The air war started, for us in the United States, on the evening of January 16th—3 a.m. the morning of January 17th in Saudi Arabia and Iraq. 400 miles or so from Baghdad the battleship Wisconsin fired the first Tomahawk cruise missile. The bird seemed to observers to hang in the air for a moment to get its bearings. Then the 20-foot missile’s engine ignited and it pitched over and disappeared into the night at 550 miles per hour, flying as low as 100 feet off the ground.
To the west, over Saudi Arabia, AWACS had been flying continuous alerts. Over the past few nights they had been passing bogus codeword messages to confuse any enemy who might be following their radio traffic. In response to this night’s messages, around two dozen F-117 Stealth fighters crossed the border, headed for communications centers around Baghdad. Invisible to enemy radar, the Stealth fighters could take the time to take careful aim at individual buildings. For the duration of the war, no other planes were used against the capital.
Behind the F-117s came F-15Cs, intended to clear the skies of Iraqi interceptors. They were joined by F-16s, F-15Es, F-111s, A-6s, and British Tornadoes, all with ground targets. Supporting them were EF-111 countermeasures aircraft, unarmed but lethal to the enemy because of their ability to jam radar installations from as far off as 100 miles. The AWACS monitored everything, both allied and Iraqi; should the Bad Guys realize they were being attacked and scramble their fighters, the AWACS would vector in friendlies to deal with them.
Americans at home followed it from the first, courtesy of Bernard Shaw, Peter Arnett, and John Holliman, experienced CNN reporters who were holed up in the Al Rashid Hotel in Baghdad. “The sky’s lit up with antiaircraft fire... It looks like a million fireflies off to the southwest of our location,” we heard them tell us.
Details followed: Explosions, lots of them, the impression that the planes were just going right over the city, that they knew exactly what their targets were. Shaw described the bombing as “surgical”—an expression that, up until that night, was used mostly in think tanks and lunatic asylums, rather than by working military men. There were tracers, the night sky was lit up, there were bright flashes of light on the ground. A refinery was hit. The aircraft were coming in waves, cells of three or four planes every fifteen minutes or so. Many of the explosions weren’t accompanied by the sound of aircraft—Tomahawk missiles launched by the Navy, the journalists guessed.
In Riyadh, Newsweek reported, Lt. Gen. Chuck Horner, commander of the American air forces in the Gulf, was in the Tactical Air Command Center in the headquarters of the Royal Saudi Air Force. It was jammed with all kinds of communications gear—except for a TV to watch CNN. Horner had to send someone upstairs to watch for him.
“What are they saying?” he asked.
“Bernie Shaw’s under the table and he’s got the mike out the window,” the man upstairs replied.
A laser in the nose of a Stealth focused on the roof of Baghdad’s main telephone exchange. The beam guided a 2,000-pound bomb to the middle of the roof. The bomb impacted squarely on target, black smoke erupting from all four sides of the building. The telephones went dead all over Baghdad.
Horner looked at his watch again; it was nine past the hour. “What’s he saying now?”
“He just went off the air.” CNN’s feed was routed through the telephone exchange.
Other reporters were quick to add their own details from other locations. Jim Hickey reported—mistakenly—the sound of incoming missiles from an airbase in Saudi Arabia. Wolf Blitzer, at the Pentagon, passed on that there were no reports of coalition aircraft destroyed. Operations were moving smoothly and on schedule; initial targets were anything that could endanger U.S. aircraft, such as SAM sites.
Charles Jaco, in Dharhan, reported a national air raid alarm. All news crews had been ordered to basement shelters with their gas masks. This turned out to be a false alarm; the lights of the city were still on, there was no sign of a blackout, nor any sign of retaliation. The aircraft had been taking off for three hours and twenty minutes, and the air assault was described as “massive.” In Tel Aviv, Richard Roth reported that the Israeli government had urged its people to unpack their gas masks. John Sweeney, in Riyadh, reported General Schwarzkopf’s communique announcing the initiation of Desert Storm.
