"Yes, sir.", said Tom. Condi and Eric nodded in agreement.
"Condi, prep things for a phone call to Putin. Iraq's a Russian client. Maybe he has some pull."
She nodded at that.
"Richard, you crank up anything you have for intel." I looked over at Winston Creedmore, who had been added to the National Security Council. "Does Counter Terrorism have anything on this?"
"No, but I'll order a top level verification on this. Maybe the Russians have something we can access.", he replied.
I nodded. "Thank you. This doesn't look like it is going to start for another month or two, so we should be safe with a meeting next week. Frank will schedule something for when Condi, Tom, and Eric get back." I looked around and saw people nodding and taking notes. "Thank you. John, I need to see you privately."
John and I went upstairs to the Oval Office, where we sat down in a couple of armchairs. "I am getting a very bad feeling that we are going to have to do something about that asshole.", I told him.
"Who, Saddam Hussein?", he asked. I nodded grimly, and he asked, "Sorry you didn't help your predecessor in taking him out?"
I grimaced at that. "No, not really. That was different. George and that bunch wanted to invade Iraq and make it into America Junior. They had no plan for ever getting out, and didn't want to, in fact. I am nowhere near as certain as they were. I'd be satisfied to kick his ass up between his ears and go home."
"And do you think we can do that? I don't. I think we are going to have to take him out of the game for good this time."
I sighed. "That's what I'm afraid of. It's one thing to send in a few A-teams and fly patrols out of Incirlik. This is shaping up to be a major campaign. I do not want to get bogged down halfway around the world trying to invade Iraq!"
"Carl, you may not have a choice. Short of dumping the Kurds to their fate, we will have to get involved.", he told me.
I sighed and nodded. "I know. Just because I don't like it, it doesn't mean I won't do it."
It would be a crowning monument to my hubris if I ended up in a war in Iraq, after killing off George Bush just to prevent us from going to war in Iraq! Was it possible for me to change anything? Or was the best that I could do be to simply delay the inevitable? Had I managed to improve anything in the last five years?
I followed the travels of Tom Ridge and Condi Rice as they bounced around the Middle East. I got nightly updates as they met with anybody they could think of to calm down the situation. Erdogan was not happy with Hussein, and agreed to allow combat patrols out of Incirlik, as well as logistic support across the border. We could even send troops and equipment across the country by train as needed. Kuwait was also on board, since they still had harsh memories of what Hussein had done to them in 1991. Most of the rest of the neighbors weren't as cooperative. Iran would love to see us bogged down in Iraq; they were traditional enemies, but they hated us as well. A fight would weaken us both and leave them in a stronger position. They would not be looking for peace to break out. The same was true in Syria. Jordan did want peace, but was relatively defenseless against the Iraqis, as was Saudi Arabia. Condi told us that she had asked the Jordanians and the Saudis to attempt some diplomatic pressure, and try to get Hussein to back off. According to them, Hussein simply replied that it was a training exercise, and they needed to mind their own business. That was also what we heard from the neutrals Swedes and Swiss.
A real sore spot was Israel. They were watching the developing situation with considerable alarm, and for good reason. Even though they were not the target of any attack, Saddam Hussein was probably targeting them with his missiles. During the Gulf War, which they sat out of since an Israeli presence would have destroyed the coalition, Hussein had fired missiles at them, simply hoping for a response. If he did the same, and the Israelis responded with a counterattack, it could blow up any hope of an Arab solution to the problem. I wanted this as contained as possible.
I even called Vladimir Putin in Russia to see if he could pressure the Iraqis into backing down. This was a long shot at best. Iraq was a long time buyer of Russian weapons. Putin had no overwhelming interest in not selling them more, as long as the Iraqis paid cash on the barrelhead. They had been manipulating the oil-for-food program for years, and pouring the funds into Russian weapons. I simply told Vladimir that if he couldn't help us, to stay out of our way, because if we had to go in, Iraq wasn't going to be a customer for long.
Eric worked NATO, and got a lot of sympathy but not much assistance. Britain agreed to assist, and began to mobilize some troops, but most of the rest simply said they would wait and see. I sighed, but couldn't blame him. It wasn't their fight. I told him to simply come home, and we would figure it out if we needed to.
When Tom and Condi returned, I met with them together, and then we had a full meeting of the NSC. It didn't seem as if any of our diplomatic efforts were paying off. Hussein continued to slowly funnel troops and armored vehicles towards a general area south of Kirkuk, and was beginning to conduct wartime drills with them. He would surge his troops forward, and then stop and back away. Routine training exercises were the explanation, not that it was our business to ask! The Kurdish government, such as it was, was getting nervous and had invited us to bring in troops. Unfortunately, that is nowhere near as easy as you might think. That was a big focus of the meeting.
America has a large and powerful army, but it isn't easy to get them anywhere fast. If the shit were to hit the fan, there would be limited things we could do quickly. We could shuttle an Air Force wing or two into Incirlik within a few days. Incirlik was far enough away from Iraq that they couldn't attack there, but that worked the other way, as well. Combat flights into Iraq would need tanker support. We could send in the Marines, but the nearest beach was in southern Iraq, near Basra. The Marines would need to fight their way north, through the Iraqis, to meet the Kurds in northern Iraq. That was simply insane. Theoretically we could ship them through the Bosporus and into the Black Sea, and then land them in northeastern Turkey, but there were a bunch of treaties designed to prevent that sort of thing, and no way was Russia going to be amused by our sending our Navy into the Black Sea.
The Navy could sail a carrier or two into the Gulf, and fly combat patrols, as well as launch Tomahawks from several different directions, but that ignored one of the fundamentals of combat. You can bomb a country, strafe it, fly over it, sail around it, hell, you can even nuke it, but you can't control it until you stick a teenager with a gun on it. We needed to get troops into position. That isn't easy. I could order the 82nd Airborne into position, and they would get elements in place within 24 hours. After that it gets dicey. The 82nd is primarily an infantry outfit, though if they had trucks they would have some mobility. During the Gulf War we sent them in first, but only the fact that Hussein held off on attacking American units saved them from being anything more than a speed bump.
It would take a heavy armor presence to really stick it to the Republican Guard. The nearest American armor was maybe a brigade's worth in Germany, perhaps 100 M-1 Abrams tanks and a matching number of M-2 Bradleys and other vehicles. Those could be loaded on trains and shipped by rail from their locations into eastern Turkey. That might take two weeks, if we were lucky. We could probably scrape up about another brigade's worth by pulling everything else possible out of Europe, and by asking for assistance from the Brits. They were the only ones I could see helping us. Again, maybe in two to three weeks they might be showing up. If we needed to bring in a heavy division, the only place we would get one or two of those was from here in the States. That would require moving the division to the nearest port, loading it onto appropriate shipping, and then sending it across the Atlantic and through the Med to Turkey, where they would disembark and be rail freighted to eastern Turkey. Even at high speed, that was going to take at least a month and probably more. Another possibility was the 101st Air Assault Division, the 'Screaming Eagles'; they could be brought in, but they would go after the 82nd, and since nobody had developed a helicopter that could fly across the Atlantic Ocean, their gear mostly needed to be shipped as well.