Week 1 through Week 10

Week 11 through Week 20 (below)

Week 21 through Week 30

Bio of William M. Arkin

On Oct. 6, 1990, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Colin Powell called Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf at his Central Command headquarters in Riyadh to tell him that the Joint Chiefs, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, and "possibly the President" needed to be briefed on the state of offensive planning for Iraq.
Under its United Nations mandate, the United States and the allied coalition were still defending Saudi Arabia. Though offensive ground war planning had begun on Sept. 18 in a secret planning cell later nicknamed the "Jedi Knights," even the Saudi government was unaware of the effort.
By contrast, development of an offensive air war was merely an official secret. Two days before Schwarzkopf held his initial meeting with his Army planners, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael J. Dugan had told reporters from The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times - and therefore, the entire world - all about air campaign planning in the Black Hole. Saddam Hussein is "the focus of our efforts," Dugan said, describing the "decapitation" mission to get the Iraqi leader and the air offensive that would be unleashed if war erupted.

For the White House, then furiously piecing together an international coalition and still far from commanding either congressional or public consensus favoring military action, Dugan's talk of an offensive - let alone aerial assassination - was an unforgivable slip of the lip.
The day after Dugan's comments appeared in print, Cheney promptly fired the chief of staff. But in a way, Dugan did Washington a huge favor. What followed was the complete smothering of any discussion or acknowledgment of that true goal of the air war - to take out Saddam Hussein by smart bomb, air-to-ground missile or commando raid. Dugan's admirers in the Black Hole and the Pentagon air planning cell, Checkmate, quietly redoubled their efforts in hopes of proving their popular chief correct. Gen. Schwarzkopf and his top commanders also had Dugan to thank: No one wanted to be explicitly directed to pursue an objective they might not be able to accomplish.

The Origins of Don't Ask, Don't Tell

The White House meeting on Oct. 11, 1990, was likely the most important single event in shaping the war that was to come. Keeping it low-key, Schwarzkopf sent Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Robert Johnston, his chief of staff, and Brig. Gen. Buster Glosson, head of the Black Hole, to brief President Bush on the ground and air efforts.
To Schwarzkopf, and most who have written about this meeting, the only thing discussed was the concept for a single U.S. Corps attack into the heart of Kuwait. Schwarzkopf didn't think he had sufficient forces for a low-risk ground offensive, and he read Johnston the riot act before he left Saudi Arabia stressing that what was being briefed was the best that could be done with the forces available.
It is no wonder that the possibility of significant casualties in the "One Corps Concept" drove the discussion to other alternatives by the various civilian leaders present, including an "Inchon-like" envelopment. Bush and National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft were both appalled by the plan that was presented. The meeting of Oct. 11 precipitated not only talk of the famous "left hook" ground offensive further to the west but also was the genesis for deploying the Army's VII Corps from Europe, a decision that would be announced Nov. 8.
But there was also Glosson's brief. He discussed the three phases of the air war: Phase I would strike targets in Iraq; Phase II would gain air supremacy over the Kuwaiti theater; and Phase III would attack Iraqi ground forces. Glosson anticipated U.S. losses of 40 aircraft, and 400 to 2,000 Iraqi civilian casualties.
Though it had been less than a month since Dugan's firing, decapitation of the Iraqi leadership had quietly disappeared from view. The official briefing on Phase I discussed the twin goals of destroying Iraqi government "command and control" and disrupting the ability of the regime to communicate with the Iraqi people. Fifteen "leadership" targets had thus far been chosen. The president said for the record that pursuing Saddam could not be an objective.
In the words of the Gulf War Air Power Survey, "The guidance that General Glosson carried away from the October 1990 briefing was that the president did not support trying to kill Saddam Hussein overtly."
But not one target was ever changed, not one iota of the air campaign plan was revised. For Glosson and his men, the primary objective remained to kill Saddam.

The Leadership Hunt

Checkmate in Washington became the command center for the leadership hunt. Small cells at CIA, the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency collected together tidbits that might guide a silver bullet. Because the assassination objective was so sensitive, and because Col. John Warden, the Checkmate head, worked in a highly chaotic and ad-hoc way, the organization became its own intelligence shop, identifying potential leadership-related targets and interviewing sources who might be able to help. As part of its planning, Checkmate also ran a simulation to target the U.S. capital, analyzing the most sensitive and vulnerable chokepoints in an attack on the federal government, and then attempted to select Baghdad equivalents to achieve similar "paralysis."
As of Aug. 2, 1990, there were 126 Iraqi leadership and military support targets, and 201 command, control, and communication (C3) targets in the DIA's databases. From a computer printout of 90 potential "government control" targets in DIA's Automated Installation File, Checkmate and the Black Hole chose a dozen civilian, military, and intelligence organizations to bomb.
By striking Saddam Hussein's sanctuaries, and by attacking headquarters, ministries and military commands, the hunters also believed they could defeat Iraq without ground fighting, or secondarily, induce a coup or revolt with the same result.
Washington was aware of the covert operation, and attacks in the leadership category provoked considerable debate between planners and senior decision makers in the Pentagon.
Some key policy makers argued that decapitation was a potential violation of the Ford Administration's Executive Order prohibiting U.S. government involvement in assassination. Government lawyers freshly researched international law to determine Saddam's status as a target. Even the International Committee of the Red Cross stated that "organs for the direction or administration of military operations" were legitimate military objectives. If President Bush approved the designation of Saddam Hussein as a target by the President, the lawyers concluded, the Executive Order would be waived.
But there would be no such designation. Reservations continued to be expressed in Cheney's office about targeting Saddam, but nothing was actively done to discourage any such action. The air war objective officially became elimination of government control, with the hope that bombing might generate internal strife.
Meanwhile, some hawks in the administration thought that fine distinctions such as decapitation versus incapacitation were self-defeating, arguing for an even greater assassination attempt. Their view was firmly rejected in the White House. Bush and Scowcroft may have officially rejected the assassination objective, but they also adopted the air warriors' belief that the United States would be able to dictate who would be in power after the Iraqi army was defeated on the battlefield.

The Double Plan

Thankfully for the aerial assassination planners, the coalition war was not the only war. As the plan for an offensive against Iraq was revealed, and as the international community gave their consent to attacking Iraq, two separate war plan documents were written: a "combined," that is, coalition plan, and the second, a "U.S.-only" war plan. The plans would have significant differences regarding the emphasis on targeting Iraqi leadership.
The classified war plan meant for foreign consumption designated "leadership, command and control" as one of three centers of gravity, while the U.S.-only plan (stamped "NOFORN," for "no foreign dissemination") designated a more precise locus: Saddam Hussein. The number one campaign objective in the combined plan was "destroy Iraq's military capability to wage war."
The U.S. plan was more precise: "Neutralize Iraqi leadership and command and control." But even the U.S.-only plan sometimes proved too candid for broad distribution within the U.S. military. So while the draft U.S. plan in December 1990 identified "Saddam Hussein" as a target, the U.S.-only Operations Order (OPORDER) finished in January 1991, softened the language to read, Iraqi "national command authority."
Though Saddam was in the bullseye, still no one wanted to set forth an assassination objective that might not be achieved. Gen. Schwarzkopf's final U.S.-only operations order (OPORDER) issued on Jan. 17, 1991, reflected the double talk. The first military objective designated was "attack Iraqi political/military leadership and command and control." The key word was "attack." It was the only time the word was used to describe an objective in Operation Desert Storm. For every other task, the goal was to "destroy."
Double-speak or not, the effort remained unchanged. Glosson and his men had Saddam Hussein's buildings in their cross hairs. NSA eavesdroppers were cued to watch the highest-level communications networks for tip-offs of Saddam's location. Intense scrutiny was given to VIP aircraft and helicopters at three Baghdad airports. Dugan revealed that Israel had advised that "the best way to hurt Saddam was to target his family, his personal guard and his mistress," and input continued from Israeli intelligence. The U.S. Special Operations Command, working with the CIA, planned "direct action" missions to target Saddam, even capture him, closely studying palaces and bunkers in Baghdad and Tikrit.
If someone got lucky, no one would complain. "At the very top of our target list were the bunkers where we knew he and his senior commanders were likely to be working...." Schwarzkopf later wrote in his 1992 memoir, "It Doesn't' Take a Hero" (Bantam Books, New York). "If he'd been killed in the process, I wouldn't have shed any tears."
The full story of the assassination campaign will never be told by historians. Much of the discussion and preparations took place only over secure telephones and was never put to paper; documents were later destroyed. Even to this day, principals involved in the planning will discuss the matter only off the record. Yet an incomplete telling should not obscure a far greater enduring reality: The jihad against Saddam was never more than a clash with Saddam's buildings.

