Cheney and Bush Dispute Schwarzkopf on War’s End

In the first sign of top-level military discord in Operation Desert Storm, the Bush Administration on Wednesday sharply denied assertions by Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf that he had recommended continuing the allied attack until Saddam Hussein’s forces were annihilated.

The decision to stop firing before the Iraqi forces were destroyed “was coordinated with and concurred in by the commander in the field, Gen. Schwarzkopf,” Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said in a statement. Schwarzkopf, he said, “raised no objection” to halting the war.

President Bush, in comments to reporters, said that all of his top military advisers, including Schwarzkopf, were in “total agreement” that the time had come to halt hostilities against Hussein’s decimated forces in Kuwait and southern Iraq.

The Administration comments represent a stinging retort to Schwarzkopf, the outspoken commander who has assumed almost folk-hero status in the wake of the allies’ resounding victory in the Persian Gulf War.

It remained unclear, however, whether Schwarzkopf actually expressed reservations, and to whom, about allowing a significant remnant of Iraq’s forces to escape destruction.

Concern has mounted in recent days about the sizable Iraqi military force that escaped Kuwait and now appears to be crushing rebellions against Hussein’s government by Kurds in northern Iraq and Shiite Muslims in the south.

The extraordinary rebuke of a senior military officer came in response to a television interview in which Schwarzkopf said he had recommended that allied forces “continue the march” to destroy Iraqi military units that had been enveloped by allied forces.

“Frankly, my recommendation had been . . . to continue the march,” Schwarzkopf said in the interview, which aired on public television Wednesday night. “We had them in a rout, and we could have continued to, you know, (wreak) great destruction upon them. We could have completely closed the door and made it in fact a battle of annihilation.”

The decision to halt allied offensive operations after 100 hours of ground combat apparently allowed Iraq to salvage many of the weapons, including advanced tanks and armored personnel carriers, now being used to quell the resistance.

Schwarzkopf told interviewer David Frost that Bush’s decision “did leave some escape routes open for them to get back out.” The order to stop the fighting at that point is “one of those ones that historians are going to second-guess . . . forever,” he said. “Why didn’t we go for one more day vs. why did we stop when we did, when we had them completely routed?”

While Schwarzkopf called the President’s decision to halt the fighting “very humane and very courageous,” he stated clearly that the decision had gone against his own advice.

Bush moved quickly to try to quell the controversy, citing an apparent consensus on ending the allied offensive among the President, Schwarzkopf, Cheney and Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“I don’t think there’s any difference between any of us--me, Cheney, Powell or Schwarzkopf,” Bush told reporters after completing a routine physical examination. “I have such high regard for Gen. Schwarzkopf that I’ll let him explain what he said. All I’m talking about is the facts.”

Schwarzkopf’s headquarters in Riyadh had no comment on the apparent dispute.

Cheney recalled the decision to end hostilities differently.

“The President and I spoke personally with Gen. Schwarzkopf . . . to congratulate him on the outstanding success of the campaign. He raised no objection to terminating hostilities,” the defense secretary said in a statement released by the Pentagon.

“The question was whether to continue operations with the attendant killing and destruction beyond what was required to achieve our objectives,” Cheney said. “Gen. Schwarzkopf and Gen. Powell were consulted and made the recommendation to me and to the President that we had achieved our military objectives and agreed that it was time to end the campaign.”

Cheney’s pique was echoed by White House officials. One official who was in the Oval Office when the temporary cease-fire was discussed said that Bush asked Powell to telephone Schwarzkopf in the midst of the deliberation to get “Norm’s” view.

According to the official, Powell spoke with the general, and, hanging up, turned to the others in the office and declared: “Norm says he can handle it.”

A senior Pentagon official said that the apparent contradiction between Schwarzkopf’s statement and the Administration’s version of events was so obvious that Cheney was moved to release the statement “to set the record straight.”

“I think he may have misspoken,” the Pentagon official said of Schwarzkopf. “He’s just not used to doing a lot of television. It’s all very recent for him.”

This marks the third time that Cheney has publicly rebuked a senior military official during his two years in office. In March, 1989, Cheney chastised Gen. Larry D. Welch, then chief of staff of the Air Force, for brokering an agreement on nuclear missiles directly with lawmakers. Last year, he fired Welch’s successor, Gen. Michael J. Dugan, for discussing the details of prospective air operations in the Persian Gulf.

The Administration appeared eager to put the squabble behind it without further embarrassment to Schwarzkopf, who has been portrayed widely as a military hero of historic proportions.

“I have full confidence in Gen. Schwarzkopf,” Bush said. “But all I know is that there was total agreement in terms of when this war should end. And it’s total and it is not even questionable.”

Times staff writer James Gerstenzang contributed to this report.

A DISAGREEMENT OVER ORDERS

Remarks by Army Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf on a television interview that he was ordered to halt the allied offensive prematurely were rebutted by Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. The key quotes:

Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf

“Frankly, my recommendation (to Bush) had been, you know, continue the march. I mean, we had them in a rout and we could have continued to reap great destruction on them. We could have completely closed the door and made it a battle of annihilation. And the President made the decision that we should stop at a given time, at a given place that did leave some escape routes open for them to get back out, and I think it was a very humane decision and a very courageous decision on his part.”

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney

“General Schwarzkopf and General Powell were consulted and made the recommendation to me and to the President that we had achieved our military objectives and agreed that it was time to end the campaign. The President and I spoke personally with General Schwarzkopf that evening to congratulate him on the outstanding success of the campaign. He raised no objection to terminating hostilities.”