ANOTHER DESERT WARRIOR, A talk given by James E Elliott at the First Unitarian Church of Alton, Sept. 26, 2004

This talk is about the first Gulf war from the perspective of Saudi Arabia. It relies heavily on "Desert Warrior, A Personal View of the Gulf War by the Joint Forces Commander. HRH General Khaled Bin Sultan"

Bin Sultan is a member of the Saud royal family. He attended the British West Point and was put in charge of Saudi Arabian and other Muslim forces when Saddam moved towards Kuwait. The subtitle of his book might suggest that he was commander of all forces, including American, which is not true.

In 1979, President Carter and later president Reagan proposed that the US and Saudi Arabia formalize a security arrangement that would allow the US to preposition armaments in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia rejected these overtures. Their thinking was that if American security (oil) were threatened, the US would aid Saudi Arabia even without a treaty. And if it was only the security of Saudi Arabia in question, the US would be reluctant to come to her aid even with a treaty.

We were not allowed to preposition arms in Saudi Arabia, but we had a fall back position. In 1965 we began to preposition arms 700 miles south of the Gulf on the Island of Diego Garcia.

Saudi Arabia created a furor in 1988 when she purchased Chinese Surface to Surface missiles. This was an affront to the US because it is well known that our client states are supposed to buy arms from the US. And we reserve the right to refuse to sell weapons that would anger Israel. The US ambassador made such a fuss with King Faud that he was ordered home. Israel threatened to make a preemptive strike to take out the Chinese missiles. Bin Sultan commented " It is apparently legitimate for Israel to threaten the Arab world with its weapons of mass destruction, but quite illegitimate for us to acquire and sort of deterrent or retaliatory capability".

Bin Sultan tells of the close US-Iraq relations during Iraq's war with Iran. We provided Iraq with precision satellite intelligence on Iranian positions. We reflagged Iraq's tankers to protect them from Iranian attack. An Iraqi aircraft mistakenly damaged the USS Stark using an Exocet missile. Iraq apologized and paid $27 millions in compensation. Isn't it interesting that any event can be blown up so as to justify retaliation or hushed up if it suits American policy.

On April 12, 1990, Senators Dole, McClure, Simpson, Murkowski and Metzenbaum spent two hours with Saddam and assured him that President wanted better relations with him. President Bush facilitated government guaranteed credits to assure Saddam that the US was well disposed to him. But Saddam didn't realize that Kuwait was a prize the US wouldn't allow him to swallow. Kuwait had $100 billion in external assets and a stake in key western industries as well as its oil reserves.

"But the US never explicitly warned Saddam against the use of force in his dispute with Kuwait. For example, when John Kelly, the US Assistant Sectary of State for Near East Affairs visited Baghdad in February 1990, he expressed American indifference to Iraq's border dispute with Kuwait".

As late as July 24, Ambassador April Glaspie told Saddam that the US had no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border dispute with Kuwait. Our neutrality was emphasized when Presidential spokesperson Margaret Tutweiler announced publically on July 24 that the US had no defense commitment to Kuwait.

Bin Sultan believes that after her meeting with Saddam, Glaspie traveled to Washington with a message from him. Saddam asked her to return with a statement from President Bush. Bin Sultan said that Saddam's message ran something like this "As you know I have successfully fought off Iran. But instead of rewarding me, the British and Kuwait are driving me into a corner. Please note that my record on oil is absolutely clean. I have never acted irresponsibly over oil and never will. I want our dialogue to continue. I am the man you should be dealing with in this region."

Saddam was complaining that Kuwait was stealing large quantities oil from a region on the border between the countries. This depressed the price of oil to about $10. At the same time, Kuwait was demanding that Iraq repay money that Iraq borrowed during the Iran war. Saddam felt that the Iran war benefited Kuwait and she should forgive or delay repayment.

Here is how Bin Sultan described the war aims of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia wanted to roll back Iraqi power, remove the threat to her security, and restore the status quo ante. Saudi Arabia would have welcomed the overthrow of Saddam, but they did not want to see Iraq devastated. Iraq was a brotherly country whose role was to be a counterweight to both Iran and Israel.

Some have suggested that it took more than these concerns to persuade Saudi Arabia to make war on brother Arabs.

US Defense Secretary Cheney met with King Faud on August 6 and presented satellite images that purported to show that Iraqi tanks were approaching Saudi Arabia. These images have never been released to the American public and it may be that they had been altered to make them appear to be a threat to Saudi Arabia..

Here are Bin Sultan's words on this question.

"According to some accounts, the determining factor in the King's decision is said to have been satellite pictures produced by Cheney purporting to show Iraqi forces massing on the Kingdom's border. In other accounts the ball started to roll some days earlier on the other side of the Atlantic when Margaret Thatcher, Britains Iron Lady, met George Bush at Aspen Colorado on the very day of Saddam's invasion, and strengthened the presidents resolve to intervene."