Beware the "red eye," Iraqis warn. It is a euphemism for the Iraqi intelligence service (or Mukhabarat), whose letterhead logo portrays the indigenous "hubb-hubb" bird, a bird that has no eyelids and sleeps with its eyes open.
It is a very effective bird.
Throughout the fall of 1990, as the Bush administration worked to develop an American and international consensus, Saddam Hussein's police state kept U.S. and coalition decision-makers in the dark with regard to their adversary.
Thus when Kuwaiti resistance reported Saddam's first visit to occupied Kuwait City on Oct. 3, 1990, the tidbit was consumed to divine what the Iraqi leader was up to. But it was not just news that became intelligence. The press reported that Saddam Hussein marked his visit by ordering the execution of 200 Iraqi commandos for their failure to capture the Emir of Kuwait during the invasion, and the visit became another event to demonize Iraq.
Saddam's purges were notorious, and the red eye was anything but harmless. But there was a certain blowback in anti-Saddam propaganda, a self-consumption that would not only influence public consent for the use of force, but also have an impact on the Washington leadership and even find its way into Air Force bomb damage assessments.

Synchronize your Watches

Like most stories of the brutal Iraqi president, there was more a grain of truth in the October execution story. But were the specifics to be believed?
U.S. intelligence sources say that contrary to the reporting of Kuwaiti resistance, fall 1990 executions in Kuwait City appeared to be directed against renegade soldiers who were pillaging and plundering without permission. Typical of Iraq, there were rules and bureaucracy even in the lawless spoils.
What is more, U.S. intelligence analysts say, though the Emir escaped and the invasion was anything but clockwork, Iraq's own Top Secret "lessons learned" reports after the "Yom al Nedaa" invasion -- documents captured by the U.S.-led coalition after the liberation of Kuwait -- show more a comedy of errors rather than purge-inducing dereliction by the Iraqis. In the case of the assault on the Emir's palace, it appeared that regular Army and special forces failed to account for the one-hour time difference between Iraq and Kuwait during the invasion, thereby missing their linkup.
So executions may or may not have occurred on Oct. 3, and Saddam Hussein may or may not have even been in Kuwait.
But that was the least of the execution and purge stories that would run through the media after Iraq's invasion. Take, for instance, the replacement of chief of the Iraqi General Staff Lt. Gen. Nizar 'Abd al-Karim al-Khazraji in October 1990. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Middle East analyst Laurie Mylroie said Gen. Colin Powell's Baghdad equivalent had been purged "because key aspects of the invasion had gone awry. Iraq's forces had failed to capture the top three members of Kuwait's royal family, leaving a legitimate government intact."
According to the same report, 120 Iraqi officers were executed by a firing squad for opposing the invasion, including the leaders of an armored unit that had mutinied in protest. The Cairo press further elaborated that the officers included Maj. Gen. Kamal Abdul-Sattar and Air Force Brig. Gen. Saleh Mohammed Taher, among 16 others it named down to the rank of captain.
The interpretations were wholly erroneous. Political crony al-Khazraji was replaced with a military specialist for rational reasons once it became clear to Baghdad that Iraq might have to fight the United States.
In the words of the U.S. Air Force's independent Gulf War Air Power Survey (GWAPS), Saddam Hussein chose Lt. General Hussein Rashid Muhammad al-Tikriti, "one of Iraq's most outstanding soldiers," to be chief for his military skill. Similarly, in December, the GWAPS says, Saddam replaced aging Defense Minister Gen. 'Abd al-Jabber Shanshal, another political Ba'ath party hack, with Lt. Gen. Sa'di Tu'ma 'Abbas al-Jabburi, "an experienced and capable commander."

The Mystery Man

Even in the inner circles of the intelligence community, no one really knew Saddam. The CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency produced a number of psychological profiles of the Iraqi leader, and an Israeli intelligence profile was translated for American use. Yet after Central Command CINC Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf received a psychological profile briefing from the CIA in December, he thought the presentation was disjointed, "allowing the listener to draw any conclusions that he desires."
So without any texture for the Iraqi leader's thinking or strategy, Saddam's seemingly irrational behavior became a backdrop to explain what could not otherwise be understood in American geopolitical theory or with hard data. Analysts comforted themselves with the explanation that Saddam must be irrational to have invaded Kuwait and to have placed his forces in such a losing position. According to one intelligence report, Saddam's "limited and superficial understanding of his western adversaries" was responsible for his miscues.
The assumption of Iraqi error stuck at the highest levels in the U.S. government, even influencing American negotiations. "Please, do not let your military commanders convince you that the strategy used against Iran will succeed," Secretary of Staff James Baker told Tariq Aziz at their ill-fated meeting in Geneva in Jan. 1991. "We heard your statements that if a conflict takes place there will be many casualties. We believe, however, that this will not happen ... because of the superiority of the international community forces.… We are the ones to decide the terms of any conflict, not you," Baker warned.
Saddam had warned U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie and other officials that Iraqi forces would produce thousands or American casualties should they be attacked, but as the balance of forces shifted over five months of Operation Desert Shield, the Iraqi leadership developed additional strategies. They included missile attacks on Israel, the Khafji ground invasion, and a "scorched earth" policy in Kuwait to upset the coalition timetable and fracture the alliance. It was the only way to "defeat" the United States.
And if all else failed, the Iraqi strategy was to win by losing: To suffer military defeat at the hands of the best the whole world could throw at poor little Iraq rather than to withdraw under pressure from the United States and the United Nations. "We would rather die than be humiliated," Saddam Hussein said a few days after the invasion.

Information Blowback

The war would become one of propaganda and counter-propaganda, with manufactured "disinformation" always trumpeted to fit the portrayal of Iraq as a dire threat to the West's lifeline and Saddam Hussein as the modern-day Adolf Hitler.
Many of the military purge stories would later prove false or unsubstantiated, some planted by the Iraqi exile community or western intelligence agencies. One story in particular shows the dangers of assuming any knowledge of what was really going on in Baghdad. The day after Iraqi aircraft flew to Iran during the air war, the Soviet press quoted "officials" as confirming that Saddam had ordered the execution of his air force chief and chief of Iraqi air defenses, Lt. General Muzahum Sa'b Hassan.
The tibdit was picked up by U.S. Air Force analysts looking for evidence of their success.
In the daily Jan. 31, 1991, Top Secret "BDA Desert Storm: Operator's Look," Checkmate air war analysts reported that there were "indications" that bombing had made the Hussein regime concerned for its survival. Their evidence? A coup attempt that reportedly resulted in the execution of the air force chief of staff, and an order that only loyal troops could remain in Baghdad, Checkmate concluded. The source? A rumor from Moscow that the air force and air defense commander had been executed on the day aircraft started to flush to Iran.
On Feb. 1, 1991, after the U.S. media picked up the Moscow reports, the Pentagon officially denied that the Iraqi air commander had been executed.
On April 22, 1992, a year after the war, the Iraqi air force head gave an assessment in the Iraqi press of air defense performance in Desert Storm. It was Lt. General Muzahum Sa'b Hassan.

"Okay, Buster, can I tell Arens that he doesn't have to worry about those Scuds pointing at him out of H2 [an airfield in western Iraq]?" Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney asked at the Oct. 12, 1990 White House briefing.
"Yes sir, you can," Air Force Brig. Gen. Buster Glosson replied.
Cheney was the Bush administration's point man in keeping Israel out of any war with Iraq. Israel's concern about Iraqi chemical and nuclear capability was deadly serious given Iraq's record and Saddam Hussein's threats. Less than two weeks prior to the Iraqi invasion on Aug. 2, Cheney had met with Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Arens to discuss new intelligence on Saddam's weapons program. Since the invasion, he had been in constant contact, assuring Israel that the United States would neutralize Iraq's missile threat.
For Arens, assurances weren't enough. In his autobiography ("Broken Covenant," Simon and Schuster, 1995), Arens would describe Cheney as "reticent" and evasive and lashed out at the Bush administration for neglecting America's most faithful Middle East ally during the buildup of Operation Desert Shield. What Arens didn't know was that behind the scenes, Cheney was fighting his own war to impress upon the U.S. military in general -- and Glosson in particular -- the political imperative of neutralizing Iraq's missile capability.
It was one war that Cheney ultimately would lose.

