Three days before the invasion, Defense Intelligence Agency analyst Pat Lang sat down to write a top-secret electronic-mail message about Iraqi troops on the Kuwait border. “Saddam Hussein has moved a force disproportionate to the task at hand, if it is to bluff. Then there is only one answer: he intends to use it.”
Powell considered Lang’s interpretation a mere personal assessment. It was not based on any new hard information. Iraqi communications and munitions were still at insufficient levels, and no Iraqi airpower was in place to support a ground attack.
Two days later Lang drafted a top-secret, highest-priority flash warning message describing an even more threatening configuration of Iraqi forces and forecasting an attack that night or the next morning. That morning Powell read a CIA assessment that said all indicators showed that Saddam was going to invade. Powell knew that this assignment of intent was a big deal. The CIA tried to avoid crying wolf too often. Now the DIA warnings landed on his desk. A crossover point had been reached militarily.
Schwarzkopf briefed the Joint Chiefs and Defense Secretary Cheney that afternoon. Giving a status report on the location of the 100,000 Iraqi forces, he said they were positioned in a way to give Saddam lots of options-not just an attack. He did not predict an invasion or border crossing. Cheney agreed that everything Saddam had to do to prepare for an invasion was exactly what he also had to do if his intention was simply to scare the Kuwaitis.
But Powell himself now no longer believed that Saddam was bluffing. He suggested that Cheney sound the alarm at the White House. This was the moment to mobilize the President, perhaps get him to issue a warning to Saddam through secret diplomatic channels. We’ve got to do something, Powell told Cheney.
They pushed the White House. As far as Powell could tell, either the White House had another idea about how to handle the problem, or the suggestion just fell through the cracks.
On Aug. 2 Cheney called a meeting in his office of his top civilian and military advisers.
Okay guys, Cheney said, what do we do?
Powell told him the Army, Navy and Air Force chiefs and Schwarzkopf were working on options.
Cheney seemed incredulous there were so few options.
It’s hard, Powell said. They were dealing with a huge, instant invasion that was now over and complete.
There was a growing tension in the crowded office.
“I need some options I can show the President,” Cheney said.
Powell reiterated that they were working on it. He and Joint Staff operations chief Lt. Gen. Thomas W. Kelly made clear they were not going to come up with some half-baked proposals. Powell didn’t want the U.S. military to deliver a few pinprick surgical strikes. What would they do after that? Not much could be done from this distance; the Pentagon would look impotent and weak.
Cheney had to have what he considered a come-to-Jesus meeting with Powell about the necessity of getting the military options to the President.
The Secretary and the Chairman sat down alone. There could be no more stalling, foot dragging or even the appearance of either, Cheney said. Serious talk was coming out of the White House, and they had to present the military alternatives. The President would be better served if there was more military advice. The Pentagon had to stick to its knitting.
“I can’t do it unless I know what the pattern is,” Powell replied.
Cheney explained they now had it. Scowcroft had just called to say the President wanted them to brief Prince Bandar, the Saudi Ambassador, on Tier Two–Operations Plan 90-1002 a full-fledged military deployment.
Scowcroft knew Powell’s attitude because Cheney had hinted at it. “The President is more and more convinced that sanctions are not going to work,” Scowcroft told Powell. Bush’s determination was undisguised.
Scowcroft was substantially more willing to go to war than Powell. War was an instrument of foreign policy in Scowcroft’s view. Powell did not disagree; he just saw that instrument much closer, less a disembodied abstraction than real men and women, faces-many of them kids’ faces-that Powell looked into on his visits to the troops. In the West Wing of the White House where Scowcroft sat, the Pentagon seemed far away, and the forces even further away. Powell knew that. He had been there.
Powell told Scowcroft that if there was an alternative to war, he wanted to make sure it was fully considered. Scowcroft became impatient. The President was doing everything imaginable.
Powell left. He had become increasingly disenchanted with the National Security Council procedures and meetings. Scowcroft seemed unable, or unwilling, to coordinate and make sense of all the components of the Gulf policy-military, diplomatic, public affairs, economic, the U.N. When the principals met, Bush liked to keep everyone around the table smiling-jokes, camaraderie, the conviviality of old friends. Clear decisions rarely emerged. Often Powell and Cheney returned from these gatherings and said to each other, now what did that mean?
The operation needed a field marshal-someone who was the day-today manager, Powell felt. The President, given his other responsibilities, couldn’t be chief coordinator. It should be the national security adviser. Instead, Scowcroft had become the Companion and all-purpose playmate to the President.
