The Iraqi IIId Corps commander summed it up another way. When he saw what was happening to his forces in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, he called Saddam and asked for permission to break off the attack on Al-Khafji and begin a withdrawal.

“No, continue the attack,” Saddam replied. “I want you to make this the mother of all battles!”

To which the IIId Corps Commander replied, “Sir, the mother is killing her children,” and hung up. He then ordered his remaining forces to withdraw.

And this is what I said at the January 31 1700 meeting in the TACC:

“The effort last night went very well. Though there was a lot of confusion, you have to live with that. Still, there’s no doubt about it, the Saudis inflicted a tremendous defeat on Saddam at Khafji. The word I got was they captured 200 [it was actually 463] and killed over 10 [actually 32], and I think the Saudis lost one guy [actually 18 KIA and 32 WIA]. That’s a very important victory.

“Unfortunately, our press will make it look like we somehow bungled it; but that’s all right.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen tonight. People are concerned about another attack in the Khafji area. It is probably likely. We also have to beware of another attack in the border area. That could be a disaster.

“The Scuds continue to be a problem, and weather is going to complicate the search tonight. But we’ll work on that.

“We’re not getting a lot of feedback on the Republican Guard. But the only reason I could think of for him to do the attacks at Khafji and in the Marine sector was because he felt a compulsion to force the action. He feels that we are hurting him, and that he’s got to step up the pace or the train is going to leave the station, and he’s not going to be on board. Of course we would like to see that happen. We would like to destroy him at our own pace; but he may not allow us to do that. So we have got to be prepared to manage chaos, we’ve got to keep the units informed, and we have got to be able to react without jerking the flying units around too much. It’s going to be a lot of pain for everybody if we change or divert flights and we get into changing ordnances and all that. We will do our best to keep that from happening. But you’ve got to convey to the units down in the field that this could invoke some very quiet changes this evening. We could have—like Khafji—a lot of serious battles go on that we don’t anticipate right now.