Counting Scuds

The SS-1c Scud-B is a vintage-1960's Soviet missile, originally designed to deliver a nuclear warhead to a maximum range of 170 miles. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) estimated that Iraq had some 600 of the 37 foot-long, 14,000-pound missiles prior to the Iran-Iraq war. But during the 1980's, Iraqi technicians were able to produce their own longer-range versions by cannibalizing the original missiles, sacrificing already limited accuracy and payload in favor of an extra 300 kilometers that would bring the weapons within range of Israel and Tehran.
In a two-month period in early 1988, Iraq initiated the so-called "war of the cities," firing some 181 Scuds at the Iranian capital. The attacks were devastating Even with missiles having only a three-kilometer accuracy, they reportedly caused almost one third of the city's residents to evacuate.
In early 1990, imagery analysts detected construction of five launching complexes in the western Iraqi desert, a move that would bring all major Israeli cities as well as nuclear facilities in the Negev Desert within range. After the invasion, Iraq installed six additional fixed launch pads at Wadi al Jabariyah, bringing the total Israel-oriented installations to 28, with 64 launch pads.
In addition, mobile Scud units were thought to be dispersed to a half dozen installations in western and southern Iraq. Intelligence analysts estimated that Iraq had anywhere from 20-35 mobile launchers. These would obviously be more difficult to destroy, especially since by late August, the bulk of them had been evacuated from their support bases to dispersal areas.

An Insignificant Weapon

In August, Cheney directed the intelligence community to keep all Iraqi Scud sites under continual surveillance. But the secretary was evidently the only high-level U.S. official who was deeply concerned about the Iraqi missiles.
Just prior to the White House meeting with Glosson, the Defense Intelligence Agency asked Central Command in Saudi Arabia if it would agree with its recommendation to reduce coverage of Iraqi Scud sites to free up intelligence resources. Gen. Schwarzkopf regarded the inaccurate missiles with their small warheads as "militarily irrelevant," so it is no surprise that Brig. Gen. John ("Jack") A. Leide, Schwarzkopf's intelligence chief, agreed with the DIA.
From the Air Force's perspective, the Scud missile was also irrelevant. Lt. Gen. Charles ("Chuck") Horner, Glosson's boss, thought the missiles were "lousy weapons." Glosson as well believed the Scuds were "not militarily significant."
Checkmate, the Air Force's targeting cell in the Pentagon, had put no Iraqi Scud missile targets in the initial Instant Thunder attack plan developed in August. Although Horner added a new category just for Scud missiles to the original ten strategic target groups, the Gulf War Air Power Survey would later conclude that "the records suggest that planners and commanders in the Gulf neglected to push preparations for an aggressive anti-Scud campaign to the full extent because they regarded Scuds as a weapon of little military consequence."
The pressure from Washington, nevertheless, was relentless. Not only did Cheney bring up the effort against Scuds at every briefing, but starting in September, his office began pushing for contingency planning for a ground attack -- "Operation Scorpion" -- to take out the H2 and H3 Iraqi airfields and surrounding Scud sites west of the Euphrates river. Schwarzkopf and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Colin Powell, committed to their evolving invasion plan for Kuwait, furiously fought off any such scheme, confident that the Scuds would be promptly dealt with by airpower.
On Oct. 12, the day after the White House briefing, Cheney formally ordered the preparation of options for a western Iraq attack. And two weeks later, the Joint Staff informed DIA that Cheney wanted imagery coverage of the 28 fixed Scud launcher sites in western Iraq at least every other day.
Finally, Powell says, Schwarzkopf "got the message" and directed the CENTCOM Black Hole targeting staff to plan to stop, or at least try to suppress, Iraqi fixed and mobile missile launches.

Mobile missiles

The Black Hole focused the choreography of the first 24 hours of the air war on destruction of the fixed sites in western Iraq, since pre-surveyed mobile hide sites had not been positively identified before the war began.
DIA analysts were reporting that the set-up and launch procedures for Scuds would resemble those long utilized by Soviet units in central Europe. With four hours preparation time, complex liquid fueling requirements, and strict command and control procedures for approval of missile launches, there was a belief that sufficient "signatures" would be uncovered to allow eavesdroppers and patrolling aircraft to identify mobile missiles and attack them before launch.
But the Air Force would learn in January 1991 that even once identified, mobile Scuds would be difficult to attack. This was proven in a Top Secret project codenamed "Touted Gleam" held in October and November at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. Electro-optical surveillance and attack aircraft, as well as imagery satellites, practiced on an actual Soviet Scud launcher secretly acquired from the Germans. Even when an airplane was given precise target coordinates, the testers found, mobile launcher proved "virtually impossible to find."

Holding back Israel

During a trip to Saudi Arabia in December, Cheney again would probe deeply into the Air Force's Scud strategy. Horner would tell Cheney and Powell that bombing would "preclude" missile attacks.
"I had promised the Secretary of Defense in our briefings that I would do my utmost to suppress them but I could not guarantee the mobile Scuds wouldn't be able to shoot," Horner said after the war. "The point I missed about the whole operation is the terror the Scud induced in the people in Israel, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, it was almost overwhelming, and that's why all the pressure to shut the Scuds down."
"There will be no targets in western Iraq that will not be taken care of," Cheney would assure Arens in one of their pre-war conversations. Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger also told Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir that air operations would rapidly neutralize the Scuds. In turn, the Israeli told Washington that they would not be the first to launch a war, but they also reminded the Americans in no uncertain terms that they reserved the right to defend their own country.
Arens believed that Cheney, and Washington, never took Israel's predicament seriously enough. Though the secretary of defense would offer Patriot surface-to-air missiles to Israel and a new secure communications link to warn of missile attacks, he avoided the two things Arens wanted most updated satellite imagery of western Iraq and coordination to allow an independent Israeli air strike.
Though Cheney would not get what he wanted from Horner, Glosson or the Black Hole, his handling of Israel produced something far better than that alternative. The secretary relentlessly stuck with the Scud issue, assuring Israel while he was fighting the U.S. military and that all was being taken take of.
It was delay and bluff without antagonism, a skillful strategy that ultimately avoided unilateral Israeli action.

Some called it "the Starship Enterprise," others "the Black Ops Group."
Officially, it was the Special Technical Operations branch of the Operational Plans Division of the J-3 Operations Directorate of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM).
Manned by officers from three services, all with the highest security clearances conferred by the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies, the STO, as it was called, served as Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf's secret team, connected via a communications network with 12 other STO centers worldwide, including the top banana of U.S. military covert operations, the J-39 STO of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington.
Schwarzkopf would rely upon his STO to plan for the deployment and use of futuristic and secret technologies, and to coordinate "special access" or "black" programs available to his command. But more important, CENTCOM could tap his secret warriors to conduct "off line" projects where he didn't want anyone, even inside the system, to know about them or to meddle.
Even 10 years later, STO officers decline to go on the record about their Persian Gulf War operations. Despite the fact that their most sensitive efforts never materialized (and many others have been written about or since been declassified), the secret warriors adhere to their conviction that a capability revealed is one begging for enemy countermeasures.
They can't talk about it, but like most key officers in the top headquarters, especially in the black world of special operations, they believe they played a major role in winning the war.

