Ten years have passed since Iraq invaded Kuwait on 2 August, 1990. Yet the
origins, conduct, and end of the ensuing Gulf War - a bizarre conflict
former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski aptly termed
`over-personalized, over emotionalized, and over-militarized'- remain
shrouded in mystery and distorted by propaganda.
At last week's Republican Convention, former President George Bush, Gen.
Colin Powell, and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney receive cheers for their
victory in the Gulf War against Iraq, a nation of only 22 million people.
But among all the enigmas of this oil war, the most fascinating question
remains: was there really a ground war at all, or was the 100-hour
Operation Desert Storm a made-for-TV fictional drama?
My heretical view from Day One was that there was no ground war to speak
of. The air war was very real: the US-led coalition plastered Iraq for a
month with 250,000 bombs and missiles, wrecking its military and civilian
infrastructure.
The precision air attacks killed some 3,000 Iraq civilians. The Pentagon
claimed 20,000 Iraqi soldiers died. However, a rogue Defense Intelligence
Agency analyst asserted Iraq's actual military losses were only a few
hundred, and the actual number of armored vehicles destroyed under 300, not
2,500 plus claimed by the Pentagon.
This is because when the long-awaited ground invasion was launched on 23
Feb, 1991, the Iraqis had already largely pulled out of Kuwait. Before the
attack began, I went on TV and described, using a large map, precisely how
the coalition would outflank and then envelop Iraqi forces in Kuwait by a
wide turning movement from the Saudi border to the Euphrates Valley. My
predictions were accurate. Not because I was clairvoyant, but because Gen.
Norman Schwarzkopf's strategy was obviously dictated by basic military
science, the terrain, and Iraqi deployments.
Saddam, for all his military blundering, was also aware his troops in
Kuwait were vulnerable to being outflanked, cut off, and destroyed. Two
days before the ground offensive began, Saddam withdrew his best combat
units - six armored and mechanized divisions of Republican Guards - from
Kuwait. I have seen the radar imagery from US JSTARS surveillance aircraft
showing every road from Kuwait into southern Iraq jammed with Iraqi armor,
vehicles, and guns.
This headlong retreat of Saddam's crack troops appears to have been largely
unopposed by the allied air forces. Otherwise, the withdrawing Iraqi
forces, with ineffectual anti-aircraft defenses and no air cover, would
have been totally destroyed.
I am convinced President Bush allowed the Republican Guard to escape from
Kuwait virtually intact. How else can one explain that after the `total
victory' in Kuwait, the six full-strength Iraqi divisions originally
stationed there - the core of Iraq's army- were fully combat capable days
later in Iraq, and able to crush rebellions by Shias in the south and Kurds
in the north.
What about TV pictures of eagerly surrendering Iraqi soldiers and the
notorious `highway of death' north of Kuwait City, littered with hundreds
of burning Iraqi vehicles?
Saddam left thousands of militiamen in Kuwait, a poorly-trained,
poorly-armed rabble of mainly anti-Saddam Shia southerners who had been
press-ganged into the army and spent their time looting Kuwait. When US
and British troops stormed into Kuwait, these `bashi-bazouks' - the old
Ottoman term for mobs of cannon-fodder - surrendered in droves. The
biggest group of fleeing looters was caught by the US warplanes on the
`highway of death' and exterminated.
There were a few sharp skirmishes between Saddam's retreating Guards and
advancing US forces, but no real sustained combat. The only exception was
the attack by the US 24th Infantry Division on Iraq troops two days after
the cease-fire which, according to investigative journalist Seymour Hersh,
was an unprovoked massacre. My information supports Hersh's claims.
Bush and his team concluded that if Iraq's Republican Guard were destroyed,
Saddam would fall. This, in turn, would lead to Iraq's disintegration and
the likely occupation of its oil-rich, Shia south by Iran. Saddam had
formerly been a faithful US ally in the 1980 war against Iran. Better a
gelded Saddam, Bush reasoned, than revolutionary Iran.
Besides, if US troops marched on Baghdad, they would end up mired in a long
guerilla war inside Iraq. A war that would not be waged in the open desert,
where the US held all the advantages, but in Iraq's fertile river valleys,
towns, and cities where American high-tech military power would be least
effective. Israel's long, bloody, 18-year war in Lebanon and its final
defeat this year by Hizbullah guerillas showed how wise Bush was not to
invade Iraq.
I am convinced the US and Iraq secretly made a deal, probably brokered by
France. Iraq pulled out of Kuwait and declared victory. Saddam thus
survived, though caged up inside Iraq. The US staged a grand but largely
bloodless invasion of Kuwait -after the Iraqi pullout - proclaiming a
titanic military victory second only to World War II. Gen. Schwarzkopf was
hailed by the media as a second Gen. George Patton. Pesky reporters were
banned.
The US media, acting on cue from Washington, never bothered to dig into the
curious and troubling questions about the Gulf War.
Only 79 US combat deaths (mostly from friendly fire), no nasty occupation of
Iraq, no guerrilla fighting. Just a perfect little war, the first ever
made-for-TV movie produced by the Pentagon.
The cruel, postwar US-British embargo of Iraq has led, says the UN, to the
death of 500,000 Iraqi children, and the ruin of Iraq's oil and
agricultural infrastructure. The embargo has also forced Americans pay more
for gas because Iraq is only allowed to export a trickle of oil. The US
bombs Iraq almost daily, at a cost of $4 billion annually. Wicked Saddam,
the man we love to hate, remains firmly in power.
