America At War - Concise Histories Of U.S. Military Conflicts From Lexington To Afghanistan (40 page)

VII Corps’s role was to smash the Republican Guard units in Kuwait. In February 1991 it fought a series of small but nasty engagements close to the Wadi al-Batin. This is a lengthy dry riverbed that essentially marks Kuwait’s western border with Iraq. Together, these engagements, at 73 Easting, at Medina Ridge, at Norfolk, and at other locations (including one designated Waterloo where British tanks defeated the Iraqis) have been given the name of the Battle of Wadi al-Batin. They were all limited in duration but violent in character.

Seventy-three Easting was simply a place on U.S. Army maps (initially such was the shortage of maps that the Pentagon’s Defense Mapping Agency had to produce 13.5 million of them). The desert terrain was so featureless that American units depended on artificially drawn grid lines to identify where they were and where they were going. In the Iraqi and Kuwait deserts there were no towns, rivers, or hills to serve as points of reference. Seventy-three Easting was inside Iraq, several miles north of VII Corps’s departure point. Late in the afternoon of February 26, the Corps’s forward reconnaissance unit, the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, did what it was supposed to do. It found the Iraqi Republican Guard armored units. These were dug in, with their tanks half-buried on the downward slope of a rise in the desert, waiting to ambush the Americans. It was a classic defense position, one the Iraqis believed would lead to victory.

It did not. The Iraqis were too far back and their aim was off. The Abrams fired on the move, making Iraqi artillery fire ineffective, and the tanks’ lethal shells blasted through the sand barricades, destroying the T-72s.

Douglas Macgregor, an American officer who fought in the battle, described the action. His account, while referring to the engagement at 73 Easting, applies as well to the other battles along the Wadi al-Batin. Writes Macgregor:

Metal smashed against metal as killing round after killing round slammed into the Iraqi army’s Soviet-made tanks. A few hours later, the few surviving Republican Guards, exhausted men in dirty green uniforms, huddled together as prisoners of war in the nighttime cold.

Macgregor also described the violent character of modern combat between tanks:

Armored warfare is hair-trigger fast, frighteningly lethal, and unforgiving. Men are vaporized, eviscerated, blown apart, asphyxiated, or burned to death when an incoming tank projectile or missile strikes, and the margin between victor and vanquished can be a fraction of a second.

The speed at which the “frighteningly lethal” combat between American and Iraqi tanks occurred at 73 Easting is illustrated by noting that the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment destroyed thirty-seven T-72s in less than six minutes. A somewhat similar outcome took place at Medina Ridge. There, the Iraqis lost 186 tanks in a matter of hours. The two battles and several others demonstrated the superiority of the Abrams and their crews. In total, during its eighty-nine hours of combat, VII Corps destroyed 1,350 enemy tanks and more than 1,200 armored personnel carriers, against the loss of four tanks and a small number of armored vehicles. Victory belonged to the Americans.

Schwarzkopf’s plan had worked, and brilliantly. The Republican Guards had been defeated. But they had not been destroyed. The Central Command chief thought he knew why. VII Corps had moved too slowly. During the battle, he had let his impatience be known to the VII Corps commander, Lieutenant General Fred Franks. Franks, a cautious field commander, had wanted to concentrate his assault forces and have them ready logistically. This took time. Moreover, he wanted to be sure that, once his soldiers pulled the trigger, they were not inadvertently aiming at fellow Americans.

Who was correct? Swiftness in battle is often a virtue. But so is preparation. Significantly, in his memoirs, Schwarzkopf backed off his criticism of Franks, writing:

I . . . also decided that I had been too harsh in my criticism of VII Corps’ slow progress during the ground battle. . . . Franks was a fine commander who had carried out his assigned mission as he had seen it. . . . What I did know was that we had inflicted a crushing defeat on Saddam’s forces and accomplished every one of our military objectives. That was good enough for me.

With the Iraqis’ defeat in battle and with their subsequent withdrawal from Kuwait, President Bush directed that a cease-fire be put in place. It took effect in Iraq on February 28. One highly visible event encouraged the American leader to believe the time had come to end the loss of life.

