •
•

  At precisely 5:30 the U.S.S. Bunker Hill, an Aegis-class cruiser in the Persian Gulf, fired a Tomahawk missile to its designated target inside Iraq. This unmanned cruise missile could not be recalled. There was no turning back now.

  About 20 Tomahawks were preprogrammed to hit Saddam’s presidential palace, the main telephone exchange and Baghdad’s electrical power-generating stations at H-Hour. Nine U.S. Navy ships were assigned to fire 106 Tomahawks in the first 24 hours of the war. Since the missile had never been used in combat, there were Air Force bombers assigned as back-ups for all the Tomahawk targets. The air campaign would involve more than 1,000 sorties in the first 24 hours, and expand after that.

  At 5:31 the U.S.S. Wisconsin launched its first Tomahawk.

  An intelligence unit embarked on the Wisconsin dispatched a report of the firing on the military’s CRITIC emergency alert system, designed to send out a flash message whenever there were “strong indications of the imminent outbreak of hostilities of any type.” CRITIC was created to make sure all U.S. forces worldwide would receive the earliest alert of possible hostilities, especially an attack by the Soviet Union. The message overrode all other message traffic, automatically ringing bells on teletype machines at thousands of commands worldwide.

  “Why did those dumb bastards do that?” Kelly said. “The Navy did it again.” He notified Powell at once.

  My God, Powell thought, we are going to blow operational security on ourselves.

  The Wisconsin was ordered to cancel the message. The cancelation message went out with equal speed. Military men and women throughout the world know that the first report on any incident is frequently wrong, so no one had jumped to conclusions. Operational security held.

  Cheney and Powell ordered that the CRITIC system be temporarily disconnected. Powell tried to find out who had been stupid enough to activate it, so he could disconnect them.

  Cheney continued to watch CNN. Anchorman Bernard Shaw was in Baghdad interviewing former CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite in New York about covering wars. Cronkite was reminiscing about his experiences going back to World War II. Shaw explained that he had gone to Baghdad to interview Saddam, but the interview had not worked out and therefore he was leaving on a flight the next afternoon.

  There weren’t going to be any flights out the next afternoon, Cheney knew. He felt a strange sensation watching this conversation, knowing that hundreds of attack missions were heading for Kuwait and Iraq, unbeknownst to the media and almost all Americans.

  As H-Hour approached, the Secretary sent his driver to McLean for his suitcase. Someone in the office was dispatched for Chinese food.

  * * *

  25

  * * *

  POWELL DID NOT WANT TO keep a deathwatch down in the operations center. He felt that’s what they had done during the Panama invasion as Cheney and he had taken up positions of command at the center table. Now Cheney was upstairs in his office. Powell was staying in his office for the hour or so before 7 p.m.

  He sat down in his large maroon leather executive chair. He was alone. In his last conversation with Schwarzkopf earlier that day on the secure phone, Powell had said, “Good luck, Norm.” The White House seemed satisfied.

  As in Panama, Powell felt he had adequately prepared President Bush. Bad things are going to happen, Mr. President, Powell had said. There will be bad news, things will blow up in our faces. You’ll be very tempted to get hands-on, to try to fix problems yourself. You’ll collect scar tissue and people will be kicking you around on television. This is going to take a while, and the more you can leave us alone to work our way through it as military professionals, the better it will be.

  Despite all the firepower, anticipated swiftness and violence, Powell had worked hard with Schwarzkopf to make sure the offense showed some restraint. Collateral damage had to be minimized. Of the half dozen bridges inside the Baghdad city limits, the air campaign was, at Powell’s urging, only going to hit two. Four would be left standing. Powell was convinced that it would not be in the U.S. interest to have a totally defeated Iraq with no capability to defend itself. So some of the Iraqi tanks and military would have to be left intact. Baker had been briefed. Cheney’s questions had been answered. Powell’s Joint Staff was calm. The chiefs—“the six brothers,” as he had come to call them—were all in agreement.

  Powell’s rule number 8 was “Check small things.” There were none left. The minutes ticked by. He found himself mentally reviewing the specifics from the air-war target list. Is that a good target? Is that a bad target? Should we have a Tomahawk or an F-15E on that? Or both? Or none? The targets had been worked and reworked, he knew. He had to stop.

  This is the end, he realized. Metaphors of gambling went through his mind. Poker. It was high stakes. They were using all their advantages—technology, superior intelligence, a plan that looked and sounded nearly perfect. All the odds were on his side. Almost a sure thing; but still, as in poker, he knew there was uncertainty.

