Chapter 162: Going to War

It is very tempting to bury yourself in a single cause once you are in the White House. The stuff that lands on your desk is important, life and death matters in many cases, and you can spend every waking hour micromanaging pieces of the job. Obviously, war is the most important thing, and it is very tempting to put all your time in on this.

Not all Presidents can keep from doing this. Roosevelt lined one of the downstairs rooms with maps, giving it the still current name of the Map Room, and would spend hours in there every day following troop movements and how the front changed. At least he managed to win his war. Johnson would spend hours every night wandering the hallways in his pajamas and bathrobe and would haunt the Situation Room. Worst of all, telecommunications had advanced to the point that he could pick up a telephone and be connected to a platoon leader in the Mekong Delta on a search and destroy mission and give him tactical advice and orders. He did that several times.

What a REMF Navy Reserve Lieutenant Commander thought he knew about infantry tactics was questionable at best. Johnson and McNamara thought they were smarter than all the generals and admirals around them and didn’t mind firing them. However, after that, the Pentagon went out of its way to keep the President from exercising tactical control, and the post-Viet Nam generation wasn’t above telling us to behave ourselves. That generation was pretty much gone now, but we had learned that lesson. The problem now was that a lot of the current military leaders came of age during Desert Storm and thought that war was a video game. I wasn’t sure how that was going to work out, but my own low-level experience said that it was a whole lot dirtier than that.

Not much happened until the afternoon of the 14^th, as we began lining up assets and preparing a response. At that time, shortly before I spoke to the nation, the Navy launched over 400 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Iraqi targets from ships and submarines. The initial targets covered air bases, air defense sites, military bases, and anything that anybody could imagine might be harboring chemical weapons stockpiles. Other targets covered most of the country’s infrastructure, including bridges, power plants, chemical factories, canal locks, and dams. Shortly after that, we had F-15s and F-16s flying combat air patrols and interdiction runs out of Incirlik and Kuwait, and F-18s doing the same thing off carriers in the Gulf. Then the heavies showed up, B-1s and B-2s and B-52s, to destroy anything the cruise missiles might have missed.

Back in the 1920s, an Italian general named Giulio Douhet came up with the theory that by massively bombing an enemy, you could win a war without troops. His theory, which was refined into the concept of strategic bombing, was that by bombing the enemy, especially his deep targets - infrastructure and cities - you would inflict massive damage and destroy their will to fight. It certainly sounded like a good idea, and for most of the Twentieth Century that was what we tried to do. It didn’t work in Germany or Japan, it didn’t work in Korea or Viet Nam or Serbia, and it didn’t work in Iraq the first time. In every case it became necessary to send in the troops. Fortunately, by the time we got to Desert Storm, everybody knew that this was going to be necessary. Bombing could still be extraordinarily useful, but it was not going to help the Kurds on its own.

By Wednesday afternoon we were beginning to develop a pretty good feel for what was going on and the Iraqi strategy. Saddam Hussein had two corps of Republican Guards armored and mechanized troops in the field. This worked out to about six divisions, though they were all considerably smaller than an equivalent American division. Still, that was about 75,000 troops, and 1,000 T-72 tanks, and lots of other older tanks, armored personnel carriers, and trucks. They were split into two groups, and were trying to pincer Kirkuk between them, to envelope it. Chemical weapons were being used in isolated Kurdish towns and cities, but not in areas the Guard planned to move forward through. It was standard Russian doctrine, because that was where they got most of their equipment and training from.

By the morning of the 16^th some of the real horror began becoming known to the rest of the world, as Iraqi civilians began arriving after fleeing the areas which had been hit with mustard gas. The chemical burns and blisters were so horrible that most of the media refused to show it. Not all, however, and some of the tabloids ran front page pictures in full color, which was enough to make you vomit. After that, the others started showing them also. We also started getting reports of American casualties along with Peshmerga troops caught by the mustard gas, and found out that Bismarck Myrick, our Special Envoy, was one of those who had died. Condi Rice told me that, and I promised her that we would do right by his family.

It took a full day to fly the lead elements of the 82^nd to Incirlik in C-17s, where they then transferred to smaller and handier C-130s for the flight to Erbil. Erbil was far enough from the front that it wasn’t in danger of being immediately overrun. They were offloaded there, and then carried on whatever local transportation they could beg, borrow, or steal to get to the front. The Peshmerga were fighting valiantly, but Kalashnikovs and RPGs were not going to cut it against T-72s, and they were falling back. The battle plan was that the infantry forces we were sending in first would be able to stabilize the front lines long enough that our armored and airmobile stuff coming in from Europe would be able to break the Iraqis.

