Meanwhile, as everyone knew, the United States was rushing toward the start of what was widely expected to be a bloody ground war. Troops in the field knew it; they were at full battle readiness, and the lucky ones who could get to a telephone were making their final calls home. The timing of the attack had been drawn up two weeks earlier during Cheney and Powell’s visit to Saudi Arabia; they had established a window of Feb. 21 to Feb. 26. The actual moment for the attack would be chosen by Schwarzkopf, once the president had authorized the campaign. A number of factors weighed on the decision, including the impending start of hot weather in the gulf and the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan on or about March 17. American officials were eager not to offend their hosts by fighting during this solemn period, even though it is not specifically prohibited in the Koran–and the Saudis, besides being a religious people, are an eminently practical one.
What did matter was having troops in position and their supplies close at hand. In the end the war may not have been much of a challenge for the American fighting man, but it demonstrated American truck driving at its finest. Schwarzkopf insisted on a 60-day supply of ammunition, fuel, spare parts, food and water for his main assault forces. A single armored division in combat uses 5,000 tons of ammunition and half a million gallons of fuel a day. There was only one narrow east-west road paralleling the Saudi border with Kuwait. In what turned out to be one of the more dangerous occupations of the operation, drivers (many of them women) moved mountains of gear along this highway at speeds up to 50 miles an hour (double the official limit) and in dust storms as impenetrable as a Wyoming blizzard. This process–which accounted for more casualties than the combat air operations–continued until virtually the final hours before the attack.
Also, of course, the start of the ground battle would depend on the success of the air campaign. Bomb-damage assessment, even with the fabulous surveillance tools available to the Pentagon, remains something of an art. On the eve of the ground war, Central Command in Riyadh publicly estimated that 30 to 35 percent of Iraqi tanks had been put out of action; privately, however, the Pentagon’s internal estimate was that half of Saddam’s force had been destroyed. But the Central Intelligence Agency believed the figure was much lower. Nor was there necessarily a consensus on whether that was “enough.” From the perspective of the soldiers who would have to face the allegedly fearsome, dug-in Iraqi troops, the point of diminishing returns of the air war was reached only after the last Iraqi tank was blown up. The Air Force argued unsuccessfully for letting the bombing go on into the beginning of March, and most civilians apparently felt the same way; a “Newsweek’ Poll in mid-February found that Americans favored continuing the bombing over starting the ground war by a margin of nearly 11 to 1.
Even harder than counting destroyed tanks, and in some ways more important, was assessing the morale of the Iraqi troops and the command capabilities of their officers. “Iraq’s military is hurting and hurting very badly,” Schwarzkopf told an interviewer on Feb. 19. “Our assessment is that they are on the verge of collapse.” A steady trickle of deserters across the lines, amounting to something more than 2,000 by that date, supported the picture of a disintegrating army. Even larger numbers were believed to have deserted north, back to Iraq. The day after Schwarzkopf’s interview appeared, four U.S. helicopters raided a complex of Iraqi bunkers across the border and flushed nearly 500 prisoners with a few missile round; big Chinook choppers had to bring them out in relays.
But officials in the Pentagon were not so optimistic. Schwarzkopf’s view “is not my assessment,” kelly told reporters in Washington. “There’s still some fighting to be done.” Even armies on the verge of collapse–like the Germans near the end of World War II–have been known to hang on tenaciously and inflict large casualties. By late February knowledgeable officials no longer feared the war would drag on for months. The president’s top advisers, including Cheney, Powell and national-security adviser Brent Scowcroft, told Bush that with luck the fighting might be over in two weeks or more. Just before the ground campaign began, the Army prepared an estimate that the battle might take as little as seven days if the Republican Guard came out of their bunkers to fight, 10 days if they stayed dug in. And still virtually everyone, from Schwarzkopf on down, assumed that when the first troops crossed the border Saddam would at last unleash his dreaded poison gas.
Still, the main concern in Bush’s mind that crucial third week in February was not avoiding a ground war, but making sure that he didn’t get tricked into accepting a cease-fire before he could attack. Schwarzkopf had originally chosen Thursday, Feb. 21 (8 p.m., Washington time), as H-hour, then decided he needed two more days to prepare. And just as well, because on Thursday afternoon Gorbachev threw the whole war plan into momentary chaos with an eight-point peace proposal that seemed to meet many of Bush’s conditions. Aziz, back in Moscow, had given a “positive response” to the plan, A soviet spokesman added.
