Several minutes before the U.S. publicly acknowledged the attack, Holliman, Arnett and anchor Bernard Shaw already held tens of millions of viewers in thrall with their live descriptions of the firepower raging around them.
Early Thursday morning European viewers glued themselves to CNN`s broadcast from its ”Boys in Baghdad.” In Beijing, where it was nearing midday, a Chinese man booked himself into a Western-style hotel.
”Make sure that it has satellite television,” the New York Times quoted him as saying, ”because that`s the only reason I`m booking the room. I just want to watch the television news.”
In the U.S., millions of dinners on the East Coast and in the Midwest were interrupted by war news. Tens of millions of Americans would go into sleep debt that night, mesmerized by their television screens.
Among the most attentive viewers was Bush. Ensconced in a study off the White House Oval Office with Scowcroft, Sununu, Quayle and press secretary Marlin Fitzwater, the president held a remote channel switcher, skipping around coverage by the three networks and CNN.
With the first live broadcast report of ”flashes in the sky” appearing over Baghdad at 6:40 p.m. EST, the president wondered aloud why hostilities had begun 20 minutes before they were scheduled.
At 7 p.m. CNN`s Holliman opened the window of his Baghdad hotel room and hung his microphone out, capturing the first hit of the war.
”Right on schedule,” Bush said. Now that it was on television, Bush turned to Fitzwater and told him, ”Go ahead and do it.”
Fitzwater made his way to the White House press room, mobbed with nearly hysterical reporters, and began talking at 7:06 p.m.:
”The liberation of Kuwait has begun.”
Across the Potomac River in the Pentagon, Cheney and Powell also watched the news shows. At that evening`s first press briefing they said their best intelligence on the operation`s success came from CNN`s live reports.
Cheney and Powell allowed that they liked what Arnett, Holliman and Shaw had been telling the world. The newsmen`s first impressions of surgically precise air strikes on Iraqi military targets was the best possible news the two men could have heard.
Over the last 5 1/2 months these two men had crafted an excruciatingly intricate plan of battle. Now that it had been activated, it was heartening to see it unrolling in a manner almost beyond their expectations.
On top of their list of Iraqi targets was Hussein`s cache of Scud ballistic missiles, capable of hitting Israel and military bases in Saudi Arabia. The threat of chemical or biological weapons, however crude, raining down on allied troops, was vexing enough to Powell and Cheney. The specter of Scuds dropping out of the sky on Israel was even more nightmarish. Israel was vowing a counterattack-a move that might enrage the Arab nations arrayed against Iraq.
If the international coalition against Hussein was to hold together, it was crucial that the first wave knock out missile threats against Israel.
The Americans put their faith in cutting-edge weaponry. If it worked, American bombers would swoop in on targets with pinpoint accuracy and devastating power.
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The weapons worked.
The planes came in on Iraq so fast in the first 24 hours of battle that a target would explode, and stunned survivors would be left with only contrails to stare at as a hint of what caused the sudden destruction.
Video cameras in the American bombers` targeting systems recorded the raids as they proceeded. These tapes of initial American bomb runs on Iraq were remarkable. They clearly show the computer has sent warfare to yet a higher plane of stupefying destruction. In the tapes, pilots screaming along at supersonic speeds cleanly and calmly send their ”smart” bombs right through the doors of targeted buildings.
”This is how the big boys play,” Col. Keith Kellogg, chief of staff of the 82nd Airborne Division, told reporters in Saudi Arabia as he assessed the allied successes and Iraqi failures after the first 24 hours of battle.
As morning light came to the Middle East on Thursday, Israelis were jubilant over reports that the night`s action included successful strikes at missile bases in western Iraq that threatened them.
”We salute them,” a pilot said on television from the cockpit of his U.S.-made F-15 jet. ”They did better than anyone could dream. They took the world championship.”
In Jerusalem, a police officer jerked a thumbs-up signal at a passerby. An army reservist joked: ”Have a nice day. Have a nice war.” Soviet immigrants, still arriving despite the threat of war, received gas masks at Ben-Gurion International Airport.
But the army ordered Israelis who ventured onto the streets to return home, warning they still faced the threat of an Iraqi chemical attack with mobile missiles.
”There is always a danger that a lone launcher will send a missile in our direction, and we are ready,” said Brig. Gen. Zeev Livne, assistant to the military chief of operations.
At 5:30 a.m., his hair still wet from a shower, Bush stuck his head into a White House briefing room and told a huddle of reporters and photographers who had been there all night: ”Things are going well.”
Later that morning, George and Barbara Bush and several U.S. officials attended a prayer service at a chapel at Ft. Meyers in Virginia, conducted by Rev. Billy Graham, an old friend of the Bushes` who had spent the previous night with them at the White House.
