U.S. General Says U.N. Move May Jolt Iraqis

The commander of American forces in the Persian Gulf said Wednesday that a United Nations ultimatum threatening force against Iraq could help undermine the morale of the Iraqi military and that he hopes to be prepared to launch an offensive as early as Jan. 15.

“When that day comes and passes, then every day after that, tensions in Iraq should greatly increase,” the commander, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, said in an interview. Asked whether the ultimatum makes war more likely, the general said that it would “tend to up the ante.”

“If I was an Iraqi general out there, up until now I could have maybe convinced myself that maybe this thing could drag on forever,” the four-star general said. “If an ultimatum comes out right now, I don’t think I can convince myself any more.”

However, he said, he wants more troops in place before taking the offensive. Since there are tremendous complications in accomplishing the buildup, he said that he could not give a “date certain” as to when he would feel confident that the troops are ready for any option war might bring.

“I’d rather not worry about the resolution. You see, the nice thing about the resolution is it doesn’t say you have to execute the option on that particular day,” he said.

At the same time, amid new urging from some quarters that the United States refrain from military action and seek instead to wait Iraq out, Schwarzkopf warned: “I don’t think we have an indefinite amount of time.”

He said that the weather and Arab tolerance for a massive U.S. presence in the region, particularly during holy days, are important considerations. However, he added that these considerations have been somewhat “overplayed” and that the window for action is “more flexible” than portrayed by some.

“Do we want the troops sitting out in the sun for another complete summer?” he asked. “But don’t get me wrong. If that somehow gave us some guarantee that we wouldn’t go to war . . . , if the alternative to dying is sitting out in the sun for another summer, then that’s not a bad alternative.”

He said that the entire coalition arrayed against Iraq must consider a series of difficult questions.

“Will the sanctions bring about the desired outcome? And if the answer to that is no, then the next question is, OK, is the desired outcome worth going to war over? And then if the answer to that is yes, then you go to war.”

The 56-year-old general, who saw combat in two tours in Vietnam and one in Grenada, described these as “knotty questions.” But as domestic debate sparks new questioning about American operations here, Schwarzkopf said that he is troubled by the prospect of declining public support.

“It bothers me,” the general said, “because I know it will bother my troops.”

With support for a possible offensive against Iraq not yet clear even among U.S. allies here, Schwarzkopf also said he is “concerned” that some nations will refuse to join in an attack. But, he said confidently, “those we’ll need to have with us will be with us.”

The general, wearing combat fatigues and a watch on either wrist--one set permanently to Washington time--appeared relaxed and rested in the course of the 70-minute interview. Conducted in the conference room of a Saudi government building that serves as his headquarters, it was interrupted twice as loudspeakers blared a Muslim call to prayer.

Sipping ice water as he spoke, the commander, who arrived in Saudi Arabia in late August and heads a 240,000-member U.S. force that is to nearly double in size soon, stressed repeatedly that he remains reluctant to see the crisis end in war.

“I have very vivid memories of the men under my (previous) command,” the general said. “I have very vivid memories of visiting them in hospitals, and very vivid memories of watching them die.

“I’m not one to go rushing into battle,” Schwarzkopf said. “I’m not a Gen. Custer.”

But he also left no doubt that if war is to come, he would favor an all-out offensive focused “on the destruction of the enemy’s military forces” to seek victory “as fast as I possibly can.”

“I guess I do become a Gen. Patton,” the general said, telling of the hard-charging American commander who during the final months of World War II urged his commanders eastward across Europe by warning that “every day quicker we get to the Rhine is one day less we lose soldiers’ lives.”

A principal purpose of the massive reinforcements now on the way to Saudi Arabia, Schwarzkopf said, is to provide the United States with overwhelming force that would minimize casualties in case of war.

“By holding back,” he said, “what we are doing in my mind is endangering our own forces and causing more losses on our side.”

In granting his first extended interview in nearly a month, the burly general at times leaned back in an upholstered chair to stretch his 6-foot-3-inch frame, crossing his enormous desert-boot-clad feet in front of him.

With the main body of new U.S. troops weeks away from arriving in Saudi Arabia, Schwarzkopf described current operations as a “strategic pause” as the United States begins to build its offensive capabilities.

Not until the reinforcements are in place “to provide every option available that I would like to have to be assured of the outcome,” the general said, would he be “fully ready” to mount an attack against Iraq.

He said he hopes those forces will be in fighting position by mid-January. Today, the U.N. Security Council is expected to set a Jan. 15 deadline after which it would back the use of force against Iraq if that nation has not voluntarily withdrawn from Kuwait. But Schwarzkopf left open the possibility that it could be longer before the United States is prepared to attack.

In welcoming the U.N. resolution, Schwarzkopf said that he believes it will serve an immediate military purpose in causing Iraqi commanders and civilians to take seriously the prospect of conflict for perhaps the first time.

“I really think that up until this time, not only (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein but his entire military chain of command and certainly the people of Iraq felt that there was a pretty good chance that we were not really . . . committed to going to war,” the general said.

An ultimatum from the Security Council, he said, “should send a very clear signal to the Iraqi people, the Iraqi military and the Iraqi leadership that the world is committed, if it has to come to that, to fighting.”

Citing a 19th-Century French military writer, Charles Ardan du Picq, who wrote that in warfare moral factors outweigh physical ones “as 10 is to one,” Schwarzkopf said that the most important effect of the U.N. ultimatum may be the message it sends to Iraqi soldiers.

“Psychologically, at least, the pressure’s going to be greater on the military,” Schwarzkopf said. “And psychologically, that should affect them.”

Nevertheless, the American commander said that whether Iraq accedes to the ultimatum depends solely on the unpredictable calculus of Saddam Hussein.

Drawing a comparison between Hussein and the colony of Jews who in AD 73 committed mass suicide inside their fortress of Masada rather than submit to a besieging Roman army, the American general asked:

“Is this a case where he as an individual would rather sacrifice his nation rather than be perceived in the eyes of the world or of the Arabs as having backed down?” That, he added, is “the $64,000 question.” And, he declared, after months of what he called intensive study of his adversary: “I think it’s a flip of the coin myself.”

Schwarzkopf acknowledged that one effect of the U.N. ultimatum is essentially to guarantee that the United States would not launch an attack on Iraq before the deadline expires. But he played down that fact, saying that modern communications may already have eliminated the prospect of “strategic surprise” in warfare.

“I don’t know . . . if World War II was being fought now, I don’t know whether Eisenhower would have gotten away with confusing the Germans as to where he was going to come across the beaches” of France in June, 1944, the American commander said. “I think they would have figured out by now that it would be Normandy.”

In looking ahead to a possible U.S. offensive, Schwarzkopf expressed skepticism about scenarios that envision success based on air power alone and said that he sees no alternative to an attack that would include ground forces.

“It’s an old military adage that you really can’t claim victory until you’ve got the infantryman’s or the Marine’s feet on the ground on the objective,” the general said.

Since the objective is the unconditional withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait, he said, then “somebody’s feet have to be in Kuwait other than the Iraqis’.”

Referring to the fortifications the Iraqi forces have spent much of the past three months erecting inside Kuwait’s borders, he said that “the Iranians took terrible casualties” trying to surmount such defenses. But while he said he did not dismiss the fortifications, he suggested that they are surmountable.

Asked whether he envisions a short war, Schwarzkopf said: “I am quite confident that it will not be a long war. But don’t ask me to give you days, weeks, months, because I can’t.

Excerpts from the interview with Gen. Schwarzkopf. B7

U.N. ACTION TODAY: Council approval of a use-of-force plan is expected. A12