Quoth Time, cheerfully:
[T]here is no getting around the fact that the toll of soldiers killed in a day of land fighting—even the delayed, low-intensity mopping-up operations that some air-power advocates still foresee—is likely to exceed by far the number of pilots lost in a month of the most ferocious bombing. Deciding whether and when to start a ground offensive inescapably turns into pondering a calculus of death.
Despite the fact that the dead and maimed came in surprisingly small numbers when the fighting actually did start, the magazine was correct in that the “calculus of death” had to be figured. Any field commander who has no idea of how many casualties he can sustain in a given operation is stupid. If one hopes vaguely for the best, as Saddam Hussein apparently did, one is likely to get the worst. Schwarzkopf’s task was to ensure that the number of casualties his force took was as low as he could get it; that meant that as much of the enemy force as possible had to be rendered combat ineffective—incapable of doing significant damage to his troops.
This requirement of command also applied to the tactics of the force. Schwarzkopf’s biggest advantage over the Iraqis was the AirLand Battle concept; his force was welded into one. His second-biggest advantage (or maybe the positions were reversed) was the reliability and level of discipline of his troops.
Discipline receives little attention in the press, and it has an unpleasant flavor to the general public. It brings to mind unthinking obedience and arbitrary punishments. But it is discipline that separates a fighting force from a rabble. Put an average American soldier in a dark alley with an average Iraqi soldier, give each of them a stick, and chances are even as to who will win. The war was to show that the same fight, on the unit level, would be a walk for the Americans, the British, or the French, each of whom was fielding a professional force against the Iraqi conscripts. The only worry was about when they came up against another professional, disciplined force—the Republican Guard.
Schwarzkopf planned to use the AirLand concept to take the principle even further. Getting back to the analogy of the two men from opposing sides meeting in the alley with sticks, the American will win every time if an A-10 demolishes his opponent as soon as he picks up his stick—no matter how many SCUDs his friends may launch at Israel.
Iraq was again calling on Arab states to break political and economic relations with the U.S. and its Gulf allies, to form a single Islamic Front, and to disavow the UN resolutions. The issue was not Kuwait, but American and Zionist aggression. “With every day and every hour, the Iraqis hold more strongly to what they believe in,” Saddam Hussein stated on the radio. A bomb went off in Greece, detonated by Iraqi believers. There were no injuries.
Support for Iraq was growing in Jordan, with another piece of downed aircraft being auctioned off, but King Hussein somehow restrained his impulse to overtly join the fray on the Iraqi side. Congress was debating whether to cut off $55 million in aid to Jordan now.
The Saudis reported that 21 Iraqis, one of them a lieutenant colonel, had crossed the lines to give up. A POW had brought word on the status of Melissa Neeley and David Lockett, who had been captured near Khafji. They had been taken to Basra, and were reported all right.
On Monday Cheney and Powell briefed the President. Bush was to meet with the British and French ministers of defense during the week. These were the discussions, the ironing out of the last wrinkles, that would clear the political way to ground war.
The Non-Aligned Nations met in Yugoslavia. They proposed that Iraq leave Kuwait, followed by a cease-fire and a mutual pullout. Saddam hadn’t been able to bring himself to accept Iran’s mediation efforts, which had probably suggested something along the same lines.
The Soviets were different. Evgeny Primakov met with Saddam to bring the advice of President Gorbachev. Reuters was saying that the dictator was ready to cooperate with the Soviets. He had good reason: there had been over 65,000 sorties flown since the beginning of the war, and Iraqi deserters were saying that even seasoned troops were beginning to run because of the relentless bombing and the lack of food. A Syrian newspaper had helpfully suggested that Iraqi officers assassinate Saddam Hussein to avoid the Iraqi army being crushed.
In “the biggest battlefield action of the war,” three battalions of Saudis, backed by Marine artillery, had carried out a combined arms attack on Iraqi positions along the Kuwait border. Marine aircraft had provided air cover, and big gun fire from the Missouri had also supported.
Kuwait, Art Harris told us on “CNN Special Assignment,” was “an obstacle course of death.” Harris showed us footage of how such obstacles might be breached — explosives, bombing, and mine plows mounted on tanks — but told us that once that was done it would be “hand-to-hand combat in the trenches, a throwback to World War I.” B52s and C-130 transports were dropping 15,000 pound “daisy cutters” on the Iraqi front lines; the shock was calculated to set off some of the half million mines the enemy had laid. If there were a few Iraqis standing under the bombs, that was all right, too. Nobody would have to fight them hand-to-hand.
A side benefit of the daisy cutters was that terrified Iraqi air defense men were certain that the explosions signaled the beginning of the ground war and turned on their radars all along the border. Pilots pinpointed many installations they had never known existed. The radars were duly “painted” and knocked out.
The Army was in “last stage dress rehearsals,” expecting to move out in full chemical gear, and ready to go. There were 20,000 Marines gearing up for an amphibious and airborne assault; whether it came off or not, they were tying down seven or eight Iraqi divisions.