As the Bushes prayed, Cable News Network broadcast taped footage showing Hussein kneeling on a Muslim prayer rug.
At 9:30 a.m., Bush met with top congressional leaders from both parties. He was somber, say those who were there, and warned of hard days and hard nights ahead. ”He didn`t want anybody to have a feeling of euphoria,” said Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.).
Oil prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange plunged by more than $10 a barrel, the largest one-day drop in history. Stock markets around the world jumped in response to the apparent success of the initial allied air strikes. The question on everyone`s lips was: ”Why hadn`t Saddam Hussein struck back? What was he planning? Could it really be this easy?”
As Israeli and U.S. leaders were urging caution, Belgian radio quoted the Iraqi ambassador to Belgium: ”The attack on Israel is coming,” Ziad Haidar said. ”The decision has been taken. The timing is, of course, a secret.”
Throughout Thursday, the war`s impact rumbled around the world, much like the thunder and lightning that Gen. Schwarzkopf had challenged the allied troops to become.
Turkey, which had insisted its land could be used only for defensive purposes, announced that allied warplanes could attack Iraq from Turkish air bases, although Turkish forces massed along the 206-mile border with Iraq would not attack Iraqi targets.
NATO held an emergency session and warned Baghdad that any assault on Turkey, the only NATO member bordering Iraq, would be an attack against the entire 16-nation alliance.
In Jordan, sandwiched between Israel and Iraq, worried citizens in the capital, Amman, stripped store shelves of flashlights, first-aid supplies and masking tape, used to keep windows from shattering. Jordan closed its international airport and airspace. The government condemned ”the brutal attack against Iraq” but pledged to maintain its neutrality.
President Hashemi Rafsanjani of Iran, which fought an eight-year war with Iraq, called the airborne assault a ”historical catastrophe” that was killing innocent Muslims.
Pro-Iraqi students protested in Lebanon and Sudan, and the Palestine Liberation Organization urged all Arabs to avenge a ”black day in history”
by fighting on behalf of Saddam Hussein.
In Bahrain, many of the 12,000 Kuwaiti exiles danced in the streets, streamed to mosques to pray for victory and crowded hotel lobbies to watch TV news bulletins.
”The sun of liberation will soon rise,” said Kuwait`s exiled crown prince and prime minister, Sheik Saad Abdullah al-Sabah.
British Prime Minister John Major commended the United States for
”paying a very substantial price to ensure freedom for Kuwait,” and Canada expelled three of the seven diplomats at the Iraqi Embassy in Ottawa.
Japan, which so far had contributed $2 billion to the multinational forces, said it would send more. France toughened its stance against Iraq`s actions, and South Korean President Roh Tae Woo said his people ”fully support the resolute military actions the United States has taken.”
The Soviet Union blamed Hussein for the war, urged him to pull his forces out of Kuwait immediately, and expressed support for the U.S. in the conflict. For the first time since the mid-1940s, the Kremlin had firmly supported Western nations against a Third World country.
Officials in China urged restraint, but some citizens rejoiced.
”Iraq was knocked senseless!” a Chinese man said as he stopped his bicycle to buy a newspaper from a street vendor. Lines formed as papers flew from his hands to eager buyers. ”Come read the papers!” the vendor called.
”War has broken out!”
But strong anti-war sentiment was also evident. At UN headquarters in New York, at least 4,000 demonstrators gathered to condemn the attack and pray for peace.
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In the Japanese city of Hiroshima, survivors of the 1945 atomic bombing joined an anti-nuclear sit-in. Protesters in Germany marched by torchlight and blocked train tracks. Other peace protests were reported in Brussels, Milan and Athens. In Melbourne, Australia, more than 200 protesters, some weeping, blocked traffic Thursday, chanting ”no more war.”
Throughout the afternoon in the U.S., hopes rose that enough Iraqi Scud missiles had been destroyed that Israel would not be attacked, and the war might be contained, casualties kept low, and the international coalition held together.
At a 3 p.m. Cabinet meeting, Baker, Cheney and Powell stood in a circle, joking a little and patting one another on the back, The New York Times reported, sharing new ”war stories” about how well things were going.
But Bush remained somber, and again warned against claiming victory too soon.
Barely four hours later, eight Iraqi Scud missiles hit Tel Aviv and Haifa, causing injuries but no deaths. The direction and political
ramifications of the war had changed dramatically, only 24 hours after it had begun.
Baker expressed to Israel his horror at the attack, and began a series of diplomatic calls to make sure the tenuous American-Arab alliance against Iraq held firm.
As Israel weighed whether it should retaliate or trust the Americans to wipe out the Iraqi threat, the world waited.