Nineteen years ago, one of the most diabolical slaughters in
war history occurred in Iraq. Despite the assurances of the
Bush I regime that retreating Iraqi soldiers would not be
attacked, just the opposite happened. Iraqi soldiers and
civilians were massacred after Saddam Hussein called for
their exit of Kuwait.
More than 100,000
Iraqi soldiers were killed in five weeks, the majority
during the 100-hour ground war. You may say, "This is war
and people get killed." That’s true, but tens of thousands
of Iraqi soldiers were killed by illegal weapons in a most
brutal manner that contradicted international laws that
apply to war.
When then Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell, was
asked about the number of deaths the Iraqi military
suffered, he said, "I don’t have a clue and I don’t plan to
undertake any real effort to find out." This is the same man
who stated several months after Desert Storm that his goal
was to "make the world scared to death of the United
States."
We all know how
Powell as Secretary of State lied to the world about Iraq in
2002 and 2003, yet few remember his affinity for killing
during the Gulf War. He was just as vicious and untruthful
in 1991 as he was in the early part of the 21st
century.
Prior to the start
of the ground phase, many countries were trying to dissuade
the U.S. from attacking. Moscow came up with a peace plan
that Bush called "a cruel hoax." Bush kept saying that the
only objective was for Iraqi troops to leave Kuwait. When
one reporter asked him how the Iraqis could retreat while
they were still being heavily bombed, Bush answered, "That’s
for them to find out."
On February 22,
1991, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater played his own
"cruel hoax." He stated, "The United States and its
coalition partners reiterate that their forces will not
attack retreating Iraqi forces."
Despite all the efforts to bring a peaceful conclusion, none
was accepted by the U.S. Saddam Hussein ordered a retreat of
Iraqi troops from Kuwait on February 25, 1991. This order,
with Fitzwater’s earlier statement, appeared to be the
beginning of the end of violence in Kuwait and Iraq.
Bush looked at it
another way. He now had his chance to slaughter tens of
thousands of defenseless soldiers and one of the most
barbaric massacres in history began.
On February 25,
1991, at a junction of roads leading from Kuwait City, U.S.
Marine aircraft, flying close support for ground troops,
arrived and saw a five-vehicle-wide stream moving on the
highway out of Kuwait City. The vehicles were occupied by
Iraqi military personnel (mostly unarmed) and civilians of
many nationalities.
The Marines allowed
the vehicles to get out of the city and then laid down an
aerial barrage of anti-armor mines across the road, making
it impossible for the vehicles to move ahead. There were
miles of vehicles and thousands of passengers who were not
able to move. Kill zones were assigned to groups of eight
aircraft sent into the target area every 15 minutes.
According to Major General Royal N. Moore, commander of the
Marine Air Wing 3, "It was like a turkey shoot until the
weather turned sour."
By the morning of
February 26, the 2nd Marine Division and its
augmenting armored brigade (the Tiger brigade) of the Army’s
2nd Armored Division, arrived on the scene. Other
ground division followed. Now, the slaughter on what has
become to be known as "The Highway of Death" began in
earnest.
U.S. troops
observed thousands of Iraqis trying to escape up the
highway. They attacked the defenseless soldiers from the
high ground, cutting to shreds vehicles and people trapped
in a miles-long traffic jam. Allied jets repeatedly pounded
the blocked vehicles. Schwarzkopf’s orders were "not to let
anybody or anything out of Kuwait City."
On February 27, the
first words hit the outside world about this carnage,
however, it still would be a few more weeks until
photographs of the destruction made their way to the public,
and then only a few were seen. A pool reporter with the 2nd
Armored Division wrote:
As we drove
slowly through the wreckage, our armored personnel
carrier’s tracks splashed through great pools of
bloody water. We passed dead soldiers lying, as if
resting, without a mark on them. We found others cut
up so badly; a pair of legs in its trousers would be
50 yards from the top half of the body. Four
soldiers had died under a truck where they sought
protection.