Silver Bullets

"Use all available firepower," Schwarzkopf said to the STO on Aug. 9, 1990, "hold back no silver bullets." At the evening meeting, the STO briefed Schwarzkopf on the outlines of their "Operation Wolf" -- a "retaliatory strike plan" should Iraq seize the U.S. Embassy or attack Saudi Arabia. Schwarzkopf had asked his planners to look at limited attacks, a task also being undertaken by Lt. Gen. Charles ("Chuck") Horner's CENTAF air force planners.
The STO had six major Top Secret special access programs to work with. They were so secret that many officers in the CENTCOM staff weren't even cleared to know about them. These were weapons that could not be fully incorporated into conventional planning. One, the F-117A stealth fighter, then under the codeword Senior Trend, would soon come out of the "black," being such a central element of the coming air war. Others, such as the Navy's Tomahawk sea-launched cruise missiles and the Air Force's air-launched cruise missiles were also SAP's because of some unacknowledged or secret features.
The STO assisted in planning, targeting, and bomb damage assessment for the SAP programs. During the fall of 1990, they also waded through a mountain of "special" programs and capabilities in the hands of the services. Every program manager and every defense contractor wanted to get their weapon into the fight. The STO system was flooded with proposals and briefings. The STO eventually would work on bombing electricity with "carbon fiber" warheads, drone programs, biological weapons target analysis, lasers, and the "Rivet Fire" electronic countermeasures system. Other politically sensitive projects such as development of a second front in the air war out of Turkey and discussions and exchanges with Israel and Iran, fell within their purview.

From Wolf to Postman

In early directions to the STO, Schwarzkopf mused that the centerpiece of Operation Wolf should be to "fix Saddam."
"I want to isolate Saddam in Baghdad so it causes a popular uprising that removes him as Iraq's leader," Schwarzkopf said at one point.
Here was one of the dangers of "special" planning and musing without accountability. STO officers took Schwarzkopf's emphasis to mean that he wanted to target the Iraqi leader himself. They thus initiated a parallel enterprise to the aerial assassination plan that was to be developed by the Black Hole in Riyadh and Checkmate, the Pentagon's air warfare planning cell.
The STO effort became known as the Command and Control Counter-Measures Program (C2CM) under the codename "Postman." Its ostensible function was to cut the lines of communication from Baghdad, particularly to the Iraqi General Forces HQ Forward in Basra.
Given that the STO's first mission after the Iraqi invasion was work with the Joint Special Operations Command at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina (the headquarters for "Delta Force") in planning an evacuation by force of the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait City, it was no surprise that planners focused much of their interest in these types of "direct action" and extraction operations. Underground communications cables were mapped to look for vulnerable nodes to cut or tap into, and Iraqi bunkers were scrutinized to "map" the Saddam regime leadership's whereabouts.
Two bunkers north of Baghdad, the hardest and most sophisticated in Iraq, called Taji 1 and 2, attracted much attention from the intelligence agencies and the STO. After Schwarzkopf had a early conversation with Gen. Carl Steiner, the commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) in Florida, joint work began on a plan to seize the bunker in a deep strike with Army Special Forces troops and Rangers.
Though none of the Postman plans were ever implemented, there were successful spinoffs, such as the successful covert operation to extract military and intelligence personnel from Baghdad after all of the people had been moved to the Iraqi capital from Kuwait City.

Authorized to Do What?

The core of the STO's work, at least according to officers who were in Riyadh, continued to be the effort to go after Saddam.
Officers insist that they were just carrying out Schwarzkopf's orders, though to many insiders, the STO appeared to be zealots mounting their own operations. In September, as they pressed the CIA for more and more information about Saddam Hussein and his habits, the agency got suspicious and sent an unusually stiff warning to Riyadh. "Susan," the CIA liaison officer in Riyadh, precisely conveyed in a meeting with CENTCOM officials "The Director of Operations of the Central Intelligence Agency asks that I inform the Central Command STO officers that Presidential Executive Order 12333 prohibits the assassination of a foreign country's head of state."
"He also wants to make it very clear that the CIA will not be a part of any plan by Central Command to attempt to assassinate Saddam Hussein," she added.
Participate or not, as the planning progressed and the air war started, others in the agency would "help" as much as they could.
The final Top Secret SAP to emerge for Postman was nicknamed the "Saddamizer," a 5,000-lb. bunker-busting bomb that would be delivered on the penultimate day of the war to penetrate the two Taji bunkers which had proven impervious to earlier attacks with 2,000-lb. bombs.
The STO was asked to suggest an appropriate target, and later many accounts would point to the Feb. 27, 1991 attacks as proof of a CENTCOM plan to kill Saddam. What STO officials knew, however, and few others were privy to, was that "all-source intelligence," intercepted signals and human agents, indicated that Taji 1 and 2 were actually unoccupied; even above-ground guard posts had been abandoned.
But the new weapon had to be used.

As Congress adjourned on Oct. 28, 1990, President George Bush intensified his campaigning and fund-raising for Republican candidates for Congress. The fight with Iraq, he said at a press conference, "isn't about oil." Rather, he said, it is about "naked aggression that will not stand."
Bush reminded the electorate of the plight of the besieged U.S. Embassy in Kuwait City and of Iraqi atrocities: "I don't believe that Adolf Hitler ever participated in anything of that nature."
Still, he would later say in his autobiography, "A World Transformed" (1998, Knopf), "I wanted to keep the crisis out of the domestic political process as much as possible, and I made a point of emphasizing the bipartisan support for our efforts in the Gulf."
President Bush also had a secret. At a White House meeting on Oct. 31, he had formally approved the deployment of the U.S. VII Corps from Europe based on a new offensive ground war plan for wresting Kuwait from Iraq. Concerned about adverse public reaction, the president also decided to delay making the decision public until after the congressional elections. Was it bipartisanship or manipulation?

An Unhelpful Meeting

When the president sat down with the congressional leadership on Oct. 30 to discuss the Gulf, House Speaker Tom Foley handed Bush a letter signed by 81 Democratic members raising concerns about rumors of an imminent offensive.
"We believe the consequences would be catastrophic," they wrote, "resulting in the massive loss of lives, including 10,000-50,000 Americans." Saying they were "emphatically opposed to any offensive military action," they warned that "Under the U.S. Constitution, only the Congress can declare war."
Rationalizations about the reasons for going to war had shifted with the desert sands, from "our jobs" to "our way of life" to "our freedom" and a "new world order." No one questioned that naked aggression had indeed occurred.
"The country and Congress are not prepared for offensive action," said Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell. The country, Rep. Les Aspin said, had "moved away from a more hawkish position with the last month.... The crisis lacks freshness and outrage."
All agreed that the news media already were providing exaggerated coverage for anti-war demonstrators in the absence of other news. No one was saying the president should decide on the basis of public opinion, but many urged him not to use force, even if the hostages were harmed. "I want to plead with you personally before you take the country into war," Foley concluded.

Left Hook Approved

With "that unhelpful meeting as background," National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft would later write, the core group met the same afternoon to discuss the use of force. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Colin Powell had returned from an intense session in Saudi Arabia with Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf and his Jedi Knight planners convinced that the two-U.S.-Army-Corps option for an offensive could succeed.

"Tell me what you need for assets," Powell told Schwarzkopf. "We will not do this halfway."
Schwarzkopf renewed his request for a two-division heavy corps from Germany, but that wasn't good enough for Powell. "I agreed and said we would add a third division from the United States," Powell later wrote in his autobiography, "My American Journey" (1995, Random House). "We would also send another Marine division. I beefed up his request for additional fighter squadrons. Aircraft carriers? Let's send six. We had paid for this stuff. Why not use it?"
Powell called the Oct. 30 meeting in the White House situation room the "most crucial" of the prewar phase. The "group of eight" minus Dan Quayle, who was out of town, agreed to give Schwarzkopf his forces.

This Will Not Stand

With the force level and strategy decided, the question still loomed about a deadline for Saddam Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait.
"I realize that if we do give Saddam some kind of a deadline, we are in effect committing ourselves to war," the president said. "I also realize that by making such a threat and by preparing for it, we may also increase the odds that Saddam agrees to a peaceful solution. Indeed it may be necessary to push matters to the brink of war if we are to convince Saddam to compromise."
"An ultimatum, plus major forces buildup, would make it clear we're serious," said Secretary of State James Baker. The secretary had been pushing for continued U.N. approval of coalition operations and argued that November was the best time to seek a Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force to eject Iraq from Kuwait. That month, the United States would be in the rotational presidency of the council, crucial for getting things done. In December, the presidency would rotate to a small country named Yemen, which had consistently supported Iraq.
The press line, the participants agreed, would be that troops continued to go into the theater, but that the White House was reviewing the situation. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney wanted to announce the decision immediately. Baker argued for Nov. 5, after he had an opportunity to get agreement from Saudi Arabia. But the president decided to wait until after the Nov. 6 congressional elections.
Bipartisanship or not, when the White House announced on Nov. 8 that Bush planned to add more ground, naval and air forces to those already deployed, to create what he called "an adequate offensive military option" to drive Iraq from Kuwait, there was an outcry from Congress, the pundits and increasingly the public.
We'll never know whether a pre-election announcement would have changed anything in the public's mind. Over the next few weeks, debate about the War Powers Resolution, fighting for Kuwait, the United Nations, the "Vietnam Syndrome," environmental disaster and, finally, Iraq's timetable for obtaining nuclear weapons would make November 1990 the most contentious month of the entire Persian Gulf crisis and conflict.

