Atkinson: Well, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Powell was the senior military advisor to the president. In the American construct of the military he actually did not have sovereignty over central command and Norman Schwarzkopf. That chain of command was directly between Schwarzkopf and the Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney. In fact, Powell by virtue of his own standing with Cheney served as the buffer between Washington and Riyadh, the theater. Powell was a man who I think as much as anyone else exemplified the observation that in an army of a political democracy the most peaceful men are generals. This was something that Colin Powell who was an inveterate collector of aphorisms certainly could live by himself I think. He was a man who by nature much preferred to negotiate to maneuver to avoid force of arms as a way to reconcile a problem. As the crisis unfolded in the fall, Powell, I think, clearly preferred that there be a way other than all out war to resolve this problem. I think for Powell, a man who had been in Vietnam twice, who knew first hand what it was like to have men die in combat--this was not a theoretical exercise. This was a matter where you sent young men out to die and I think particularly as October unfolded, Powell would try and nudge the President and the Executive Branch into examining whether there wasn't a way short of war to handle this problem.

Q: Schwarzkopf, what's playing out with him?

Atkinson: Well, Schwarzkopf had been in Vietnam twice. He'd been a battalion commander in Vietnam. Like all the other senior commanders involved in the Gulf War, he had a certain dread of civilian meddling in what were fundamentally military matters. He recognized that it was important for the Secretary of Defense and the President of the United States, the commander in chief to help steer this great engine of war. On the other hand, he was constantly torn between what he believed were military necessities in Ridyah and what were seen as political requirements in Washington. It will ever be thus-- the strain between Washington and the field is something that played out in Ridyah and in the Persian Gulf War in ways that aren't surprising but in ways that certainly tormented Schwarzkopf on occasion.

Q: Who's the brake man?

Atkinson: As the war unfolded, you would often hear in Washington that George Bush was the engineer. This was the metaphor that seemed to take root in Washington among the press corps and others that he was the man driving the train. In fact there was also a brake man on the train and that was Colin Powell. Powell was the voice who was loudest and most influential in deciding when enough was enough. So it was a symbiotic relationship in a sense between the engineer-the president, and the brake man-the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Q: What were Saddam's miscalculations?

Atkinson: Well, Saddam made so many strategic miscalculations it's almost difficult in retrospect to comprehend. Here was a man who came to believe that the United States first of all would turn a blind eye to control the forty percent of the world's oil supply. He was a man who believed that he could hunker down and ride out an attack by what was clearly the most formidable coalition of military powers since World War II. He was a man who believed that the West lacked a political will to carry through on its threats. He was a man who miscalculated in taking hostages and then compounded his miscalculations and made Schwarzkopf's military efforts much easier by letting them go in December. Every time he had to make a major strategic decision, Saddam guessed wrong until the end of the war when he guessed right.

Saddam made many strategic miscalculations. He failed to recognize that the world was awash with oil. That Iraqi oil was not critical to the functioning of the Western democracies. There was plenty of oil. He failed to recognize that Arab unity would hold even in the face of attacks on Israel and the potential for Israel to come into the war. He failed to reassure King Fahd of his benign intentions toward Saudi Arabia thereby driving the Saudis into the arms of Washington. Perhaps most importantly, he failed to calculate that the United States was serious about this. That there had been a decision made in Washington that they would go to war. I think he believed that the United States would fold as it had after the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983 and simply leave. He made one strategic miscalculation after another.

Q: What are Bush's real feelings towards Saddam?

Atkinson: In searching for a rationale to go to war, Bush settled on the notion of Saddam as an incarnation of evil basically and convinced himself that Saddam was fundamentally Adolf Hitler reborn. I think his feelings towards Saddam were in fact quite genuine and quite legitimately hostile. He was not play acting. He would refer to Saddam in the privacy of the oval office as that lying son of a bitch. I think he personally felt offended by what Sadam had done. By what he saw as a betrayal of American efforts to woo Sadam and I think that he felt most comfortable in demonizing Saddam in a way that permitted him to launch this great crusade.

Q: So why is he having so much trouble in describing to the American people why we're going to war?

Atkinson: Bush had trouble convincing Americans that this was a cause for which American men -- and women --should die. Bush bounced around from rationale to rationale and finally, having initially contended that cheap oil was at stake, that American jobs were at stake., that the principle of preventing bullies from picking on smaller neighbors was at stake..... I think all of those were somewhat hollow early on with the American body politic somehow. It was difficult to make a case that you could send a huge armada off to protect Kuwait or to reclaim Kuwait as a consequence of any of those reasons. It was only when he cast it in terms of a moral crusade that Bush really found his voice here.

Q: And ultimately what price has George Bush paid for demonizing Saddam like that?

Atkinson: It's my belief that by demonizing Saddam, by raising the stakes in this war to the point where we're talking about a great moral crusade that Bush in fact planted the seeds of discontent in the country because this was fundamentally a limited war with limited objectives and with limited gains. By leaving Saddam in power, by preventing the dismemberment of Iraq after the war, Bush I think left Americans feeling a certain lack of satisfaction. A certain feeling that war aims had not been fully achieved in the same way that Lieutenant George Bush in 1945 would have felt dissatisfied had the real Adolf Hitler still been in power in Berlin and the Japanese warlords still been in...

