In My Time - Dick Cheney [108]
When I appeared on the morning television shows on October 25, I laid some groundwork. Asked by Harry Smith on CBS This Morning whether we were getting ready to send another hundred thousand troops to the Gulf, I responded that it was conceivable that we could end up with an increase that large. I also explained that we had never put an upper limit on our deployment and I wasn’t prepared to do that now. My comments were intended to prepare the American people for what I believed was a likely new buildup, but I also wanted to send yet another message to our generals that we planned to continue to flow forces until we had provided whatever they needed to do the job. Schwarzkopf, in particular, seemed to need bucking up. The week I did the morning shows, he gave an interview in the Gulf to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution claiming that sanctions were working, “so why should we say . . . ‘Let’s get on with it and kill a whole bunch of people’?”
By October 30 Powell had returned from the Gulf with Central Command’s troop requests. When I met with him at 8:00 that morning to review the bidding, he laid out a long and lengthy list—and I said that I fully supported it. That afternoon Powell and I went to the White House for a meeting in the Situation Room, and the president, Scowcroft, Baker, and I listened as Powell briefed us on what Schwarzkopf wanted if he was ordered to carry out the offensive option—basically a doubling of the force. When Powell had finished, I told the president that I fully supported the request, and I went further. I was convinced the offensive option was the right one, and that we should give the generals whatever they thought it would take. The president agreed and signed off on Powell’s and Schwarzkopf’s requests.
Prior to the public announcement of the new deployment on November 8, 1990, I placed calls to congressional leaders to notify them it was imminent. Then, at 4:00 p.m., I joined President Bush at the White House as he announced, “I have today directed the secretary of defense to increase the size of the U.S. forces committed to Desert Shield to ensure that the coalition has an adequate offensive military option should that be necessary to achieve our common goals.” After the White House briefing, I went directly back to the Pentagon, where, at 4:45 p.m., Colin and I briefed the Pentagon press corps. I set forth a long list of units to be deployed: the VII Corps Headquarters out of Stuttgart, Germany; the 1st Armored Division in Germany; the 3rd Armored Division in Germany; the 2nd Armored Division (forward); and the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment. In addition, we were taking 2nd Corps Support Command from Stuttgart and the Big Red One, the 1st Infantry Division, from Fort Riley, Kansas. The navy would be sending three additional aircraft carrier battle groups and their escorts; one additional battleship and another amphibious group. The Marine Corps would be sending the II Marine Expeditionary Force out of Camp Lejeune and the 5th Marine Expeditionary Brigade out of Camp Pendleton. I also announced that we would be calling up combat units of the Army National Guard.
On November 18, when I appeared on Meet the Press, there was interest in whether we had decided to seek congressional authorization for the use of force in Iraq. I told Garrick Utley that I loved the Congress. I had served there for ten years. But I also had a sense of its limitations. “I take you back to September 1941,” I said, “when World War II had been under way for two years; Hitler had taken Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and was halfway to Moscow. And the Congress, in that setting, two months before Pearl Harbor, agreed to extend . . . the draft for twelve more months, by just one vote.”
I made clear the decision hadn’t been made, but I also emphasized that putting a matter of the nation’s security in the hands of the 535 members of the U.S. Congress