By October 6, Purvis’s planners had developed several options. The most desirable of these involved an enveloping flank attack to the west of the Iraq-Kuwait border (which lay along the Wadi al Batin, the dry riverbed that slanted north and east from the southwest corner of Kuwait). However, there were initial problems with this choice (which, of course, was the plan that was eventually adopted): Primarily, it was thought that not enough forces were available to effect the envelopment, keep the pressure on Iraqi forces along the Saudi-Kuwait border, and maintain a sufficient reserve. Army doctrine requires certain force ratios—that is, friendly-to-enemy ratios; and the forces then available to CENTCOM didn’t satisfy these numbers. Secondarily, no one knew whether the desert west of Kuwait could support armor. How hard was the ground? No one knew for sure.

What options were then open to Schwarzkopf? None of his other choices was appealing. The best of them seemed to be to focus his attack into the western sector of Kuwait, drive north to the heights near Mutlaa Pass (west of Kuwait City), and hope that counterattacking Republican Guards could be taken out by air. And if that somehow didn’t go as planned? . . . Well, they’d improvise.

Predictably, Schwarzkopf was set against this. That he never liked attacking into the heart of Iraqi defenses was always clear to Chuck Horner; that he liked armor was also clear: the lightly armored XVIIIth Airborne Corps was never his favorite attacking force against armor. And in fact, he didn’t have far to look: he had the “Left Hook”—the envelopment west of the Wadi. For that, however, he would need another heavy corps. How was he going to get it? He would present what he had to President Bush, Secretary Cheney, and General Powell—with all of its limitations. When they saw how risky this was, they would realize he needed more, and they would give him the extra corps he required for the Left Hook.

In hindsight, we now know that the Army planners never sufficiently took into account the ultimate effect of the air campaign on the Iraqi Army, though in all fairness, no one—not even the most optimistic airpower advocate—anticipated how seriously air attacks would damage the Iraqi Army prior to the ground campaign. If this success had been taken into account, the Left Hook would have been executable with pre-VIIth Corps Coalition forces.

★ On October 9, Buster Glosson and a team from CENTCOM left for Washington to brief the air campaign to General Powell (on October 10) and to the President and his chief advisers (on October 11). Heading the team was Major General Bob Johnston, the CENTCOM chief of staff. The other Army briefer was Lieutenant Colonel Joe Purvis.

Before the briefers left Riyadh, Schwarzkopf made it forcefully clear to Johnston that he was not recommending any of the ground schemes Purvis was going to brief. His aim was to generate the question “What do you need to develop an acceptable ground campaign?” With the expected answer being “A heavy corps.”