THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, January 16, 1996 TAG: 9601160250
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: THE GULF WAR: FIVE YEARS LATER
SOURCE: BY ED OFFLEY, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
LENGTH: Medium: 93 lines
Even though Iraq's military strength was crippled during the Persian Gulf War, President Saddam Hussein has since been able to reconstitute a good part of it.
Hussein remains ``a renegade whose actions must be closely monitored . . . (and) a major threat to regional stability,'' the U.S. Central Command said last year.
Indeed, violations of various ``no-fly'' U.N. sanctions and other threatening Iraqi moves have prompted allied forces in the region to attack Iraqi sites nine times since the end of the war, including major air strikes in early 1992 and a massive cruise missile attack against Iraqi intelligence headquarters in June 1993. Twice - in October 1994 and last August - the Pentagon rushed additional forces to the region in response to threatening military moves by the Baghdad regime.
As a result of Iraq's resilience, early U.S. promises in the fall of 1990 that U.S. military forces would leave the area when the crisis was resolved have gone unfilled.
The Central Command has 13,000 U.S. military personnel in the Arabian Peninsula area, with 7,000 sailors and Marines at sea and another 6,000 personnel in Saudi Arabia with a provisional air wing of 150 combat and support aircraft ``temporarily'' assigned at Saudi bases.
Pilots and maintenance personnel from Langley Air Force Base in Hampton rotate into Saudi Arabia every 90 days to enforce the U.N.'s ``no-fly'' zone.
One reason for Iraq's ability to come back from battlefield defeat was the now-controversial decision by President Bush and his military advisers to halt ground combat operations after the highly publicized bombing of fleeing Iraqis along the ``Highway of Death'' in Kuwait. The halt allowed several Republican Guard divisions to escape.
In an interview on the PBS show ``Frontline'' aired last week, military analyst Bernard Trainor accused Desert Storm commander Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf of serious error in halting the war.
``He never carried out the goal that he had set for himself in his own mission orders'' to destroy the Republican Guard, Trainor said.
Schwarzkopf and Gen. Colin Powell, then chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, stoutly defend the cease-fire recommendation on the grounds that further combat would have merely added to the Iraqi body count and possibly have spawned a political backlash against America.
But Bush, in an interview with David Frost to be aired tonight, said he underestimated Hussein's staying power.
Middle East expert Jere Bacharach at the University of Washington says Operation Desert Storm will stand in history as ``an unresolved war.''
``The specific aggression of Saddam Hussein was dealt with but fundamental issues remain unresolved,'' Bacharach said. These include the failure of the West to promote democracy among Kuwait and other Mideast allies and the protection of the minority Kurds and Shiites in Iraq from retaliation after their postwar revolts, he said. MEMO: Five years after the Persian Gulf War:
Saddam Hussein remains in power in Iraq.
Iraq has an army of 27 divisions, including a new force of eight
Republican Guard units. Just before the war, the army included 57
divisions.
Based on a statistical analysis, public health researchers say
malnutrition and other health problems caused by economic sanctions
imposed on Iraq since the invasion of Kuwait have claimed the lives of
more than 500,000 children younger than 5.
Insurgencies by Iraqi Kurds in the north and Shiite Muslims in the
country's southern marshes have continued, despite retaliation by the
Baghdad regime. The U.S. and allies continue to protect an autonomous
zone in northern Iraq, but terrorism against the Kurds continued.
Kuwait is still seeking to learn the fate of more than 600 citizens
it claims are being detained by Iraq.
The Pentagon has more than 13,000 ground and naval personnel serving
in the Arabian Peninsula region on a semipermanent basis.
Since the end of the Gulf War, U.S. aircraft in the Persian Gulf
region have flown three times the 112,000 aircraft sorties flown during
the six-week war.
The United States and its allies have attacked Iraqi targets with
aircraft or cruise missiles nine times after military provocations since
the cease-fire on March 3, 1991, and have sent reinforcing troops to the
region twice, in 1994 and last year.
Medical experts are still struggling to identify ``the Gulf War
syndrome,'' a mysterious cluster of ailments that struck hundreds of
soldiers who served in the war.
A U.N. inspection program continues to unearth evidence of Iraqi
nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs.
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
KEYWORDS: GULF WAR ANNIVERSARY by CNB