There was never any chance that Washington would accept the plan. Not that it was that far from the American position. American officials were quick to point out its shortcomings, but issues such as Iraqi cooperation in sweeping the minefields left in Kuwait weren’t really insurmountable obstacles. And what it did provide–a “full and unconditional withdrawal” from Kuwait over three weeks, immediate release of prisoners of war–might at least have provided a basis for negotiation, if Bush were interested in negotiating. Or so it appeared to some of America’s coalition partners, both Arab and European. “Oh, Christ,” said one high State Department official, as he read the cautious responses to the Kremlin statement from allied capitals, “he [Gorbachev] has finally done it. He’s split the coalition.” Once more, out of concern for Soviet sensibilities, and to avoid the appearance of warmongering, Bush had to pretend to consider a proposal he had no intention of accepting. As White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater went on television Thursday night to announce that Bush would “examine” the plan overnight, the president and other American officials were calling allied leaders to lobby against it.
With Schwarzkopf ready to attack, Bush had no intention of negotiating anything. And he was, if anything, less inclined when he learned of Saddam’s most recent atrocity. Were the Americans fighting for oil? Saddam would make them rue the day they had ever discovered that the stuff could burn. Before the war began, he had threatened to turn Kuwait’s oilfields into an “inferno” if he were forced to leave, and now he was making good on it. Early in the air campaign, Iraqi troops had set around 50 well fires, mostly in the southwestern oilfields. This might have been a tactical move, creating smoke and infrared hot spots to confuse American pilots. But beginning Thursday, a systematic and terrible campaign of destruction was unleashed on Kuwait’s oilfields. Wellheads were packed with explosives to destroy the valves and controls, and then the oil was ignited, sending pillars of flame more than 50 feet into the air. Within a day U.S. officials estimated that a quarter of Kuwait’s 1,000 wells were blazing. Pipelines, storage tanks and refineries were also wrecked. Saddam said Neal, “is carrying out his policy of destroying Kuwait.”
So Saddam must have known the end was near, even as he pursued his “peace” plan. As usual he improved his chances of being turned down with a belligerent radio speech implying that the allies were afraid of a ground war–a war, he noted ominously but incomprehensibly in which “the clouds of battles will be dispelled to make room for a brilliant moon surrounded by a halo, whose size will be commensurate with the sacrifices that are required by the duties and conditions of victory and by the patience that God Almighty expects from the people of holy war.” Allowing Aziz–a career Iraqi diplomat and a Christian–to negotiate for peace while at the same time whipping his people into a holy war suggested that Saddam was still seeking to salvage a victory on the planes of metaphor.
The American response was even more flat, literal and uncompromising than usual. Citing the oilfield fires as evidence of how little Saddam could be trusted, Bush laid out a set of non-negotiable terms, beginning with a complete Iraqi withdrawal inside seven days, that were intended to be so humiliating that there was no chance Saddam could accept them. To make doubly sure of it, on Powell’s suggestion he added a deadline: noon, Washington time, Saturday, Feb. 23–eight hours before Schwarzkopf was to launch the ground offensive.
Schwarzkopf may have believed that the Iraqis were on the verge of collapse, but still he had to prepare as if he were facing an enemy with the discipline of Roman legionnaires, the guns of the Red Army and the scruples of Blackbeard (partially offset, in Schwarzkopf’s reckoning, by leadership with the adroitness of Mussolini). This mood of caution pervaded the entire American force, which on the eve of one of the most lopsided victories in the history of modern warfare charged into battle to the sound of a half-million voices murmuring “Assume the worst.” One reason, of course, was that they expected to be gassed. Since it suited both American and Iraqi propaganda to portray Saddam as utterly ruthless, the expectation of chemical warfare had risen to a virtual certainty among the troops near the border. Intelligence briefings confidently reported that chemical weapons had been distributed to Iraqi troops, and that division commanders had authority to use them. Reconnaissance teams reported seeing puffs of gray smoke from rocket-propelled grenades that might be cyanide gas. Putting the best face on it, a ranking officer of the Army engineers predicted that the use of such inhumane weapons would spur soldiers to greater efforts. “There’s a big difference,” he said, in what appears to have been a slightly misguided effort to boost morale, “between seeing your buddy blown apart and seeing him twitching to death right next to you.”
In fact, allied commanders did not regard chemical weapons as a major military threat in themselves. A gas attack would slow the allied advance while soldiers donned their masks and suits, but properly prepared troops were expected to survive. Apart from chemical weapons, though, the Iraqi troops had a reputation for fierce defensive fighting. In Schwarzkopf’s reckoning, the allies had a slight numerical advantage–around 500,000 Americans and 200,000 other forces facing 540,000 Iraqis, minus an unknown number that died or deserted during the air campaign. (In fact, the Pentagon now believes the actual number of Iraqi troops was less than half that, around 250,000–perhaps indicating a serious intelligence failure that is being investigated.) But military doctrine holds that attacking forces should enjoy at least a 3-1 advantage in numbers, and more when the enemy is well fortified. It was believed that the frontline troops were draftees mostly waiting for fighting to start so they could run without being seen. Still, there were regular Army units behind them, and in reserve near the Iraqi-Kuwait border eight divisions of what were inevitably referred to as the “elite” Republican Guard. And directly across the border from the allies, vast minefields, oil-filled ditches and steep-walled sand berms and trenches intended to channel the attacking armies into “killing fields” for the convenience of Iraqi artillery and tank gunners. This tactic had worked brilliantly against the massed assaults of Iranian foot soldiers. The difference this time was that Schwarzkopf had no interest in seeing his men become martyrs.
