The opening moments of the war demonstrated that we were able to get to our targets and destroy them and for the most part return safely. We had some air-to-air kills, and probably no losses to enemy fighters on our side. That boded well. Though I expected good results over time, I really didn’t expect such good results so soon. Even if we had lost two or three aircraft, I would have marked the opening night as a success.

Still, I knew we were in for a long haul. We had trained for a fifteen-round fight, and I figured it would go the full fifteen—or, as I had told Secretary Cheney, six weeks. So I didn’t read too much into our early success.

★ Like a fool, I stayed in the TACC, fascinated by the unfolding events, and neglecting sleep. I had admonished all the others to rest so they could hold up under the long haul, but neglected to follow my own orders. I was operating on caffeine and adrenaline, the “breakfast of champions” for a fighter pilot.

Meanwhile, the F-117s and F-111s were tearing Iraqi command and control to pieces. The strikes against key airfields and munitions production facilities were going as planned. The B-52s, A-10s, F-16s, Jaguars, FA-18s, and AV-8s were hard at work on the Iraqi Army deployed in the desert.

When we bombed the Iraqi Army with B-52s, we were primarily using them for effect. And they had quite an effect. One POW was asked which aircraft he feared the most, and he said, “The B-52.” He was then asked to describe the experience. To which he replied, “I was never bombed by a B-52; but I visited a friend who had been, and I saw and heard what it was like, and so I feared the B-52 more than anything else.”

After the war, another Iraqi was asked why he had surrendered so quickly. “It was the bombs,” he said, pointing to pictures of B-52s and A-10s. “It was the bombs.”

Little did he realize that he had most likely survived because we had targeted those aircraft to minimize Iraqi deaths. We did that because it was the right thing to do, and because we wanted to exploit the already low morale of the Iraqi soldier in his unholy occupation of a Muslim neighbor. If I had wanted to kill Iraqi soldiers, we could have loaded the B-52 “buffs” with wall-to-wall antipersonnel munitions; and, today, unexploded submunitions (ready to detonate if disturbed) would probably have left Kuwait and southern Iraq uninhabitable.

What we dropped were regular bombs. They made a lot of noise and tore up the desert for miles; and if one hit a bunker, the folks inside died. That couldn’t be called an accident, but if by some miracle we had hit no Iraqi soldiers, and they had all surrendered without fighting, I would not have been unhappy.