Page 14 - 2011 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - January 2011

What Really Happened in the Gulf War What Really Happened in Gulf War Continued on from Page 12 The critical meeting in the Bush White House took place at 1 pm on February 27. Bush, Scowcroft, Cheney, Powell, Robert Gates and British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd agreed that they needed to force terms on Saddam, and not wait for him to request a cease-fire on his own terms. The allies agreed -- mistakenly -- that they had destroyed Iraq's WMD capabilities in the air campaign. Although the Air Force pronounced itself capable of bombing Iraq "until they're down to two stone axes and a pushcart" and coalition ground units were within striking distance of the Iraqi capital -- the 101st Airborne Division sat astride Highway 8 just 150 miles from Baghdad -- the coalition was losing the will to go on. Thatcher, who might have argued for a drive on to Baghdad to remove Saddam, had left office in November 1990, and been replaced by John Major, who evinced a desire to end the war quickly. Bush called for a "clean end." The main thing, Bush insisted, was to avoid "charges of brutalization," of piling on just to kill Iraqis in the war's last hours. Secretary of State Baker concurred: "We have done the job. We can stop. erased the stain of Vietnam, so why fight on? recondite objection that "100-hour war" would We have achieved our aims. We have gotten Air Force Chief of Staff General Merrill be a politically disastrous term since it would them out of Kuwait." But, like everyone else in McPeak privately protested the "merciful evoke memories of the 100-hour Franco- the room, Baker worried about "unfinished clemency" offered Saddam, but publicly British-Israeli attack on Egypt in 1956. ("Would business." What would become of the Saddam supported Powell. President Bush too wanted to 99-hour war be better?" Cheney joked.) Bush Hussein regime? Would the Americans give it a quit while he was ahead. In Washington, the had confidently predicted that the Iraqi "troops shove, or let it stand? In Riyadh, Schwarzkopf analogy on everyone's mind was not Vietnam, will straggle home with no armor, beaten up, was declaring victory at the Hyatt Hotel -- "the but Korea, where a limited American war -- to 50,000," but they were more numerous than gates are closed ... we almost completely evict the North Koreans from the south -- had that, and they had extricated lots of armor. destroyed the offensive capability of the Iraqi slipped (under MacArthur's gung-ho influence) American surveillance photos of southern Iraq forces" -- and assuring the press that going to into an unlimited struggle to destroy the North revealed the depressing news that Saddam had Baghdad was not in the cards. That ingenuous Korean communists that had dragged on pulled one-quarter of his tanks and half of his revelation prompted a startled protest from Paul bloodily and inconclusively for three years and APCs from Kuwait. Worse, the tanks that Wolfowitz in the Pentagon, who agreed that the then left American troops as a permanent fixture escaped were largely Republican Guard. Indeed allies probably weren't going to Baghdad, but in South Korea. Few wanted to risk this easy the Republican Guard divisions in Kuwait had considered it foolhardy to tell that to the Iraqis. victory and expand American liabilities by pulled off a desert Dunkirk, extricating 80,000 Wolfowitz and the other "Washington hawks" - rolling the dice and pushing north to Baghdad. troops with large numbers of tanks, helicopters, - the future neo-cons -- were still hoping for a Powell ridiculed the notion: it was not as if "a and heavy guns. coup, and wanted to keep pressure on Saddam. lot of little Jeffersonian democrats would have "The end game: it was bad," McCaffrey In Riyadh, the deputy Centcom popped up to run for office" in Baghdad on recalled. "First of all, there was confusion. The commander, General Calvin Waller, also America's coattails. Still, Bush felt tension and objectives were unclear. And the sequence was expressed amazement at Washington's hasty, incompleteness everywhere. "Why do I not feel wrong." Ordinary Iraqis expressed wonderment charitable concession of a cease-fire, when only elated?" President Bush asked aloud. He knew at Saddam's continued hold on power. about half of the Republican Guard's equipment why. The instigator of the war had survived to Retreating troops fired their AK-47s into the had been destroyed, and before the last bridges fight another day, and there was little that Bush portraits and murals of Saddam that lined their over the Euphrates had been demolished, could do to change that outcome. In his diary, routes home. An Iraqi cement worker muttered: effectively bottling up the Iraqi army, most of Bush wrote of his anger at seeing Baghdad "Kuwait destroyed by Saddam. Iraq destroyed which was still south of Basra, squarely in the Radio broadcasting victory even as U.S. forces by combined forces. But Saddam is still in his sights of the U.S. forces. American planners had trounced the Iraqis. But the coalition would not chair." The Shiites of southern Iraq, who had planned to disarm and dismount the Iraqis and support continued combat in Iraq or Kuwait begun to seethe even before the ground war, then send them streaming back into Iraq on foot. merely to "destroy Iraqi forces," nor would exploded into rebellion after the cease-fire. That was the kind of image that would humiliate many Americans. The war was not cheap either; Saddam was weakened and discredited. The Saddam and rock his regime. "You have got to 390 Americans had died in combat, and the bill moment to rise up had arrived. In northern Iraq, be shitting me. Why a cease-fire now?" Waller for the war stood at about $620 billion. "We the Kurds made the same calculation. They took expostulated. "One hundred hours has a nice need to have an end. People want that. They are President Bush's awkward March 1 declaration ring," Schwarzkopf chuckled. "That's bullshit," going to want to know that we won and that the as a call to action: "In my own view, I've always Waller said. "Then you go argue with them," kids can come home. We don't want to screw said it would be - that the Iraqi people should Schwarzkopf said. "Them" was the Joint Chiefs this up with a sloppy, muddled ending." Within put him aside and that would facilitate the of Staff, the Pentagon, and the Bush White a year, two-thirds of Americans would come to resolution of all these problems that exist, and House. Schwarzkopf had never squared off believe that President Bush had terminated the would certainly facilitate the acceptance of Iraq against Powell and was not about to begin now. war too soon, and the unresolved issue would back into the family of peace-loving nations." Powell set the tone in the J.C.S., and talked the contribute to Bush's defeat in the elections of (Continued on Page 15) other chiefs into an early end to the war. Desert 1992. Storm had evicted Saddam from Kuwait and The Hundred Hour War ground to an Dr Doug Rokke on The ‘X’ Zone Radio equivocal close, over Paul Wolfowitz's Show www.xzonepodcast.com