Trainor: The Iraqis approached the war and planned to fight it the same way as they planned to fight the Iranians. That is , have a defense in depth so that when your enemy attacks you bleed him. And you cause him so many casualties in the process that he loses the will to fight or the ability to fight. Saddam Hussein was counting on American's aversion to casualties in support of his strategy. That when the Americans attacked they would take so many casualties, the American people would rise up and say, this is not worth the effort and let's see if we can't have a negotiated settlement, and he would end up with the fruits of his aggression. That was his strategy.

Q: And what's the Air Force strategy for winning the war?

Trainor: The Air Force's idea was to go right to downtown Baghdad and to any of the other military installations in Iraq that were significant. Just forget about the ground troops. Just go after the command and control, and the ability for Saddam Hussein to command and control, his communications, the electric grid, the air fields. All of this backup stuff. That if you break that you in effect have left the forces in the field abandoned. And that they would be useless and they won't resist and they will probably retreat. That was the idea behind the air war. Now that didn't fit in completely with what Norman Schwarzkopf had in mind. He was a ground officer. And yes, he supported the idea of going to downtown Baghdad and destroying the ability of Saddam Hussein to control his forces, but he also wanted to make sure that the troops, the Iraqi troops in the field were being hit. And this got into a little bit of a friction between him and his air component commander who was putting maximum effort on the first night of the war, against 84 targets in Iraq itself and virtually ignoring the field forces. And when he saw the plan for the opening of the air campaign and it did not use B-52s against the Iraqi field forces he got very upset, and said, you promised me to put B-52s on the ground forces.

The Air Force people, particularly General Horner tried to explain to him that the campaign would all work, but he would have none of it. Again, the guy was under an awful lot of pressure and tension and he felt he was being deceived by the Air Force and he blew up and he told both Horner and the Chief Air Force planner, a man by the name of Glosson, he said, you know, if you people won't do it I'll fire you and get somebody who will. So the Air Force had to adjust their approach. But I think it was Schwarzkopf's lack of understanding really of what the Air Force had in mind plus the fact that he was under such terrific pressures, that anything that struck him as deviating from that which he believed and understood he had been briefed on sent him into a tantrum.

So the end result was there was a compromise. That they went after both the targets in Iraq and also the Iraqi field forces. But the original Air Force plan was going to be a six day air campaign, which would be intensive around the clock and that would in effect, break the back of the Iraqis. Well, it didn't happen.


Q: Was the demonization of Saddam by Bush a good idea?

Trainor: Well, the idea of demonizing Saddam Hussein I think was essential to selling the idea to the American people. You know, Americans like white hats and black hats. And we were able to demonize the Kaiser in the first World War. We were able to demonize Hitler in the second World War. In the Vietnam War it was a little difficult. We didn't have a demon. Uncle Ho didn't quite fit the picture. But Saddam Hussein looked like a villain and acted like a villain. So his demonization I think did a lot to convince the Americans that they should support a military effort in the Gulf.

Q: That first night over Baghdad, what was the Iraqi anti-aircraft strategy?

Trainor: The Iraqi air defense system was very sophisticated. The French Thomson CSF company had done an awful lot of work in developing this air defense system that the Iraqis had, which was made up of redundant radar sites and redundant firing battery... batteries of missiles. Plus thousands and thousands of garden variety anti-aircraft guns. The American strategy was to blind that system, that air defense system, so that they couldn't see anything. And they were going to blind it by using an airplane that they couldn't see to begin with which was this Stealth aircraft which could evade their radar and help take it out. Now the Iraqis would be blind, their missiles wouldn't have guidance and their anti-aircraft guns wouldn't have guidance, and that's what we saw in the first night of the war. They were able to take out the command and control facilities for the Iraqi air defenses. Thereafter the Iraqi air defenses depended upon simply volumes of fire going into the air in the pious hope that an American airplane would fly into it. But they were shooting blindly and they got no hits.

Q: So, that first night of the air war summarize what kind of success was that?

Trainor: The first night of the air war that the Americans were treated to and watching CNN was a little bit like watching a 4th of July fireworks display. Lots of fire, but no results. The first night of the air attack was dramatically successful. It virtually shut down the early warning and fire control capabilities of the Iraqis, and thereafter left them blind to the American air attacks which continued to come around the clock.