Bin Sultan denied this version of the start of the Gulf War. It was the King's decision alone and not based on Cheney's or Thatchers positions.

Bin Sultan believed these to be America's war aims. Defend US access to Arabian oil, protect Israel's security, remove Saddam's threat to the political order in the Gulf, and more generally affirm America's supremacy (p315)

The land war began at 4 AM Feb 24, 1991. It ended 100 hours later when a cease fire was agreed to at Safwan. Safwan is an Iraqi airfield just north of Kuwait. Bin Sultan refers to the cease fire as Failure at Safwan. He complains that we allowed Iraq to be represented by mid rank generals rather than high level politicians. We did not require the Iraq generals to sign documents of surrender. They agreed to release POW's but Bin Sultan was concerned when Iraq failed to release certain Kuwaitis who had been taken to Iraq.

Iraq asked for permission to continue to fly helicopters, even armed helicopters. Their justification was that many bridges had been taken out by air raids and helicopters were needed to provide legitimate transportation needs. Schwartzkopf agreed to let the helicopters fly as long as they did not fly over allied forces.

Muslim forces stopped operations as the last Iraqis left Kuwait. Bin Sultan said that the Muslim allies did not support continuation of the war in an effort to overthrow Saddam. Even US forces would have had a hard time justifying a continuation of the war. They were operating in accordance with a UN resolution that spoke only of liberating Kuwait.

But President Bush 1 thought there was still a chance of ousting Saddam. On Feb 15, 1991 he publicly asked Iraq to oust Saddam. Bush's statement was rebroadcast in Arabic from stations in Saudi Arabia. In response, rebellions began in Kurd and Shiite areas.

Saddam struck back with Republican Guard units and armed helicopters.

Strong US forces were in the area, but they took no action as the revolts were savagely put down. General Schwartzkopf laments this turn of events and says that Iraq put one over on him. He implies that he felt bound to honor his agreement to allow armed helicopters to fly. But this is clearly an excuse. If Washington had wanted to support the revolt, we would have been justified in saying that Iraq was violating the stated use of their helicopters, i.e. using them for transportation.

So why would Bush call for a revolt and then not support it. Kurdishmedia.com, in an internet document dated Feb. 2, 2001, suggests an answer. The writer, Mirza Nammo, argues that the US was hoping that the Iraqi revolt would be led by an army strong man who would hold Iraq together despite her non-homogeneous population. This Kurdish writer argues that Bush withheld support for the revolt when it became apparent that its end result would be fragmentation of the country. He is suggesting that Bush wanted a strong Iraq but an Iraq consisting of Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites.

Another explanation of our failure to support the uprising that we called for is in a Washington Post story written by Laurie Mylroie, dated June 28, 1992. She wrote that an Iraqi exile in London convinced the US High Command that an Iraqi Air Force officer in command of helicopter gun ships would stage a coup to replace Saddam. Schwartzkopf's agreement to their request to fly armed helicopters was intended to confirm our support for such a coup. We watched passively while the Shiite uprising was put down, but were dismayed when the anticipated coup did not take place. Was this another example of bad intelligence provided by Iraqi dissident Chalabi? What was his intent? Who knows?

Bin Sultan mentions this article but calls it a rather far fetched hypothesis.

Allied manpower was 595,022 for the US forces and 185,351 other. 223 were killed in action and 697 were wounded.

In closing, let's compare Saudi Arabia's participation in Desert Storm and George W Bush's war. In Desert Storm, in addition to supplying troops Saudi Arabia contributed 50 Billion dollars in cash to the war effort. She allowed US aircraft and troops to attack Iraq from her territory.

Saudi Arabia contributed nothing to the second Gulf war. In fact she barred us from using Saudi Arabian bases to prosecute the war. Here is a statement of the Saudi position.

"We will not allow the Prince Sultan Air base to be used for anything other than what was agreed to in the Safwan accord of 1991, meaning use of the base south of Riyady to enforce a no fly zone over southern Iraq."

Maybe Cheney couldn't fool them the second time!

Note:

Bin Sultans ego appears throughout his book. He required General Swartzkopf to come to his quarters for conferences as often as he went to the quarters of the US general. When Bin Laden flew into

Safwan to take Iraq's surrender, his helicopter was directed to a parking area some distance from the meeting site. Bin Sultan asked where Swartzkopf's helicopter was and demanded that he be allowed to taxi alongside the US helicopter. This held up the meeting with the Iraqi delegation, but Bin Laden had made his point.

Another example of Bin Sultan's ego was his denial that Saudi Arabia could be hornswoggled into war by fake pictures or by the act of a British woman. Maybe it was the fact that Thatcher is a woman that led him to deny that she had influenced the kings decision.