Four months before the war began, Powell briefs President George H.W. Bush, second from left, and his advisors on the op- tions available to deal with Iraq: sanctions or war.

the U.S. available but a signifi cant force in Germany. We were going to fi ght a war we had prepared for decades but without mountains or trees. All of the tactics, equipment, procedures, and doctrine, all the training and leadership we had re- hearsed to deal with the Soviet army invading West Germany, would now go to the Persian Gulf. In those fi rst days after Iraq

invaded Kuwait, we had to under- stand what we might have to do. It’s been reported we had debates within the administration. That’s not unreasonable. My position was: Mr. President, tell us what are you prepared to do, and we’ll show you how we’ll do it. General Schwarzkopf and I and some of his people had laid out plans, fi rst to defend Saudi Arabia and, if we needed, to go on the of- fense. If the Iraqis did not leave Ku-

PHOTO: SUSAN BIDDLE/WHITE HOUSE

wait in response to U.N. sanctions and all the diplomatic and econom- ic pressure applied, our planning was to make them leave, plus any additional missions the president might assign. That fi rst weekend, briefi ng the

president, we even gave him an es- timated cost. It was almost exactly what the cost of the operation turned out to be, six months later.

How was the rest of the world responding? One of the biggest successes came on the president’s decision to pull the entire international community to our side: the Russians, the United Nations, Congress, everybody. Only Jordan and the Palestinians opposed what we were doing. We were even able to get a Syrian division and an Egyptian division to be part of Gen- eral Schwarzkopf’s force.

But you asked about shortcom-

ings. We pretty much had everything we needed except enough transport to move our force around in theater. We managed to do that by borrow- ing from the Egyptians hundreds of trucks and tank carriers that they had purchased from the Soviet Union over the years. So it really was a coalition eff ort.

What about airlift and sealift of forces, equipment, and supplies? By late fall, the president had agreed with our recommendation to double the size of the U.S. force to liberate Kuwait, from 250,000 to 500,000. We activated the Civil Reserve Air Fleet [CRAF], though everybody was worried about the impact on package transport during the Christmas season. Well, this was a war; we’d worry about the Christ- mas season later.

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