That was the theory, anyway. How well it would work was anybody’s guess. The 82^nd brags that it can be anywhere in the world in twenty-four hours, but it’s a whole lot more complicated than that. Yes, the lead elements, say the first few battalions, can manage that, but afterwards it becomes a real scramble. It would take about a week for the rest of the 82^nd and the Rangers to get there, and at least another week before the 173^rd Airborne Brigade in Italy showed up to help, and possibly another week after that for the armor in Germany to make it onto the scene. Even that would be light, since we only had one heavy armored brigade available, the 1^st Brigade, 1^st Armored Division, with M-1 Abrams tanks, and a second brigade, the 2 ^nd Stryker Cavalry, which used a light infantry vehicle. Strykers couldn’t fight tanks, or at least not easily. The Brits were also sending a heavy armored brigade, the 7^th Armored, also stationed in Germany, which would probably arrive at the same time as ours. Meanwhile, transports returning to the States would pick up any gunships available from the 101^st, while the transport helos would be shipped over. The biggest issue in most cases was the lack of enough air transport assets. Even with the beefed-up purchases of transport aircraft, we just didn’t have enough planes to fly everybody around at once.

The Air Force was in better shape. That first day’s missile and bomb attack took the starch out of the Iraqi air force, and subsequent attacks destroyed it. I was informed that they tried to stop us, but that in the first two days of combat American pilots shot down 19 planes, with no losses of our own, and nobody else was coming up to play. Once the 82 ^nd was in place, they would be able to call on close air support.

The first contact between American and Iraqi ground forces came on Friday the 17^th in a small valley somewhere northeast of the town of Azwya. This was basically south of Erbil and west of Kirkuk, and the western pincer was moving through to try and trap Kirkuk. They had been pressuring the Peshmerga heavily, and while the Air Force was trying to do close support, the Kurds didn’t have radios to reach them. They were basically light infantry, brave and trained adequately, but without the gear they needed. They were falling back north up the valley, when a short battalion of paratroopers came over the hill like cavalry, riding a ragtag bunch of beat-up civilian trucks. They had with them a battery of 105s being hauled by some Hum-Vees.

The paratroopers managed to form a line across the valley, with the 105s behind them in a reverse slope position and held firm as the Iraqis advanced. The Peshmerga coalesced around them, like ice freezing around starter crystals in a glass of freezing water. Meanwhile, they began calling in accurate fire support from the Air Force. It was textbook infantry tactics when facing a superior mechanized unit, and it worked; the Republican Guard was stopped cold in its tracks and withdrew to lick its wounds. What they don’t show on the sand tables, though, is the price you pay for this. That short battalion had been outnumbered over three to one, facing most of the 1^st Brigade, 6^th Nebuchadnezzar Mechanized Division, and so far, we had a casualty count of over twenty dead and over fifty wounded, and it was expected to end up even worse.

For three nights in a row, I spent a couple of hours after dinner in the Situation Room. Kurdistan was seven hours ahead of us, so by dinnertime the day’s events would be over. While American troops had night vision equipment, the Peshmerga didn’t, and we still didn’t have anywhere near the strength to start any night assaults. That was still going to be one of the big issues with this war. Hussein had smartened up a lot. He wasn’t letting us get ready for six months and then attack him at our leisure. So far, he was the one calling the tune, and even as we pounded him from the air, he had ample combat power to hurt us and the Kurds.

I had gone back up to the Residence on Friday the 17^th after getting the latest from the Situation Room and hearing about Azwya. My basic instincts were to get in Air Force One and go over there, but I knew that was simply stupid. I was an out-of-date battery commander; trying to take control at a headquarters would have been as stupid as Johnson calling some kid in the Delta. Marilyn caught my mood and simply sat quietly in her recliner reading near me. Stormy was dozing next to me in mine. The phone rang about 8:15, and I grabbed it from the coffee table next to me. “Hello?”

It was a pleasant alto voice. “Mister President, this is Colonel Dillard in the Situation Room. We’d like you to come down, sir. The Iraqis have launched missiles.”

I swore softly, and Marilyn looked over at me. “I’ll be down in a couple of minutes, Colonel.” I hung up.

“Problems?” asked Marilyn.

I smiled and shrugged as I stood up. “Just the usual. You know the end of the world and western civilization as we know it.”

“Let me know if I have to be worried.”

I leaned down and kissed my wife, and then slipped a pair of shoes on and headed downstairs. Once in the Situation Room I grabbed my usual spot at the head of the table and looked at the others. A woman in a Marine uniform with eagles on her epaulets was facing me. “Colonel Dillard, I presume?”

“Yes sir, thank you for coming.” She flashed a map of the Middle East onto the big screen. “Approximately fifteen minutes ago, we had eleven launches of either Scud or al Hussein missiles from Iraqi territory. Two were launched at Kuwait, three at Turkey, and six at Israel.”