The Iraqi retreat
extended north of Jahra, where the two main roads going into
Iraq split at al-Mutlaa. Because the main road was so
jammed, Iraqi troops were being diverted along a coastal
route. These soldiers suffered the same fate as those on the
Highway of Death. According to a U.S. Army officer on the
scene (the coastal road):
There was
nothing but shit strewn everywhere, five to seven
miles of just solid bombed-out vehicles. The Air
Force had been given the word to work over the
entire area, to find anything that moved and take it
out.
Surrendering Iraqi
troops were also slaughtered. According to a media pool
report of February 27:
One Navy
pilot, who asked not to be identified, said Iraqis
have affixed white flags to their tanks and are
riding with turrets open, scanning the skies with
their binoculars. The flier said that under allied
rules of engagement, pilots were still bombing tanks
unless soldiers abandoned the vehicles and left them
behind.
The first British
pilots to arrive at the scenes of slaughter returned to
their base. They protested taking part in attacking
defenseless soldiers, but, under threat of court martial,
they eventually took part in the massacre.
According to a
report by Greenpeace called On Impact:
Aboard the
U.S. aircraft carrier USS Ranger, air strikes
against Iraqi troops were being launched so
feverishly … that pilots said they took whatever
bombs happened to be closest to the flight deck. S-3
Viking anti-submarine patrol aircraft were brought
into the bombing campaign, carrying cluster bombs.
The number of attacking aircraft was so dense that
air traffic control had to divert planes to avoid
collisions.
On March 10, the
scenes at the coastal road were still horrendous. Reporter
Michael Kelly described them:
For a 50 or
60-mile stretch from just north of Jahra to the
Iraqi border, the road was littered with exploded
and roasted vehicles, charred and blown-up bodies …
I saw no bodies that had not belonged to men in
uniform. It was not always easy to ascertain this
because the force of the explosions and the heat of
the fires had blown most of the clothing off the
soldiers, and often too had cooked their remains
into wizened, mummified, charcoal-men.
General McPeak took
great pride in the slaughter. He said, "When enemy armies
are defeated, they retreat. It’s during this phase that the
true fruits of victory are achieved from combat, when the
enemy’s disorganized." Less than a week after the White
House spokesman assured the world that U.S. forces would not
attack a retreating Iraqi army, most of the army was
destroyed while it was retreating.
When the operation
was completed, Iraq was stuck with the bill. One of the
conditions of the cease-fire was that Iraq had to pay Kuwait
$50 billion in reparations for damage caused by the U.S.
When the oil-for-food program began, the first 15% of all
revenues taken in by Iraq went to Kuwait.
The most appalling
aspect of this end to Desert Storm was the bravado of the
U.S. government and the top military officers. They ordered
this unnecessary slaughter and took glee every time they
publicly spoke of it. Powell and McPeak gained the military
accolades that had diverted them a couple of decades earlier
in Vietnam.
In addition to the
Highway of Death carnage, an incident occurred that has
since been forgotten by most of the world. On the first two
days of the ground war (February 24 and 25, 1991), U.S.
troops, using tanks and earthmovers that had been
specially-fitted with plows, buried thousands of Iraqi
soldiers alive.
Three brigades of
the 1st Mechanized Infantry Division (the Big Red
One) used the tactic to destroy trenches and bunkers that
were defended by about 10,000 Iraqi soldiers. These
combatants were draftees, not seasoned troops such as the
Republican Guard.
The assault was
carefully planned and rehearsed. According to U.S.
participants, about 2,000 Iraqis surrendered and were not
buried. Most of the rest, about 8,000, were buried beneath
tons of sand — many trying to surrender. Captain Bernie
Williams was rewarded for his part in the burying with a
Silver Star. He said, "Once we went through there, other
than the ones who surrendered, there wasn’t anybody left."
According to a
senior Army official who, under anonymity, was questioned by
The Spotlight about the tactics, the use of
earthmovers is standard procedure in breaching obstacles and
minefields. The heavy equipment precedes armored and
infantry units to level barriers, then the vehicles can move
quickly through enemy defenses. The official stated that any
Iraqi troops who remained in their bunkers would have been
buried and killed. He added, "This is war. This isn’t a
pickup basketball game."
