By about 0815 to 0830 the meeting is over, and the night shift heads out. ★ 0830 Down the street, the CENTCOM staff is coming up to speed, which means that the phones will occasionally ring with their questions. Though I leave these matters to the TACC directors or my generals, I do want to know what questions are being asked, as the subject will likely come up in the CINC evening meeting, which means I have to be on top of it.

This is also a good time to chat with the national leaders, since they tend to leave during the day to visit their forces, or perhaps to escort some bigwig from their home country or grab a nap.

Tom Olsen has gone to bed. He is tireless, but getting on in years, and the night shift is a strain for him.

★ 0900 I go for a cup of coffee at the snack bar just off the right-hand side of the TACC toward the rear, over by airspace management. The cookies are abundant, and I take too many for my own good. The American people have kept us in goodies at a staggering rate. No wonder morale is so high. We know that our people at home are pulling for us and proud of us . . . so unlike Vietnam, so different.

I take my coffee and chat with the AWACS and Patriot teams, then pass by the Scud warning lady (since it’s daytime, she won’t have anything to do and can safely read her mystery or romance novels), the airspace management team, the duty officers on my left, the admin section on my right, and out the rear door. On good days, I make it without spilling any coffee.

Now I stroll down the hall past the ATO room, which is going full speed in mass confusion, and into the Black Hole for the daily strategy meeting. I will take what comes out of this to Schwarzkopf that night. Inside the Black Hole, Glosson, Tolin, and Deptula are drinking coffee and arguing about how the war is going and what we ought to do next. Though doctrine writers wax eloquently about this level of strategic thinking, as always it is coming down to people who don’t have a clear understanding of what exactly needs to be done yet are far from blind, since they have intelligence not available to others, etc.

For my part, during the run-up to the war, I had read all I could about Saddam and the history and culture of Iraq. Dick Hallion, the USAF historian, had flooded my office with books on these subjects, which I’d devoured, sometimes reading more than one a day. It’s funny how focused you get when final exams are approaching. This is the final exam of my military career.