With the Oct. 1990 decision by the Bush administration to double American forces, one segment of the American military was left in the lurch. This was the special operations force -- The Army Green Berets and Delta Force, Navy SEALs, Air Force and Army special operations aviation units and a variety of commando groups -- who had deployed to Saudi Arabia and Turkey right after the invasion of Kuwait, only to find their contingency planning increasingly circumscribed as the march toward war became inevitable.
The special operations forces (SOF) developed plans for sabotage, hostage rescue, and even an independent operation to assassinate Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.
But Washington decision-makers were wary of any provocations that might provoke a premature war with Iraq, and Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the theater commander, had an enormous distrust of special forces. Only with the Iraqi firing of Scud missiles after the start of the air war would SOF mount significant covert operations, as U.S. and British commandos infiltrated into Iraq hunting down mobile launchers. But those operations were never anticipated in the planning for the war.
Some excellent accounts of SOF in the Gulf War have been written, most notably Douglas Waller's "The Commandos" (New York Simon & Schuster, 1994). Though Schwarzkopf would do his darndest to constrain the special operators, when it was all over, he typically developed amnesia and call them "unsung heros." It is an accolade that serves to obscure a debatable contribution.

Pacific Wind

SOF were on the ground four days after the Iraqi invasion, initially made up of Army Green Berets and covert operators, but soon enough joined by Army special operations aviation units, Navy SEALs and Special Boat Units, and Air Force special operations squadrons.
The elite of the elite, the highly classified Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), parent command of the famed Army "Delta Force" anti-terrorism unit, also deployed.
A small Delta contingent supplemented Schwarzkopf's protection detail, providing bodyguards who would never leave the general's side.
JSOC also worked with the Joint Staff special operations division and the CIA on Top Secret "Pacific Wind" contingencies to rescue American hostages inside the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait City. A mock-up of the embassy was reportedly constructed at a remote area of Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, and operatives were prepared to infiltrate Kuwait with concealed transponders and other gear. CIA Arab national agents were also slipped into Kuwait to develop contact with the embassy, and build links with the Kuwaiti resistance to facilitate operations behind enemy lines.
Meanwhile, Navy units conducted security missions along the Kuwaiti coast starting on Aug. 23, and Navy SEALs conducted nightly water patrols. By October, SEAL platoons and Saudi naval commandos maintained a continual presence north of Ras Al-Khafji, the closest town to the Kuwaiti border, and one that became a no mans land in a buffer zone between coalition and Iraqi forces. Troops of the Army's 5th Special Forces Group, in cooperation with Saudi paratroopers, manned observation posts further west along the Kuwaiti border to provide border surveillance and early warning of any Iraqi attack.
"Pacific Wind" never progressed beyond the planning stage, as Washington feared that a mission gone bad could erupt into a full-scale war at the wrong time. Washington also restrained SOF covert plans to build a resistance and guerrilla movement inside Iraq. The Saudi royal family wanted no part of an effort to arm fundamentalist Shiites in southern Iraq, let alone the Kurds in the north, acts that could lead to a balkanization of Iraq and an eventual threat to the Sunni Moslem hold in the rest of the Gulf.

Protect My Forces

By November 1990, moreover, the active Kuwaiti resistance largely found itself contained by the Iraqi occupiers, limiting SOF options inside the country. Schwarzkopf significantly constrained any cross-border efforts, also to limit any chances of a provocative act. The general was particularly distrustful of SOF independent operations. His feelings extended back to his experiences in Vietnam and Grenada, where he experienced SOF operations that seemed to always require emergency assistance of conventional forces, thus draining the capabilities needed for the main event.
Any important role for SOF, in Schwarzkopf's mind, would be limited to support for his conventional battle plan. As an offensive ground war plan unfolded, Schwarzkopf's priority was in using special forces in liaison work and training of Arab military forces who were members of the coalition.
Starting in September, almost the entire 5th Group became involved in this program, and CENTCOM requested an additional battalion of the 3d Special Forces Group to carry out any long-range patrol work north of the border. To be fair to the special operators, though, Schwarzkopf also regarded air and naval power also as merely support for the all-important ground war.
The air and ground war plans solidified in November and December. The main SOF role would be in support of a pre-H-hour attack of Iraqi air defense ground control intercept sites to facilitate F-15E Strike Eagle attacks on western Iraqi Scud launch sites and combat search and rescue into Iraq to pick up any downed coalition pilots.
The one exception in the use of SOF for true unconventional warfare was in the case of the British Special Air Service. By coincidence, Schwarzkopf's British counterpart in Saudi Arabia, Sir Peter de la Billiere, had once commanded the SAS regiment, and de la Billiere quietly lobbied the American general to get his SOF into the fight. De la Billiere proposed sending in small SAS teams into far western Iraq to harass Saddam's force and distract their attention from the main event in Kuwait. It was just the operation, supporting Schwarzkopf's ground war, that had appeal to CENTCOM.

I Killed A Tent

Despite post-war claims, neither the SAS nor their Delta counterparts were trained or prepared to go into operations against mobile Scud launchers once Iraq started firing the missiles. When the air war broke out, the first SAS troops were covertly inserted into Iraq on Jan. 20, but it wasn't until three or four days later that they were retasked to target mobile Scuds.
On Jan. 28, according to various accounts, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Colin Powell had to personally order Schwarzkopf to unleash British and American SOF in western Iraq in a full-fledged Scud hunt. The first U.S. mission against the Scuds took place on Feb. 7, involving 16 Delta commandos.
How much would the SOF aid in the hunt for mobile Scuds? Firings peaked on Jan. 26, long before they got into the fight, and there is no post-war evidence that a single Scud launcher was destroyed on the ground as a result of coordinated air and ground efforts.
Despite the arrival of the covert cavalry and a bunch of post-war bravado, coordination between coalition aircraft flying Scud patrols and teams on the ground was virtually non-existent at first.
In one case, an American fighter destroyed a Bedouin tent encampment in the belief it was attacking a mobile launcher unit cleverly disguised to look like an Arab encampment. The encampment was indeed disguised; it was one of the CIA Arab teams set up in the desert to help with pilot escape and evasion.

"Those who would measure the timetable for Saddam Hussein's atomic weapons program in years may be underestimating the reality of the situation and the gravity of the threat," President George Bush told assembled soldiers during his Thanksgiving 1990 visit to the troops in Saudi Arabia. "Every day that passes brings Saddam one step closer to realizing his goal of a nuclear weapons arsenal," Bush said, "and that's why more and more your mission is marked by a real sense of urgency."
Public opinion polls showed increasing division over a potential war, and the president's Nov. 8 announcement to double forces and shift to offensive action saw in an immediate plummet in presidential popularity to an all-time low.
The mood had actually been shifting for some time. In a private conversation, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Colin Powell and CENTCOM commander Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf discussed the recent airing of Ken Burn's Civil War series on public television, which they both thought had a sobering effect on public opinion.
Soldiers in Saudi Arabia, Schwarzkopf told Powell, were also getting testy with the waiting game. Stories were increasingly appearing about their concerns and conditions as more and more news media flooded into the Gulf. The griping was typical to be sure of any military deployment and war. But absent other stories, they filled a vacuum and put a human face on Desert Shield.
October polling, however, also showed that Americans were particularly fearful of the potential threat from Saddam's nuclear weapons. White House political advisers concluded that weapons of mass destruction were a "hot button" issue, urging administration focus as a potential key to rebuilding public support. This was done.
The effect was immediate. On Monday, Dec. 3, USA Today released a poll indicating that Bush's approval rating had climbed six points from the week before.

