Two feelings hit Horner as he learned that for the next few weeks he was to be “CENTCOM Forward.” First the big head—“Gee, I’m going to be in charge!”—swiftly followed by the more chilling realization that what he was in charge of could become a tremendous, tragic disaster. He thanked God silently for the presence of John Yeosock, Grant Sharp, and Don Kaufman, who were sitting beside him in that grand but somber meeting hall. Another prayer, never far from his lips, also came. “Please, God, keep me from screwing things up.”
By midafternoon, Cheney and the others returning to Washington were at Jeddah’s international airport, delivering last-minute instructions to those who were to stay in Saudi Arabia. No one there guessed that in six short months, this huge complex, called Jeddah New, the primary entry point for Islamic pilgrims making the hajj to the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina, would be wall-to-wall with B-52 bombers and KC-135 tankers.
Meanwhile, over two dozen battle-hardened Iraqi divisions stood at the border. Horner had at his disposal exactly two armored-car companies of Saudi National Guards.
In the windy afternoon heat, amid the bustle of loading and goodbyes, Schwarzkopf and Horner stood on the airport ramp, at the foot of the stairs leading up to Cheney’s 707, and discussed what needed to be done.
Among the points they talked about was campaign planning. “Since your staff will be disrupted packing up and deploying,” Schwarzkopf said, “I’m going to ask the Joint Staff”—the planning staff of the JCS in the Pentagon—“to start work on a strategic air campaign plan.” (Later this became the USAF staff in the Pentagon.)
The phrase “strategic air campaign” rang like Easter bells in Chuck Horner’s head. The CINC was acting like a CINC and not like an Army general. Instead of talking about a ground campaign to repel an Iraqi invasion or to evict the Iraqis from Kuwait, he was talking strategic28 air campaign.
What did that mean?
Most air campaign plans are put together at the behest of the Army, and the purpose of the Army is to defeat the enemy army. To an army person, air planning means using airpower to support his own operations. That is not the way an airman looks at it. To the airman, his job is to defeat the enemy—a job that may or may not include defeating an enemy army. Therefore, the Air Force code for use of airpower aimed at the heart of the enemy, and not at his ground forces, is strategic air campaign.
Back in April 1990, Horner had briefed Schwarzkopf about the need for a strategic air campaign plan in preparation for the planned July Internal Look exercise. The scenario there had been army-against-army, but Horner had wanted to show airpower as something beyond a ground support role, to expose his new boss to ways of thinking that would allow Horner to exercise airpower in a more productive and effective way. At the briefing, Horner had talked ballistic missile defense, close air support, how to work with Allied air forces, and how to use airpower “strategically.” Schwarzkopf had liked the briefing and, as always, was sensitive to expanding his concept of airpower to complement his already vast understanding of land power.
Thus, when Schwarzkopf started talking right from the start about the need for a strategic air campaign plan, he showed that he remembered that briefing back in April. More important, in Chuck Horner’s view, he showed that he had grown up—and away from—his Army roots.
For a moment, Horner was thrilled. How could he not be?
But then the sounds in his head changed from Easter bells to Klaxons, and the ghosts of Vietnam assaulted him. “Washington? . . . the Pentagon? . . . Shit!” As soon as it dawned on him that the CINC intended to have the plans made in Washington, Horner went ballistic and shouted, “Okay, but we ain’t picking the goddamn targets in Washington!”
Though his air component commander’s anger caught him off guard, Schwarzkopf smiled. “Look, Chuck,” he said, “you’re my air boss, with final veto authority over everything connected with air. Any air plans will be ‘presented’ to you. We’re going to plan and execute this war in the theater.” He, too, remembered Vietnam.
The Joint Staff has its virtues, Horner was thinking, as he heard these words. It’s even good at a few things. But it’s best at compromise between the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps. Any plan that is the product of compromise is bound to be mediocre. And any air plan that is built by anyone other than airmen is bound to be a disaster. Horner trusted that Schwarzkopf knew this in his guts and would ensure that any work started in Washington would be delivered to the fliers who had to execute it and succeed. He proved true to his word.
