Defense Secretary Dick Cheney was so offended by the way Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf conducted himself and treated subordinates that he considered firing him as commander of allied forces during the months leading up to the Persian Gulf War, according to a published account of a new book.
The book by Rick Atkinson of The Washington Post says that instead of relieving him, Cheney assigned a three-star general to act as a buffer between Schwarzkopf and his staff.Despite that intercession, the book - "Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War" - says that at one time or another Schwarzkopf threatened to fire or court-martial his senior Army commander, Navy commander, Air Force commander, chief air targeteer and the commanders of both Army corps in the desert.
But the paper said that despite the unflattering portrait painted of Schwarzkopf's personality, he practiced subtle diplomacy when needed with the coalition's foreign forces and Saudi Arabian hosts and, overall, made "no significant error of strategy or tactic."
The book is to be published by Houghton Mifflin in October, and the Post said the publisher will begin circulating review copies this week.
Schwarzkopf sped around in a "motorcade larger than (Saudi King) Fahd's" and was preceded in every room by an enlisted aide who laid out a precise setting of water, orange juice, coffee and chocolate mocha, according to the paper's account of parts of the book.
The book also says Cheney watched in wonder during a long flight from Washington as a major held a place for Schwarzkopf in a toilet queue and a colonel knelt on his hands and knees to iron the general's uniform.
Other items from the book reported by the Post included:
- President Bush secretly allowed Navy warships to fire cruise missiles without permission over Iran and also allowed them to be routed over parts of Syria.
It said the Tomahawk used a form of ground guidance that needed broken terrain to be effective and that only by using a route up the mountainous spine of western Iran was such terrain available to missiles fired from the Persian Gulf. Missiles routed over Syria were fired from the Mediterranean Sea.
- The United States used a Tomahawk with a type of warhead that distributed thousands of tiny spools of carbon filament over Iraqi electrical plants, creating massive short circuits and blowing transformers.
- The decision to attack a bunker in Baghdad in which 204 civilians were reported killed was made after an Iraqi spy - said to be a top official in the Iraqi government - reported that the bunker was being used as an alternate command post for Iraqi intelligence.
- The United States provided additional Patriot missiles to Israel to defend against Iraqi Scud missiles only if Israel promised not to fight back, but told Jordan's King Hussein he should not try to stop Israeli warplanes if they passed over his country en route to Iraq.
- U.S. special forces rehearsed a plan to rescue diplomats held in the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait, but did not have to use it because Iraq released the diplomats.
- Schwarzkopf wanted to tell Baghdad that if Iraq used chemical weapons, the United States would respond with nuclear weapons.
- Marine planes dropped napalm and "fuel air explosives" directly on Iraqi infantry positions.
- Seventy-six of 167 laser-guided bombs dropped by F-117A "stealth" jets in the first five days of the war missed their targets.