Our Last Best Chance_ The Pursuit of Peace in a Time of Peril - King Abdullah II [110]
General Franks was famous for his ability to chew out people using colorful and imaginative phrases. In fact, there should be a book written about his use of expletives. Provided the cursing is not being directed at you, it is pretty hilarious to watch.
He visited Amman to brief me on the war preparations, hoping to get my permission to deploy U.S. troops. Pulling out a huge board, he said, “I want to bring twenty-five thousand troops into Jordan.” Then he proceeded to outline a detailed plan for the operation. He had a list of military units he wanted to deploy inside our country. He wanted to bring a Joint Special Operations Command, logistics units, Patriot batteries, and many other units.
I have the highest regard for General Franks, but in this case I could not give him what he wanted. We went down the list one by one. I pointed to the logistics unit and asked, “What’s this group?” He said, “We need them to take trucks and equipment from Aqaba into Iraq after the war is over. The idea is to send supplies in once we move toward Baghdad. We have the transportation corps coming with a large number of drivers and trucks.”
“Well,” I interrupted, “it seems to me the Jordanian army could do that. I mean, if we are going to be working together, you will have to trust us, so you don’t need to bring those men. We will ship the stuff to the border.”
He continued, describing how he wanted to put a Special Operations headquarters and helicopter transport hubs inside Jordan.
“Look,” I said, “headquarters can be put anywhere, don’t put them in Jordan. And I really don’t want helicopters flying from our border. I don’t want an attack launched from Jordan into Iraq.”
He agreed to move the headquarters and to shift the Chinook helicopters and other air transport elsewhere, to places like Qatar. After a lengthy debate, soldier to soldier, we agreed that only a few Patriot air defense batteries would be placed in Jordan to defend against Iraqi Scud missiles that could be fired over our territory.
With this agreement, General Franks left, and I continued to prepare for the coming conflict. But no military plan can remain intact for long in the shifting politics of the Middle East. The United States wanted to move an infantry division through Turkey, in preparation for a strike into northern Iraq. But on March 1, the Turkish parliament voted no. The Turkish vote disrupted the U.S. war plans, and shortly afterward I received a call from Vice President Dick Cheney, who asked me to respond positively to requests that Tommy Franks would make during a meeting that had been scheduled between us the next day.
“Mr. Vice President,” I said, “Tommy Franks and I have a very good relationship and a lot of trust. Let us two military men work something out between ourselves.” Cheney agreed, and we ended the conversation. I made sure to try to have breakfast with the vice president whenever I went to Washington. Sometimes we would meet alone, while at other times he would be joined by a member of his staff or his daughter Liz, who was then a State Department official. Cheney was a tough character, dead set in his views but always very supportive of Jordan and sympathetic to our financial problems. Because he was so influential within the administration, I would often make the points I wanted to drive home on subjects such as the peace process and Iraq to him a day or so before my meeting with the president. His reaction would give me an early warning of the arguments I was likely to hear