Highway 6 links Kuwait City and the Iraqi town of Basra. As the Iraqis were fleeing toward Basra on the highway, they were attacked by Coalition aircraft. The planes wreaked havoc on the Iraqis. More than fifteen hundred vehicles were destroyed, and initially the number of people killed, civilians among them, was estimated to be extremely high. Images of this “Highway of Death” were flashed around the world. The gruesome pictures suggested that the Coalition clearly had triumphed and that further killing would be inhumane.

Despite the cease-fire, one last firefight took place. On the morning of March 2, a Republican Guard unit, seeking to return home, fired on the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division near the Rumaila oil fields. The Americans did more than just return fire. They launched a full-scale counterattack. The result was the same as at 73 Easting and Medina Ridge. The Iraqis suffered heavy losses while the Americans lost only a single tank.

Formal cease-fire talks took place on March 3, at an Iraqi airfield near the village of Safwan. Conducting the talks inside Iraq, Schwarzkopf believed, would emphasize to the Iraqis that indeed they had lost the war. Representing Saddam’s side was the deputy chief of staff at the Iraqi Ministry of Defense, a three-star general. For the Coalition the two senior officials were the Central Command chief and Khalid Bin Sultan al-Saud, Saudi Arabia’s counterpart to Schwarzkopf. To further emphasize to the Iraqis their defeat in battle, their delegation had to arrive at the airfield through a cordon of Abrams tanks while Apache helicopters circled in the skies above.

Discussion at the airfield centered on the return of prisoners, accounting of the dead, the identification of minefields, and the release of Kuwaiti citizens held by the Iraqis. In addition, there were to be restrictions upon the Iraqi air force, although, at the special request of the Iraqi three-star, Iraqi helicopters were given permission to fly. They were allowed to do so in order to be able to move people and supplies throughout the country. That Saddam later would employ these airships to repress groups in Iraq he did not care for was, for the Americans, an unintended result they came to regret.

U.S. casualties in the Gulf War were light, although sources differ as to the exact number. One reputable publication, produced by the Naval Institute Press of Annapolis, lists the total number of American dead at 304, of which 122 came about from combat. The rest were the result of either accidents or natural causes. Regrettably, of the combat deaths, 35 came from friendly fire.

The number of Iraqis killed is but an estimate. At least 10,000 soldiers and civilians appear to have lost their lives, although the number might well be greater. What is not uncertain is that in defeat the nation of Iraq saw many, many of its citizens pay dearly for Saddam Hussein’s folly in invading Kuwait.

Why did Saddam invade Kuwait?

Saddam believed that the lands comprising Kuwait historically belonged to the empires from which modern-day Iraq emerged. Moreover, he considered Kuwait to be an artificial construct of the British (which it was, although its legitimacy as an independent nation was recognized by most nations in the world). Additionally, Saddam claimed that the Kuwaitis, by drilling at an angle, were stealing petroleum from Iraq’s portion of the Rumaila oil field. This huge oil deposit lay beneath the borders that delineate Kuwait and Iraq. Perhaps equally important, Saddam wanted the access to the Persian Gulf which Kuwait possessed and Iraq did not. Then, of course, there’s the enormous debt Saddam had incurred as a result of his war with Iran. Arab nations, including Kuwait, had loaned Iraq large sums of money. The Iraqi leader argued that he had fought the war on behalf of his Arab brothers and that they, therefore, should reduce the debt, if not forgive it altogether. He particularly wanted Kuwait to forgive its share of the debt. Kuwait offered to reduce the amount owed, but not to eliminate the entire debt. This left Saddam angry with the Kuwaiti leaders, and his country in financial difficulty. What better way to solve the problem and other concerns than to remove Kuwait itself from the scene?

Why did Saddam believe the United States would not go to war over Kuwait?

He had good reason to so believe. America had been supportive of Saddam’s war with Iran, and when the United States ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, met with him prior to the Kuwait invasion, she, following State Department instructions, did not state with specificity what the U.S. response to an invasion would be. She said merely that the United States wished to see a peaceful solution to the dispute.

Yet Saddam, in his own mind, had a more compelling reason to conclude that the United States would stand idly by as Iraqi forces took control of Kuwait. He believed America and its citizens lacked the stomach for any military action likely to result in heavy loss of life. After all, had not U.S. marines ignominiously left Beirut after losing only two hundred of their men, when Ronald Reagan had deployed troops to the Lebanese capital? If the United States did send troops to aid Kuwait, Saddam foresaw “the mother of all battles” in which America would have thousands of men killed. Iraq, he knew, would accept such losses. He was convinced the United States would not.