Tactically, the key to survival would be battlefield preparation. The air and ground bombardment reached a peak in the days before the attack. Under cover of rocket and artillery fire, engineers advanced to the edge of minefields and fired MICLICs: small rockets that flew a hundred yards or so, trailing a line packed with explosive charges. When the charges were detonated, they set off all the mines in their vicinity, clearing a path wide enough to drive a tank through. The “Saddam line” of border fortifications included ditches that were to be filled with oil and set ablaze to slow allied tanks. In a half-hour attack three days before the ground campaign started, Stealth fighters destroyed all the underground distribution points for this oil. B-52s, which had not previously been used against Iraqi frontline positions, flew against them for the first time just before G-day–on the theory that the psychological shock of a B-52 attack is greatest if you haven’t been through one before.
Engineers driving armored bulldozers punched holes in sand berms as high as 10 feet, while Iraqi artillery thudded around them. “I was scared to death of the entire operation,” said Sgt. Douglas Plaisted, an engineer with the First Infantry Division. “Every time I got up on the crest, I reversed as fast as I could. All I could think about was that I didn’t want to go rolling down on the Iraqi side.”
NEWSWEEK’S Ray Wilkinson was with one of the first units to cross into Kuwait, a regimental task force (code-named Ripper) of the First Marine Division. At dawn on Sunday, Feb. 24, the Marines–wearing chemical suits as a precaution–piled into their M-60 tanks and armored troop carriers and stormed across no man’s land near the heel of the Saudi-Kuwait border. Combat engineers had blasted a portal through a sand berm and cleared a path through the deserted and ill-tended minefield. This was known to be a weak spot in the Iraqi lines, although no one realized “how’ weak until they discovered that it was defended chiefly by dummy tanks constructed to half scale out of sheet metal. The feared Saddam line, supposedly a mile-wide gantlet of obstacles and fortifications, was only 140 yards deep at this point, and Task Force Ripper crossed it without the enemy so much as throwing a rock.
Strategically, success lay in deceiving the enemy. While pounding away at Iraqi troops in southern Kuwait, the allied commander had quietly moved two whole corps–VII and XVIII, combined with British and French division to make a total of nearly 250,000 soldiers–to the undefended Saudi-Iraqi border several hundred miles to the west. It was, Schwarzkopf said later, one of the largest battlefield troop movements in history. The purpose was to set up what he called the “Hail Mary” maneuver: a strike deep into Iraq followed by a quick move to the east, fulfilling the prediction Powell had made weeks earlier about dealing with the Republican Guard: “First we’re going to cut it off, and then we’re going to kill it.”
Of course, the Iraqis had to expect a flanking maneuver, even if all their intelligence at this point came from CNN. The gulf war was a bonanza for America’s retired colonels and admirals, who found themselves in enormous demand to draw arrows on television maps. Most of them had divined at least the principals of Schwarzkopf’s strategy. At first American officials worried that Saddam might actually learn something useful this way, but they soon realized that the arrows were pointing in all directions. In any case, almost no one guessed that the strike would come as far west as it actually did, through terrain that had widely been regarded as too rugged for wheeled vehicles.
But in case the Iraqis did awaken to this move, Schwarzkopf planned two feints to keep the defenders from moving their troops west to counter it. One was a move by the First Cavalry north along the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border, up a ravine called the Wadi al-Batin. Since this was a logical invasion route, the hope was that the Republican Guard would turn to meet it, exposing their flanks to the real attack coming from the west. The other was a threatened landing on the coast of Kuwait by 17,000 Marines aboard ships in the Persian Gulf. The Marines had held five ostentatiously secret rehearsals for amphibious assaults during the fall. For several weeks, the 16-inch guns of the battleships Missouri and Wisconsin had been bombarding Kuwaiti coastal defenses. As late as January the Marines had hoped they would actually be called on to perform the first Marine landing under hostile fire since the Korean War. On television screens, a flotilla of arrows took flight in the gulf and streamed ashore. But insofar as the goal was to keep the Iraqi divisions pinned down near coast, Schwarzkopf reasoned that a faked assault was just as good as a real one, and a lot safer. This seemed especially wise after two Navy ships were damaged by mines off the Kuwaiti coast. The insulted Marines appealed over Schwarzkopf’s head to Powell, but the decision stood. Two Marine divisions saw action on the ground–Schwarzkopf was exceptionally lavish in describing their feats at his postcombat press conference–but their special skill, combat amphibious assault, would have to wait for the next war.