And back to Baghdad: there had been scores of bombs dropped, though the bridges were still standing over the Tigris River. The planese couldn’t be heard, were moving much too fast for the defenders. Antiaircraft batteries were responding much too late. Holliman stated that even though he’d never been there, they felt like they were “at the center of hell.” There were 45 journalists in the hotel, all but the three CNN men in the basement shelters. At least five SAMs had been launched, but there was no sign of Iraqi aircraft in the sky, only wave after wave of allied planes.
NBC’s Tom Brokaw was rightly envious. Why was CNN still on the line when the other networks were off the air from Baghdad? CNN had previously made the extra effort to obtain Iraq’s permission to use a four-wire connection, a two-way telephone line that required no operators or switching, which would continue to work even when local power lines were cut. “We went door to door, day after day,” to get the required permission, Ed Turner, the network’s executive vice president explained. It had cost the network $16,000 a month to maintain the wire out of Baghdad to Jordan, with a satellite relay from Amman to Atlanta.
With their own communications knocked out, only a handful of Iraqi pilots took to the air, mostly to fly their planes north, getting them and themselves out of the way of the attacks. The allies lost not one plane to Iraqi interceptors during the entire war.
The Iraqis were apparently taken by surprise. One theory was that Saddam Hussein genuinely believed that the U.S. was bluffing. Another—probably the most likely—was that he had no real idea of the speed, stealth and power of a modern air and missile attack. Or he may not have cared; he may have simply counted on taking his casualties until he could counterstrike.
In New York, Secretary General Perez de Cuellar was saddened by the outbreak of hostilities. Cuba would try to get the Security Council to stop the war. The Iraqi mission had no comment, but lower-ranking members of the delegation thought the reports of war probably weren’t true. The Kuwaiti ambassador thought they were; he welcomed the action. In Brussels, NATO foreign ministers were holding an emergency meeting.
The cool professionalism of the CNN men in Baghdad stands in contrast to reports by Tom Mintier in Norfolk, and Robert Vito in San Diego. Their interviews with Navy wives immediately brought to mind the cliche of press ghouls feeding on survivors’ tears. Mintier interviewed Colleen Jackson, whose husband was a pilot on the aircraft carrier Saratoga. She was scared. There were tears. “If you could talk to the President right now,” he asked, “what nessage would you send him?” Mrs. Jackson believed in the President, she was praying for him, she hoped he would bring the men home as quickly and safely as he could. Vito’s interviews were in the same vein, with lots of tears. A lady named Denise was scared, frightened for her husband. Kay Hunter was deeply concerned for those “over there.” Mr. Bush was told to get it over with, “get our husbands home.”
One likes to assume that Bernard Shaw would have handled the interviews differently, but maybe it was the assignment itself. It is hard to think of a way to handle one like that without seeming ghoulish. One is also impressed with the courage of the Navy wives; there were no hysterics with the tears, only concern. There were no demands that the war be stopped so hubby could come home to little Jason and Jennifer.
Jeff Flock, in Independence, Missouri, after searching through the adults in a restaurant and getting their (pro-war) opinions, found a “young person,” maybe 13 or 14 years old and asked him what his opinion was of the start of the bombing. “I don’t think it’s good,” the young man answered dutifully. “And I don’t think we should go to war over some stupid oil.”
Doug James, in Amman, talked to Kamel Abu Jabar, since King Hussein was busy watching CNN. Jabar bemoaned the fact that the U.S. hadn’t talked to Iraq “in a meaningful and human manner.” If Mr. Bush could talk about Free Kuwait, he asked, why couldn’t he also talk about Free Palestine?
Charles Bierbauer, in Washington, informed us that President Bush had been working on the speech he was to give since the Christmas vacation. The demonstrators were still in Lafayette Park, across from the White House, keeping their vigil.
And then, at 9 p.m. EST, there was the Bush speech. It was carried, not only by the networks, but also by such normally impervious to news channels as ESPN and MTV. More than 61 million households were tuned in, the largest audience for a single event in TV history.