Did the Iraqis have any realistic chance of winning the war?

No. Coalition forces, particularly those of the United States and Great Britain, simply outclassed Saddam’s military. In both equipment and personnel what the Coalition put onto the battlefield was superior to what the Iraqis possessed. American (and British) forces were well trained and well led. And, with their technological edge on the field of battle they crushed their Iraqi opponents.

Did the Iraqis fight poorly?

Certainly the Iraqi air force did. That some eighty-six thousand Iraqis were taken prisoner by Coalition forces suggests that Saddam’s army underperformed as well.

Why did Saddam not employ his chemical weapons?

Because the Iraqi leader was uncertain how the United States might respond. No doubt, the U.S. government conveyed to the Iraqi leadership that in the event of chemical attacks, America would respond in a manner that would bring enormous harm to Iraq.

Why did the Coalition forces under General Schwarzkopf, once the Iraqis had left Kuwait, not proceed to Baghdad and finish off Saddam and his regime?

It’s true that Schwarzkopf’s army could have continued on to Baghdad, destroying both the Republican Guards and Saddam’s regime. But that’s not what President George H. W. Bush had defined as his objective or what the United Nations had authorized. Moreover, most Arab nations, however much they despised Saddam Hussein, were uneasy with the prospect of an American army unseating an Arab government whose legitimacy they accepted. Had the Americans and British made known their intention to march on the Iraqi capital, the Coalition that President Bush and his secretary of state had so skillfully put together, would have splintered, thus jeopardizing the effort to remove the Iraqis from Kuwait.

Was there a lesson from the Gulf War that has ill-served the United States?

Yes. The Gulf War was won quickly and with little loss of American lives. Many Americans came to believe future conflicts would produce similar results. Yet all wars are different, and there can be no guarantee of either an easy victory or light casualties when the United States embarks on future combat operations.

11

IRAQ

2003–2010

On March 20, 2003, American and British troops, staging from Kuwait, invaded Iraq. Superbly equipped, these troops constituted a small but lethal military force. As they pushed through the sand berms at the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border, the invaders had two simple objectives: they were to remove Saddam Hussein from power and bring an end to his Baathist regime.

For years, as the rulers of the country, Saddam and his thugs had terrorized the people of Iraq, and twice they had brought war to the Middle East. By 2003, armed with chemical weapons and having both the capability and desire to develop nuclear devices, Saddam’s Iraq posed a threat to the stability of a region critical to countries dependent on oil. Most leaders of the worlds’ nations seemed content to tolerate Saddam. One leader did not. This was George W. Bush, the president of the United States.

At the urging of the British prime minister, Tony Blair, and of his own secretary of state, Colin Powell, Mr. Bush had gone to the United Nations to seek authorization to move against Saddam. The Iraqi leader had ignored numerous U.N. resolutions aimed at correcting his country’s unacceptable behavior, particularly in regard to nuclear weapons. Increasingly, the international body was receptive to the employment of force. In September 2002, the president had told the U.N. that Saddam was a threat not only to peace, but also to the credibility of the United Nations itself. The next month, the U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1441, which threatened serious consequences if Iraq did not meet the U.N.-imposed obligations. When Saddam continued to defy the U.N., the American leader, who previously had labeled Iraq as part of an “axis of evil” (along with Iran and North Korea), decided to take action. France, with substantial economic ties to Iraq, objected. Dominique de Villepin, the French foreign minister, argued that before military force was used another resolution was required. The United States disagreed. To George Bush and his vice president, Dick Cheney, 1441 was more than sufficient. Having been told by American, British, and other intelligence agencies that Saddam was building nuclear weapons, they believed the time for debate and diplomacy had ended.

In addition to the United Nations, the American president also sought approval for the use of force from the American people. And he got it. In October 2002 both houses of Congress passed resolutions supporting military intervention. In the Senate the vote was 77–23. In the House of Representatives it was 296–133. In effect, the United States had voted to go to war.