“Why don’t you come over with me and we’ll see what the man thinks about your idea,” Cheney said to Powell. At the White House, Cheney and Powell went to the Oval Office to see Bush and Scowcroft. Powell made his pitch for containment but pulled away from the brink of advocating it personally. The sun was streaming in. For some reason the atmosphere wasn’t right. There were interruptions. The mood was too relaxed, too convivial-the boys sitting around shooting the shit before the weekend.
“There is a case here for the containment or strangulation policy,” he told the President. “This is an option that has merit. It may take a year, it may take two years, but it will work some day.” He tried to adopt the tone of an advocate, support it with his body language.
In military terms, Powell said he could live with either containment or an offensive option. No one, including the President, embraced containment. if only one of them had, Powell was prepared to say that he favored it.
“I don’t think there’s time politically for that strategy,” Bush said, referring to containment. Afterwards, Powell said his conscience was clear. He had presented the military implications of each choice. There was only so much he could do.
When they went off for a private walk, Army Chief of Staff Carl Vuono could see that Schwarzkopf was upset. The CINC, all 6 foot 3, 240 pounds of him, seemed about to explode out of his desert fatigues. He was precisely halfway through the 17 weeks he’d told the President he would need to put the defensive force in place. Now Washington was beginning to talk offense. Powell had just told Schwarzkopf in a secure phone conversation that Bush wanted a briefing right away on what an operation against Saddam’s forces would look like.
Schwarzkopf was furious. They had to be kidding. He was not ready to present such a plan. He had two more months’ work to do on defense, and he had told the President in August it would take 8 to 12 months to be ready for offense.
After listening to Schwarzkopf for four hours, Vuono felt as if he’d been through a psychotherapy session. He could see that his old friend felt very lonely and vulnerable.
Baker had argued that the focus of the Gulf policy should be shifted to the hostage issue. It was the one issue that might justify a war. Bush had 15 congressional leaders from both houses and both parties to the White House.
Has there been more maltreatment of the hostages? Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell asked. The Congress didn’t know about that. It was not documented.
Baker, unused to being challenged, lit up and turned several shades of red. He asked what the group considered maltreatment. Was not kidnapping and murder sufficient?
Yes, Mitchell and Senator William Cohen, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, agreed. But the hostage taking was nearly three months old. Cohen had never seen emotions-including his own-quite so high in a White House meeting.
Prince Bandar was delighted by the U.N. resolution authorizing the use of force. He received word that night that the Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations wanted to see him. At last, Bandar thought, Saddam was scared.
President Bush was going to be on television at 11 a.m. Bandar sat down in front of a television.
“To go the extra mile for peace,” Bush said, he would receive Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz in Washington. “In addition, I’m asking Secretary Jim Baker to go to Baghdad to see Saddam Hussein … at a mutually convenient time between December 15th and January 15th of next year.”
Bandar nearly shot out of his chair in disbelief and surprise. How stupid, he thought. Americans would never understand Arabs. A peace offering 24 hours after the United States and the coalition had scored the United Nations victory would send precisely the wrong message to Saddam: a message of weakness. Bandar complained to the White House.
Why did you not consult with us? he asked Scowcroft. To you, sending Baker is goodwill; to Saddam, it suggests you’re chicken.
Scowcroft replied that it had been a last-minute decision-but a needed step to prove to Congress and the American public that the President was willing to exhaust all diplomatic alternatives.
At precisely 5:30 the U.S.S. Bunker Hill, an Aegis-class cruiser in the Persian Gulf, fired a Tomahawk missile to its designated target inside Iraq. This unmanned cruise missile could not be recalled.
At 5:31 the U.S.S. Wisconsin launched its first Tomahawk.
An intelligence unit embarked on the Wisconsin dispatched a report of the firing on the military’s CRITIC emergency alert system, designed to send out a flash message whenever there were " strong indications of the imminent outbreak of hostilities of any type." CRITIC was created to make sure all U.S. forces worldwide would receive the earliest alert of possible hostilities, especially an attack by the Soviet Union. The message overrode all other message traffic, automatically ringing bells on teletype machines at thousands of commands worldwide.
“Why did those dumb bastards do that?” Kelly said. “The Navy did it again.” He notified Powell at once.
My God, Powell thought, we are going to blow operational security on ourselves.
The Wisconsin was ordered to cancel the message. Military men and women throughout the world know that the first report on any incident is frequently wrong, so no one had jumped to conclusions. Operational security held.