The map had red stars in what I assumed were impact points in the three countries. “Did we get any of them?” I asked. I remembered back during the Gulf War the Patriot missile batteries blew the things out of the sky left and right. During the run up to this war, I was cruelly informed that the performance of the anti-missile systems was extremely overhyped.

“We got some, sir.” A few of the red stars turned blue. “One of them was hit by a Patriot battery over Kuwait City, and the other impacted in the desert. There were no chemical signatures. Three were targeted at Incirlik. Again, one was shot down, one impacted in a deserted area of the air base, and one hit in downtown Adana a few miles away. Again, there were no chemical weapons signatures detected. Israel was targeted by six missiles, and the Israelis managed to knock down two of them. The other four landed in what appear to be relatively uninhabited sections near Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa.”

“Four? That’s all we got? Four?”

“That’s way better than we did the first time, sir, back in ‘91,” she answered defensively.

“Jesus Christ!” How much money had we wasted on this stuff? “So, what’s the results? Please, for the love of God, tell me the Israelis didn’t nuke Baghdad!”

That got a small smile from them. “No sir, not yet anyway.” The map changed to a close-up of Kuwait. “The Kuwaiti impact was a desert area, and there were no casualties.” We switched to the Incirlik area. “One missile hit an empty transient taxi area and exploded. There were no casualties or damage, but they probably have to fill in the hole. The second impact was much worse. It landed downtown and hit a hospital. We are still getting reports, but there appear to be massive civilian casualties.”

“Oh, shit! And Israel?” They were the real wild card in all this. If they responded, the game went into extra innings, and nobody knew what would happen.

“From what we could see by satellite, nothing major was hit, at least in Israeli areas. One of the missiles smacked outside of an apartment complex in a Palestinian neighborhood. The Israelis don’t consider that to be a big problem, which does not endear them to the Palestinians,” she reported.

I scratched my head. “But no chemical warheads?”

An Air Force major piped up at that. “No, sir,” he said. “We are seeing no chemical signatures, and all intelligence and BDA is pointing to conventional HE warheads.”

I turned to face him. “Why not? Not that I’m complaining, mind you, but they have chemical weapons, and Hussein has proved any number of times that he doesn’t mind using them.”

“I don’t think he can, sir. I did a brief tour at the Aberdeen Proving Ground and learned some about them. Chemical agents are actually pretty nasty stuff. They are toxic, corrosive, volatile - you just don’t want to mess with them. The best way to use them is by airplane. You rig up planes like giant crop dusters, like we did with Agent Orange in Viet Nam. They called it Operation Ranch Hand. However, the planes are easy to shoot down, and it isn’t exactly secret. The next easiest way is to load them into artillery shells, which is what they have been doing. The toughest is to load them into a missile. It’s hard enough to shoot missiles and figuring out how to disperse the chemicals when they get there is tough. The payloads are small. The only chemical payload worth doing, I was told, is nerve gas, and they either don’t have it or aren’t using it.”

“Huh. Makes sense, I guess.” I had never really learned too many of the details on this stuff. Yes, we had some training back at Artillery Officer’s School, but you really don’t get more than an intro. Nasty shit! “Is the Vice President still in Ankara? I am going to have to talk to him” I had sent John McCain to Ankara yesterday to talk to Erdogan and hold his hand. That was looking prescient right now.

“Yes, sir. It is 0340 Ankara time.”

I picked up the phone and asked to speak to the Vice President, and then hung up. They would track him down halfway around the world. “How are they doing this?” I asked.

“Mobile launchers. During the Gulf War they had some in silos, but they were too easy for us to target. Mobile launchers at night. They have them hidden in a barn, then just drive them out, set them up, and launch. After that they go back into the barn and reload.”

I grunted an acknowledgement. The phone rang and I picked it up. “Hello?”

“Carl, it’s John McCain. You’ve heard about the rocket attack?”

“That’s why I’m calling. How bad is it?” I asked him.

“Terrible! One missile slammed directly into a hospital in downtown Adana. What the explosion didn’t destroy is now on fire. There are going to be hundreds dead!” he reported.

“Oh, crap! John, you need to talk to Erdogan. Tell him we are sorry and promise that we will help with rebuilding the hospital. Promise your children if you have to! If he forces us out, it is game over!”

“Carl, I am meeting with the Prime Minister right now. He is furious with the Iraqis! He wants to talk to you,” replied McCain.

My eyebrows rose at that. “Put him on.” As I said this, Condi Rice and Tom Ridge came in. They must have been called as well. I pointed them towards the colonel and mimed that she was to brief them. Then I turned my attention back to my phone.

“I’m handing the phone to the interpreter, Carl.”

I nodded. This was not the usual method, where we had mutual interpreters and so forth. We just didn’t have the time. After a moment of fumbling around, I was greeted, “President Buckman?”,

“Prime Minister Erdogan, thank you for talking to me. I have just heard about the attack on your hospital, sir. You have my sympathies and those of my entire country. This is a horrible action. I promise to help you rebuild it, sir, even better than before.”