On March 17, 2003, the president issued an ultimatum to Saddam to leave Iraq within forty-eight hours. A refusal to do so, he said, would result in armed conflict “at a time of our choosing.” Saddam stayed put. Three days later, American and British tanks crossed the border.

***

In overall command of the forces deployed to oust Saddam was Tommy Franks, a four-star general in the U.S. Army. Officially, Franks was in charge of Central Command. This was one of six joint commands the United States had established to cover large geographic areas. Encompassing nineteen countries, Central Command at the time had two principal concerns. One was Afghanistan, where U.S. troops were at war with Islamic fundamentalists allied with those responsible for the 2001 terrorist attacks of September 11. The other was Iraq. After the Gulf War, despite two no-fly zones and U.N. sanctions, Saddam Hussein was in Baghdad, still in charge. He continued to repress Iraqi citizens and to threaten the stability of the lands under Central Command’s purview.

As chief of the Command, General Franks had senior officers reporting to him. One of these was Lieutenant General David McKiernan, who was in charge of all ground operations. McKiernan would lead the effort to unseat Saddam. With input and approval provided by Tommy Franks, McKiernan devised a detailed plan of battle. The American came up with an audacious scheme, which was given the name Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF).

His plan called for two powerful armored strike forces to move quickly north to Baghdad. One of the forces, comprising several U.S. Army divisions, would approach the Iraqi capital via the Euphrates River. The other, made up of U.S. marines and located to the east, would advance along the Tigris. The two armored units would surround Baghdad, sealing off the city, and then prevent enemy movements into and from the city. The plan emphasized speed and the need to avoid costly battles in the towns along the way. These towns would be sealed off but not fought over and occupied. American casualties thus would be kept low and the war not turned into a lengthy conflict. The hope was that if Baghdad were rapidly cordoned off, Saddam and his regime would collapse.

Other elements of the plan envisioned British troops seizing Basra and the Al Faw Peninsula, including the port of Umm Qasr. Additionally, U.S., British, and Australian Special Forces would operate in the Iraqi western desert, shutting down missile sites and keeping enemy troops away from Baghdad. Other Special Forces would work in the northern part of Iraq both aiding and keeping in check Iraqi Kurds who had their sights set on the oil fields near the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk.

Of course, America’s war plan called for air strikes. These would be extensive and involve U.S. naval aircraft as well as those of Britain’s Royal Air Force. In the Gulf War airpower had played a significant role, and it would do so again in this conflict. This time around, there was to be a major difference. Franks and McKiernan wanted no preliminary air campaign as had occurred in the 1990–1991 conflict. They believed lengthy air strikes prior to ground-level attacks would give advance warning to Saddam and his generals, enabling them to better prepare their defenses. The two American commanders thought that by attacking first with soldiers and marines they would surprise the Iraqis, throw them off balance, and deliver a shock to Saddam’s political and military infrastructure.

One element of the plan put together by Tommy Franks and David McKiernan was never to be realized. This called for a strong ground force to strike into northern Iraq from Turkey. Such an attack would have required Saddam to fend off American forces from several directions. This made sound military sense, but unfortunately for the Americans, the Turks objected and refused access to their territory. The result was that no attack occurred from the north.

During Operation Iraqi Freedom David McKiernan directed several U.S. Army units that, taken together, were designated as Third Army. The unit’s name was rich in American history. In June of 1944, the Third Army had been established in Normandy, soon after the D-Day landings. Its commander was George Patton, who, utilizing the speed and firepower afforded by its many tanks, defeated German forces as the army drove through France. Patton’s campaign began as part of Omar Bradley’s Operation Cobra, which saw the Americans break out of the French bocage and begin the drive to the German frontier. With a sense of history and the desire to replicate Third Army’s success, General McKiernan named his ground attacks Operation Cobra II.

Throughout the planning process and the campaign itself, there was one scenario that deeply concerned the Americans. This was the possibility that as they drew near to Baghdad, Saddam would employ weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), principally chemical weapons and possibly biologicals, in order to halt the invaders. Saddam had employed the former against his own people, so why would he not use them against the Americans? In response, all Coalition troops in the region were issued protective gear. Moreover, special units, including several from Germany and the Czech Republic, were deployed to detect the presence of various toxins. While no doubt Saddam had been warned not to use the WMDs, U.S. leaders were fearful that the Iraqi leader, concluding that he personally had little to lose, would target the approaching Americans with the deadly devices.