A Gulf with the People

"We could face an Iraq armed with nuclear weapons," national security adviser Brent Scowcroft declared after the Bush speech. "It's only a matter of time until he acquires nuclear weapons and the capability to deliver them," said Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney.
Throughout the fall of 1990, U.S. officials oft repeated their public warning that the American response to an Iraq chemical attack would be most severe. Cheney was most explicit at the end of October "The U.S. military has a wide range of capabilities that could be brought to bear against Iraq, should Saddam Hussein be foolish enough to try to use chemical weapons on American forces," he said. "I wouldn't want to specify beyond that."
"I am going to preserve all options," President Bush said in a CNN interview on Nov. 16.
Discussions were being held between the decision-makers at the White House, State Department, and the Pentagon over the deterrence policy with regard to an Iraqi chemical attack. Not wanting to make an explicit nuclear threat, the administration opted instead to leave the use question open. Secretary of State James Baker called the policy "calculated ambiguity," leaving the "impression that the use of chemical or biological agents by Iraq could invite tactical nuclear retaliation."
Calculated because at least President Bush, Scowcroft and Baker agreed that nuclear weapons would not be used under any circumstance. According to Baker's account in his memoir "The Politics of Diplomacy" (New York G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1995), the president privately decided in December that U.S. forces would not retaliate with nuclear weapons even if the Iraqis used chemical munitions. "There was obviously no reason to inform the Iraqis of this," Baker says.
Yet an increasing drumbeat of chemical and nuclear talk through November had led the administration to its widest gulf with the American people. "The administration," said Cheney, "had not found a successful formula for speaking to the various publics out there." "I haven't done as clear a job as I might have of explaining this," Bush told CNN on Nov. 20.

A Credible Threat

To make a nuclear threat, the administration had to use caution because of a potential for both domestic protest and foreign policy repercussions. Prominent articles subsequently appeared in the news media attempting to carefully explain U.S. government thinking on the impracticality or inadvisability of using nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, administration officials tried to find diplomatic communications channels to quietly pass on to Saddam the gravity of their concern in an attempt to make the Iraqi dictator think that every U.S. military option remained open.
Based on my interviews with Iraqi officials after the war, the possibility of a nuclear war was exactly what the Iraqis thought, regardless of the sophisticated qualifications that appeared in the planted media stories.
The Iraqis saw the careful explanations leaked to newspapers as merely window dressing to assuage nervous Western governments. To the Iraqi leadership, American fear of chemical weapons, and of high numbers of casualties in a conventional war with Iraq, meant the true possibility of nuclear escalation.

As incredible as nuclear use might seem, for the Iraqi government, the alternative American threat of toppling the regime was seen as a less serious possibility. Throughout the fall of 1990, American officials articulated a grand strategy based on a traditional balance of power view survival of an intact Iraq to protect the Gulf monarchies and a desire to ensure against a power vacuum in Iraq for Iran to exploit. To Iraq, protection against the Persians, and Islamic fundamentalism, was seen as historic struggle.
Besides, a decade of war, and hundreds of thousands of casualties, hadn't shaken Saddam's rule. And the French and Soviet governments were ensuring Baghdad that the United Nations mandate would never consent to the total defeat of the nation.

The Iraqi Bomb

The President's Thanksgiving rhetoric was partly based on a new analysis by the Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee, an interagency group of the U.S. government, which concluded in early Nov. 1990 that with a "crash program" Iraq could produce one or two "crude nuclear explosive devices" in as little as six months to a year. The CIA had earlier indications that the Iraqi nuclear program was more extensive, but there was no hard evidence existed to tie together all the pieces. Intelligence collection accelerated, however, and the JAEIC reviewed its earlier findings.
Nuclear imagery expected of a modern Hitler fell nicely into place. Intelligence reports now speculated that Scud missile warheads, aerial bombs, cluster bomb sub-munitions, Iraq's "super gun," artillery, and spray tanks -- even "the proverbial terrorist with a vial" -- "could" deliver chemical and biological weapons. A Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE) in October concluded that "Iraqi tactical use of chemical weapons is virtually certain if Iraq suffers serious battlefield defeats," even predicting "Iraqi chemical attacks if Baghdad believes a Coalition attack is imminent."
Nuclear materials in Iraq's research reactors, and the few known nuclear weapons installations, took on an added importance. The CENTCOM Black Hole air-war planning cell in Riyadh was told that the Iraqi "capability to produce and use weapons of mass destruction" should be destroyed "as early as possible" in the air war.
The world never came close to seeing nuclear weapons used in the Gulf War, but a nuclear shadow hung over the conflict well into the air campaign. Discussion of the use of nuclear weapons to respond to an Iraqi chemical attack or to stave off massive casualties in a ground war emerged and reemerged.
For those privy to the debate, there were two camps. Those most unfamiliar with nuclear realities -- the capabilities and effects of nuclear weapons as well as basic nuclear policies -- tended to accept that nuclear use would serve some positive aim. Those directly involved in nuclear affairs, particularly at the highest levels, were far more skeptical about the advisability of nuclear use.
Even after the air war got underway and "conventional" armaments technology demonstrated unprecedented effectiveness against Iraq, nuclear weapons, real and imaginary, continued to provoke unexpected emotion. In the first two weeks in Feb. 1991, as the ground war again loomed, a bizarre 45 percent of the American public said they supported the nuclear use to avoid the expected carnage of a ground campaign.
For an object whose very existence rests upon clarity of purpose and intention and absolute control, speculation and ambiguity over the possible use of nuclear weapons would be shockingly loose.

Baghdad, Pentagon planners assessed, was more heavily defended than Murmansk on the Kola peninsula in the northern Soviet Union. They estimated the Iraqi capital had twice the density of the most heavily-defended NATO targets in Eastern Europe.
Fifty-eight surface-to-air missile batteries comprising 552 launchers ringed the Iraqi capital. Throughout the city, at military installations, on top of civilian buildings, in open fields atop elevated emplacements, were 380 anti-aircraft artillery sites comprising 1,267 guns.
Washington computer simulations predicted that the manned Air Force F-111F Aardvark and Navy A-6E Intruders originally called for in the Instant Thunder air war plan would suffer too great attrition from the defenses, and consequently only the F-117A stealth fighter was chosen for downtown duty.
A star was born.

Emerging from the Black

By August 1990, a total of 59 F-117 stealth aircraft had been purchased by the Air Force, the last delivery made just a month before Iraq invaded Kuwait. The single-seat bat-winged bomber was developed in the 1970's under a $7 billion prototype project codenamed "Have Blue." The famed Lockheed Advanced Development Projects operation in Burbank, Calif., nicknamed the "Skunk Works," was later awarded the Top Secret special access "Senior Trend" production contract, and the first plane secretly flew in 1981, 31 months after the full-scale development decision. The Air Force Tactical Air Command's first operational F-117 unit, the 4450th Tactical Group, quietly stood up at Tonopah, Nevada, in October 1983.
The unique shape of the F-117, and its advanced electronics and special techniques to "suppress" its own electrical and infrared emissions, provided the radar evading capability. According to a 1996 article in Aviation History magazine, the stealth fighter's "radar cross section" (RCS) measured between .01 and .001 square meters -- about that of a small bird. Compared to a Vietnam era F-4 Phantom II fighter, which has a head-on RCS of 6 meters, the F-117 was assessed to be able to get 90 percent closer to ground-based search radars, and 98 percent closer to airborne radars before being detected.
The night-time bombing and viewing system in the cockpit, much improved throughout the 1980s, was also rated by war planners as the most accurate in the U.S. military. The plane internally carried one or two laser-guided bombs for which the pilot required high fidelity target "materials" to find and hit precisely designated "aimpoints."
Stealth's existence remained officially secret until November 1988, when the "Nighthawk" was unveiled. The planes were then employed in combat during Operation Just Cause in Dec. 1989, the invasion of Panama. Six Nighthawks made their way to Panama, two as backup aircraft, to support the aborted special forces operation to kidnap General Manuel Noriega. A total of two bombs were dropped, one in a field next to the barracks of Noriega's elite troops, the second on a building in the barracks compound. The mission was declared a success. Stealth had not been detected by Panamanian radar.

