In My Time - Dick Cheney [101]
Unlike all the other meetings I’ve ever had with Saudi royalty, there was no small talk. It was clear the king wanted us to get right to the business at hand, and I began by affirming the United States’ commitment to Saudi Arabia and emphasizing the danger Saddam represented. The president was personally working to build international support for economic, diplomatic, and military action against the Iraqis, I said, but in the meantime we had to prevent an attack on Saudi Arabia. Military deterrence would be critical, I said, “as economic measures began to bite and Saddam, feeling the pain, might be tempted to lash out.”
I asked General Schwarzkopf to brief our hosts in more detail on the forces Saddam had deployed along the border between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Saddam was in a position to launch in one or two days, Norm said. He also briefed on what the United States was prepared to do, the F-15s that would be deployed immediately and the air and ground divisions that would follow.
At the end of his briefing, I emphasized that we would stay as long as the Saudis wanted and leave when they wished us to, and I stressed the importance of acting quickly. If we waited for “unambiguous warning of attack,” it would be too late. The Saudis began a discussion among themselves in Arabic. Bandar stopped interpreting. I learned later that there was some feeling among the Saudis that there was no need for a quick decision, that they could afford to wait. King Fahd ended that line of argument. “The Kuwaitis waited,” he said, “and now they are living in our hotels.”
The king turned to me. “Okay,” he said. He knew that his decision was controversial, but he did not care, he said, since Saudi Arabia itself was at stake.
Back at the guest palace, I told Joe Lopez, my new military assistant, to connect me with the president. When the White House Situation Room was on the line, I picked up the handset of one of the dedicated U.S. government phones installed wherever the secretary of defense travels. The president came on the line from the Oval Office, with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at his side. She had come back to Washington with him from Aspen. “Mr. President, the Saudis have agreed to accept our forces. Do we have your approval to begin the deployment?” “Yes, Dick. Go ahead.” I thanked the president, hung up, and placed a call to General Powell. “Colin, begin the deployment.” Within hours of my call, F-15 fighter jets from Langley Air Force Base arrived in Saudi Arabia and began flying combat patrols. The next day, the first elements of the Ready Brigade of the 82nd Airborne arrived; the U.S.S. Eisenhower started for the Suez Canal and the U.S.S. Independence for the Gulf of Oman. In a week the first U.S. Marines were there, then the first three prepositioned ships, then the A-10 tank-killers, three thousand men from the 101st, and eighteen F-117s. It all started happening with a single phone call.
Defense Minister Sultan returned home that night, and we met the next morning. He wanted to be sure that it was clear to the world that Saudi Arabia had invited U.S. forces, and he wanted assurances that there would be no announcement of the deployment until our troops had arrived. I gave him my word on both counts.
I left Jeddah and headed for Egypt, where I was scheduled to meet President Mubarak in his summer home outside Alexandria, on the Mediterranean Sea. With the summer heat and a full load of fuel, my 707 required more runway to land and take off than was available at the Alexandria airport, so we stopped in Cairo, and I got on an old King Air Beechcraft propeller plane used by the U.S. Embassy for travel