Retired Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf dies

In this photo from Sept. 14, 1990, U.S. Army Gen. H. Nor­man Schwarzkopf, com­man­der of U.S. forces in Saudi Ara­bia, answers ques­tions dur­ing an inter­view in Riyadh. Schwarzkopf died Thurs­day in Tampa, Fla. He was 78. (Asso­ci­ated Press file | David Longstreath)

LOLITA C. BALDOR

RICHARD PYLE

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — Retired Gen. H. Nor­man Schwarzkopf, who topped an illus­tri­ous mil­i­tary career by com­mand­ing the U.S.-led inter­na­tional coali­tion that drove Sad­dam Hussein’s forces out of Kuwait in 1991 but kept a low pub­lic pro­file in con­tro­ver­sies over the sec­ond Gulf War against Iraq, died Thurs­day. He was 78.

Schwarzkopf died in Tampa, Fla., where he had lived in retire­ment, accord­ing to a U.S. offi­cial, who was not autho­rized to release the infor­ma­tion pub­licly and spoke on con­di­tion of anonymity.

A much-decorated com­bat sol­dier in Viet­nam, Schwarzkopf was known pop­u­larly as “Stormin’ Nor­man” for a noto­ri­ously explo­sive temper.

He served in his last mil­i­tary assign­ment in Tampa as commander-in-chief of U.S. Cen­tral Com­mand, the head­quar­ters respon­si­ble for U.S. mil­i­tary and secu­rity con­cerns in nearly 20 coun­tries from the east­ern Mediter­ranean and Africa to Pakistan.

Schwarzkopf became “CINC-Centcom” in 1988 and when Sad­dam Hus­sein invaded Kuwait three years later to pun­ish it for allegedly steal­ing Iraqi oil reserves, he com­manded Oper­a­tion Desert Storm, the coali­tion of some 30 coun­tries orga­nized by then-President George H.W. Bush that suc­ceeded in dri­ving the Iraqis out.

At the peak of his post­war national celebrity, Schwarzkopf — a self-proclaimed polit­i­cal inde­pen­dent — rejected sug­ges­tions that he run for office, and remained far more pri­vate than other gen­er­als, although he did serve briefly as a mil­i­tary com­men­ta­tor for NBC.

While focused pri­mar­ily in his later years on char­i­ta­ble enter­prises, he cam­paigned for Pres­i­dent George W. Bush in 2000 but was ambiva­lent about the 2003 inva­sion of Iraq, say­ing he doubted vic­tory would be as easy as the White House and Pen­ta­gon pre­dicted. In early 2003 he told the Wash­ing­ton Post the out­come was an unknown:

“What is post­war Iraq going to look like, with the Kurds and the Sun­nis and the Shi­ites? That’s a huge ques­tion, to my mind. It really should be part of the over­all cam­paign plan,” he said.

Ini­tially Schwarzkopf had endorsed the inva­sion, say­ing he was con­vinced that for­mer Sec­re­tary of State Colin Pow­ell had given the United Nations pow­er­ful evi­dence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruc­tion. After that proved false, he said deci­sions to go to war should depend on what U.N. weapons inspec­tors found.

He sel­dom spoke up dur­ing the con­flict, but in late 2004, he sharply crit­i­cized then-Defense Sec­re­tary Don­ald Rums­feld and the Pen­ta­gon for mis­takes that included inad­e­quate train­ing for Army reservists sent to Iraq and for erro­neous judg­ments about Iraq.

“In the final analy­sis I think we are behind sched­ule. … I don’t think we counted on it turn­ing into jihad (holy war),” he said in an NBC interview.

Schwarzkopf was born Aug. 24, 1934, in Tren­ton, N.J., where his father, Col. H. Nor­man Schwarzkopf Jr., founder and com­man­der of the New Jer­sey State Police, was then lead­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion of the Lind­bergh kid­nap case, which ended with the arrest and 1936 exe­cu­tion of German-born car­pen­ter Richard Haupt­mann for steal­ing and mur­der­ing the famed aviator’s infant son.

The elder Schwarzkopf was named Her­bert, but when the son was asked what his “H” stood for, he would reply, “H.” Although reputed to be short-tempered with aides and sub­or­di­nates, he was a friendly, talk­a­tive and even jovial fig­ure who didn’t like “Stormin’ Nor­man” and pre­ferred to be known as “the Bear,” a sobri­quet given him by troops.

