Read Online Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins by Andrew Cockburn - Free Book Online

believed that technology had changed the equation. New methods of intelligence and surveillance, including radars such as JSTARS, combined with stealth bombers invisible to enemy defenses and precision-guided bombs and missiles would enable U.S. bombers to do their job not only rapidly but with a gratifying economy of force: one plane accomplishing what had required hundreds or thousands of missions in World War II. As for targets, he had developed what he called the “five rings” theory, in which the rings denoted targets of progressively greater criticality, with the innermost representing the enemy leadership. The other rings were “centers of gravity,” such as power plants and communications centers, which, if put out of action, would lead to enemy paralysis in a neat, surgical, and above all predictable manner. Resorting to metaphor, Warden compared an enemy system to the human body, with the brain and nerves representing enemy leadership, bones representing infrastructure, and so on. This sounded like an “organic” approach to war, except of course the human body cannot replicate or bypass lost parts, whereas enemies like General Nguyen, defender of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, certainly could.
    Untroubled by such quibbles, Warden and a specially assembled team code-named Checkmate drew up a plan, Instant Thunder, which he was convinced could defeat Iraq without the army firing a shot. The targets associated with each ring were duly posted on a board in Checkmate’s Pentagon basement office. At the top of the “leadership” list, the most important target, was a name: Saddam. Critical nodes were no longer just things— bridges, oil tanks, and power plants—now they could be people . Two days later someone remembered that assassination was officially banned as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy. Saddam’s name was erased and the entry changed to “Isolate and incapacitate Saddam’s regime.”
    Under “Expected results,” Warden wrote: “National leadership and command and control destroyed.” He estimated it would take six days. After getting an enthusiastic response from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, who exclaimed, “This could win the war!,” Warden flew with his team to Saudi Arabia to lay out the plan to General Charles Horner, commander of the coming air war with Iraq.
    Horner, a notoriously emotional character, took an instant dislike to the obsessive theorist from Washington and ordered him on the next plane home. However, Warden had brought with him Lieutenant Colonel David Deptula, who had been seconded to the planning team from the office of the secretary of the air force. Deptula, a former fighter pilot like Warden, had developed greater skills as a bureaucratic politician. Earlier in 1990 he had coined the air force’s new motto: “Global Reach—Global Power,” the title of a manifesto he penned at the secretary’s request, touting the air force’s unique and enduringly desirable attributes of “speed, range, precision, and lethality” in a changing world when the Soviet threat appeared to be going away. These assets, he noted, offered “decisive capabilities against potentially well-equipped foes at minimum cost in casualties—increasingly important in an era in which we believe the American people will have low tolerance for prolonged combat operations or mounting casualties.”
    While a despondent Warden flew back to Washington, Deptula had ingratiated himself sufficiently with Horner to stay in Riyadh and was soon ensconced at headquarters as the chief attack planner for the coming war. With Warden’s ideas and Horner’s backing, he was about to make his reputation.
    The air attack on Iraq launched on January 16, 1991, incorporated the basic scheme of Instant Thunder and appeared to be a triumphant success. Lights went out all over the country. Military and other government headquarters were neatly demolished without damage to their neighbors.