Colonel Anthony
Moreno, commander of the 2nd Brigade, said, "For
all I know, we could’ve killed thousands." A thinner line of
trenches on Moreno’s left flank was attacked by the 1st
Brigade, commanded by Colonel Lon Maggart. He estimated that
his troops alone buried about 650 Iraqis alive.
After the
cease-fire, in an interview with New York Newsday,
Maggart and Moreno came forward with some of the first
public testimony about the burying alive of Iraqi soldiers.
Prior to their interview, then Secretary of Defense, Dick
Cheney, never mentioned the atrocities, even when he
submitted a report to Congress just prior to the interviews.
The technique used
in burying the soldiers involved a pair of M1-A1 tanks with
plows shaped like giant teeth along each section of the
trench line. The tanks took up positions on either side of
the trenches. Bradley fighting vehicles and Vulcan armored
personnel carriers straddled the trench line and fired into
the Iraqi soldiers as the tanks covered them with piles of
sand.
According to
Moreno, "I came through right after the lead company. What
you saw was a bunch of buried trenches with peoples’ arms
and things sticking out of them." Maggart added, "I know
burying people alive sounds pretty nasty, but it would be
even nastier if we had to put our troops in the trenches and
clean them out."
The attack
contradicted U.S. Army doctrine, which calls for troops to
leave their armored vehicle to clean out trenches or to
bypass and isolate fortified positions. Moreno admitted that
the assault was not according to policy:
This was
not doctrine. My concept is to defeat the enemy with
your power and equipment. We’re going to have to
bludgeon them with every piece of equipment we’ve
got. I’m not going to sacrifice the lives of my
soldiers — it’s not cost-effective.
The most disturbing
aspect of the incident was the secrecy involved. When
Newsday broke the story, many were taken by surprise.
According to members of the U.S. House and Senate Armed
Forces Committees, the Pentagon had withheld details of the
assault from the committees. Senate Chairman, Sam Nunn, was
unaware of the assault and after he was notified, he stated,
"It sounds like another example of the horrors of war."
Quickly, the incident was forgotten.
The killing of
defenseless soldiers and civilians did not end with the
cease-fire. On the morning of March 2 (two days after the
cease-fire was announced), a convoy of Iraqi vehicles was
reported moving through the demarcation point of allied
operations on Highway 8 about 50 kilometers west of Basra.
According to a pool
reporter from the UPI, a platoon of the 24th
Infantry Division reported that the "massive Iraqi convoy …
had just shot a couple of rockets at it." The Washington
Post added that the convoy of 700 wheeled vehicles and
300 armored vehicles "opened fire in an effort to clear a
path toward a causeway across the Euphrates." Lt. Chuck
Ware, the battalion commander, received permission to return
fire and the battalion received backup from Army artillery
and 20 U.S. Cobra and Apache helicopters.
The ensuing
fighting was one-sided and several thousand Iraqis (civilian
and military) were killed in two hours. There were few Iraqi
survivors.
According to a
Washington Post report on March 18, 1991:
U.S. tanks
were shooting Iraqi tanks off heavy equipment
trailers trying to haul them to safety. Bradley
fighting vehicles shattered truck after truck with
25mm cannon fire as Iraqi civilians and soldiers
alike ran into the surrounding marshes.
Lt. Col. Ware said,
"They shot first, we won big." Another U.S. officer stated,
"We really waxed them."
This massacre took
place after the cease-fire had been announced. At the time,
it was thought that the convoy was not aware of its
position; therefore it ran into the U.S. Army personnel. All
the equipment was being transported on trucks — it was not
in position to use in battle — so the U.S. forces had
nothing to fear in terms of casualties. Some Iraqi soldiers
were lying down on the vehicles and sleeping or obtaining a
suntan.
When the
post-cease-fire massacre occurred, the U.S. news agencies
mentioned a "skirmish" between Iraqi and U.S. troops and
said there were no U.S. casualties. They did not mention the
slaughter.
The information
made it appear that the unlucky Iraqis had taken a wrong
turn somewhere and happened to run into a trigger-happy
group of soldiers. The truth, however, is much more
diabolical.
