Operation Desert Sham, the made-for-TV war

By ERIC MARGOLIS -- Toronto Sun
  Ten years have passed since Iraq invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990. Yet the origins, conduct and end of the ensuing Gulf
war - a bizarre conflict former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski aptly termed "over-personalized,
over-emotionalized and over-militarized" - remain shrouded in mystery and distorted by propaganda.

 At last week's Republican convention, former president George Bush, Gen. Colin Powell and former secretary of defence
Dick Cheney received cheers for their Gulf war victory over Iraq, a nation of 22 million people. But among all the enigmas
of this oil war, the most fascinating question remains: was there really a ground war at all, or was the 100-hour Operation
Desert Storm a made-for-TV fictional drama?

 My heretical view from day one was that there was no ground war to speak of. The air war was very real: the U.S.-led
coalition plastered Iraq for a month with 250,000 bombs and missiles, wrecking its military and civilian infrastructure.

 The precision air attacks killed some 3,000 Iraqi civilians. The Pentagon claimed 20,000 Iraqi soldiers died. However, a
rogue Defence Intelligence Agency analyst asserted Iraq's actual military losses were only a few hundred, and the actual
number of armoured vehicles destroyed was under 300, not 2,500-plus as claimed by the Pentagon.

 This is because when the long-awaited ground invasion was launched on Feb. 23, 1991, the Iraqis had already largely
pulled out of Kuwait. Before the attack began, I went on TV and showed on a large map precisely how the coalition would
outflank Iraqi forces in Kuwait by a wide turning movement from the Saudi border to the Euphrates Valley. My predictions
were accurate. Not because I was clairvoyant, but because Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf's strategy was obviously dictated
by the terrain and Iraqi deployments.

 Saddam Hussein, for all his military blundering, was also aware his troops in Kuwait were vulnerable to being outflanked
and destroyed. Two days before the ground offensive began, Saddam withdrew his best units - six armoured and
mechanized divisions of Republican Guards - from Kuwait. I have seen the radar imagery from U.S. JSTARS surveillance
aircraft showing every road from Kuwait into southern Iraq jammed with Iraqi armour, vehicles and guns.

 This headlong retreat of Saddam's crack troops appears to have been largely unopposed by the allied air forces.
Otherwise, the withdrawing Iraqi forces, with ineffectual anti-aircraft defences and no air cover, would have been totally
destroyed.

 I'm convinced President Bush allowed the Republican Guard to escape from Kuwait virtually intact. How else can one
explain that after the "total victory" in Kuwait, the six full-strength Iraqi divisions originally stationed there were fully combat
capable days later in Iraq, and able to crush rebellions by both Shias in the south and Kurds in the north?

 What about TV pictures of eagerly surrendering Iraqi soldiers and the notorious "highway of death" north of Kuwait City,
littered with hundreds of burning Iraqi vehicles?

 Saddam left thousands of militiamen in Kuwait, a poorly trained, poorly-armed rabble of mainly anti-Saddam Shia
southerners who had been press-ganged into the army and spent their time looting Kuwait. When U.S. and British troops
stormed into Kuwait, these "bashi-bazouks" - the old Ottoman term for mobs of cannon-fodder - surrendered in droves.
The biggest group of fleeing looters was caught by the U.S. warplanes on the "highway of death" and exterminated.

 There were a few sharp skirmishes between Saddam's retreating Republican Guard and advancing U.S. forces, but no real
sustained combat. The only exception was the attack by the U.S. 24th Infantry Division on Iraq troops two days after the
cease fire which, according to investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, writing in The New Yorker, was an unprovoked
massacre. My information supports Hersh's claims.

 Bush and his team concluded that if Iraq's Republican Guard were destroyed, Saddam would fall. This, in turn, would lead
to Iraq's disintegration and the likely occupation of its oil-rich, Shia-dominated south by Iran.

 GUERILLA WAR

 Saddam had formerly been a faithful U.S. ally in the 1980 war against Iran. Better a gelded Saddam, Bush reasoned, than
revolutionary Iran. Besides, if U.S. troops marched on Baghdad, they would end up mired in a long guerrilla war inside Iraq.
Israel's defeat by Hezbollah guerrillas after 18 years of bloody fighting in Lebanon showed how wise Bush was not to
invade.

 I'm convinced the U.S. and Iraq secretly reached a French-brokered deal. Iraq pulled out of Kuwait and declared victory.
Saddam thus survived, though caged up inside Iraq. The U.S. staged a grand but largely bloodless invasion of Kuwait - after
the Iraqi pullout - proclaiming a titanic military victory second only to World War II. Pesky reporters were banned. Only 79
U.S. combat deaths (mostly from friendly fire), no nasty occupation of Iraq, no guerrilla fighting. Just a perfect little war, the
first ever made-for-TV movie produced by the Pentagon.

 The cruel, postwar U.S.-British embargo of Iraq has led, says the UN, to the death of 500,000 Iraqi children. The embargo
has also forced Americans to pay more for gasoline because Iraq is only allowed to export a trickle of oil. The U.S. bombs
Iraq almost daily, at a cost of $4 billion annually. Wicked Saddam, the man we love to hate, remains firmly in power.

 Contributing Foreign Editor Margolis appears Sundays.