Bush is not a mesmerizing speaker, but his listeners have probably never been so intent on his every word as they were that night. The allied forces had begun attacking Iraq two hours previously, but the war had begun on August 2nd. The action being taken was in accord with the UN resolutions, with the consent of Congress. Saddam Hussein had demonstrated his unwillingness to leave Kuwait, had rebuffed Secretary of State Baker in Geneva, had rebuffed Secretary General Perez de Cuellar. Overtures for peace had been met with contempt. All reasonable efforts had been exhausted, and the United States was determined to knock out Iraq’s nuclear and chemical weapons potential. Saddam Hussein’s forces would leave Kuwait, its government would be restored, and the country would be free. Sanctions had been tried for over five months, and it was obvious they would not force him out of his conquered 19th province. While negotiations had gone on, Iraq had dug in, moving “massive forces” into Kuwait, had stalled, threatened, and defied the UN. The U.S. commanders had been instructed to “prevail as quickly as possible” and to hold casualties to a minimum. This would not be another Vietnam.
And finally, Mr. Bush reiterated his hope for a “new world order,” in which “the rule of law, not the law of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations.”
Bush’s speech was dissected and analyzed, as was customary with a presidential address. But it was done in a cursory manner. There was too much other information and opinion to get on the air.
Back to CNN: Charles Jaco reported that planes were returning from their missions, with no losses reported. Schwarzkopf had addressed the troops, calling them the “thunder and lightning of Desert Storm.” BBC mistakenly reported that five SCUDs had been fired on Saudi Arabia.
“The Boys in Baghdad” were heard from again: Shaw reported the attacks still continuing. The press locked up in the cellar was trying to tune into BBC to see what was happening outside. The attacks had begun in the center of the city and then moved toward the outer edges. There was no word on the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein. Arnett observed that in the past week the dictator had made it clear that he almost welcomed war, and that he was prepared to fight it.
Cheney and Powell met with the press to summarize the events leading to the opening of hostilities. Congress had been notified, and Schwarzkopf’s orders had provided that no action was to take place if there was a last-minute diplomatic breakthrough. Then came the question-and-answer session:
To what extent did Powell think we had established air superiority? Powell couldn’t tell yet; the operation was still only two and a half hours old.
How many casualties had we taken so far? That information would be released.
How about the SCUD launches? They were false reports.
What kind of aircraft were we using, and how many? Powell couldn’t comment on specific weaponry, sorry.
When would ground forces be committed? Cheney wouldn’t speculate on it.
How about civilian casualties? The best reporting Cheney had gotten yet was from CNN; it appeared the operation was successful in striking its targets with precision.
“What about the SCUDs in western Iraq at those airbases on the border?” one reporter asked. “Are those fairly high priority targets?” Powell agreed solemnly, “Yes, they are fairly high priority targets.”
Another reporter was worried the strikes might be too successful. “Are you confident that your targeting of command and control targets has left Saddam Hussein with the capability of knowing what’s happening to his troops and to communicate that he wants to quit?” she asked. “Is there a military commander left alive to surrender if there is such a decision?” Somehow the reply was kept polite.
The CNN desk in Atlanta told us that strategic targets which had been hit in the Baghdad area included two nuclear facilities, two biological warfare facilities, three missile producing facilities, and five chemical warfare production sites. Command, control and communications targets had included Baghdad’s central railway station, the Council of Ministers, Ba’ath Party headquarters, the presidential palace, the airport, and Iraqi TV. This was probably a small percentage of the total, as strikes were taking place all over Iraq. Blitzer stated that the H2 and H3 SCUD sites—the western airfields Cheney and Powell had been asked about— had been destroyed.
Jaco interviewed Khalid al-Maenna, editor of the Arab News, asking him how long he expected the campaign to last. The Saudi’s response: about two weeks. The Iraqi army could fold up and surrender, en masse. Will Saddam surrender? His ego wouldn’t permit him to do so and he would probably try to escape.