He also was out­spo­ken at times, includ­ing when he described Gen. William West­more­land, the U.S. com­man­der in Viet­nam, as “a horse’s ass” in an Asso­ci­ated Press interview.

As a teenager Nor­man accom­pa­nied his father to Iran, where the elder Schwarzkopf trained the country’s national police force and was an adviser to Reza Pahlavi, the young Shah of Iran.

Young Nor­man stud­ied there and in Switzer­land, Ger­many and Italy, then fol­lowed in his father’s foot­steps to West Point, grad­u­at­ing in 1956 with an engi­neer­ing degree. After stints in the U.S. and abroad, he earned a master’s degree in engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­sity of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia and later taught mis­sile engi­neer­ing at West Point.

In 1966 he vol­un­teered for Viet­nam and served two tours, first as a U.S. adviser to South Viet­namese para­troops and later as a bat­tal­ion com­man­der in the U.S. Army’s Amer­i­cal Divi­sion. He earned three Sil­ver Stars for valor — includ­ing one for sav­ing troops from a mine­field — plus a Bronze Star, a Pur­ple Heart and three Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice Medals.

While many career offi­cers left mil­i­tary ser­vice embit­tered by Viet­nam, Schwarzkopf was among those who opted to stay and help rebuild the tat­tered Army into a potent, mod­ern­ized all-volunteer force.

After Sad­dam invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Schwarzkopf played a key diplo­matic role by help­ing to per­suade Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd to allow U.S. and other for­eign troops to deploy on Saudi ter­ri­tory as a stag­ing area for the war to come.

On Jan. 17, 1991, a five-month buildup called Desert Shield became Oper­a­tion Desert Storm as allied air­craft attacked Iraqi bases and Bagh­dad gov­ern­ment facil­i­ties. The six-week aer­ial cam­paign cli­maxed with a mas­sive ground offen­sive on Feb. 24–28, rout­ing the Iraqis from Kuwait in 100 hours before U.S. offi­cials called a halt.

Schwarzkopf said after­ward he agreed with Bush’s deci­sion to stop the war rather than drive to Bagh­dad to cap­ture Sad­dam, as his mis­sion had been only to oust the Iraqis from Kuwait.

But in a desert tent meet­ing with van­quished Iraqi gen­er­als, he allowed a key con­ces­sion on Iraq’s use of heli­copters, which later back­fired by enabling Sad­dam to crack down more eas­ily on rebel­lious Shi­ites and Kurds.

While he later avoided the pub­lic second-guessing by aca­d­e­mics and think tank experts over the ambigu­ous out­come of Gulf War I and its impact on Gulf War II, he told the Wash­ing­ton Post in 2003, “You can’t help but… with 20/20 hind­sight, go back and say, ‘Look, had we done some­thing dif­fer­ent, we prob­a­bly wouldn’t be fac­ing what we are fac­ing today.’”

After retir­ing from the Army in 1992, Schwarzkopf wrote a best-selling auto­bi­og­ra­phy, “It Doesn’t Take A Hero.” Of his Gulf war role, he said, “I like to say I’m not a hero. I was lucky enough to lead a very suc­cess­ful war.” He was knighted by Queen Eliz­a­beth II and hon­ored with dec­o­ra­tions from France, Britain, Bel­gium, Kuwait, Saudi Ara­bia, United Arab Emi­rates, Qatar and Bahrain.

Schwarzkopf was a national spokesman for prostate can­cer aware­ness and for Recov­ery of the Griz­zly Bear, served on the Nature Con­ser­vancy board of gov­er­nors and was active in var­i­ous char­i­ties for chron­i­cally ill children.

“I may have made my rep­u­ta­tion as a gen­eral in the Army and I’m very proud of that,” he once told the AP. “But I’ve always felt that I was more than one-dimensional. I’d like to think I’m a car­ing human being. … It’s nice to feel that you have a purpose.”

Schwarzkopf and his wife, Brenda, had three chil­dren: Cyn­thia, Jes­sica and Christian.

Posted by AP News on Dec 27 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.