In May 2000, The
New Yorker published an article by Seymour Hersh called
"Overwhelming Force." Hersh spent years tracking down some
of the participants in the slaughter, which was given the
moniker the "Battle of Rumaila."
Instead of a
wayward convoy of Iraqis who had the bad luck to shoot at
U.S. forces, Hersh paints a picture of U.S. General Barry
McCaffrey intentionally giving wrong location information to
his superiors so he could concoct a battle with the hapless
Iraqis who, in reality, were exactly where they were
supposed to be according to the "safe" routes of return
designated by the U.S.
According to the
article:
McCaffrey’s
insistence that the Iraqis attacked first was
disputed in interviews for this article by some of
his subordinates in the wartime headquarters of the
24th Division, and also by soldiers and
officers who were at the scene on March 2nd.
The accounts of these men, taken together, suggest
that McCaffrey’s offensive, two days into a
cease-fire, was not so much a counterattack provoked
by enemy fire as a systematic destruction of Iraqis
who were generally fulfilling the requirements of
retreat; most of the Iraqi tanks traveled from the
battlefield with their cannons reversed and secured,
in a position known as travel-lock. According to
these witnesses, the 24th faced little
determined Iraqi resistance at any point during the
war or its aftermath; they also said that other
senior officers exaggerated the extent of Iraqi
resistance throughout the war.
The slaughter may
have been forgotten and never discussed if not for an
anonymous letter sent to the Pentagon that accused McCaffrey
of a series of war crimes. The letter stated that
McCaffrey’s division began the March 2nd assault
without Iraqi provocation and it included information only
an insider would know. An investigation ensued, but,
eventually, McCaffrey was exonerated.
Despite the
prospect of an inquiry, McCaffrey openly bragged about his
unit’s performance in the massacre. He told another
general’s battalion that the 24th Division had
carried out:
"absolutely
one of the most astounding goddamned operations ever
seen in the history of military science … We were
not fighting the Danish Armed Forces up here. There
were a half million of those assholes that were
extremely well-armed and equipped."
Some participants
of the battle say that Iraq did not fire the first shot.
Others maintain the Iraqis shot first, but only once.
Authorities differed on the time between the supposed Iraqi
shot and the beginning of the U.S. actions. Some say it was
about 40 minutes, while others say the time lapse was close
to two hours. Either way, it was evident that if Iraq did
fire a shot, there was no follow-up or change of formation
for the convoy. It still went forward with its equipment not
in place for battle.
Soon, a call came
asking for every available unit to come to rescue the U.S.
troops. Sergeant Stuart Hirstein and his team rushed to the
site. When Hirstein arrived, he said there was no attack and
no imminent threat from retreating Iraqi tanks. According to
Hirstein:
Some of the
tanks were in travel formation, and their guns were
not in any engaged position. The Iraqi crew members
were sitting on the outside of their vehicles,
catching rays. Nobody was on the machine guns.
Despite the
intelligence that stated the Iraqis were no threat, and the
doubts of other officers about an Iraqi attack, McCaffrey
still wanted to go to battle. There were more discussions
and Captain Bell, who had been involved with the talks
before the U.S. "counterattack," believed that McCaffrey
moved his brigades to the east of the original cease-fire
line to provoke the Iraqis. He added that there is a huge
difference between a round or two fired in panic and
McCaffrey’s determination that the Iraqis were "attacking
us." He added, that "is pure fabrication."
Hersh described the
beginning of the hostilities that wiped out thousands:
The
division log placed the time of McCaffrey’s first
known battle order at five minutes after nine
o’clock. According to Log Item 74. McCaffrey
directed that the causeway "be targeted," thus
blocking the basic escape route for the retreating
forces. The division’s Apache helicopters were to
"engage from south with intent of terminating
engagement." Within moments, the assault was
all-out. One company reported that it had engaged a
force of between a hundred and two hundred Iraqi
"dismounts." By ten o’clock, division headquarters
had begun receiving reports of extensive damage to
the Iraqi forces. One group of Apache helicopters
reported in mid-morning, "Enemy not firing back,
they are jumping in ditches to hide." Forty minutes
later, according to another log item, McCaffrey
ordered artillery to be "used in conjunction with
personnel sweep to ‘pound these guys’ and end the
engagement."
