Content area
Full Text
Forget James Bond What in,telli ence agencies need are a few good professors.
EARLY ONE MORNING IN OCTOBER 1994, Secretary of Defense William J. Perry rose from behind his oversized desk to greet General John Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). Under his arm, the general carried a portfolio of satellite photographs of Iraq. He spread the imagery across a conference table in the drab, bunker-like room.
Using a pointer, Shalikashvili directed Perry's attention to a disturbing set of photographs. Improbable as it might have seemed coming just three and a half years after a United States-led coalition blasted Saddam Hussein to his knees, elements of the Republican Guard (Saddam's elite troops), supported by mechanized infantry, armor, and tank units, were moving at a rapid clip southward toward Al Basrah, a mere 30 miles from the Kuwaiti border. The force aimed like an arrow at the Al Jahra heights overlooking Kuwait City, in an apparent repeat of the same maneuver that led to the Iraqi conquest of Kuwait in 1990. At its current speed, the Republican Guard would pour across the Kuwaiti border in a couple of days.
Perry quickly ordered a US. armored brigade stationed in Kuwait to the Iraqi border. With a rising sense of uneasiness, the secretary of defense and the top Pentagon brass waited as young captains and lieutenants brought new batches of imagery into Perry's office over the next 24 hours. Upwards of 10,000 Iraqi troops had amassed in an area near Al Basrah. Steadily the number rose to 50,000, some bivouacking within 12 miles of the border. The American brigade had arrived, but consisted of only 2,000 lightly armed Marines.
While the United States also had 200 warplanes in the area on standby alert, the Iraqi armored force dwarfed the US. presence. President Bill Clinton ordered 450 more warplanes to Kuwait, along with the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division and a Marine contingent from Camp Pendleton. The aircraft carrier George Washington steamed toward the Red Sea. None of these forces, though, would arrive in time to halt an invasion of Kuwait. The secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff faced the strong possibility of a rout that would quickly wipe away...