  Craps. The country was at the table and the dice had been thrown. This was the moment of waiting, the dice in midair. Soon they would hit the cloth and arrive at the far end, crash and come abruptly to rest.

  Pool. He had written out and tucked underneath the glass on his desk a line from the movie The Hustler: “Fast Eddie, let’s shoot some pool.” It was the moment of confrontation.

  “Never let them see you sweat,” was another aphorism he had placed under the glass.

  In this moment, however, he was sweating. Saddam could still pull a stunt of some kind. In several minutes, the Iraqi leader could flash some message of capitulation and possibly derail the entire operation. Powell remained convinced that Saddam did not, could not, should not want war. Saddam had misread American resolve, and he certainly did not comprehend the magnitude of what was about to hit him.

  How could we be maintaining operational security? Powell wondered. They had grown very good at keeping secrets. But how good? Maybe the operation was blown? Unlikely to impossible, but there was no telling for sure.

  Powell expected the air campaign to last about three weeks. After that, the coalition would have to seize the initiative from Saddam. The ground war was inevitable. At the thought of a ground war, he found himself worrying about the Marines. They would have the hard job, driving into the front-line fortifications. God, Powell thought, we could lose a lot of Marines. The Army, with its large flanking operation, was going to be safer.

  He would have thought this would be the most important day of his life. More than 32 years in the Army and he was the top military man on the eve of a big war. But the day was falling short. The old Robert E. Lee quote went through his head: “It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.” Lee had been watching the slaughter of enemy Union troops at Fredericksburg in 1862. How the military loved the preparation for war. From the Pentagon, war at times looked like a great game. If people were not going to die, it would be great fun, Powell thought. He had to remind himself constantly that this was real, not a game. The public and the world were going to see an incredibly limited and antiseptic version of the war. The media were going to be kept away. Even the videos from the gun cameras in the bombers showing the attacks were going to be distortions when they were made public. The audio would be edited out in most cases so the pilots’ nervous yells of “Holy shit!” or whatever would be excised. The distinctive, rapid-fire hyperventilation of the pilots feeling the pressure of their G-suits and the terror of combat would not be heard by the public.

  He thought of the troops and pilots as kids, even teenagers. They would be flying in the darkness or dropping down behind the lines to spot targets. It would come down to one American kid dealing with one Iraqi kid. Both would want to live.

  Powell felt a foreboding and a chill. The war was in the hands of these kids. And if they screwed up, it would mean that Powell and the generals—the adults—hadn’t done their jobs well enough. That was as it should be.

  It
would be hours before Powell would learn what happened. Schwarzkopf was in charge of the battlefield. Informing Washington was not going to be his top priority.

  Powell was still alone. It remained quiet in the Chairman’s office. No one knew or had any real idea how many Americans would die in the war, he realized. Some of the senior officers on the Joint Staff had confidentially estimated that the killed in action on the American side would be about 1,000. But there was no hard estimate. Of course it could be more. He knew they would lose some. He was hoping it would not be a lot.

  On this most important day of his life, he had one overriding thought. There was no cheering, no thrill, no eagerness, no battle fever. None of the emotions of war raged. He thought only one thing: “How many will not come back?”

  Over the border inside Iraq, it was nearly 3 a.m. A U.S. Army Apache helicopter was 12 kilometers from the electrical power-generating station at an Iraqi air defense radar site protecting Baghdad. This was going to be the first target of the war. The pilot could see the building on his Forward-Looking Infrared Sensor, a tiny dancing square on the horizon. His equipment showed that the time of flight for his Hellfire missile to the target was 20 seconds. He launched. “This one’s for you, Saddam,” he said. The equipment ticked off the seconds and on the screen he could see the Hellfire come in over the building and descend like a rock. The tiny square became an explosion, suddenly and quietly filling his radar screen.

  In the White House, Bush, Quayle, Scowcroft and Sununu gathered in the small private study adjacent to the Oval Office to watch television. When the sounds of bombing could be heard behind the voices of the reporters still in their Baghdad hotel rooms, Bush, visibly relieved, said, “Just the way it was scheduled.”

  The Gulf War lasted 42 days. The three air phases took 38 days. The ground war took four days before Bush declared a cease-fire. The U.S. and coalition forces overran Kuwait and southern Iraq, destroyed Saddam’s army, routed the Republican Guard, dictated the terms of peace, and killed tens of thousands of Iraqis. Kuwait was liberated. American casualties were seven missing in action and 137 killed in action.