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The Truth About the Gulf War
by Mark Gery
- With our vaunted Desert Storm campaign
having ended exactly one decade ago this week and Iraq still posing
a considerable challenge to our policy and objectives in the Middle
East, it is time to really start questioning the common wisdom about
the Gulf War.
Ten years ago we were told that Iraq¹s
army had been quickly expelled from Kuwait, that the elite
Republican Guard had been rendered "combat ineffective," and that
tens of thousands of lesser troops had simply given up. Night after
night we were shown Iraqi command sites and aircraft shelters being
zapped by laser-guided missiles, enemy bridges being pulverized
seemingly at will, and hundreds of Iraqi tanks burning in the
desert.
But what were we not told? What were
we not shown? Absent from the Pentagon's glowing reports was the
fact that the enemy's command sites and aircraft shelters had been
emptied long before the war started, that the downed bridges were
irrelevant to the war effort (as ready-made pontoon versions were
available), and that most of the destroyed tanks were third-rate
models that Iraq had little use for. Most critically, our military
brass failed emphasize that the war plan called for Kuwait to be
liberated only after Iraq had been crushed as a regional military
power.
As for the 80,000 Iraqis we saw
eagerly surrender, practically all were fourth-rate conscripts who
were simply handed a rifle and told to sit in a ditch and wait. As
he did repeatedly in the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq's wily President
placed these "throw-away" divisions on the front lines to
deliberately bring our ground advance to a standstill. In the
meantime, the eight elite Republican Guard divisions, our primary
target for the campaign, packed up, headed north across the
Euphrates River (using those pontoon bridges) and were safely out of
reach by the time of the cease-fire.
For those of us following the war back
home on television, all of these crucial details were withheld,
garbled, or downplayed and we were left with what seemed to be a
shining example of overwhelming American military superiority. But
for those who watched closely there were tiny clues about the true
nature of events.
In early February,
1991, after he had
finished interviewing then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, Rowland
Evans, co-host of "Evans and Novak," ended the show, observing "I've
never seen him (Cheney) look so morose." A few days later, at a
dinner held in his honor, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin
Powell could barely bring himself to rise when given a standing
ovation. After smiling politely to all, the General nearly collapsed
back in his chair. (CNN's Headline News, week of 2/13-2/20)
President Bush himself, at a press conference a day after the
cease-fire, was questioned as to why, in that moment of complete
triumph," he looked so downcast. (Desert Storm, p. 211) And back in
Saudi Arabia, General Schwarzkopf was suffering from post-war
depression. (A Woman at War, p. 312)
In the next few months, while
Americans were happily distracted by victory celebrations, the raw
data started coming in. Anthony Cordesman, respected defense analyst
from ABC News, returned from his post-war inspection of the
battlefield saying, "My discussions with theater commanders and
officers in the allied forces raise questions about the extent to
which many believe in the official battle damage assessments."
(Armed Forces Journal, 6/91, p. 68) Robert Schnitzlein, a picture
editor from Reuters news service assigned to oversee photos from the
Gulf War battlefield, remarked "There is really no documentation of
actual fighting in the Gulf." (Second Front, p. 155)
In 1992 Brassey's, a well
known military research organization, released their semi-annual report on
world-wide military capabilities. "Fresh information," they said, "has
allowed a reassessment of Iraqi divisions." The Republican Guards, Iraq's
"center of gravity," still totaled exactly eight robust divisions while
Iraq's greater army was still at its prewar high of one million men. Also
revealed was the Iraqis prewar confiscation of numerous advanced weapons
from Kuwait including British tanks, Russian Infantry Fighting Vehicles
and U.S. Stinger, Hawk, and TOW missiles. (The Military Balance,
1992-1993, p. 103, 235, 260) It should be assumed that all of these arms
have long since been integrated into the Republican Guards arsenal, making
them an even more powerful force.
In sum, the Desert Storm campaign must
be seen as a major strategic setback for the U.S. Not only had we
failed to destroy Iraq's offensive military potential, but the
enemy¹s air-force, its air defense, its navy, its short and
long-range missiles, its weapons of mass destruction, and, most
importantly of all, its presiding regime came out of the war intact,
unbeaten, and more emboldened than ever.
Let the facts about the conflict be
known. Let the distortions and denials be ended. The United States
lost the Gulf War.
Mr. Mark Gery is an independent Researcher and Analyst on Iraq and the Middle East. He is active in the anti-war movement in southern California and is an affiliate Speaker for EPIC - The Education for Peace in Iraq Center in Washington D.C. He is currently writing a comprehensive text on the U.S.-Iraq conflict entitled "Desert Nightmare: the Truth About the Gulf War, the Middle East and Saddam Hussein's Challenge to America."
Source:
by courtesy & © 2001
Mark Gery
by the same author:
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