
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, March 28, 1991                   TAG: 9103280342
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

WHITE HOUSE REBUTS SCHWARZKOPF/ GENERAL: I WANTED TO CONTINUE ATTACK

In the first sign of top-level military discord in Operation Desert Storm, the Bush administration Wednesday sharply denied assertions by Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf that he had recommended continuing the allied attack until Saddam Hussein's forces were annihilated.

The decision to stop firing before the Iraqi forces were destroyed "was coordinated with and concurred in by the commander in the field, General Schwarzkopf," Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney said in a written statement. Schwarzkopf, he said, "raised no objection" to halting the war.

President Bush, in comments to reporters, said that all of his top military advisers, including Schwarzkopf, were in "total agreement" that the time had come to halt hostilities against Saddam's decimated forces in Kuwait and southern Iraq.

The administration comments represent a stinging retort to Schwarzkopf, the bold, outspoken commander who has assumed almost folk hero status in the wake of the allies' resounding victory in the Gulf War.

The extraordinary rebuke of a senior military officer came in response to a television interview in which Schwarzkopf said he had recommended that allied forces "continue the march" to destroy Iraqi military units that had been enveloped by allied forces.

"Frankly, my recommendation had been . . . to continue the march," Schwarzkopf said in the interview, which aired on public television Wednesday night.

by CNB