“Thank you, President Buckman, but that is not why I asked to speak to you. I have been talking to your Vice President McCain and wish to offer our help. Saddam Hussein, he is...” Suddenly there was a vitriolic attack from the background that I couldn’t understand. It seemed that Turkish was a fine language to cuss in! After a moment, the translator continued, “Saddam Hussein is a mad dog and a monster who must be stopped!”

“Your assistance will be most welcome, sir. I am not qualified to tell you what needs to be done, but I will have our generals talk to your generals and we will figure this out. Is that acceptable?”

“Yes, yes, of course. We will kill this animal! What he does is an abomination against Allah! My entire country is repulsed by this attack!”

“I couldn’t agree more, sir. After this is over, I hope to make a visit. I would like to meet with you, and certainly to help with the reconstruction of the hospital. I hope that will be possible.”

“Yes, yes, of course!”

There was some fumbling on the other end, and then I had John McCain back. “Carl, it’s me again. Erdogan is simply furious over this.”

“John, I have Tom and Condi here, and I think they are trying to get Pace on the phone. Stick around over there. I don’t know what is going to play out, but this is a big help. We’ll get back to you, and probably sooner than later.”

“Roger that!”

We hung up and I looked over at my Secretaries of State and Defense. “Okay, now you know as much as I do. I just spoke to John McCain and Prime Minster Erdogan. Erdogan is royally pissed at the Iraqis and has offered to begin assistance. As in combat assistance, not just letting us use the air base at Incirlik!”

Tom gave a low whistle and smiled, and Condi said, “Well done, Mister President!”

“Don’t thank me, thank John. When I called him, he was already meeting with Erdogan. Anyway, you need to fill in the various ambassadors, and talk to Eric in Tel Aviv. Tom, you need to get together with Pace and figure this out. What can the Turks add to this?”

At that point the phone rang, and somebody announced it was Prime Minister Olmert from Israel. That was not a surprise. As the others watched and listened, I picked up the phone. “Prime Minister Olmert, this is Carl Buckman. Thank you for calling me. If you hadn’t called me, I was certainly going to call you.”

“Mister President, I assume you have heard that Saddam Hussein has decided to attack the peaceful state of Israel.”

So much for pleasant chit chat. “Yes, Mister Prime Minister, I am quite aware of this. I was just talking to our mutual friends in Ankara. They have also been targeted, and they have taken serious casualties.”

“We have heard that as well, and you may give them our sympathies, but that is not why I called. I know that your Ambassador and your General Shinseki have been asking that Israel not respond to this provocation, but I assure you, our forbearance will not last forever. You need to do something about this, or we will!”

“I understand your concerns, and I can promise that we will redouble our efforts to stop these attacks,” I said.

“I must tell you, sir, that I have talked this over with my advisers, and we are agreed that if that mad dog uses chemical weapons against the state of Israel, we will have to make a response, and it will be most grave indeed.”

Well, that was blunt enough! “I understand your concern, and I will take it up with my advisers. Please, allow us to see what we can do first, to end this threat.”

“Good day, Mister President.” He hung up on me, and I winced.

“That didn’t sound very good,” commented Tom Ridge.

I grimaced. “No, not at all. He pretty much stated that if they get hit with chemical weapons Iraq is going to turn into a radioactive hole in the ground.” Nobody else looked like they enjoyed that prospect either.

Before I could discuss it further, it was announced that General Pace was on the speakerphone. “General, thank you for calling. Before we get too far along, let me ask you something. Hussein launched some missiles last night at Israel, just like in the Gulf War. Can we stop them? What can we do? The Israelis are not amused!”

“That is really tough, Mister President. Iraq is a big place, about two thirds the size of Texas, and those missiles can be launched from something the size of a tractor trailer.” His voice was clear but sounded like he was speaking from a car or limousine. “During the Gulf War we spent forty percent of all our sorties on Scud hunts and never found a one of them.”

“Great! Well, we are going to have to do something about them, because they are pissing off the Israelis and the Turks.”

“Yes, sir. I just had my driver turn it around and I will be in the Pentagon in a bit. I will be in touch.”

“Call me when you figure something out.”

I hit the button and cut off the call. “Well, you heard it. We have both a real problem as well as a real help here. I want the Turks involved as much as we can. That gets a third NATO member involved, and we can get some more cooperation out of the others. Kuwait is on board, and the Saudis are making nice, too. Tom, we need to figure out a way to neutralize the Scuds, and I don’t much care how we do it. Send more Patriots to Israel. Start running Scud hunts at night. Whatever it takes! Condi, get together with your embassies and with Eric and John and make sure we are all speaking with the same voice.”