Glosson: Yes, I knew the restrictions that were placed on us after the bombing of the bunker and in essence General Schwarzkopf told me that he didn't want to bomb any more targets in Baghdad unless he specifically knew what was being bombed in advance.

So we went into that type of mode of operation which basically meant that instead of having the freedom to bomb the targets that needed to be bombed each target he had to check off or say OK, and he was very reluctant obviously to approve any targets because he was getting quite a bit of pressure from the States and everywhere else..

Q: Does it matter?

Glosson: I think it mattered significantly because you then permit that Iraqi leadership to have the freedom to operate like they're not at war.

Remember, the ground army is not located in Baghdad, so if the leadership is in Baghdad and three hundred miles or a hundred and fifty miles whichever way you want to go, the war's taking place for all practical purposes they're not at war. Of course it matters.

Q: What were your feelings at the time?

Glosson: I thought it was a mistake to lift the intensity off the leadership in Baghdad and I thought it would give them an opportunity to show more mischief and be more involved in what was going on in Kuwait city and then with the land army.

I didn't think that it would impact the ultimate conclusion or results of the war in any significant way other than maybe prolonging it slightly and putting the regime in a stronger position to survive than they may have been otherwise.

Q: If that bombing had been continued do you think there's a chance that Saddam Hussein might not still be there?

Glosson: That is too speculative for me.

Because with the intensity very high up to the point that the Al Firdos bunker occurred, he managed to survive that so I can't with a clear conscience say that keeping the intensity that high he would have somehow not survived the last three, four weeks.

Q: How did the bombing of Highway Six come about? Tell me that story.

Glosson: I got a call from the Kuwaiti resistance that indicated they were starting to pack up and leave out of Kuwait City.

At about the same time, I got a call from Mike McConnell to tell me that their indications were that they were also leaving, and I had been previously alerted about six hours earlier by Mike McConnell that they had picked up some intelligence that indicated that he might be getting ready to withdraw his troops and so forth.

At the ops centre , you could see that developing on JStars very clearly, and they had been putting strikes in against it but because of the weather they were not successful, and so I asked how many of the F15's since the F15's worked for me, I said... under the weather at night low altitude airplane, I said, "How many of those" and they said, "None and because they've already flown and so I can't fly them again" and I said, "Fine" so I went over and called the number two person, Colonel Ball Baker down at the F15E Unit and told him that I wanted twelve F15 E's airborne, I wanted to go straight and check in with JStars and I wanted to stop that exodus going north on Highway Six.

And I acknowledged to him that I knew they had flown and that they were flying without crew rest and all the other requirements and restrictions.

Q: Did you use the words "At all Costs"?

Glossan: No that came later when I, and as we were discussing this Ball Baker asked me, he says "Okay, I'm going to do this" and he says "most of the guys are already in bed" and I say, "I understand they're already in bed, get them up. Tell them to go to their airplanes, I don't want them to take time to brief, they'll be single ship so they can talk it over among themselves.

I want them to get airborne, and I know that I'm going to take losses. I understand Ball that I will take some losses here", and I said, "but this convoy exodus must be stopped. These are the same people that brutalised Kuwait City for the last five weeks", and so that was how it came about.

Q: And do you remember getting the reports back of what they'd managed to do?

Glossan: I actually got it from the JStars and watching it --I knew they had succeeded in starting... piling it up, backing it up.

Q: Was the setting of the bomb line a source of great frustration to you?

Glossan: In the last 24 hoursof the war, 24 to 36 hours of the war the setting of the fire support coordination line that we called a thistle was a very frustrating experience.

What in essence happened is the Army land commanders wanted to move that line out, away from their troops because they were unsure of exactly where everybody was in their divisions and Corps and so forth, so they wanted to move it out far enough that they could be assured that we'd not dropping bombs on friendlies and that's understandable.

But then when you move that so far in this case they moved it all the way to the Euphrates river that came down from the north west towards Basra and in the canals down into the sea, the gulf, and what happened by moving it there is between the front lines of the coalition forces and the river, was like a hundred and ten miles in many cases, and that pocket had the artillery and armor and tanks and everything else in it...

