Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 14, 1993 TAG: 9301140241
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
U.S. BOMBS IRAQI MISSILE SITES
Warplanes from the United States, France and Britain bombed missile sites in southern Iraq on Wednesday, two years after the allies claimed to have decisively defeated Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in the Persian Gulf war and just a week before President Bush is scheduled to leave office.The 30-minute night attack, limited in scope, clearly was intended to deliver a political message of allied resolve in the face of Iraqi defiance and not a crushing military blow.
About 80 strike aircraft and 30 support planes took part. No economic targets like power stations or warehouses were hit, nor did bombs rain on airfields and major cities.
The attack took place in remote areas, far from the view of most Iraqi citizens.
Saddam breathed defiance in a broadcast Wednesday night, urging the "falcons" of his air force to fight the allies "the way you fought God's enemies before."
At the same time, Iraq offered to halt its raids into Kuwait. They have been taking place for several days and were a violation of U.N. resolutions. Iraq also has deployed missile batteries in forbidden areas and fired an Iraqi missile at an American plane, actions the United States has described as brazen provocations by Baghdad.
After Saddam's speech, Baghdad radio reported the raids killed a soldier and three civilians in a residential area near a "petrochemical complex" in the area around the southern city of Basra, the Associated Press said. The radio report, which quoted an anonymous official source, also said three soldiers and four civilians were wounded.
In a further warning to Saddam that he could not continue to flout the will of the United Nations, Bush announced the dispatch of a battalion-sized task force, about 1,250 American troops, to neighboring Kuwait, where they will act as a deterrent to further Iraqi incursions.
"I would think that soon Saddam Hussein would understand that we mean what we say and that we back it up," Bush said in a meeting with reporters, brushing aside any suggestion that it was improper for him to launch an attack with so little time left in office.
He implied, and officials in Paris and London said more bluntly, that if the Iraqi leader did not mend his ways, there would be more attacks, whether Bush remained in the White House or Bill Clinton had moved in.
"If he infringes again, he must expect us to retaliate again," British Prime Minister John Major said. "We have made it clear to him that we will certainly do that."
All the strike aircraft, which operated mainly from airfields in Saudi Arabia and from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk in the Persian Gulf, returned safely, and there were no allied casualties, Pentagon officials said.
Marlin Fitzwater, the White House spokesman, said early reports indicated "the mission was accomplished." A Navy Intruder pilot, Cmdr. Rick Hess of the 52nd Attack Squadron, based at Whidbey Island, Wash., said the missiles he had struck, which were in position to imperil allied aircraft patrolling the air-exclusion zone in southern Iraq, had been "systematically destroyed."
U.S. pilots, who were joined by British airmen in Tornadoes and Frenchmen at the controls of Mirages, said they flew through skies lit by the orange splashes of anti-aircraft fire. Several said they made double passes over the targets before dropping their bombs to make sure they had correctly identified the targets.
Reports from the Kitty Hawk said at least four surface-to-air missiles were fired at the American planes. But they apparently were launched at random, without the benefit of the crucial guidance supplied by radar.