“Another thing—get the word out—the people at KKMC, and to a lesser extent at Dhahran and Riyadh, need to be prepared to respond to a chemical attack, because that’s one of the tricks left in his bag. I don’t know whether he can do it or not. I don’t think he can; but we can never allow him to have the initiative. So anything he does, we have to be able to counter and then just stick it right up his nose. I think the team that worked the Khafji problem last night [Colonel Joe Bob Phillips and his team from Nellis AFB] did a magnificent job.

“We are in the work phase of the war now. Shooting down the MiGs is pretty much over with; all the glorious laser-guided bombs and telephone exchanges, that’s all history. Now it’s digging him out of the ground and stomping his military forces in the field into the dirt. There is no turning back for him. The battle of Khafji proved that. So let’s just get on with it; and let’s be home before Ramadan, so the people in this country can celebrate their holy days without a bunch of Americans, French, Italians, Brits, and Canadians hanging around.”

To which Lt. General Behery added “and Iraqis,” as the meeting broke up.

★ Tom Clancy resumes the story.

BRIDGES

After the battle of Khafji, an even greater emphasis was put on efforts to isolate the battlefield by shutting down the transportation system. Iraq had an excellent road system, with more than 50,000 military trucks and nearly 200,000 commercial vehicles capable of hauling supplies to the army of occupation in the KTO. Since it would clearly take a very long time to shut down transportation by attacking individual vehicles (there were simply too many of them), Horner and his planners had to try something else. They’d hit the roads and bridges.

Fortunately for Coalition planners, the major road and railroad lines paralleled the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers south of the Iraqi capital, and major road and rail bridges could be found at key cities along each route. For example, five major roads and the railroad to Basra all converged and crossed various waterways at the town of An Nasiriyah in southern Iraq.

The problem for planners was that finding suitable roads to target grew harder as one got closer to the KTO. Since craters could be rapidly repaired or bypassed on roads south and west of Basra, bombing them had little effect. As a result, planners placed most of the targeting effort on crossings over waterways and rivers. In essence, it became a bridge-busting campaign.