New History Pans Schwarzkopf

In a new history of the Persian Gulf War that redraws the public portrait of its field commander, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf is described by key subordinates as a man of profane and dysfunctional rages who turned his headquarters into “a dispirited bunker” and had little to do with the crucial air campaign against Iraq.

Former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, the book says, was offended enough by Schwarzkopf’s “imperial trappings” and fits of fury that he considered firing him as commander of allied forces in the months before the war. Instead, the book says, he dispatched a three-star general as Schwarzkopf’s deputy to be a buffer for the staff and “sweep up the CINC’s (commander in chief’s) broken crockery.”

The book describes numerous vivid scenes in which the new deputy, Army Lt. Gen. Calvin A.H. Waller, tried to calm Schwarzkopf with corny jokes and shield the cowed staff.

In “Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War,” author Rick Atkinson of the Washington Post discloses scores of new details about the planning and conduct of the war fought in January and February, 1991, and the diplomatic struggles that led up to it. Houghton Mifflin plans to publish the book in October.