As President Bush strode along with Secretary of State James A. Baker III in the last few hours of the final diplomatic frenzy before all-out war, he made an effort to stand up straighter.
A man for whom good posture is second nature, Bush has become more slump- shouldered as the dreary weeks of war have dragged on. Despite his effort, his shoulders were soon round again as he walked.
Bush is still uncommonly healthy for a man of 66; but the war, not surprisingly, appears to have aged him.
His hair is thinner and grayer, his face more deeply wrinkled. And he has all but given up his custom of light-hearted bantering with those around him. He denies his wife`s assertion that he has not been sleeping well. But his demeanor is businesslike, even somber, and he has been glimpsed yawning in public.
He made a hurried trip to Kennebunkport, Maine, last weekend to blow off steam-taking his famed ”power walks” in icy weather-to finalize his decision to launch a ground offensive. He left his senior aides at home, going over in his own mind the pros and cons of war in the Persian Gulf. Grim and determined, he said the war would be over ”very, very soon.”
Aides who see him every working day say that Bush has never wavered from his original decision that Saddam Hussein must be removed from Kuwait by force-and punished.
Bush`s resolve that Hussein must be ousted by a war was strengthened by reports of atrocities in Kuwait by Iraqi troops. The image that he repeatedly has cited of infants being dumped out of incubators in Kuwait hospitals has haunted him. When he went to Saudi Arabia last Thanksgiving, he said he was sickened by the pictures he was shown by Kuwaiti exiles.
Reports Saturday that Iraqi soldiers were executing Kuwaiti citizens on a mass scale and possibly rounding up teenagers heightened the urgency and mood at the White House not to tolerate any more ”stalling” by Hussein, a man Bush finally decided cannot be trusted.
Bush and Baker stayed mainly indoors at Camp David Saturday, sitting on sofas handy to telephones and television, while the third member of the top trio, national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, worked at the White House.
About a half hour before the noon deadline, Bush talked by telephone for 28 minutes with President Mikhail Gorbachev, possibly informing the Soviet leader that a final military offensive was now inevitable. The White House said the two men thanked each other for ”positive” roles in the last-minute effort to find peace.
An hour after Bush`s noon ultimatum for Iraq to show signs of withdrawal from Kuwait passed without compliance, Bush telephoned the White House to authorize a public statement.
Bush said he regretted Hussein`s failure to comply and said the United States intends to fulfill the United Nations resolutions.
”Military action continues on schedule and according to plan,” he said. Actually, American troops were already in attack positions.
When Bush sent his two top military aides, Gen. Colin Powell of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, to Saudi Arabia more than two weeks ago, they worked out the final scenario for the ground war with the Allied field commander, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf.
Bush has said he would abide by the military judgment on when the long-dreaded ground campaign would begin, and the Pentagon said Saturday the decision was left up to Schwarzkopf.
Reporters in Saudi Arabia for days have been seeing escalating preparations awaiting a final determination that key Iraqi military equipment was just about 50 percent destroyed.
Depending on who is doing the estimating, that figure has just about been reached, if not exceeded.