Q: What about the role and perfomance of the press in reporting what was happening? Trainor: The press coverage of the war was pretty much under the control of the Saudis and the Americans, because if you misbehaved you were invited to leave the country. Plus the fact that we were dealing with a large area and a remote area and journalists couldn't really get to see what was going on. So in large measure they had to depend upon what they were getting from the military briefings. And the military briefings while they were honest, I don't think there was any question of that. There was no deliberate attempt to deceive the American people, but there was certainly spin control put on it. And the spin control was designed to make everything look good, particularly the weaponry that was being used. We were using laser guided bombs. We were using precision guided munitions of various types. And they were getting the cameras coming back from the attacking aircraft would develop the film and you could see what was going on. And of course they selected the best of these to put on television.

Now were we 100 percent accurate with the precision guided munitions? No there were lots of things that interfere. Pilot error, weather, smoke, fog, all sorts of things, little gremlins that get into systems. So you saw the best of the best. But I have to say the high tech weapons that were employed in the Gulf War, delivered as advertised, and in some instances better than advertised. It wasn't perfect, but it was certainly better than it had been in any previous war. And so I think the accuracy of the precision guided munitions was somewhere in the 76 to 80 percent category, depending upon what weapon you're talking about which is certainly better than we've ever had before. So what you saw was the best, but it was a pretty honest portrayal of the accuracy of the weapons.

Q: What's the impact of that kind of portrayal in terms of people's perception about war?

Trainor: The problem with the picture that the Americans got of this kind of clinical war where every weapon was very precise and did exactly what it was designed to do was to increase that natural American tendency to think that you can run an antiseptic war, where you have the pilots at 30,000 feet dropping a very precise weapon on a precise military target that just destroys that target and doesn't hurt any of the civilians around it and therefore one can carry out war in a clinical fashion with only the individual bad guys getting hurt and the good guys never getting hurt and innocent civilians never getting hurt. That's wrong. War is a dirty confusing thing, whether it's from the air or from the ground.

The danger of that kind of perception I think we were able to see in Bosnia. Where the U.S. people were supportive of the idea of using American aircraft on bombing missions, but absolutely opposed the use of American ground forces, because in their mind's eye it's safe to do it from the air, and accurate from the air, where it's a bloody mess if you do it on the ground.

Q: Tell me about the military's attitude toward the press. What's the strategy they developed about how to handle the press in this war.

Trainor: You're aware that the Marines did a beautiful job. Well, the guy that was the Marine Commander had been the Public Affairs Officer. Boomer. And so he knew what the press wanted and what they needed and he gave it to them. The Army saw the press as an enemy and restricted it.

Q: Talk about the Army point of view.

Trainor: We'll generalize it. The military that ran the Gulf War were the company commanders in the Vietnam War. And they came away from the war with the feeling that the American press had given them a bad shake, had indeed stabbed them in the back. And so they were very distrustful of the media, and would determine that they were not going to allow the press to paint them in dark hues in the Gulf War. The structure controlling the press was very, very tight for lots of reasons. Most of them good reasons. But it was a controlling structure nonetheless. What the press were able to get out to the public was pretty much what the military wanted them to get out. Now in general it was quite accurate and timely and the policy was to cooperate with the press, but that antipathy to the press that existed particularly on the part of the U.S. Army was reflected in restrictions on the press that were not intended by the Pentagon but were imposed in the field by people who were just anti-press. And the end result of it really was in a sense self-defeating. Because lots of credit that accrued to the military operations never got on television, never got in the newspapers, because by the time it was releasedby the military to get back to the editors it was already overtaken by events. It was old news. So they missed an opportunity. But there was a sense on the part of the military that we got back at you fellows in the press for the bad job that you did in Vietnam. We've controlled you over here. And in a sense I think that was true.

Q: Give me an example or two of how the press reporting played out...

Trainor: I think there were two events that took place that are fascinating in terms of the role that the media played. One is the anticipated amphibious landing against the Kuwaiti coast. The Marines were practicing amphibious operations in the Persian Gulf and the press was invited to watch it. Well, this was during a period of the build-up where there wasn't much news to report, so this became big stuff. But that led the journalists to conclude and Saddam Hussein to conclude that indeed there was going to be an amphibious operation involved in the war. Which was not in the cards to begin with. But there was the impression there. And in a sensethe press deceived themselves and they also deceived Saddam Hussein and indirectly deceived the American people. But it wasn't deliberate deception. It was a case of self-deception on the part of the reporters. But that was a very, very important thing because it ended up with Sadam Hussein putting six divisions along the coast to defend against an amphibious operation.