After the VIPs boarded their aircraft and headed home to America, Grant Sharp and Paul Wolfowitz left to tour the Gulf allies to consult, seek agreements, and secure support for the U.S. forces, while Ambassador Freeman, John Yeosock, his aide, Major Fong, Don Kaufman, Bill Rider, and Horner boarded a small, twin-engine C-12 prop plane operated by an outfit known as “GUTS Airline” (Greater USMTM29 Transportation System—Kaufman’s guys). Flying in this fragile-looking aircraft didn’t bother Horner, but the Ambassador and Major Fong looked a little worried as they bounced into the hot desert air. Horner sat back in his seat as the noise from the props drowned out attempts at conversation, and tried to work out what he had to do.
Earlier, he had already started to unleash the flood of aerial reinforcements by notifying Bob Russ at TAC to get the 1st Tactical Fighter Wing F-15Cs headed east to supplement the Royal Saudi Air Force F-15s and Saudi AWACS who had been guarding the skies around the clock since the invasion.
The 1st Fighter Wing would be assigned the air-to-air missions, while the other wing, the 363d Fighter Wing, would be assigned primarily to do air-to-ground missions with their F-16C swing fighters. These were the two Ninth Air Force wings Horner had put on alert in July at the start of the crisis. For this, he had taken some heat from his bosses in the Air Force who were not in the CENTCOM chain of command. He also had the other Ninth Air Force units leaning forward.
Meanwhile, the Navy had a carrier task force headed for the Gulf, and Marines embarked on transports were also en route, as was Horner’s good friend, Lieutenant General Gary Luck, with the lead elements of the XVIII Airborne Corps, primarily the paratroopers of the 82d Airborne Division.30
He then ran over where they would unload the Army and Marine Corps, as well as where to beddown the forces. How do we house and feed them? he asked himself, with the memory of the Beirut barracks bombing, where hundreds of Marines had lost their lives, still fresh in his mind. While Saudi Arabia was the safest nation in the world, some there would still side with Saddam Hussein. What could they do to our forces as they deployed into the airfields and ports? he asked himself. And then as they moved to the bases and into the desert? No matter how good the Saudi or U.S. forces were that were tasked to provide security, a single well-placed bomb could wipe out the deploying CENTCOM staff. Riyadh hotels were also an inviting target, vulnerable to a well-trained Iraqi special forces team.
If the threat of air or terrorist attack, or just plain accident (as in the crash of a troop-filled aircraft) weren’t enough to give him pause, there were the growing numbers of Iraqi tanks and troops just over the border to the north. Consequently, the single most important question Horner had to ask himself in those dark days before his own forces were in place was What will we do if the Iraqis come across the border tonight? That particular night, any effective response would have been tough, since there wasn’t much standing between the Iraqis and Riyadh but the Saudi Air Force and hundreds of miles of desert. If they’d come toward Riyadh that night, Horner planned to drive to Jeddah and rent a boat. Each night thereafter, new and stronger forces were available to resist the invasion that never came.
Added to those questions were the more complex everyday problems of gaining the enthusiastic cooperation of all the host nations—not only Saudi Arabia but Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Egypt.
When one is doing business in the Middle East, the first requirement is patience. The American way is to f
ocus on the heart of a problem, define a course of action, and implement the solution. In the Arab world, business is done more gently. Since personal relationships are all-important, business is conducted with a leisurely civility. A promise is given only after great deliberation, for once one’s word is given, it must be kept. The Arab way is to discuss, consider, and avoid mistakes made in haste. The Arab way is to take time to understand all aspects of a situation; they have a deep aversion to making mistakes that could cause hard feelings between individuals, tribes, or nations. So Horner knew that all he needed was a couple of years to discuss how to beddown the oncoming troops, how to organize command arrangements, and who should accomplish which tasks, where, and when, in order to make the deployment a success.
Time. Time was the real enemy. The desert summer of the Arabian Peninsula was a killer, and Iraqi intentions were unknown.
