MAIL ON SUNDAY October 14, 2001
IT'S BUSH'S WAR - BUT BLAIR IS THE BRAINS
By Christopher Anderson
GEORGE W BUSH is a creature of routine. Each day he rises at 5.30am and delivers a cup of rich, dark coffee to his wife. He skims the Washington newspapers.
Then he rings Tony Blair, and in a departure from White House convention, places the call without aides present in the Oval Office. The two leaders speak for an average of 15 minutes. Their conversation is pacey and businesslike, but they also share small, rueful jokes and inquire after each other's health.
These, say officials, are the calls that determine both the substance and tone of the day's business in the war on terrorism. They have spoken constantly since the September 11 outrage. Both men have their own domestic teams of advisers, but, at times, Mr Bush and Mr Blair form a trans-Atlantic war cabinet of two. It was last Saturday that the American President told Tony Blair that it was time to go to war. The Prime Minister had just completed an exhausting diplomatic mission to Russia, Pakistan and India - largely at the behest of Mr Bush. Mr Blair's VC-10 landed at Heathrow 15 minutes before the end of the World Cup decider between England and Greece; by the time he got in his car, the game had two minutes left to run.
The driver put on the radio: England were two-one down. Then the commentator announced that David Beckham was taking a free kick from a few yards outside the Greek box E
The Prime Minister was still jubilant when he arrived at Downing Street to be told that the President was on the line.
'How you doin'?' asked Mr Bush cheerfully.
'Fantastic,' replied the Prime Minister. 'England has just qualified for the World Cup.'
Mr Blair briefed the President on his foreign tour. Pakistan had misgivings, but would stand firm. The same went for India. And in Russia, President Putin was solid. The President was content. Bombing would begin in 24 hours, he said.
THE B2 Stealth bomber, sleek, black and reeking of science-fiction menace, serves as a kind of metaphor for the disengaged, video-arcade strangeness of modern warfare. Pilots take off from heartland America, sit patiently while they flash across time zones, and deliver 16 2,000lb bombs with computer accuracy upon Afghan peasants. They then return home - they have to, because after each mission the aircrafts' secret radar-resistant covering has to be repainted - and resume their safely conventional lives. Never can warfare have been so impersonal.
The missions cover 14,000 miles and take 44 hours. For crews, the greatest problem is tedium. They play cards, sleep, or idle away the hours while reclining on cheap plastic sofas bought from Wal-mart and wedged to the rear of the cockpit.
The pilots do not see the enemy, and the enemy does not see them. 'All you are worrying about is what you're going to eat for lunch,' says brigadier Tony Przybyslawski, commander of the 509th Bomb Wing.
The Stealth pilots refer to themselves as train drivers, unglamorously following orders. But where are the orders coming from?
EVERY day, the President convenes his war cabinet at 9am in the 'situation room' in the basement of the West Wing of the White House. Blair, of course, is 4,000 miles away - yet he is viewed within Washington as an unofficial, and highly influential, member of the Bush war team.
'Of course, it's Bush who has the power - but it's Tony who has the experience, political scope, and, frankly, the brains.' The Prime Minister has played a crucial role in building and sustaining the international coalition,' says a Blair intimate. 'He's George Bush's foreign secretary. And he loves it,' said the official, adding that the two men have become genuine friends.
Mr Blair has spent some 60 hours in the air, and travelled more than 30,000 miles. He has lost half a stone, and is running on adrenalin. In Oman he surprised our military by addressing colonels and squaddies alike as 'guys'.
But the Prime Minister is sensitive to suspicions in Whitehall that he is simply following orders from Washington, and is attempting to placate ministers who feel excluded. By and large, he has failed to do so.
On Sunday afternoon, the Prime Minister telephoned the Queen with the news that battle was about to commence. At 7pm he made a statement at Downing Street. He was flanked by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon, and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. The idea was to counter any charge that Mr Blair was going to war single-handed.
On Monday morning, Mr Blair agreed to set up his war cabinet. But the impression persists that the important decisions are taken elsewhere.
Friends of Geoff Hoon concede he is 'not totally in the loop'. David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, has now taken himself off on a cycling holiday.
Downing Street let slip last week that the Prime Minister's 'policy bible' setting out the allied war aims had been cleared with Washington, but not with the British Cabinet. Had the war cabinet seen it? Officials were evasive.
Jack Straw urges restraint, swayed by Foreign Office concerns of violent consequences throughout the Middle East. Friends describe his body language during the war as 'wretched'.
BOMBING Afghanistan is easy. The difficult bit, Pentagon officials admit, has been in finding aerial targetsthat they consider 'meaningful'.
From the outset, military planners cautioned against the folly of a pulverising bombardment that would succeed only in 'converting large rocks into smaller rocks'. Yet strategists are struggling to come up with a better plan.
The problem is that the allies don't know where Bin Laden is, or even might be, and they are running out of worthy targets. 'Disabling the Afghan airforce is about as impressive an achievement as sinking the Swiss navy,' admitted a military planner. The CIA has told President Bush that searching for Bin Laden across Afghanistan is akin to hunting down a single rabbit in Texas.
It is tempting to think of spy satellites as a kind of heavenly CCTV that can monitor every individual's movements among a swarming populace. The reality is different. There are four military satellites over Afghanistan, but only for less than five minutes each per day, and the pictures are grainy and blurred.