Ghosts of Desert Storm

On Aug. 21, 1990, two weeks after the Iraqi invasion, the first squadron of 18 F-117s deployed to King Khalid Air Base at Khamis Mushait, 6,800 feet up in the coastal mountain range near the Saudi-Yemeni border. The Nov. 8 decision by President Bush to double U.S. forces in Desert Shield called for another squadron of jets, and a second contingent of 20 F-117s arrived in Saudi Arabia on Dec. 3.
Though host to countless VIPs making their pilgrimage to visit the troops during Desert Shield, the planes continued to operate in relative secrecy compared to other aircraft. Air Force crews of KC-135Qs aerial tankers tasked with refueling F-117As on the first stage of their journeys to the Middle East during Desert Shield in August 1990, were reportedly not given refueling data on the airplane.
But in the Black Hole, the F-117A would become the star, tasked to hit targets in every one of the 12 target categories. The entire choreography of the first night blow against Iraq centered on two important themes "strategic" attacks on centralized air defenses and targets in Baghdad by F-117As, and neutralization of air defenses in southwestern Iraq to allow F-15E Strike Eagles to penetrate undetected and attack Iraqi Scud missile emplacements.
After the first night, the three dozen stealth fighters would crisscross Iraq and Kuwait, sent here and there to drop one or two of their bombs on selected aimpoints to achieve functional effect on the targets "X's marked off a very long list," one air planner later said.

Dropping Hyperbole on the Target

To truly understand stealth's contribution, one must carefully define what a target is, and what a "hit" means. At each target, aimpoints would be selected, either to completely disable functions (such as in the case of bridges and communications transmitters) or to cause "shock" effect that would disrupt or nullify the function of the object of attack without massive physical damage.
Though the reporting of stealth's performance during and after the war would focus on its 2,000 lb. laser-guided bombs reliably hitting aimpoints to seemingly always cause the desired effect, hardly any target was only hit once. Take, for instance, the first target on the first night, the Nukhayb air defense operations center in southwest Iraq. Two stealth fighters initially dropped bombs on the target on Jan. 17, but stealth returned to Nukhayb two more times -- on Jan. 18 and 19 -- to re-bomb a center widely reported as having been disabled in the first blow. The restrikes were planned before definitive "bomb damage assessments" arrived in Riyadh.
Gauging the "effects" of attacks, Black Hole planners would learn, was far more difficult than pre-war theory. For stealth, though, the public reputation of accuracy was forged by the soon to be famous videotapes showing the "results" of selected missions. "Fewer than one-tenth of 1 percent" went astray, The New York Times would gush. Flying only 2.5 percent of the total fighter/bomber force mission, the Pentagon would brag, F-117s attacked over 30 percent of the strategic targets. "The bottom line," said Brig. General Buster C. Glosson, chief of the Black Hole strategic cell in Riyadh, "is that over 47 percent of the targets destroyed in Iraq were destroyed by the F-117As."
The official results, of course, don't match the hyperbole, but that is not to say that stealth and other precision-guided platforms did not perform historically once Desert Storm commenced. Like Nukhayb, most targets were "fragged" to be hit multiple times. Planners doubled and tripled scheduling aircraft and missiles to ensure that they achieved the intended impact. But there is nothing particularly devious about taking such precautions, though it does tend to be a practice that completely contradicts later claims of instant "paralysis."

The Christmas Acceleration

In December 1990, the Black Hole revised the entire choreography of the air war, fearful that Saddam Hussein might quit at the first blow, or that the United Nations or Washington might impose a cease fire. The planners wanted targets hit as soon as possible.
According to an official Air Force history, "It seemed better to inflict some damage on many targets systems/centers of gravity than to attack two or three and leave the rest untouched."
Thus, two weeks before the air war would begin, a new plan emerged. It would compress six days of attacks into three, nearly doubling the number of sorties flown during the first 72 hours and emphasizing Washington's requirement that all nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) targets be visited by the end of Day Two. "Visited" because it was essentially the adoption of a veneer strategy the pre-Christmas assumption was that eight F-117 stealth fighters would drop eight bombs on a typical target in a single attack. Now the Black Hole wanted just one or two bombs per target for "functional" impairment.
Air Force Col. John Warden's original Instant Thunder plan called for the use of precision-guided weapons and "bombing for effect" as well. But the late-breaking innovation -- the veneer attack of the entire existing strategic target base simultaneously for shock effect -- transformed the war from a discrete affair entailing Instant Thunder's 4,000 strikes on 84 targets, to a daily massive strike of that magnitude across a target base that had grown more than six times in size.

During the 1980s, Army chemical weapons specialists would joke that NBC-the military acronym for nuclear, biological and chemical weapons-really stood for "nobody cares."
"I was used to having soldiers do anything, up to and including volunteering for KP, to get out of having to practice NBC skills," says one Army captain of her experience in the Chemical Corps in the 1980s. Then NBC training became the number one attraction during Desert Storm "What a marvelous training motivator a bit of poison gas can be."
As chemical troops and the military medical community scrambled to put together the pieces of a responsible chemical and biological defense response, their enthusiasm never caught up with the lack of preparedness (and an enormous blind spot caused by horrific intelligence) as war loomed in December 1990. Though soldiers would initially pay close attention to the proper fitting of their protective masks and suits, as time went by the uneven application of the passive defense would have enormous reverberations. The Gulf War Syndrome would be born.

Weapon of the Past or the Future?

At the end of the Vietnam War, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Creighton Abrams disestablished the Chemical Corps as the service restructured for a European war. Schools were closed, officers were integrated into the Ordnance Corps. Within combat units, chemical specialists were assigned to administrative and training duties. But then came the Arab-Israeli war, and there was growing intelligence indicating a Soviet offensive chemical arsenal. The Army reinstated the Chemical Corps in 1979, and a long road began to return from the dead.
How it was that by 1990, the U.S. military was still "unprepared for an opponent using World War I and II chemical-biological agents" is the subject of Albert J. Mauroni's tight and precise book Chemical Biological Defense U.S. Military Policies and Decisions in the Gulf War (1998, Praeger). As Mauroni sees it, the 1980s emphasis on rapid deployment forces and Central America once again conspired against integration of chemical and biological weapon (CBW) capabilities into combat forces.
European troops were better equipped and trained, at least for chemical warfare, but the initial forces deployed to the Gulf in Desert Shield were the light troops of the XVIII Corps. U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) recommended that soldiers deploy with three unopened sets of protective clothing, a mask, filters, three Nerve Agent Antidote Kits (NAAKs) and three M258A1 skin decontamination kits, but, as Mauroni recounts, "Army units would discover this goal could not be realistically met."
Prepositioned stocks were found damaged by heat and petroleum; protective masks had dry-rotted. A mad scramble got underway to collect sufficient and serviceable protective masks and suits. Still, a valiant effort was made to supply the soldiers, including the awarding of numerous emergency production and procurement contracts.
The bottom line for chemical weapons was that detection and protective measures were proven to be fairly effective.

Drop Your Drawers

Whereas warfighters thought that all they had to do was wear their suits and masks to protect against the rapidly dissipating chemical agents, and use their atropine injectors if exposed, Mauroni observes that when it came to biological weapons, in Desert Shield it was clear that no one understood vaccines.
On Aug. 22, 1990, in response to intelligence assessments concluding that Iraq had engineered biological weapons, the services' surgeons general agreed that U.S. forces should be vaccinated. They recommended that the entire force receive anthrax vaccine, and that those at greatest risk receive botulinum toxoid as well. Though both had been used by researchers and medical personnel over the years, there was no data on their effectiveness on a real battlefield. Thus began months of maneuvering and wrangling to obtain permission from the Food and Drug Administration for use of vaccines and other treatments.
Meanwhile, there was an enormous problem of manufacturing sufficient vaccine for all CENTCOM forces. According to Mauroni, "no US firm would take the millions of dollars offered to produce the vaccines and pretreatments." Because the items were legally "experimental," even with government promises of indemnity, none of the companies "trusts that it would be free of lawsuits after the conflict if the vaccines were thought unsafe."
And the military did not have sufficient bio detectors to provide early warning of the presence of toxic agents. With a time frame of 45 minutes to an hour exposure under the best of circumstances, Mauroni is convinced that without vaccines, large numbers of soldiers would have died within two or three days of exposure. Unlike poison gas, anthrax and other biological agents are persistent. Chemical officers, Mauroni says, could make "plots" on the basis of wind patterns and create dead zones around biologically contaminated areas. Everyone would then have to move out of the area, swap their protective suits and regroup.