Sitting there in his aircraft seat, winging toward Riyadh, a hollow feeling came over him; fearful thoughts slithered through his brain. I can’t do it, he told himself. I’m not adequate. I won’t get it right. No one’s capable of meeting these challenges.
Until it came to him: I don’t have to succeed. John Yeosock, Bill Rider, and a host of others are here. I’m not alone. More important, none of us is alone. God’s always present. So I’ ll trust in God. Inshallah.
5
CENTCOM Forward
WHEN they arrived at Riyadh Air Base, on the afternoon of Tuesday the seventh of August, Chuck Horner and the other Americans were greeted by Major General Harawi, the base commander and a friend of Horner’s since his initial visit to the Kingdom in 1987. In their three years working together, he and Harawi had learned to solve issues “offline” that might have gotten stuck in both countries’ bureaucracies if they’d been handled more formally. Meanwhile, Harawi spread the word that Horner could be trusted, which helped cement Horner’s already growing friendship with General Behery, the RSAF chief, and a close friend of Harawi’s. Among Arabs, friendship is everything.
The air base, now perched on the northeast corner of the city, had once served as the international airport, but modern hotels, apartment buildings, and shops spreading out of the old city center had crowded it, requiring the construction of a huge new facility, King Khalid International Airport, out in the desert well to the north.
General Harawi’s base housed the Saudi Air Force E-3 AWACS aircraft, a C-130 squadron, and the Air Force academy, with its collocated flight training school. For almost ten years it had also hosted the USAF ELF-1 AWACS aircraft and tankers that flew out of Riyadh twenty-four hours a day, and had provided early-warning radar coverage for the Saudi’s eastern province during the Iran-Iraq War and the oil tanker convoy operation in 1988 and 1989.
During those years, Harawi had cared for a TDY family of about 1,000 U.S. Air Force men and women. If any of them had a run-in with the police or the Mutawa, the religious police force, Harawi got them out of it and sent them back to the United States. Alternatively, if the hotel contractor tried to skimp on food or room services, Harawi paid him a call to remind him that the Saudi government was spending a great deal of money to make sure the USAF AWACS people were well taken care of during their stay in the kingdom. He had a major operation at Riyadh, and owing to its proximity to town, many VIPs used it, yet he looked after the American troops as if they were his own sons and daughters.31
Yeosock, Kaufman, Horner, and Harawi sat down in the elegant VIP reception lounge, with its cool, scented air, easeful light, splendid chandelier, and what seemed to be acres of blue-and-white Persian rug, while a tall, impassive Sudanese steward served gaua and sweet tea. In the coming months, the presidents and prime ministers, congressmen and parliamentarians who flocked to the Gulf to cheer and be seen with the troops of the coalition would all pass through this same impressive space. There they’d be served gaua and tea by the same impassive steward and be given the opportunity to make the transition from the rushed intensity of the West to the more measured pace of Saudi Arabia.
After a decent interval for small talk, Harawi probed Horner about events in occupied Kuwait and the other countries (many of them unfriendly) that bordered the Kingdom. What was happening in occupied Kuwait? Who’d gotten out and who’d gotten killed? What were the Iraqi forces doing? Would they attack or not attack? What was going to happen in Yemen and Sudan? On the adjacent seas? Like most Saudis, Harawi’s primary source of information was rumors; the entire Kingdom lived on rumor. Information there was on very close hold, which meant that accurate information was truly valuable, and having such information gave the possessor great power. Even a two-star general such as Harawi was not in the top-level information loop, which meant that he had access to more rumors than news.
News was particularly important, because, unlike Americans, who think of threats from far away, Saudis thought of threats from a tight, immediate circle—Iraq, Iran, Yemen, or even Sudan. Their sensitivity was very acute, their fears very immediate.