The 24th
Division continued pounding the Iraqi column
throughout the morning, until every vehicle moving
toward the causeway — tank, truck, or automobile —
was destroyed
McCaffrey
was triumphant at battle’s end. "He was smiling like
a proud father," John Brasfield told me …
… A couple
of evenings later, Pierson was driving toward the
causeway. "It must have been a nightmare along this
road as the Apaches dispensed death from five
kilometers away, one vehicle at a time. I stopped as
a familiar smell wafted through the air … It was the
smell of a cookout on a warm summer day, the smell
of seared steak."
After the battle, a
captured Iraqi tank commander asked again and again, "Why
are you killing us? All we were doing was going home. Why
are you killing us?"
Shortly before his
troops flew back to Fort Stewart in the U.S., McCaffrey told
them he had never been:
"more proud
of American soldiers in my entire life as watching
your attack on 2 March … It’s fascinating to watch
what’s happening in our country. God, it’s the
damnedest thing I ever saw in my life. It’s probably
the single most unifying event that has happened in
America since World War II … The upshot will be
that, just like Vietnam had the tragic effect on our
country for years, this one has brought back a new
way of looking at ourselves."
McCaffrey weathered
the storm and received his fourth star in 1994. In 1996, he
retired from the Army and was appointed by the Clinton
administration as the director of the Office of National
Drug Control Policy, more commonly known as the U.S. Drug
Czar.
Hersh’s article
received much pre-publicity in 2000 and many people were
anticipating the piece. Then, a couple of days before The
New Yorker was to appear on the stands with the article,
a press conference was called to address the issue. A
Clinton spokesman took to the podium and criticized the
article. He called it "old wine in a new bottle." In the
space of about five minutes, an article that should have
been read by the American public was dismissed as rubbish by
the Clinton administration. The curious aspect of this
denigration is that the article had not yet appeared.
Normally, an administration tears apart something in the
press after it is published. This fact alone should
have piqued the interest of the public. However, the
opposite occurred. Within a couple of days of its
publishing, few spoke of the article again. It became a
non-issue.
The entire article
is a must-read for anyone who wants to know the truth about
how the U.S. military conducted itself in Desert Storm. Not
all the personnel were as bloodthirsty as McCaffrey, and
Hersh interviewed participants who opposed the decision to
slaughter thousands of Iraqis who could not fight back. It
is available online at many websites. Punch in the name of
the article on a search engine and you will be able to find
the entire piece.
Marlin Fitzwater’s
statement that retreating Iraqi troops would not be attacked
was an outright lie, yet neither he nor the administration
paid a price for the deceit. Up to 100,000 retreating Iraqis
were slaughtered after he made the statement to the
world. Among the retreating Iraqi soldiers were civilian
men, women and children of various nationalities. Their
deaths were, according to various U.S. military officers,
the "spoils of war."
Those soldiers who
did make it out of Kuwait were still not out of the woods.
As soon as they approached Basra, they came under attack
from Iranians who crossed the Iran-Iraq border during the
U.S. bombing and their Iranian-backed Iraqi stooges. Much
bloodshed on both sides occurred, creating more deaths for
Iraqi troops. When the hostilities ended, the Iraqi army, by
putting up a fierce resistance to the attempted coup, came
out on top.
Marlin Fitzwater
lied about not attacking retreating Iraqi troops and despite
the horrendous circumstances they endured to get back to
Iraq, their war was not over. Iran, with the blessing of the
U.S., tried to finish off the Iraqi army. But, in the end,
the heroic army kept Iraq intact by its brave fighting. Even
this part of history has been re-written by the U.S. Instead
of stating that Iraqi soldiers faced yet another ambush, the
West put its propaganda machine in full gear and the
perception of this incident has been attributed to Iraqi
soldiers attacking and massacring Iraqi Shi’ite Muslims.
