Word: schwarzkopf
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...battle plan did call as well, however, for narrowly focused thrusts through the main Iraqi defensive works. Concerned that his troops would get caught in breaches and slaughtered by massed Iraqi artillery firing poison-gas shells, Schwarzkopf ordered a shift in the bombing campaign during the last week to concentrate heavily on knocking out the frontline big guns. The planes succeeded spectacularly, destroying so much Iraqi artillery that its fire was never either as heavy or as accurate as had been feared. Also in the last week, special-operations commandos expanded their activities deep in Iraqi territory. Many additional units...
...Schwarzkopf had initially got Washington's agreement to Feb. 21 as the day to begin the ground assault. But some subordinates thought they needed two more days to get ready. So he and George Bush fixed 8 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 23 -- noon in Washington -- as zero hour, and Bush made that the expiration time of a final ultimatum to Saddam. As the deadline approached, tanks equipped with bulldozer blades cut wide openings through the sand berms Saddam's soldiers had erected as a defensive wall along the border, and tanks and troops began pushing through on probing attacks; some were...
Nearly all units continued moving at rapid rates: the Saudis and U.S. Marines in Kuwait toward the north; American Army units toward the Euphrates; British, other American, Egyptian and Syrian forces to the east. The French, having taken As Salman in 36 hours, stopped at midday on Schwarzkopf's orders to set up a defensive position guarding the units to their right against any Iraqi attack from the west...
...Schwarzkopf was careful to state that the mass surrenders did not necessarily mean the Iraqis were poor fighters. Most, he noted, had no belief in what they were doing and did not regard holding on to Kuwait as a cause worth dying for. They were starved, thirsty, often sick -- medical care was atrocious to nonexistent -- and some had been terrorized by their own commanders, who employed roving execution squads to shoot or hang troopers who had attempted to desert or defect. That barbaric method of keeping discipline backfired: soldiers gave themselves up as soon as the guns pointing at them...
...bigger clash along the Kuwait-Iraq border, American and British troops pushing eastward after their flanking maneuver through the desert finally broke the Republican Guard. Schwarzkopf had defined these troops as the "center of gravity" of the Iraqi forces. Said a senior Army staff officer: "The whole campaign was designed on one theme: to destroy the Republican Guard...