Battle Ready

Zinni had finished, the chairman called for a vote on the options.

To say that the vote surprised Zinni was an understatement; the vote itself made no sense. Not only was there no serious discussion beforehand, nor to his knowledge had there been earlier sessions to discuss the options, but, most important, the Joint Chiefs were not in Zinni’s chain of command (which went directly through the Secretary of Defense to the President). The CINCs are operationally independent of the Joint Chiefs, whose primary job, in their Service Chief role, was to provide the CINCs with the personnel and equipment they needed to do their job. In other words, to Zinni the vote was meaningless (though no CINC casually ignores the recommendations that the JCS gives on employment of U.S. forces). He was even more shocked when the JCS voted 4 to 2 for the lighter option, after he had recommended the heavier one. Since there had been little discussion before the vote, the reasons for their choice were unclear. Whatever the reason, Zinni could sense their nervousness: Going against the CINC’s recommendation made them all uneasy. None of them liked to second-guess a field commander.

Though Zinni repeated that he could live with either option, his difference with the Chiefs remained. Since the place to resolve their difference was higher up, General Shelton recommended to Secretary Cohen that Zinni attend a meeting of the principal cabinet members and the President at Camp David in order to discuss the options.

The next day, November 8, he flew out to Camp David.

The meeting was held in the wood-paneled conference room of the main cabin. Bill Clinton, seated at the head of the table, was flanked by the Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet; the Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright; the Secretary of Defense, Bill Cohen; the National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger; and the JCS chairman and vice-chairman, Generals Shelton and Ralston. Though the Vice President was not present, he was on a speakerphone.

As the group discussed the choices, Zinni sensed that the cabinet was as divided as the Joint Chiefs; and when it came time for a vote, there was again no consensus. The Secretary of State leaned toward the heavier strike, the Secretary of Defense the lighter, George Tenet the heavier, and so on around the table. The cabinet members were all over the map.

It was left to Sandy Berger to square this circle.

“Are these two options mutually exclusive?” he asked reasonably. “Why couldn’t we start with the lighter one and see how it goes, but hold open the option of going heavy?”

“That’s fine with me,” Zinni answered. This was neither the time nor the place for drawing a line in the sand. At this stage, he just wanted to get on with it. “I’m not trying to make this hard. If that’s what you want, we’ll work it that way.”

The President approved the compromise.

The trigger for Desert Viper was to be the end of the inspections. As soon as Richard Butler announced, “We’ve had it; we’re out of here; we can’t do business,” the clock would start ticking. The bombs would start dropping within hours.

Preparing for this takes time. Bringing bombs to their targets is an enormously complex process, involving land-based aircraft, carrier aircraft, and cruise missiles fired from both ships and B-52s. The various strike aircraft have to be in the air — along with tankers, the Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS), and all the other support aircraft; the ships and carriers have to be in position for launch; the crews must all have their required rest; and much, much more. Zinni’s people needed about twenty-four hours before the actual strike in order to make all that happen.

At some moment after the inspectors climbed into their white UN SUVs, drove out to Habbaniyah Air Base[5] eighty-five miles northwest of Baghdad, and took a plane to Bahrain — or some other friendly place — the President had to give the “go” decision for Desert Viper. Twenty-four hours later, the bombs would fall.

Once the twenty-four hours started, the strike could be stopped at any time up to six hours before the scheduled impact. But six hours was the drop-dead moment. That was when the first cruise missiles were launched.

This fact had caused some controversy — Clinton’s advisers didn’t want to tell the President what he couldn’t do.

“You don’t understand,” Zinni told them. “When you get beyond six hours, the launch is a done deal. Nobody can stop it.”

“But you can’t tell the President that,” they replied. “He has to be able to call back his decision up to the last moment.”

“I’ve got no problem with that,” Zinni persisted. “What I’m telling you is that the last moment is six hours before the bombs drop. And you need to tell him he can’t.”

The controversy came to a head at a Pentagon session, attended by the President. Zinni had with him what was called “the Master Air Attack Plan”—an enormous and labyrinthine time/event matrix that came rolled, like a scroll.

When the advisers began to sense that Zinni intended to show the plan to their boss, they were horrified: “You can’t do that! It’s too complex!”

But when the opportunity came, Zinni unrolled the plan on the conference table. “Mr. President,” he said, “you need to see all the moving parts that have to be in position and all the timelines and limits we’re working from. You need to see when you have to make the decision to start. And you need to see exactly what’s happening with the cruise missiles. They spin up and launch six hours before the strike. Once launched, that’s it. They’re going to go until they hit what they’re aimed at.

“This is the absolute drop-dead time. If you want to send us a no-go, you have to do it before that.”

The advisers’ fears were of course groundless. Zinni knew from previous briefings that Clinton was a very quick study; he instantly caught what Zinni was trying to show him.

“Right,” he said. “Fine, you’ll get the decisions you need in time.”

As November wound on, Zinni’s people kept tabs on the inspectors… watched their progress — or lack of it — waiting for the launch trigger. It came in mid-November. The inspectors had continued to demand access and cooperation, which the Iraqis continued to refuse to give.

As this drama unfolded, CENTCOM built up air and naval forces in the Gulf in preparation for the strike.

Finally, on November 11, the inspectors gave up on the fiction of Iraqi cooperation. They’d had enough. Butler ordered the evacuation of his team; and the President ordered the execution of Desert Viper on the heels of their departure…

… and on November 12, Tony Zinni, in his command room in Tampa, with his fudge time completely gone, grabbed a phone and called Willy Moore, hoping against hope that Admiral Moore could stop the Tomahawks anyway.

The admiral said: “You may be in luck, sir. I built in fifteen minutes of fudge time myself. But we’re already into it.” Moore scrambled. He had to get word out to all eight ships to shut down the missiles — by then their gyros were already spinning, the last step before they are launched.

And with exactly eight minutes left until the launch — he succeeded. Meanwhile, Zinni got the planes in the air recalled. Desert Viper was averted. But it achieved its aims: Saddam had blinked once again. Richard Butler’s inspectors flew back into Habbaniyah and attempted to resume their work.

DESERT FOX

One aspect of their (temporary) success troubled Zinni and other senior American leaders, though. A few days after Desert Viper was aborted, General Shelton called Zinni to talk about this frustration. “You know,” he said, “every time we deploy forces out there, Saddam sees them coming and moves his sensitive equipment and files out of targeted facilities.”

“You’re right,” Zinni answered, “and because he knows about our precision bombing and concern for