As a result, the US military has been obliged to buy footage from superior, commercial satellites. However, the orbits of these are public knowledge: you can look them up on the Internet. India successfully concealed its 1998 nuclear test preparations after plotting the course of the satellites. Bin Laden is similarly sophisticated.
So there is no substitute for human intelligence. Armed with a virtual blank cheque from the White House, the CIA is swamping the region with agents and money. But they are starting from scratch - because at the time of the September 11 outrage, the agency did not have a single representative in the country (an omission that will, in due course, cost CIA director George J Tenet his job.)
On Wednesday, Tenet called General Thomas Franks to say that a black Suburban Chevrolet, similar to one used by the Taliban's Mullah Omar, was on the road leaving Kandahar. The message was flashed to the carrier USS Carl Vinson, and from there to a patrolling F-14 jet.
Within a minute the car had been located, and blasted. Intelligence chiefs are trying to establish whether they got the right man. But one American planner admits: 'We are chasing shadows.'
One fear is that Bin Laden is not in a remote cave. What if he is hiding in Kabul? Defence analyst John Pike said: 'This would turn into door-to-door combat. There are 10,000 houses.' He adds: 'It's like looking for hay in a haystack.'
WHEN George Bush has decided on military action, he asks: 'Is Tommy Franks ready to go?'
General Franks has operational charge of the fight against the Taliban. His Central Command headquarters in Florida (CENTCOM) is secret, and never photographed, but apparently its banks of monitors, and giant situation maps, conform to Hollywood stereotype.
A tall, spare Vietnam veteran, Franks has a fondness for cigars and caustic one-liners. He is legendarily foul-mouthed. An unsuspected cuddly side is, however, revealed to his family.
His daughter, Jacqy Matlock, said: 'We all know him as General Pooh. That's the name my daughter gave him. So now he wears a Pooh tie to church whenever he comes back.'
Franks's grizzled flamboyance contrasts sharply with the style of his British counterparts. Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, the man overseeing military operations in London and the first naval officer for 12 years to become Chief of the Defence Staff, is a bookish type who is respected rather than loved. Boyce links with the briskly efficient Chief of Operations, General John Reith, based at Northwood, Britain's version of CENTCOM.
So who calls the shots? The Americans take the lead. They are hugely protective of military secrets, and have a classification one higher than Top Secret, called Noforn - not to be shown to foreigners. However, the British have been unprecedentedly admitted to CENTCOM. British forces are invited rather than ordered to comply with American plans. But these invitations are unlikely to be declined.
Occasionally British and American generals combine to thwart their political masters. 'If they think the politicians are embarking on a dangerous strategy, the generals tell their own governments to do the opposite, without admitting they have joined forces,' says a former defence minister here.
WHAT next? The allies teeter on the brink of sending in ground troops. But it is a hazardous enterprise. Meanwhile, the allies are deliberately not delivering the coup de grace to the Taliban front line, for fear of leaving the way clear for the Northern Alliance to seize power.
Haji Rauof, who commands 2,000 Northern Alliance irregulars, says: 'The Americans are bombing airfields, but the Taliban only have 12 aircraft. They are bombing Al-Qaeda training camps, but the fighters themselves are on the front lines and are not being hit. Why?'
The answer is that the West is anxious to install a stable, democratic government. The Taliban cannot be allowed to collapse and leave a vacuum. Moreover, Mr Blair has convinced President Bush that the West should not desert Afghanistan after the mission is finished.
The subject of Iraq is another example of Downing Street's influence. Hawks within the Bush war cabinet favour a massive military attack on Saddam Hussein; London is opposed. Unsurprisingly, the President's deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz is the chief advocate of the plan. He sent former CIA director James Woolsey to London in late September in search of evidence that Saddam was behind the September 11 attacks.
Woolsey asked friends at MI6 and MI5 for their files; they complied. Jack Straw called his Washington counterpart Colin Powell in a state of considerable consternation. Neither favours an attack on Iraq. To their relief, the files contained no evidence of Saddam's involvement.
There is no doubt, however, that contact and cooperation between Whitehall and Washington is greater than even during the Thatcher era. Condoleeza Rice, a key member of the Bush war cabinet, is in regular contact with Sir David Manning, Blair's National Security Adviser. Alistair Campbell, Downing Street's communications guru, plays a crucial role in dovetailing trans-Atlantic rhetoric in the global propaganda war - seen by all allies as critical to the war effort.
It is Manning, Campbell and Blair's chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, who are seen as the Prime Minister's real war cabinet.
WHEN an F-14 bomber blasts off from an aircraft carrier, achieving 0-165mph in under two seconds, the whole world seems to shake. Visitors are awed; sailors continue about their business.
There were five pilots assembled for interview after flying sorties from the USS Enterprise. Their language was corporate rather than warlike. Had they been nervous? 'Just relieved the waiting was over.' Was it dangerous? 'Well, they weren't pleased to see us.' Any problems at all? 'No sir, the aircraft performed as advertised.'
The notable thing, though, was that reporters were asked not to identify anyone on board.
The Enterprise is a floating fortress hundreds of miles from Afghanistan. It is under no more risk of attack than if it were moored in San Diego. But the fear is that families at home could be targeted.
One young cook complained: 'Let's just bomb the crap out of them and get on home.' But this is a strange, complicated and far-off war, and this young kitchen worker, and his shipmates and the rest of us, are going to have to get used to it.stic one-liners. He is legendaril
Copyright 2001 Associated Newspapers Ltd.