Q: That first offensive planning briefing, the one in October.....what is the civilian and Cheney's feeling as a result of that briefing.

Atkinson: When the briefing was given in Washington in October of the plan which was known as the one corps plan which envisioned an attack through Western Kuwait, there was great unhappiness with it. The air campaign which had been briefed at the beginning of the overall briefing was accepted almost with question. The ground campaign raised lots of questions both in the Pentagon and particularly in the White House. Brent Scowcroft, the National Security Advisor was very unhappy about what he saw as a very unimaginative drive straight through the teeth of Iraqi defensives. Cheney thought it was just a bad plan. That's how he described it. 'It's a bad plan.' Bush was alarmed by the fact that his closest civilian advisors were alarmed. The upshot was an effort to try to get Schwarzkopf and his planners to think more imaginatively. To look at what alternatives there were to what became known as `hey diddle diddle, straight up the middle.' The belief was that there must be way that American power and the Coalition's power could be harnessed in a more imaginative war plan then simply driving straight into Kuwait.

Q: And specifically, Cheney's reaction?

Atkinson: Cheney recognized that this plan was problematic not least because it was going to be hard to sell to the rest of the civilian leadership. Cheney did two things fundamentally. First of all he began pressing Schwarzkopf and Schwarzkopf's planners to look at alternatives. Secondly, he began to press some of his own ideas questioning whether or not it wasn't possible to strike way in the West of Iraq to come in through the back door as it were. He took a much more activist role than he had previously in the specific war planning and he pressed Powell and through Powell, Schwarzkopf to contemplate a more imaginative approach to attacking on the ground.

Q: And tell me the story about Schewarzkopf being called McClellan.....

Atkinson: Well, after the briefing occurred in October, there was a great feeling that took hold in the White House that Schwarzkopf was in fact simply trying to buy time. And among the civilian leadership in the White House there was a belief that here was a man who was fundamentally General McClellan reborn. McClellan had been Lincoln's commander during the Civil War. The certain kind of a man that Lincoln derided often for having the slows. A man who spent all of his time preparing and none of his time fighting. Lincoln had once said to McClellan, if you're not going to use the army I'd like to borrow it....And this was unfair. It was funny, but when it got back to Schwarzkopf it made him absolutely furious when Powell told him that this bit of witticism was floating around the White House, Schwarzkopf practically strangled the telephone and said, "you tell me who said that and I'll explain to them the difference between me and General McClellan."

Q: Why did Bush hold off announcing troops until after the election?

Atkinson: The decision was made on Halloween, October 31st that in fact the American presence needed to be doubled. It didn't take a genius to recognize that announcing this on the eve of the elections was bad politics. That it would become immediately a serious election issue with uncertain consequences. So, the decision was made in the White House--not surprisingly I think in retrospect, although somewhat duplicitous--that the decision would not be announced until after the election. A belief that you didn't want to complicate matters by making it even more of a political issue than it already was.

Q: Tell me about how Cheney starts doing his own planning suddenly.

Atkinson: Cheney became involved after the October briefing. Much more involved then he had been previously. He was alarmed not least because he recognized it was going to be difficult to sell this plan to the rest of the civilian leadership and the president. So, he began looking at his own potential options including attacking far to the west coming in through the back door of Iraq in ways that drove the planners in Riyadh crazy but nevertheless sent a message that he wanted a more imaginative approach then they had presented previously.

Q: After that first briefing, what does Powell realize he's got to do?

Atkinson: Powell recognized that the ground attack plan that had been presented thus far was not satisfactory. He recognized there was a certain rationale behind it in Riyadh. They were doing the best they could with the forces they had on hand but he also recognized that he needed to go himself to Riyadh and try and straighten it out. He needed to become more involved himself in the planning process.

Q: By the middle of January --what has Bush achieved? And could you set the scene how it's about to become the military's ball game.....

Atkinson: Well, by the middle of January you've got all the political pieces pulled together by Bush and his advisors. He's got Congress voting to support his war ambitions. He's got the coalition supporting United States leadership. He's got a massive force of almost seven hundred thousand troops in the desert. Now the scene shifts. The responsibility shifts to the military. Their responsibility at to this point is to win the war. They've been given everything that they asked for and then some. They've been given more or less free hand in planning both the air attack and the sequence of attacks that would lead to the ground invasion of southern Iraq and Kuwait. Now it's up to them. Now they've got to deliver.

Q: What's at stake for the military at the outset of the war?

Atkinson: There were many things at stake. First and foremost American lives and the lives of their comrades in this new-found coalition. Also, for the military particularly for the senior officers what's at stake is the opportunity to purge twenty years of baggage from Vietnam. They had demanded for twenty years the right to plan a war as they thought was appropriate without meddling from the White House and civilian leadership. They've been given that, more or less carte blanche. Now they had to deliver. They had to show that given the opportunity to run a war the way they wanted to run it that they could in fact win that war.