Q: You must have been going wild?

Glossan: And so the only way we could attack it was if a ground forward air controller had direct contact with the airplane.

Now, I appealed that to General Schwarzkopf and he initially moved the thistle back and it gave us about a twenty five mile area which we bombed quite heavily, but then, his ground commanders started complaining and asked him to move it back up and so that was the thing that frustrated General Horner and I so much because you could see on the JStars and I mean on all the other intelligence systems what was sitting there and what was transpiring and it was choked in to a pocket and water was on all sides of them except the side that the coalition forces were facing.

And yet we didn't destroy that, we permitted --what fifteen hundred, two thousand tanks or whatever they were, the armored vehicles and so forth to stay there and after the ceasefire they took them back across the river and used them against the Shi'ites and everything else they wanted to do with them.

So sure that was very, very frustrating and it should never of happened but it did.

Q: When the war ended, were you clear in your mind that there was still a lot of potential targets?

Glossan: When the war was terminated, my own diary shows that I thought that there were somewhere between seven hundred and a thousand significant pieces of armor targets in that area. I underestimated it by half as you can see, but that's what I thought at the time.

Q: What were your feelings about this?

Glossan: I was frustrated at that because remember one of the coalition's major objectives was to make sure that the potential was not left with this country to be able to duplicate this again in five to ten years.

You can't leave that much armor in the hands of that country and not be concerned that they may not try mischief again.


Q: What did this amazing air war that you coordinated, that you led, what did it achieve?

Glossan: Some of the lessons that were learned were just relearned and so I wont dwell on those, but there's no question that we established forever that there is no sanctity from air with today's technology of Stealth and precision weapons and the combination of the two.

There is no question that air can decimate a land army given enough time and enough patience and save thousands and thousands of lives. So as we have thought in the past that air, and basically sea, support a land army, I think in the future it will be much like a football game.

There are times when you pass and there are times when you run and when you're passing everybody else is supporting you, and when you're running everybody else is supporting you and in the future you will see air campaigns when everybody else is supporting and you will see land campaigns when everybody else is supporting.

Q: When the land war occurred did you want the air war to go on for longer or did you feel "No, it's time, we got to do it"?

Glosson: When General Schwarzkopf decided to start the land war I thought that we had reached the point where it was in the best interests of the coalition and the nation to start the land war.

Now I say that with a caveat that we were no longer , being disruptive and eh, impacting the leadership in Baghdad and we had focused our efforts solely on on the land Army so any prolonged bombing or continuation of the air war just for the purpose of getting destruction higher in those units I felt the destruction was high enough and the land campaign would be very brief as it was.

So, no, I did not feel that we should continue the air campaign at that point in time.

Q: You served in Vietnam. Watching those parades, did you think about Vietnam? Glosson: I guess the feelings I had for the tickertape parade in New York was where flashbacks to Vietnam occurred from the standpoint of I remember distinctly getting off an airplane in civilian clothes coming from Vietnam and not wanting to be in uniform in public.

That's a troubling thing for a military professional to say but I truthfully felt that way at the time as a captain, and the way I felt during the tickertape parade and all of the things that occurred in New York and the way the outpouring of appreciation that the nation showed -- you could not help but think back of friends that you'd lost in Vietnam and they never got an opportunity to see a grateful nation say Thank you.

Q: Did you feel when you thought of those friends-- Well this time we've done it right, this one's for you?

Glosson: When I reflect back on Vietnam although it may sound like some of the scar tissue and some of the biases that I carried into the planning, especially in the execution of this war that there is a lot of resentment may be built up there, but that's not really truthful.

I felt that Vietnam was a combination of political as well as a national -- Vietnam was not the military's proudest day.

I mean we did not do things that were innovative and that could have helped save a lot of lives and done things significantly different even with the constraints that we were under. So I don't carry as much of the animosity and bias or scar tissue toward that time frame as some of my contemporaries.