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The coalition did not give the Iraqis a chance to apply it. Once the air offensive began on Jan. 16, it became obvious that for the first time air power was going to play a decisive role in war. Again Saddam made a misstep: after losing 36 fighters to allied aircraft, fighters he sent aloft, he grounded his 800-plane air force and eventually dispatched 137 of his top-of- the-line combat and transport aircraft to sanctuary in Iran. Allied planes then flew 80,000 sorties virtually unhindered and lost only 36, dramatically fewer than the 200 the coalition command had braced for. Asked how Saddam might have made better use of his multibillion-dollar air force, a U.S. Air Force general says, "Could have flown 'em."
Iraq's field army, committed to the static defense of Kuwait, simply had to dig in and take the pounding. That commitment only intensified after Saddam fell for allied bluffs that a seaborne invasion was coming. After six weeks of bombing, frontline units were isolated, mostly unable to communicate with Baghdad or one another, short of food and water. Many divisions had lost half of their equipment and, more important, their will to fight.
Victory in this war, as in all others, depended not so much on the weapons employed -- although the allies on the whole had more sophisticated equipment than Iraq had -- as on the determination of the men who had to use them. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War II, said that "morale is the greatest single factor in successful war." In the course of unrelenting bombing, weeks of hunger and Baghdad's dickering with Moscow about a withdrawal, Iraqi morale evaporated. The Saudi commander, Lieut. General Khalid bin Sultan, said Iraq's soldiers were competent enough, but "they don't believe in what they are fighting for."
The ground war proved this. While the coalition achieved victory with a wide, flanking sweep to the west, U.S., Saudi, Egyptian and Syrian divisions struck north from Saudi Arabia. They pushed directly into the Iraqi fortifications where Saddam had wanted to see them. Even there, Iraqi forces put up little resistance.
"They surprised me by not fighting harder," says Marine General Walt Boomer of the Iraqi forces. "But if they had fought for every bunker, the outcome would have been the same." There is little doubt of that, but allied casualties would have been much higher. The coalition's commanders and troops can say they did, in the end, play Saddam's game -- and beat him at it.