Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 8, 1991 TAG: 9102080825
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: DHAHRAN, SAUDI ARABIA LENGTH: Long
As the campaign continued, U.S. warplanes knocked out an Iraqi mobile missile launcher and scored possible hits on three others overnight, the military said.
Off the coast of Kuwait, a British Royal Navy helicopter blew up an Iraqi patrol boat with a Sea Skua missile, a pool report said. Iraq's naval fleet is all but out of commission, with most of its vessels either sunk or destroyed.
On land, U.S. Marine gunners fired more than 100 rounds at a suspected Iraqi artillery battery in Kuwait, a pool dispatch said. Iraqi troops did not return fire, and no U.S. casualties were reported, the dispatch said.
It was the first ground action near the northern Saudi border since Monday, when Marines exchanged small arms and artillery fire with Iraqi troops in southern Kuwait.
In Baghdad, allied air attacks diminished overnight, but a bridge and a communications center were demolished, an Associated Press reporter said.
The Saudi commander said today that allied forces have taken more than 900 Iraqi prisoners since the war began, and more than 400 Iraqi troops surrendered in the 5 1/2 months before the war.
Lt. Gen. Khalid bin Sultan told reporters the POWs have told of Iraqi "execution battalions" positioned behind the front lines to kill deserters and intimidate those considering fleeing the Iraqi forces.
The British briefer, RAF Group Capt. Niall Irving, told reporters that more Iraqi aircraft flew to Iran in the last 24 hours, raising the total to 147. Including combat losses, about 40 percent of Iraq's air force is now out of commission.
The latest allied actions on land, sea and sky came as strategists debated when and how to wage a ground war against Iraq.
Cheney and Powell arrived at an air base in western Saudi Arabia and addressed several hundred people there.
Powell elicited cheers when he told them: "We'll get this over with a simple process - we're going to cut it off and kill it."
After the base visit, Cheney flew to Taif and met with the exiled emir of Kuwait, Sheik Jabir al-Ahmad al-Sabah.
En route to the gulf, Cheney for the first time publicly raised the prospect of a limited ground campaign, rather than an all-out assault.
"You add the amphibious element or the ground forces in the fashion that forces him to move out of his prepared positions, and it's moving out of those positions that makes him vulnerable once again to the air force," Cheney told reporters traveling with him.
Cheney and Powell have in the past promised a swift and violent campaign using most if not all of the U.S. firepower in the region.
But a limited campaign could give allied ground forces an opportunity to test Iraq's response. It could also serve to lure Iraqi units into the open for new air assaults - and buy some time for late-arriving American ground units to prepare for an all-out offensive.
Since the war's early days, Iraq has used truck-mounted launchers to fire rockets at Israel and Saudi Arabia, and allied warplanes have worked to hunt down the mobile launchers.
U.S. military officials in Saudi Arabia, speaking on condition of anonymity, today reported some successes. They said one mobile missile launcher in southern Iraq, aimed toward Saudi Arabia, was destroyed. Three others, in western Iraq, aimed at Israel, were damaged or destroyed, they said.
The raid in western Iraq came minutes after the Iraqis shot a modified Scud missile at the Saudi capital of Riyadh early today. A Patriot missile interceptor blew it apart, and no injuries were reported.
U.S. officials also disclosed that, contrary to previous assertions by top officials, Iraq still has some of its fixed Scud launch sites in addition to the mobile launchers. But they said as far as they knew, none of the fixed launchers has fired a missile since the fighting began.
In the abandoned Saudi seaside town of Khafji, which Iraqi troops briefly held last week, Saudi soldiers were still hunting down a few Iraqi stragglers, the Qatar news agency said today. Citing military sources, it said the Saudis had captured 28 Iraqi holdouts and had one building under siege.
The Iraqi capital experienced far fewer bombing and missile strikes late Thursday and early today than it did the previous night. But a major communications center was destroyed, and the al-Jomhouriya bridge over the Tigris River, left partly intact after two earlier strikes, was demolished, according to AP reporter Salah Nasrawi.
The newspaper of the ruling Baath party, al-Thawra, reported that there had been a sharp rise in the number of miscarriages and premature births in Baghdad since the air raids started on Jan. 17.
The United States has pledged to do everything possible to pinpoint military and strategic targets. Asked about the bombing's toll on civilians, command spokesman Neal responded: "War is a dirty business."
French President Francois Mitterrand predicted on Thursday that the allies will mount a land offensive within a few weeks.
"The ground battle promises to take place in coming days, in any case sometime this month," he told French television reporters on Thursday.
The British commander in the gulf, Lt. Gen. Peter de la Billiere, said he believes the land war is "inevitable."
The French Foreign Ministry said today that France and Britain will ask a joint group of experts to lay groundwork for a postwar settlement in the gulf.
If and when a land war begins, the U.S. commander in the gulf, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, says a simple frontal assault on Iraqi entrenchments would be unlikely.
"The dumbest thing you do is go right into the teeth of the enemy and play his game," he told ABC's "Primetime Live" on Thursday night. "We're not going to play his game out here."
Officers of a key unit in the allied plans for a ground assault say a full-bore attack would be huge in scale.
"You are going to see entire corps moving across the battlefield," said Col. Leroy Goff, a brigade commander in the Army's 3rd Armored Division. "We haven't seen elements of that size moving since the North African campaign in World War II."
He did not give figures, but the main corps assembled in Saudi Arabia have up to 100,000 troops each, and thousands of tanks.
Also today, a senior Soviet envoy left Tehran after extensive talks about an Iranian plan to end the Gulf War, Tehran radio reported.
Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani told a news conference Monday he had sent a message to Saddam, proposing an "idea" that could halt the conflict.
by CNB