Practically, in his capacity as Saudi AWACS commander, Harawi needed an accurate assessment of Iraqi intentions. His AWACS aircraft were maintaining twenty-four-hour coverage over the northeast. His immediate problem was that the single E-3 they had airborne (out of the five they owned32) could cover only a small sector at any one time (approximately one-fourth of the border), and the border between Iraq and Saudi Arabia was very long. This left gaps in the low-level radar coverage. If the Iraqi air force came south anywhere but in the east, the RSAF would have to depend on ground-based radar to pick up the attack. Harawi was worried that the Iraqis would take advantage of this weakness and make an attack on the kingdom—and Riyadh Air Base was a prime target.
After Horner had filled him in as best he could, and assured him that enough E-3s were on the way to fill his gap, the two friends said their goodbyes; then Kaufman, Yeosock, and Horner packed into a waiting car for the trip to MODA (the Ministry of Defense and Aviation) and a meeting with the heads of the Saudi military forces and their chairman, General Muhammad al-Hamad. Hamad, the Kingdom’s only active-duty four-star general, was Colin Powell’s counterpart.
Horner had known the tough but amiable soldier for well over three years, and made sure to call on him first thing whenever he visited the Kingdom. Their previous encounters had always been friendly, yet challenging. He wondered how this one would turn out.
Unlike Horner’s counterparts, Behery and Harawi, who’d worked closely with him to solve practical, military cooperation problems, the job of the head of the Saudi military was to work the larger political-military picture. Specifically, he had to raise a modern military in a part of the world where there were real, immediate threats. For that, he needed U.S. help, though he was not always comfortable admitting it, or rather, he needed to be able to buy up-to-date American military equipment and training. Since the U.S. government had traditionally been acutely sensitive to the wishes of those who saw U.S. cooperation with Saudi Arabia as inimical to the best interests of Israel, the history of U.S.-Saudi military cooperation at Hamad’s level had not been rosy.
As a result, whenever Hamad and Horner met, Hamad would welcome the American three-star warmly in English, a language he spoke perfectly. Gaua and tea, and talk of family and friends, would follow. Then he would switch to Arabic, to make sure his words were accurate, and, through a translator, give Horner a savage tongue-lashing—usually because the Congress was not acting on a military case of vital interest to Saudi Arabia. After the chewing-out, the talks would resume in English, with the tough Arab soldier wearing a broad smile and a twinkle in his eye. He would then wish Horner well and send him on his way. The routine never varied. Though he was dead serious, it was not personal. It was role-playing.
Why did he take shots at Horner? Because he was the closest American just then; and in the American setup you never knew who could really get things done. Hamad didn’t know Horner from Adam in those prewar days, but he did know Horner outranked the two-star he had in his building who was t
he USMTM commander.
The car carrying the Americans passed through the air base’s main gate, beyond which was a traffic circle. In the center of the circle was a large fountain. At one time the water had flowed out of the lip of a huge gaua pot, with four smaller gaua pots on the sides, and it thus became known as Teapot Circle. In 1989, the Saudis had torn the gaua pots down and put in a tiered water fountain with spray shooting out of the top—but it was still called Teapot Circle.
After swinging around the circle, the car headed south down Airport Boulevard toward the old city. Along this major artery was a complex of buildings that housed the Saudi military headquarters. Two blocks from the base was the MODA officers’ club—rooms for guests, dining areas, athletic fields, and gyms for men and women. Although it was much larger than its American counterparts, it had all the features an American military officer might expect to find, save one. There was no bar.
Next to the MODA club was the United States Military Training Mission (USMTM) compound. This covered a city block, and was walled. Within the walls were offices, a club (also no bar), a soccer field, some small houses, and two high-rise apartment buildings where John Yeosock and Chuck Horner would room together for the next nine months. The job of USMTM was to administer the various foreign military sales contracts the United States had established with Saudi Arabia. There were Army, Navy, and Air Force sections, each with staffs ranging up to two hundred people, including those who instructed the Saudi military in the use of the equipment or in setting up the training programs they had purchased from the United States. For example, at the AWACS wing, there was a USAF cadre who lived in Saudi Arabia for a year or two and trained their Saudi counterparts in the operation and maintenance of the E-3 AWACS. The two-star commander of USMTM worked for the commander in chief of Central Command.