In My Time - Dick Cheney [211]
The next day we got initial reports that the strike might have worked. An eyewitness reported a man looking like Saddam had been dragged from the rubble and left lying on a stretcher in the open air. It didn’t take long, however, to find out those first reports were wrong.
IN THE EARLY DAYS and weeks of Operation Iraqi Freedom, I received nearly daily briefings on our progress. Tommy Franks also gave regular updates via SVTS from his forward headquarters in Qatar. He did so on the morning of March 30, and the news was encouraging. The oil fields had been taken intact, western Iraq was no longer a base for launching missiles against Iraq’s neighbors, and our air strikes were significantly degrading Iraq’s forces. We were already operating from Iraqi airfields; Khurmal, the al Qaeda poisons camp, had been destroyed; and humanitarian supplies were arriving in Iraq. Our forces had closed to within sixty miles of Baghdad on multiple fronts and were still over 90 percent combat capable. The list went on and on. Tommy concluded: “The regime is in trouble and they know it.”
One of our biggest concerns was that Saddam might concentrate his best forces around the city, use chemical or biological weapons against our troops, and then create a fortress for himself inside Baghdad. We worried we’d have to deal with a siege of the city that would be extremely costly in lives and casualties. To avoid getting bogged down on the road to Baghdad, our commanders orchestrated and executed an operation that emphasized speed. They raced for the capital. Like millions of Americans, I watched news reports on television night after night as journalists embedded with the troops reported on the rapid advance toward the heart of Saddam’s regime.
At a briefing on the progress of the war on April 2, the Defense Department reported that in Najaf, people were “receiving us as liberators.” At an April 5 briefing, the report was “crowds beginning to turn out to welcome us.” On April 9, the day we marched into Baghdad, the conclusion was “situation really, really positive.” Banner headlines in the Washington Post reported, “U.S. Forces Move Triumphantly through Capital Streets, Cheered by Crowds Jubilant at End of Repressive Regime.” A few weeks before on Meet the Press, I had told Tim Russert that “from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.” There were certainly difficult days ahead, but contrary to subsequent assertions by war critics, my assessment had been on target. We were greeted as liberators when we freed the Iraqi people from Saddam’s grip.
With improvements in technology and equipment, our forces had capabilities we could only have dreamt of during Desert Storm. Our ground forces had improved their combat power and increased the range and accuracy of their weapons. Every one of our air-to-ground fighters could now put a laser-guided bomb to the target, compared with only 20 percent in Desert Storm. In Desert Storm, we had only one kind of unmanned aerial vehicle. In Iraqi Freedom, we had ten different types, ranging from tactical systems that would allow our soldiers to look over the next hill to strategic systems that operated at high altitudes.
In 1991 Saddam had time to set Kuwait’s oil fields ablaze. In 2003 our special operations forces were sent in early to protect the six hundred oil wells in southern Iraq. During Desert Storm Saddam had fired Scud missiles at Israel and Saudi Arabia. In Iraqi Freedom our special operations forces seized control of the missile launch baskets in western Iraq and prevented their use.
The plan put together by General Franks and Secretary Rumsfeld for the liberation of Iraq was bold, impressive, and effective. By moving with astonishing speed, going with a small force, and without preceding air bombardment, they achieved tactical surprise. With less than half