Most people find logistics a boring subject. It involves ensuring that the troops in the field are supplied with beans, bullets, and gasoline, and that there are spare parts for equipment. There is not much excitement in watching trucks hauling boxes and bales, especially when contrasted with the thrill of watching M1 tanks roaring through the desert, watching F-15s take off, or watching the Marines rehearsing amphibious assaults. But an armored division in the field in Desert Storm would eat up 5,000 tons of ammunition a day, 555,000 gallons of fuel, 300,000 gallons of water, and 80,000 meals. Without them, nothing could happen.
Somewhere in the background, orchestrated by Gen. Gus Pagonis, there were thousands of those trucks full of commodities, running day and night. As many soldiers died in Desert Storm in traffic accidents as died from shell fire. A large number of them were headed to points considerably to the west of the point where the Kuwait-Iraq-Saudi Arabian borders meet. The press didn’t pay them much attention, except to occasionally ask one of the drivers how he felt.
1st Cavalry Division, under the command of Brig. Gen. John Tilelli, was active enough in the tri-border area to attract even the Iraqis’ attention. In Vietnam the Cav had been a “glamor” unit, riding into battle on helicopters. After that war, the helicopters were replaced by M-1 tanks and Bradleys, and it went from being a “light” division to being among the country’s heaviest armed. Despite the danger of losing tanks and troops to allied air strikes, Saddam was forced to reposition some of his forces to counter the threat.
Iraq’s friends—Yemen, Cuba, Algeria and other North African states—were pushing for a public debate on the war in the Security Council.
On Wednesday, the 13th, an estimated 500-1000 civilians, many of them women and children, were killed when the Amiriyah bomb shelter in Baghdad took two direct hits, one on the exit door, the second down an air shaft through ten feet of reinforced concrete. It was a very precise attack, designed to seal the bunker and then kill everyone in the place, which is exactly what happened. The concrete shelter’s roof was painted in camouflage colors and it was reported to have contained a military communications center.
There was moving footage of burned bodies being removed, of weeping relatives. The U.S. command, aghast at the carnage to civilians, blamed the Iraqi government for placing them there. By Thursday the Coalition was considering announcing its targets in advance, a move which would have been militarily stupid, but which would have helped keep civilian casualties lower.
The Arab world was outraged at the destruction of the bomb shelter, understandably so; the West was hardly comfortable with the idea of large numbers of women and children killed. There were demonstrations in Jordan, predictably. Iraq vowed revenge, also predictably, and stated that so far 288 bodies had been recovered. In a half-hearted attempt to counter Iraq’s propaganda campaign, the U.S. claimed the Iraq had faked damage to a mosque in Basra, intending to blame it on the bombing.
Newsweek reported later that the bunker had been previously identified as one of about two dozen meant to shelter Saddam’s inner circle, the leaders and families of the Revolutionary Command Council and the Baath Party. Saddam himself was reputed to have been spotted at the Amiriyah bunker in the latter days of the Iran-Iraq War, and again at the beginning of February. Asked whether the victims were in fact the families of the ruling elite, a visibly shaken Pentagon source had stated, “I don’t know. [Burned] women and children all look much the same, don’t they?” After the war, a doctor in Baghdad who was in a position to know admitted that the bunker had been reserved for VIPs up until two weeks before the strike, when the local population had been admitted.
Primakov returned to the Soviet Union and it was announced that Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz would go to Moscow on Monday. The leadership of the Soviet armed forces had already publicly denounced the Coalition campaign against its old friend. Gorbachev was in the middle of maneuvering between the conservatives of the military and the KGB and the liberals, consisting of most of the rest of the country and exemplified by Boris Yel’tsin. Lithuania was again trying to break away and Soviet troops were running over people with tanks to ensure that it did not. A foreign policy boost would be a much-needed gain for Gorbachev, especially with people like Rep. Dan Burton, of Indiana, calling for the use of tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield.
A German student was stabbed in Amman; his attacker thought he was an American. The German Red Army Faction machine-gunned the U.S. embassy in Bonn. These were hardly what the Chinese used to call “telling blows” at the Coalition, especially when contrasted with the mood of the ground forces who were waiting to go. CNN showed a piece on the 1st Marine Division’s tank battalion. Its commander, Lt. Col. Buster Diggs, stated simply, “These boys are awesome!” There was a similar piece on the 101st Airborne Division, not as exuberant as the Marines, but just as ready to go.
A U.S. Air Force F-15E shot down a hovering Iraqi helicopter by hitting it with a laser-guided bomb.
Antiwar demonstrators attempted to dig graves on the Pentagon lawn and poured blood and oil on the steps of the building. The mood of the public had swung sufficiently that the gesture wasn’t even irritating — just pathetic.
Friday morning brought a shock. Baghdad Radio reported that Iraq was ready to withdraw from Kuwait and had accepted UN Resolution 660. The withdrawal should be coupled with a cessation of land, air, and sea activity. Was the withdrawal offer connected with the destruction of the Amiriyah bunker? The timing suggests so; the Ba’ath leadership may have looked at its burned families and reacted much more immediately than it did to reports of hardship, cut communications and a worsening tactical situation.