Among the American leaders concerned by an Iraqi deployment of such weapons was Donald Rumsfeld, President Bush’s secretary of defense. Rumsfeld was a strong advocate of removing Saddam Hussein by force. He also, during his tenure at the Pentagon, was attempting to remake the American military, especially the army. The secretary believed the U.S. Army needed to field units that emphasized speed, lethality, and new sophisticated tools of warfare that only America could bring to the battlefield. Rumsfeld wanted his generals to gain victory through technology, mobility, and firepower. Thus, when Tommy Franks first presented him with a plan for invading Iraq that called for 450,000 troops, Rumsfeld said no. The secretary wanted—and obtained—a much smaller strike force. When General McKiernan’s soldiers and marines attacked on March 20, they numbered only 145,000.

When Operation Cobra II began, Apache attack helicopters and the ever-accurate American artillery struck the Iraqi early-warning sites along the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border. Putting these out of commission enabled McKiernan’s troops to surprise the Iraqis, especially since no air campaign had signaled the war’s start.

In fact, the war with Iraq did not begin with the ground attacks of March 20. The day before, America’s Central Intelligence Agency received what it considered reliable information that Saddam Hussein would spend the night at a compound called Dora Farms, located in an eastern suburb of Baghdad. President Bush made the decision to strike the compound in the hope of killing the Iraqi leader. Although cruise missiles were launched as part of the strike, the principal attack was delivered by two F-117 Nighthawks. These were slow but stealthy aircraft, each armed with two large, precision bunker-busting bombs. Arriving over Baghdad just before sunlight (they flew combat missions only at night), the planes released their deadly payloads and destroyed Dora Farms. But Saddam was not there, so the mission, executed with considerable skill, went for naught. Saddam, however, took notice. He ordered a retaliatory strike sending a Chinese-built sea-skimming missile into Kuwait. It landed near the U.S. Marine Corps headquarters in that country, but caused no damage.

Between March 21 and April 3, 2003, the Iraqis launched seventeen missiles at the invading Americans. Of these, eight either crashed prematurely or targeted nothing of value. The remaining nine were intercepted by U.S. Army Patriot missiles. The Patriot was an air defense system in which the Pentagon had invested heavily. Earlier models of the missile had performed poorly in the previous war against Iraq. This time, apparently, the Patriots earned their keep.

As the troops under David McKiernan’s command advanced toward Baghdad, they were aided greatly by the firepower of British and American warplanes. Because Iraq’s air force made no effort to interfere, these aircraft enjoyed air supremacy. And, given that Saddam’s ground-based air defenses had been weakened by two no-fly zones put in place at the conclusion of the Gulf War, the American and British pilots operated in an environment that kept losses extremely low.

Tommy Franks and his air commanders planned an opening round of air strikes—referred to at the time as “shock and awe”—that would signal to the Iraqis that this time, the gloves were off. Significantly, however, a number of normally legitimate targets were off-limits. Bridges were kept intact because the Central Command chief wanted them available for use by McKiernan’s forces once they reached the city. Power plants also were left alone. Their output would be needed once the war was over. The goal of the war, after all, was the removal of Saddam and his regime, not the obliteration of Iraqi cities and towns. This restraint by General Franks served another goal as well. It helped reduce civilian casualties. Critics of the American military seek to portray it as insensitive to the loss of life. In fact, the opposite is true. Such was the concern over the death of Iraqi civilians that any target the U.S. Air Force wished to hit had to have the personal approval of the secretary of defense should estimated civilian deaths number thirty or more.

The scale of the initial air strikes can be seen in the fifteen hundred sorties flown during the first four days (a sortie is one plane flying one mission). Aircraft taking part in the aerial offensive flew from bases nearby in Kuwait and Qatar and as far away as Diego Garcia and the United Kingdom. There even were missions by American aircraft based in Missouri. During the entire twenty-three days of air attacks 36,275 sorties were flown, an astonishing number and one that reveals the extent of the aerial assault. Keeping the airplanes’ fuel tanks full required an enormous effort as modern military aircraft are notorious gas guzzlers. Through April 11, tanker planes, via in-flight refueling, delivered more than forty-six million gallons of jet fuel.