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"That's something to consider," I replied. "But I need to talk to Norm first." I excused myself and went into the President's study just off the Oval Office. I picked up a secure phone, and the White House military operator put me through to Riyadh.
"Norm," I said, "the President wants to know if we can end it now."
"When is now?" he asked.
"We're looking at this evening." Given the eight-hour time difference, that would mean stopping the war in the middle of the night in the Gulf region.
"I don't have any problem," Norm said. "Our objective was to drive 'em out, and we've done it. But let me talk to my commanders, and unless they've run into a snag I don't know about, I don't see why we shouldn't stop."
By 5:30 p.m. Cheney and I were back at the White House, where we joined the President in the small office off the Oval Office. I took note of the time the President made his final decision to suspend hostilities, 5:57. It was the Commander in Chief's decision to make, and he had made it. Every member of his policymaking team agreed. Schwarzkopf and I agreed. And there is no doubt in my mind that if Norm or I had had the slightest reservation about stopping now, the President would have given us all the time we needed.
We moved into the Oval Office and started discussing the timing and content of the announcement President Bush would make to the American people that night. Shortly after 6 p.m., I got on the phone again with Schwarzkopf. I told him the President would speak at 9 our time to announce that the fighting would stop at 8 a.m. the following morning Riyadh time. That would give Norm almost the one more day he had asked for in our conversation earlier in the morning.
The President and then Cheney came on the line to congratulate him. "Helluva job, Norm," the President said.
Schwarzkopf was soon back on the phone with a cautionary note. The gate was still slightly open, he told me. Some Republican Guard units and T-72 tanks could slip away. I told him to keep hitting them, and I would get back to him. I passed Norm's report to the President and the others. Although we were all taken slightly aback, no one felt that what we had heard changed the basic equation. The back of the Iraqi army had been broken. What was left of it was retreating north. There was no need to fight a battle of annihilation to see how many more combatants on both sides could be killed. The President reaffirmed his decision to end the fighting. I then called Schwarzkopf again and relayed to him that the White House understood that there would be some leakage of Iraqi forces, but that this condition was acceptable.