After that, things started getting giddy. There were more reports now, reports that the following days were to prove exaggerated, but which sounded good at the time. There was a “growing sense” that Iraq’s SCUD capability had been neutralized. “Virtually the entire Iraqi air force,” Wolf Blitzer told us, “in the words of one Pentagon source, has been decimated. In addition, the U.S. Air Force and the Navy bombers have decimated much of the elite Republican Guard in the northwestern section of Kuwait and in southern Iraq.”
“Decimated” is a word without much meaning. Literally, it means to kill one out of ten—not an unacceptably high attrition rate in modern combat. Colloquially, it means something on the order of “to kick the hell out of.” Presumably it was used in its colloquial sense, rather than literally; it still didn’t carry much exact meaning.
Still, it was good to know that the Republican Guards weren’t forgotten in the opening hours of the war, even if the accounts of their demise were exaggerated.
Bernard Shaw was anxiously awaiting daybreak around 6 a.m. Baghdad time. He apologized to the CNN people on the Atlanta end for any screaming at them he had done while trying to get his report in as the bombing had begun. The reporters could see a taxi on the street, but not many people.
Don Kirk, a USA Today reporter had been trying to get a telephone call through to the States from the U.S. embassy when the bombing had started and the phones went dead. He had come back by taxi. There had been no people on the street, nor had there been signs of damage.
The Baghdad team was trying to get 90 minutes of tape out to Atlanta, but Iraqi TV had no path to get the video and audio to the outside world. Lacking this, CNN contented itself with pool footage of friendly aircraft taking off on their runs and landing on their return.
A statement was expected by King Hussein and Jordanian airspace had been closed. A funeral march for three PLO leaders assassinated in Tunis a few days previously (they disagreed with PLO support for the Iraqis) was expected to turn into an anti-American demonstration. Senator Mohammed Kamal, Jordan’s former ambassador to the U.S. shook is head dolefully over the situation. Jordanians had been expecting the attack. They saw a “strong, young Arab country” defiant. The unhappy Arabs were given hope by the Iraqis’ stand, and many Jordanians had expressed their willingness to go and fight for Saddam Hussein.
Fidel Castro deplored the action as an unnecessary war. The U.S. had been bent on war when a diplomatic solution could have been found. There would be terrible consequences for the world economy, especially for those of Third World nations.
We got Saddam Hussein on Baghdad radio: “The Mother of All Battles has started,” he told the world, repeating the description the Revolutionary Command Council had hung on the war back in September. Iraq would never surrender. He urged the Iraqi people to resist. America and its allies would be taught a lesson; victory was very near.
Israel wished the allies godspeed in their efforts. Turkey was reported ready to declare war and open up a second front if necessary.
A Congressional resolution in support of the war effort was expected to pass by the end of the week. Tom Foley had been informed before the attack started; John Glenn was glad we were going in real strength; David Boren, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, stated that Saddam Hussein had made a tragic mistake. Les Aspin was skeptical of the reports of success and cautioned about getting carried away by optimism. A ground campaign, with its attendant casualties, would be needed.
And Ron Dellums said, “I am outraged by and opposed to the commencement of the war in the Gulf.”
There was an anti-war demonstration outside the UN. Hundreds of demonstrators started a bonfire in the street. Another was planned for the next night. Out in front of the White House, Daniel Ellsberg and Dick Gregory were arrested; it was Ellsberg’s 54th. Gregory had probably lost count by then. “I felt the only respectable place to be was in jail because I was so ashamed of my country,” Ellsberg told Newsweek.
Demonstrators were out in London, in front of 10 Downing Street. A fellow holding up a copy of the newspaper Socialist Worker complained about the Tories’ decision to “massacre innocent Iraqis.” 26 years old, a member of the Socialist Worker Party, Martin boasted to a writer for New Statesman and Society, the British version of The Nation, that he marched for every vaguely left-wing cause. “I’m out on the streets at the drop of a hat.”
Anne McDermott showed us protesters in Los Angeles, with signs saying “Don’t Believe the Lies!” 160 had been arrested, trying to block the entrance to the Los Angeles Federal Building. At Ohia University, 103 members of the Athens Peace Coalition were arrested. There were similar demonstrations in San Francisco. MTV fell into a time warp and began playing peace songs from the ‘60s.