importance of air to their overall combat plan, and both trusted their airman to carry out the right air strategy).
Finally, there was a round of official dinners with cabinet ministers, princes, heads of state, near heads of state, and other high-level people — somewhat daunting for a boy from Iowa, yet also a source of pride and a visible sign that he was moving up in the world. And in truth, important work was accomplished:
A dinner at the Crown Prince’s palace found Horner seated between the Saudi Ministers of Petroleum and Finance, both men educated in U.S. business schools, both extremely personable, both working hard to keep the wheels of the Coalition turning; and Horner needed help from them. In August, the Saudi government had agreed to pay for jet fuel, but no one in August had envisioned how large U.S. forces would grow. Later, the Ministry of Finance was reluctant to fund the rapidly increasing fuel bills from the Ministry of Petroleum; and the Ministry of Petroleum was therefore reluctant to refine and ship the jet fuel Horner’s increasingly large air forces were using. It was already costing $20 million a day to keep up air defense CAPs and conduct rehearsal training, and the costs were only going to grow. Over dinner, at Horner’s urging, the Minister of Finance agreed to send the money to the Minister of Petroleum, so he would send the jet fuel to Horner’s bases. (During Desert Storm, Saudi Arabia became a net importer of jet fuel, with an average of forty tanker ships per day inbound to the Kingdom.)
Horner had another problem persuading the Saudis to allow the staging of B-52s at Jeddah (where facilities were large and modern enough to handle them).
Saudi leaders were reluctant to allow large bombers — especially large bombers whose original function was to deliver nuclear weapons — to be based on their territory… and worse,
At Prince Sultan’s horse farm about a mile across the highway from the international airport, Horner was able to engage Khaled on this issue.
Always sensitive to the likely Saudi reaction, he crafted his request carefully: “I know you don’t want to do this because of the impact it can have on your people,” he told the Prince, “but I need to base the B-52s closer to the enemy, so I can get more sorties out of them than if they have to fly all the way from England or Diego Garcia. If you’ll let me put them at Jeddah the first night of the war, and operate them out of there afterward, I will redeploy them out the day after the war ends. And besides,” he offered, “during the war there will be so much going on, the people won’t notice them.”
Prince Khaled bought this argument, and he and Horner reached an agreement. The bombers would land at Jeddah after their first combat sortie, then fly the rest of their combat missions into the KTO from General Mansour’s military facilities at King Abdullah Aziz Air Base (the military part of Jeddah New). And Horner kept his side of the deal: the big bombers departed immediately after hostilities concluded.
Each dinner was different. Some were in embassies, some were in desert tents, some were in palaces. At some there were women; at others they were absent. Some went very late; others broke up early. At all of them, Horner drank orange juice, even though at embassy dinners there were normally liquids not readily available in the Kingdom.
And for Horner, not all of his performances were shining.
At an American Embassy reception — trying to play the slick insider — Horner suggested to the AT & T regional manager that the telecommunications infrastructure in Iraq and Kuwait might sustain damage if war broke out, and he might want to think about shipping switching equipment, cable, and other equipment to replace it. “Actually,” the regional manager informed him (punching a large hole in his vanity), “the replacement equipment is already stored in warehouses around the region, awaiting installation after the war.”
? In December, Horner had to sweat. Tony McPeak, the new Air Force Chief of Staff, nominated him for the job of DCINC, or Schwarzkopf’s deputy, to replace USAF Lieutenant General Craven C. “Buck” Rogers (Rogers, who was scheduled to retire in the fall of 1990, did not deploy to Riyadh).
When a joint position like DCINC came open, the service chiefs were asked to nominate one of their generals for the job. McPeak knew that Schwarzkopf liked Horner, that they worked well together, and that the current DCINC was an Air Force general. If Horner was the DCINC, he reasoned, he could then put another general in CENTAF, which would leave the Air Force well represented in CENTCOM.
“Bad thinking,” Horner reasoned. “Worse, it’s crazy. Nobody in his right mind wants to be deputy. The deputy handles all the issues the CINC doesn’t want to fool with: he’s the one who gives boring speeches, hosts minor guests at headquarters, attends all the meaningless meetings. And in meetings when the CINC is present, the DCINC is supposed to sit there and say nothing. When the CINC is out of town, he runs things, but God help him if he makes a decision not previously discussed with the CINC.”
And so Horner pleaded with McPeak. “Don’t do this to me, General,” he told him. “It’s a thankless job. You are not in charge of anything, and can only influence the CINC in private, which I’m already doing as CENTAF. And look — I know this sounds like big ego — but I don’t know where you’re going to find anyone better prepared to command CENTAF. I’m more operationally astute than most, I have more command experience than any of my contemporaries, I know the Middle East and the Arab military leaders, I’ve been working war in the Middle East since 1987, and the CINC is not likely to give a new guy the confidence that I have built up over the months.”
McPeak, a hardheaded man, resisted these pleas, but to Horner’s immense relief, Schwarzkopf agreed with him; and Colin Powell wanted his own man, Lieutenant General Cal Waller, in the job. Waller, a big, easygoing man, known for his common touch, would be a counterweight, some thought, to the far more imperial Schwarzkopf.
And so Schwarzkopf kept Horner as his air commander, and Waller became DCINC… and immediately stepped on a media land mine, after the manner of Mike Dugan.
Current plans called for the massive relocation west of VIIth Corps and XVIIIth Corps for Schwarzkopf’s Left Hook — but only
After reviewing these plans, including detailed analysis of the difficulties the corps faced in moving, Waller concluded that the two corps would not be in position to attack for several weeks after the air war started.
This led to the following exchange:
“Will the Army be ready to fight on the U.N.’s, and now President Bush’s, January fifteenth deadline?” a reporter asked.
“What’s so important about being ready to fight on the fifteenth?” Waller answered.
He was technically correct. It was not important for the Army to be ready to fight on the fifteenth, it was important for them to be ready to move west, so they could fight where and when the CINC decided.
Unfortunately for Waller, his response implied that President Bush’s deadline for Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait was a sham.
Needless to say, there was little joy in Washington when the headline broke: “CENTCOM DCINC ASKED, ‘WHAT’S SO IMPORTANT ABOUT THE 15TH?’ ”
Afterward, General Schwarzkopf took heavy — and hardly welcome — hits from his superiors, and Cal Waller never really regained the CINC’s confidence, or had much influence in the upper circles in Riyadh. The resulting fallout ended Waller’s shot at a fourth star.
One good result of the flap was the cancellation of media interviews. Horner had better things to do.
? Christmas came and went — or C+140, as it was jokingly called in the desert. If C day was the first day of the Desert Shield deployment, then C+1 was the day after that, C+2 the next, and so on until C+140—December 25. In the event, it was a lonely, miserable time for American servicemen and servicewomen in the Gulf. They desperately missed their families. “Have a merry C+140” didn’t quite do it. The good news was that everyone knew the climax was coming very soon.
New Year’s Day followed. And for Horner, the rest of January was a blur.
By the end of the first week in January, people were leaving Riyadh, the normally bustling traffic-clogged streets were almost deserted, and weather over Southwest Asia was worsening. It would prove to be the hardest winter in years.
Horner reflects:
