'We pledge, no missiles will fall on Israel again

Colonel John Caldwell Calhoun was a West Point man. When he walked into a room, there was strength there, a quiet projection of authority - trim carriage, high forehead, chiseled nose, firm chin, silver bristled hair, cobalt eyes - and one instinctively knew here was a man one could trust.

Col. Calhoun knew a thing or two about Saddam Hussein's Scud missiles. He had served with the 82nd Airborne Division during the 1991 Gulf War, and had commanded squads of Scud-hunting commandos to scour Iraq's western desert in search of the mobile missile batteries. "The Great Scud Hunt," as it was called, turned out to be a fiasco due, largely, to abysmal intelligence. For, apart from knocking out a few cunningly fabricated decoys, the 2,493 missions dedicated to the anti-Scud operation failed to score a single confirmable kill, and 42 Scuds landed on Tel Aviv as a result.

The colonel made pointed reference to this detail in the course of a closed briefing he gave to the Foreign Ministry's directorate when he visited Israel some six months after the Gulf War, in the company of other "Desert Storm" officers, guests of the IDF.

Calhoun was back again a couple of weeks ago and, to my surprise, phoned me. He said he was here with a group of old buddies, and was trying to catch up with some of the people he had met on his last trip. He had traced six of us, and hoped I would be the seventh to join them for drinks on the morrow.

He explained that his friends were retired army officers like himself, congregants mainly from churches in and around Fredericksburg, Central Texas, and they were here with their wives on a solidarity mission, which he had initiated.

He had quit the Army in 1996, he said, and was now breeding horses and raising cattle on his family's ranch in the Pedernales Valley, not far from Fredericksburg, adjacent to Lyndon Johnson's old ranch. "As a matter of fact," he said with a chortle, "LBJ's old corrals and mine face each other for miles along the banks of the Pedernales."

Speaking in his southern drawl, which amplified mightily over the telephone, he added that his congregation had earmarked their tithe offerings for the purchase of a Magen David Adom ambulance and the refurbishment of a rundown, obscure hospice in the heart of the Old City. It was there he wanted us to meet. "It's sneaked away in the bowels of the Christian Quarter, so you'll never find it alone," he said intriguingly. And then, with mock martial alacrity, "So rendezvous with me tomorrow at Jaffa Gate at fifteen-zero hours sharp and I'll lead the way."

At the appointed hour, and after much backslapping, he led us down an alleyway and into a tiny courtyard where we picked our way between laundry and hens to a stone stairway and a heavy wooden door, which Calhoun unlocked with a big key. This gave onto a flat roof and to yet another, even narrower flight of stone steps that led up to a crudely whitewashed, dilapidated, arched room high above the surrounding rooftops.

"Great view, isn't it?" he said. The skyline was sliced with steeples and minarets, which appeared to jostle each other for heavenly space. In contrast, the chalky domes of the synagogues seemed to squat meekly. Below was a warren of snaking markets, vaulted passageways, and shadowy courtyards.

Waiting for us inside were some 20 couples. The men, with crew-cut, silvery hair, six-footers mostly, approached us with long and swinging strides to give us affable "Howdy" handshakes. The women, tall, lean, and well groomed, were equally gregarious. Their pastor, a lanky, genial-looking Texan in his forties, in cowboy boots, ardently pumped our hands with a fervent "Shalom."

There being no chairs around, we clustered in the center of the oblong, ramshackle room where we fielded questions about the election, suicide bombers, Iraq, and the economy. The pastor mentioned the devotion of his congregants to Israel, expressed in the acquisition of an ambulance, and the tithe offering they were dedicating for the restoration of this hoary place in which we were standing.

It was about half the size of a tennis court, illuminated by a single high window whose shaft of light picked out a crucifix, the size of a dagger, on the opposite wall. In dark recesses were clay pots and jugs wrapped in rags. A galvanized hip bath hung from a nail. On a narrow rustic, dusty dresser stood two dull brass candlesticks, a large water jug in an earthenware bowl, and a kerosene cooking burner beneath a wooden-framed black-and-white grimy likeness of Martin Luther.

The only modern comfort in this decaying place was a folding table cluttered with bottles of Jack Daniel and Wild Turkey, and flanked by a steaming water urn, surrounded by plastic glasses, plastic plates, pastries, cheesecakes, and dips. Everybody was partaking of this fare with great zest.

AT SOME point, John Cardwell Calhoun, legs apart, hands on hips, his jaw set, planted himself squarely in front of his friends, turned to eye us with great purpose, and said, "Folks, welcome to our little shindig. Many of the people in this room saw active service during the Gulf War. We are retired now. But once an American officer always an American officer. We know what's going on. And as American officers we are here today to pledge to you a soldier's debt of honor. We pledge to you that no Scud missiles will rain down again on Israel." A spontaneous applause swelled up around the room.

"By punctilious intelligence, in the first instance," answered Calhoun. "That, and highly improved technologies and weapon systems. Saddam's forces are half the size they once were and his equipment is obsolete Soviet junk." A man with a burly physique and a ruddy, beetle-browed countenance, chimed in to say to us: "Gentleman, if there is to be a war, and that's not at all certain yet, it's going to be a totally different war compared to last time." He said this with the absolute authority of one used to subordinates leaping to attention whenever he entered a room.

"Schwarzkopf [the then commander-in-chief] made the greatest mistake of that war by refusing to invest the necessary assets to neutralize the Scud threat from the start. I told him so at the time. It won't happen again. This time, before the Iraqis will know what has hit them, our commandos will be swarming all over western Iraq. With the help of Israeli special forces we have already mapped out their likely launching sites, hiding places, and elevations. We can call in air strikes instantly. We also have vastly improved reconnaissance systems, like the J-STARS."

"It's like an AWACS but better. It scours sky and land for anything that moves. And we've got more sophisticated intelligence satellites now, as well as the BOAS."

"Battlefield Ordnance Awareness System. It can detect the flash of missile firings from spy planes flying high above Iraq. And then there is the Predator drone, which can reconnoiter for a whole day over the desert, picking off targets. And if, by chance, one of Saddam's few remaining Scuds of his ragtag army is launched, or if an aircraft takes off, the chances of their penetrating our Patriot shield and your Arrow shield are virtually nil. Your surface-to-air Arrow missile is unique in the world."

Heads nodded in silent assent and the speaker, as if to toast the matchless projectile, raised his plastic cup and downed his Wild Turkey.

A third man joined in. He had the face of an eagle. Speaking with the civility and formality of an old-fashioned Texan lawyer, he said with elaborate courtesy: "May I, folks, quote for the benefit of our highly valued Israeli friends here our immortal General George S. Patton who said, 'There is only one tactical principle which is not subject to change: it is to use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of wounds, death and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of time.' Calhoun cupped his palm and whispered to us the man's credentials. He was a former senior analyst in Intelligence with the rank of major-general.

"And, of course the enemy in this instance is not the Iraqi people," he went on. "We sincerely seek their friendship. It is Saddam and his minions we're after. Therefore" - here, his gracious tone became even more benign - "the first night of the war will open with a surprise attack that will kill thousands of Saddam's elite forces: his Special Republican Guards, his other loyalist military and para-military units, his senior intelligence personnel, and the upper echelons of his government. Saddam's power base will be so traumatized it will never recover."

A fellow standing next to us shot back, "Then, the total de-Saddamization of Iraq will begin. We shall de-Saddamize Iraq as thoroughly as we de-Nazified Germany after World War II." The speaker had a long, narrow, black face, deeply seamed, and he loomed over us, poking his points into the air with a huge outstretched finger like a loaded pistol.

Iraq was unique among Arab countries, he said. Before Saddam Iraq was well on its way to becoming the best educated and most progressive of all the Arab states. America and its allies are going to occupy Iraq and abolish the Ba'ath Party as surely as the Nazi Party was abolished. It will plant the seeds of democratization, first at the village level, and move progressively to the national level just as it did in Germany.

"Not that Iraq and Germany are comparable in themselves," he concluded. "But at the end of the day, Iraq, in its own way, will have the opportunity to evolve as a federation with a central democratic government, as did the Federal Republic of Germany after the war. It will have a tranquilizing effect on the whole region."

Everybody seemed to accept that and Calhoun, pouring a drink, said: "We old soldiers know the price of war. But we also know the cost of peace. If Saddam Hussein does not voluntarily disarm himself of his weapons of mass destruction, then our army will have to do the job for him. So folks, I think this is the opportune moment to make a toast."

We all solemnly raised our cups as he, in a sudden stentorian voice, boomed: "May our boys strike such a fear of God into the heart of that evil man in Baghdad that he will abdicate and flee without a shot being fired, just as happened in Jericho when the walls came tumbling down."

The writer, a veteran Israeli diplomat, may be contacted at avner28@netvision.net.il.

"May our boys strike such a fear of God into the heart of that evil man in Baghdad that he will abdicate and flee without a shot being fired, just as happened in Jericho when the walls came tumbling down."

I'll drink to that.

BTTT!

It's interesting to note that the retired officers understanding of what we will do paralells that of the theoreticians of the old Blitzkrieg.

The thing that jumped out at me is that everything will happen at once! The Republican Guard will be too busy dodgeing bombs and fending off raids from the Rangers, SAS, Israelis, and Aussie SAS. They won't be able to concentrate on the American and British panzer formations snaking up the Tigris /Euphrates valley and down the mountain passes from Kurdistan.

I understood from the beginning that this would be a throwback to the German plan in Poland in 1939 (Case White).

The only way to beat Saddam for sure is to make him keep his head down.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

Take out the CCC (Command, Control, Communtications), and you've won. Especially in a top-down Stalinistic system like Saddam's. No initiative from the company grade officers (you think anyone with individual initiative survives that system?), and everyone just waiting for someone to knock off the top guy, so they can breathe a sigh of relief.

Their only worry is we won't finish the job, like last time.

It makes me proud to be an American, to see my country turn out such men.

They are doing a great thing by helping our friends the Israelis. God will bless them and us because of it.

May the liberation of Iraq follow exactly the course laid out by these American heroes.

Darn good reading. The characters are extremely well done, worthy of Tom Clancy.

Before you flame, let me state that I enjoy the sentiment, and the war will probably happen the way the author states, but I rather doubt this meeting occurred at all. Come on, major general intel analyst? Last I checked, 96 Bravo was a speedy-four MOS. Major general would be running all of DIA, if there wasn't already a USAF general doing that.

The characters and statements were probably all cobbled together from a few dozen interviews the author made, as well as some in-depth reading. Probably even on this site.

Nicely done, though. But still fiction.

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