In 1991, in a televised address to the nation on this day of triumph, US President George H.W. Bush announced the successful conclusion of the so-called Bay of Goats operation.Party of War
Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Paul D. Wolfowitz (pictured) had conceived this ingenius plan alongside Marine Brigadier General Anthony Zinni - both men were in charge of Operation Provide Comfort which Zinni would later describe as :
"a dynamic war of maneuver [in which the US Marine Corps carved out a safe area of Northern Iraq for the Kurds by moving around Iraqi outposts]".
Flying into Sirsenk in far northern Iraq, Wolfowitz was startled by the success of the Operation. Arabic-speaking lieutenant colonel John Abizaid had created a security zone of some thirty-six hundred square miles with the use of minimum troop levels. Not so the State Department who went beserk, ordering Zinni and Abizaid to withdraw to the town of Dahuk.
Upon his return to Washington, Wolfowitz prepared a more daring plan with the Iraqi National Congress - "Create an enclave, give me some special forces and air support and I'll [Ahmed Chalabi] go in and topple the guy [Saddam Hussein] over". In effect, a military re-run of the Cuba Operation thirty years on but with lessons learnt and a stunningly different outcome this time around.
Recognised by neo-conservatives as the man who snatched victory from stalemate in the Gulf, Wolfowitz was the natural choice for US Defense Secretary in the Bush 2 Administration. In fact, Wolfowitz was a man of utter self-certainty; he genuinely came to believe that he had redeemed US Policy in Iraq after a messy end in which American troops had stood by whilst Saddam Hussein brutally crushed the Shiite and Kurdish rebellion.
By 2001, Wolfowitz ambition level had increased markedly. "I think the world in general has a tendency to say, if somebody like Saddam is killing his own people, 'Thats Too Bad, but thats not really my business'. Thats dangerous, because Hussein was in a class with very few others, Stalin Hitler, Kim Jong Il.. People of that order of evil .. tend not to keep evil at home, they tend to export it in various ways and eventually it bites us".
Few observers missed the significance of this statement, and in retrospect the policy of regime rollback in North Korea was widely anticipated. With W disgraced by defeat, two ex-veterans, John S. McCain and John Kerry would fight out the 2004 presidential election, as America emerged from the catastrophic military adventure in North Korea.