“Yes, sir. Give me a few days and I will be able to report on that,” she answered.
I turned to General Pace. “General, you are going to need to start getting some units prepared to move. We have, what, maybe a month, tops, before the Iraqis move. Start lining up the troops and prepping the way. Position your planes and support, that sort of thing.”
“Understood, Mister President. Any preferences?”
I shook my head. “I never made it higher than battery commander, General. You’ll know more than I would. If it hits the fan, figure I’ll order the 82nd in immediately, and follow that up with anybody we can scrape out of Europe. Let’s meet again a week from now, and you can brief us on what to expect, and when.”
“Aye aye, sir!”
I had to smile at that. Just like Charlie, a typical gung-ho jarhead response. “You sound just like my son, General.” I looked at everybody. “I don’t want to have to do this, but if I do, I want it massive and lethal. The American public is going to want to know why we didn’t deal with this jackass before, so we’d better deal with him now! Richard, really get cracking on any intel you can provide, and dial in anybody you have over there with the Kurds. Condi, you and Eric try to get anybody with any kind of influence over Hussein to get him to back down. Anybody here, if there is something that needs doing and you need me to do it, let me know. What do I need to do to make this better?” I looked over at Paul O’Neill, who was still in place at Treasury. “Paul, this is going to cost us a fortune! How much and what will be the effect? Crank up your wizards and figure that one out, please.”
“You got it!” he acknowledged.
One problem I grappled with was just how public to make this. As a general rule, you don’t want to tell the enemy your plans, and troop and equipment movements certainly qualified. On the other hand, part of having a big military is to use it as a deterrent, and by definition, it won’t deter anybody if they don’t know you are up to something. Would it deter Hussein, though? We had no proof that it would, and as had been said, his idea of policy was whatever idea he had when he woke up in the morning. If I moved troops in now, when international law still considered the Kurdish territories part of Iraq, we would be guilty of invading a peace loving country! Worse, by our responding now, he might just well move up his timetable to try and preempt us.
Over the next few days, things kept getting tenser. By the beginning of March I signed off on the order to begin moving troops and planes. The 82nd Airborne was moved to a higher state of readiness, and all leaves were cancelled, and the transports began lining up on the runways. Rail cars were ordered into special trains and the kasernes in Germany were emptied and loaded onto the flatbeds; they would begin moving towards Turkey as soon as practical, for ‘routine training.’ The 4th Fighter Wing, a mix of F-15s and F-16s in North Carolina, was ordered to surge to Incirlik, also for routine training. The Air Force began warming their bombers up, and began moving tanker and support aircraft into position. The Navy began moving a couple of carriers into the southern end of the Persian Gulf, and accompanied them with some Tomahawk missile armed ships and subs.
None of this was cheap. It costs hundreds of millions of dollars to move things around, and none of it had been budgeted for. Treasury had already told me that we were going to blow through the contingency funds the Pentagon had for this sort of emergency.
We wanted a couple of months to prepare and move the chess pieces into place. We didn’t even get two weeks.
Chapter 161: A Rock and a Hard Place
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
It was 3:00 AM when the Secret Service came to wake me. I came to with an agent standing by the side of our bed, gently nudging my right shoulder. I was spooned up behind my wife, who wasn’t wearing anything (things had gotten vigorous that evening!) Thankfully she had pulled the sheets up around her shoulders. It took me a few seconds to realize what was happening, and then I groggily looked around. The light in the bedroom was on, and the agent who had been standing post outside the Residence floor was standing next to me. “What the hell?” I asked.
“I’m sorry, sir, but there’s a problem,” he replied.
“Huh? What?” I rolled over and looked up at him.
Marilyn mumbled something and then rolled over. Seeing the light on, she opened her eyes and asked, “Carl, what… WHO ARE YOU!?” She scrambled down even further under the covers.
“Mister President, you need to come with us. There’s a problem. There’s a call from the Pentagon,” repeated the agent, who began trying to help me out of bed.
I sat upright and rubbed my eyes. “You couldn’t call?”
“You slept through it, sir.”
“Christ on a crutch. Okay, give me a second.” I rubbed my eyes again, and then rolled upright. “Go back to sleep, Marilyn. I’ll handle this.”
I stood up and headed into the bathroom. At least I had my briefs on. I took a leak and grabbed a pair of khakis and my bathrobe. When I came out, the agent had retreated to the living room. “What’s going on?” I demanded.
“They need you in the Situation Room, sir. They wouldn’t say why, but they really want to see you ASAP!” He answered.
“This better be good!” I muttered, instantly realizing that whatever the reason was, I sure didn’t want it to be good! That would mean something had gone very wrong somewhere in the world.
He followed me down the elevator and to the Situation Room. I remember hearing that Johnson had gone down there at night in his pajamas to run the Viet Nam War. I hoped it wasn’t a precedent. I thought it might be, though. There is normally a flow and banter to conversations in the room, and now the air was icy and tense. An Army light bird was running the night shift. “You guys want me for something?” I asked.
He took a deep breath. “Yes, sir. It’s Iraq. They have made their move. Heavy bombardment and an attack against Peshmerga positions both east and west of Kirkuk.” I grunted and nodded. They had been surging back and forth for the last two weeks, feigning an attack and then backing down. Classic strategy, get your enemy used to your operational tactics, and then when he gets used to them, the next time you don’t back down. You move forward. “Sir, they are using chemical weapons.”
I stopped and stared at the lieutenant colonel, and then glanced around the room. The others were nodding somberly at this. “Seriously? They used gas? Is this confirmed?”
A major piped up from the corner. “Yes, sir, we are getting aerial confirmation from drones near Kirkuk, and it’s worse than that.”
“Talk to me, Major.”
“They have hit at least two A-teams working with the Peshmerga. We had confirmation from a commo sergeant in one of them, and both are off the air. They are using mustard gas, and it’s pretty ugly,” he continued.
I expelled my breath softly. “Ohhhhh… shit!” Every eye in the room was on me. “All right, give me fifteen minutes to take a quick shower and dress. When I get back, I want a briefing. Start calling in the entire National Security Council, and tell the Joint Chiefs that we will begin operations shortly. Tell them to take the safeties off, because we will be going in hot and hard.”
Everybody seemed to stand taller as I said that. I headed back upstairs, to find a worried Marilyn in a bathrobe. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Don’t worry. It’s Iraq. You should go back to bed.”