Panic is Contagious

By mid-October, the joint chiefs agreed to request a waiver of "informed consent" for pretreatments, treatments and vaccines. "If DoD held back on developmental vaccines and pretreatments to troops in the Gulf, and Saddam initiated CB warfare," Mauroni writes, "the outcry would have been deafening. DoD had to take the risk that the drugs would save lives if CB agents were employed."

But then the decision was made to double the size of the force and the entire plan was thrown into chaos. "Supporting one corps with biological vaccines and atropine injectors seemed within the realm of feasibility," Mauroni says. "Vaccinating two corps would mean hundreds of thousands of additional dosages, which were not available."
Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney approved the bio-defense vaccine plan on Dec. 19, 1990. Vaccinations were to be given on a priority basis, with special operations forces being the first priority. The CENTCOM staff also recommended that armored units that would lead the ground assault and important rear area targets (including the CENTCOM staff) should receive vaccines.

Birth of Gulf War Syndrome

Eventually 150,000 soldiers would be inoculated (some 8,000 against botulinum), the process starting just days before the initiation of the air war on Jan. 17, 1991. Commanders found the decision not to inoculate everyone especially painful. Mauroni quotes Maj. Gen. Binford Peay, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, as saying that the limited vaccine plan was one of the greatest mistakes of the war. "In his view, there should have been enough vaccines for everyone or for no one," Mauroni writes, "sharing an equal risk among all troops."
It is no wonder then that many warfighters, Mauroni says today, "still have got to get more educated about chemical and biological threats." To Mauroni, chemical and biological defense is a tactical level question that needs to be addressed regardless of deterrence or arms control policies. Unfortunately, he says, the attitude is still "break glass in the case of emergency."
There is no question in Mauroni's mind that the lack of preparedness with chemical protective gear, the mad scramble to employ poorly tested and certified vaccines and treatments, poor intelligence, an uncoordinated policy and haphazardly explained and implemented protective and responsive measures all ultimately contributed to why many believe today that Gulf War Syndrome is somehow associated with Iraqi CBW. And, Mauroni adds, the failure of the medical community and the Chemical Corps to clearly articulate how the anthrax vaccine should have been used is one of the biggest factors influencing those who question mandatory vaccination today.

Driving to Baghdad on the winding, pockmarked two-lane road from Amman, Jordan, one gets a sense of why Iraq is so different. Once the border is crossed, the road becomes a four- to six-lane superhighway through the western desert.
As the Tigris and Euphrates basin -- and populated Iraq -- nears, there is an increasing profusion of hearty bridges, grandiose buildings and factories, and modern utilities. This is not just some evil empire. From his assumption to power, Saddam Hussein built up the Iraqi civilian as well as military infrastructure, including some of finest schools and hospitals in the Arab world.
As a "target set" in the winter of 1990, Iraq was hardly some Third World paper tiger. Although the political rhetoric was that Baghdad was impoverished and desperate, eight years of war with Iran and Ba'ath Party rule had also hardened the country with plentiful and redundant facilities. It was both one of the challenges of targeting, and why, ten years later, Saddam Hussein still survives.

Target Oil

Five of 12 target categories -- communications, electrical power, industry, oil, and transportation -- constituted Iraq's dual civilian-military infrastructure. Oil was the defining element. Iraq's petroleum system, the U.S. Defense Department would say, was one of the world's most modern extraction, cracking and distillation industries, "befitting its position as one of the world's major oil producing and refining nations."
Nine major petroleum refinery complexes gave Iraq a total 1990 refining capacity of some 200,000 barrels of crude per day. There were three large modern refineries one at Baiji north of Baghdad, one at Basra in the south, and the Doura refinery in suburban Baghdad.
Whereas refineries were large, isolated, industrial complexes that could be easily attacked, in a purely military analysis, Iraq had a far more important -- and daunting -- network of petroleum product storage facilities that directly supplied the military. The country was estimated to have 50 times more reserve oil, per person, than the United States itself possessed. Oil was also stockpiled in the field with the Iraqi army, at Kuwaiti facilities, and at water storage reservoirs and underground facilities.

Target Electrical Power

When it came to electrical power, there was no such resilience, nor the ability to "store" back-up electricity should production and distribution be destroyed. Iraq's modern electrical power network was dominated by 20 generating plants connected through a network of 400-kilovolt transmission lines. The complex systems of generating plants, transformers, and distribution lines were designed to deliver uninterrupted service. Redundancies and protective systems were built in to satisfy consumer demand, as well as to compensate for intermittent failure. If one plant were to go down, excess capacity in others would take up the slack. When a transformer or distribution station failed, currents would find their way through alternate routes.
"The dependence of highly industrialized states on electric power is so great that the consequences of an inadequate supply of electricity could be crippling to both civilian and military operations," a 1994 Air Force report, "Dropping the Electrical Grid" would later observe. Col. John Warden of the Checkmate air campaign targeting cell called electricity "highly leveraged;" just a few weapons could do enormous damage. The very sophistication of grids aided attack Power is either supplied or the customer is blacked out! There was no such thing as getting just a little electricity.

Competing Desires

In the Black Hole cell in Riyadh and the Pentagon's Checkmate, targeters sought to focus attacks on oil refining and storage facilities, and not basic production in the oil fields. Guidance from Washington was to minimize the lasting damage to Iraq's economic infrastructure to ensure post-war recovery. Brig. Gen. Buster Glosson, head of the Black Hole, issued "Target Guidance" in December 1990 instructing strikes within the refinery target subset against distribution points, but not the cracking towers. Intelligence information was sought to determine which distillation and other refining areas produced military fuels, where aim-points were to be selected.
On electricity, Glosson's Target Guidance called for attacks on transformer and switching yards and control buildings rather than on generator halls, boilers, or turbines. This would minimize recuperation time after the conflict ended.
The goal of Instant Thunder and the subsequent Operation Desert Storm strategic air campaign was Iraqi strategic paralysis, a condition that Warden postulated could be created for the first time through precision bombing. Though the Iraqi leadership was at the core of the plan, smart weapons would allow key elements of the overall infrastructure to be attacked without the kind of World War II civilian damage that had long been a part of urban bombing.
Strategic air war adherents would see the attacks as part of a continuum, but the competing objectives and limitations would severely test their theories. The primary objective in the minds of Black Hole and Checkmate targeters was still to bring down Saddam, and attacks on oil and electricity would be key to their objective. Both, planners thought, would have specific military impact, while at the same time contributing to a campaign to undermine the will of Iraqi population. "Hey, your lights will come back on as soon as you get rid of Saddam," Glosson said of the dual purpose of the electrical attacks and the impact on Iraqi thinking. "I wanted to play with their psyche."

Paralysis

Iraq anticipated attacks on both target groups, and took precautions, as the regime did with other target categories, by removing key electronics and computing equipment from facilities to preserve it. The systems, then, were already stressed, and in many cases, working at degraded levels by the time bombing began on Jan. 17. The expectation, of course, was a short war. Since Iraq was already cut off from exporting oil, scaling back refining and electrical activity and production could easily be accommodated, particularly as Iraqi industry, the largest single "draw" on electricity in the country, began to cease production in January 1991 in anticipation of war.
Before the Gulf War, Iraq's total electrical generating capacity was about 9,500 megawatts, an enormous capacity for the country, which only drew about one-third of that amount on a day-to-day basis. Similarly, there was an abundance of oil. Even after substantial damage, the U.S. intelligence community estimated at the end of the war that Iraq retained about 55 days of oil supply at pre-war consumption rates.
Oil and electrical attacks would later prove to be some of the most efficient of the entire air war, but despite the rhetoric of systemic paralysis occurring through well-placed smart bomb strikes, an overabundance of Iraqi supply and a host of unanticipated effects from the bombing would severely challenge the new strategic bombing theory.
From day one of the air war, planners would discover the reality of integrated networks Virtually everything in Iraqi urbanized society -- water purification and distribution, sewage treatment, heating and air conditioning, cooking, refrigeration, etc.-- was linked to electricity, not just military and government objects. Attacks on the targets were thus indirect attacks on the civilian population, and would become highly controversial.
Though weapons would work as advertised, targeting planners would also have to learn from experience and not from theory what would indeed be the synergistic impact of facility destruction. One of the biggest constraints that air commanders would soon find out was that they really had no means to gauge whether the successful physical strikes were having either the military or psychological effects that they had long postulated.

Week 11 through Week 20

Week 21 through Week 30

Bio of William M. Arkin

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