The official reason for the public execution of General Dugan was his revelation of secrets, and it is true, he was guilty of that. However, a case can be made that his real crime was insensitivity to the role of the CINC. It was Norman Schwarzkopf’s responsibility, not Mike Dugan’s, to describe how the air campaign in the Gulf Theater would be conducted. Dugan failed to appreciate that. Even his trip to Saudi Arabia was of doubtful wisdom from the point of view of his command responsibility. Yes, he was Chief of Staff of the Air Force; but he was also out of the direct command loop of CENTCOM.

Chuck Horner says in summary:

I can tell you that while I love Mike Dugan as a close friend, I was hurt by his interview. First, even though both of us hate ego people (and granting that I am one myself), I felt he was on an ego trip. Second, I felt he had betrayed the trust I had put in him when I’d persuaded Schwarzkopf to let us brief him. But then, third, after I got my ruffled feathers back in place, I felt sorry for Dugan. I was surprised he didn’t act smarter. Why not? I believe he had been suckered in by his own enthusiasm and the euphoria and false expectations you get when you become a high muckety-muck, like the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, with everyone congratulating you and telling you how smart you are and how pretty. The line between self-confidence and inflated ego is very fine, and generals too easily slip over to the inflated side of the line. I know I’ve done that, and it is likely that Mike Dugan did this time, and paid for it.

BRIEFINGS IN WASHINGTON

Even as Buster Glosson and his Black Hole team were pounding out the air campaign, a select group of Army planners had been developing a ground campaign. The team, called the Jedi Knights, was led by Lieutenant Colonel Joe Purvis from the Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth. The Jedi Knights had developed a ground campaign plan that called for a single U.S. Army Corps, U.S. Marine Corps, British, and Islamic force attack into Kuwait.

Bear in mind that they were looking to attack an army twice the size of theirs—half a million men, including the elite Republican Guards, with their up-to-date Soviet armor and equipment—and that the Iraqis had been busily fortifying the Saudi-Kuwait border with artillery, mines, trenches, barbed wire, fire ditches (ditches that would be filled with oil and then ignited), and other obstacles to invasion.