Back in Kuwait Again, Desert Storm Vets Ponder Hussein’s Durability

DOHA, Kuwait —  As hundreds of U.S. soldiers moved into an equipment lot to prepare rows of tanks and fighting vehicles for a move back into the Kuwaiti desert, the mood under a chilly winter sky was glum.

For most, this wasn’t their first sojourn into Kuwait, or even their second. Many had spent months in the Middle Eastern desert as soldiers of Operation Desert Storm, which liberated Kuwait two years ago from an Iraqi occupation. Some of them ended their last training exercise in Kuwait just a few weeks ago--only to go home and be summoned back again.

How many times, many wondered aloud, would U.S. soldiers be called on to defend the tiny oil emirate against the ambitions of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein?

“Politicians always run the wars, not the soldiers,” said Sgt. Don Goertz, part of the 1st Cavalry Division task force that landed in Kuwait last week as the U.S. allies launched new military air strikes against Iraq. “I believe, if you’re going to fight a war, you should fight a war, and after it’s over, let the politicians figure it out.”

Two years of political debate have followed the decision of allied commanders to end the war against Iraq, short of toppling the Iraqi regime in Baghdad. Some argued that the war had been a rout and needed to be stopped before more blood was shed.

But these are perhaps the most visible victims of former commanding Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf’s order to pull back and end the ground war four days after it began: his men. More than a year after Schwarzkopf’s retirement, and in the week that the President who launched and ended Desert Storm retires from the White House, these 1,100 soldiers are going back to the desert.

As a blustery wind kicked up a sand cloud that obscured the horizon around this coastal military camp, several soldiers summoned for this new military exercise told stories of going home to try to build new lives, only to be called back.

One told of going home from Desert Storm to find that his pregnant wife had taken up with another man.

“If I had a gun, I’d just go shoot Saddam Hussein and get it over with,” he said.

Staff Sgt. Juan Cantu, a Texan who arrived in Kuwait last week for his third tour, observed: “It should have been finished the first time. We train for this. We’re ready for it. We like it. But we don’t always get to finish what we start, because somebody always stops us.”

Specialist Christopher Cioffi, a Humvee driver who served as a gunner in a Bradley fighting vehicle during the Gulf War, added: “We should have put him out a long time ago. We stopped too soon the first time. I felt like something was left undone. It’s like we came over here, we went back for Christmas break and now we’re over here again. Why, I’m not sure.”

Cpl. Brian Poynter of Paris, Ky., said his tank unit pushed deep into Iraq during the Gulf War in the wake of the liberation of Kuwait and then turned back. “We went (almost) all the way to Baghdad, we stayed up there a day, then turned and came back,” he said. “I wish we could have finished off Saddam. But Gen. Schwarzkopf had other plans.” There was more than a touch of bitterness in his voice when he noted, “So now I been back twice.”

Maj. Gen. Robert Frix, commander of the 3rd U.S. Army joint task force in Kuwait, said the battalion that arrived last week will join about 300 other U.S. soldiers for military exercises with the Kuwaiti army. The exercises are designed to act as protection for Kuwait and as a deterrent to any Iraqi threat.

“I cannot comment on the intentions of Saddam Hussein,” he said. “From my level, what I know from my experience is by us demonstrating this capability, this resolve and determination, (it) is a deterrent.”

The first of the U.S. soldiers were to move out of Camp Doha to a training range in the northern Kuwaiti desert this week, where they are to remain for up to six weeks before returning to Ft. Hood, Tex.

To be sure, not all the soldiers here are as adamant about pursuing Hussein, either last time, or this time, or the next time. “If we would have gotten Saddam, there’d be somebody there just like him,” Poynter said. “It’s just going to be an ongoing conflict. There is no answer.”

And one of the company commanders, Capt. Mike Maughan of Eugene, Ore., said he still recalls only too vividly the devastating images of the Iraqi army’s rush from Kuwait, where they were cut down and their vehicles blown up by U.S. forces on the Mutlaa Ridge outside of Kuwait city. “It was really eerie, going back there again, seeing that,” Maughan said.

He, for one, had not been a proponent of carrying on the war. Not then, anyway.

“At the time of the end of the Gulf War, we had met the requirements set forth by the U.N., we had met the objectives and we were glad it was over,” he said. “I will tell you, when they told us to stop, it was over, we were all very happy.”

He didn’t want to press on to topple Hussein? “Me personally? No, ma’am,” he said. “I wanted to get my soldiers and go home.”