THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, January 16, 1996 TAG: 9601160257
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: THE GULF WAR: FIVE YEARS LATER
SOURCE: BY BILL SIZEMORE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 178 lines
Five years ago tonight, Hampton Roads residents sat transfixed in their living rooms, watching a spectacular fireworks display on prime-time TV.
But this wasn't the Fourth of July. This was war.
It was all there on CNN: The night sky ablaze with tracers streaking over Baghdad. Laser-guided bombs snaking their way down chimneys. The scene was eerie, as if it were some larger-than-life video game.
What the cameras didn't show was the death and destruction on the ground as the United States hurled its huge military might against the forces of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Hussein had defied an international demand for his withdrawal after invading his oil-rich neighbor, Kuwait.
Beginning Jan. 16, 1991, the United States and its allies struck the Iraqi forces with wave after wave of air attacks, many of them launched from Norfolk-based aircraft carriers.
``We will not fail,'' a grim President George Bush told the nation. Among the sites hit were oil refineries, the international airport and Hussein's presidential palace.
The U.S. armada in the Persian Gulf included 42,000 Norfolk-based sailors.
All over Hampton Roads, military families watched and waited, trying to fight off their worst fears.
At a support session for Navy wives in Virginia Beach, feelings of anger and apprehension erupted amid talk of ``the knock on the door'' from a Navy chaplain. ``If I see them coming, I'm just going to shut my door,'' said one, cradling her baby boy. ``I'll already know.''
In churches, prayers were offered for the U.S. forces. Some who interpreted the Bible literally saw the conflict as setting the stage for Armageddon, the final battle between good and evil.
But six weeks later, it was over. Iraq, its vaunted military devastated by the U.S. onslaught, withdrew from Kuwait. American forces returned home in triumph, having taken minimal casualties.
The entire crisis had lasted only seven months.
It began Aug. 2, 1990, when Iraq's army entered Kuwait. Bush ordered an economic embargo, joined four days later by the U.N. Security Council.
On Aug. 7, Bush ordered U.S. combat troops and warplanes sent to protect Saudi Arabia and its oil reserves, the richest in the world. At the time, Pentagon officials described the U.S. mission as purely defensive, saying the force might reach 50,000.
``A line has been drawn in the sand'' against any Iraqi invasion of Saudi Arabia, Bush said.
Within 10 days, 35 Norfolk-based ships with more than 27,000 sailors had been deployed to the Persian Gulf. It was the equivalent of a city the size of Blacksburg packing up and leaving. On streets near Hampton Roads Navy installations, normally clogged with bumper-to-bumper at rush hour, traffic was suddenly sparse.
Businesses near the bases reported sharp dropoffs in sales as sailors shipped out. Some were forced to lay off employees.
Almost two-thirds of the 41,000 Marines normally stationed at Camp Lejeune, N.C., were sent to the Persian Gulf.
More than 800 Americans, including several from Hampton Roads, were trapped in Iraq and Kuwait after the invasion. They were among more than 3,500 foreign nationals held hostage by Hussein. Some were moved to vital military installations and used as human shields.
Those stuck in Kuwait told of being awakened at night by the sound of Iraqi shells slamming into nearby buildings and seeing tanks roll by as they huddled inside for weeks. They said Iraqi soldiers roamed the streets looting businesses and went door to door looking for Americans.
On Aug. 24, Iraqi troops surrounded the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait. But U.S. Ambassador W. Nathaniel Howell, a feisty Portsmouth native, refused to give it up.
Howell and his staff remained holed up in the embassy for 110 days. Iraqi soldiers cut off the water and food supply. The Americans dug a latrine trench and a well, and endured a diet of tuna sandwiches.
Howell stayed at his post until all the American hostages were evacuated.
On Nov. 8, Bush raised the stakes.
Demanding an unconditional Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait, the president ordered an additional 200,000 troops into the region, acknowledging for the first time that they might take on an offensive role.
The deployment included two more carriers and 15,000 more sailors from Norfolk. The force eventually reached 539,000, approaching the maximum deployment in Vietnam two decades before.
Families were left to worry at home. Bonnie Toomer, 34, whose husband was aboard the cruiser Normandy, waited in Norfolk with her three daughters and wondered about Bush's rationale for the buildup.
``On one hand I support it,'' she said at the time. ``On the other hand, I can't. There's a whole lot of innocent people going over there to fight for something that's material. I know oil is important. But these are innocent people.''
Jason Allen, 11, waited out the deployment in Navy housing in Virginia Beach with his younger brother and sister and their grandmother. His father, Richard, a single parent, was assigned to the destroyer tender Yellowstone. Some nights, Jason told an interviewer, he had dreams about his dad.
``Some are good and some are bad,'' he said.
On Dec. 28, two carriers, the Roosevelt and America, and six escort ships sailed from Norfolk in one of the biggest single-day deployments since the Vietnam War.
Sharon Decker stood on a pier at Norfolk Naval Station saying goodbye to her son A.J., bound for the Mideast on the guided-missile destroyer Preble. It was history repeating itself: 18 years before, she had bade farewell to her husband, Al, as he shipped out to Vietnam.
Amid the patriotic hoopla, there were scattered voices of dissent.
Bishop Walter F. Sullivan of the Catholic Diocese of Richmond advised Catholics to search their consciences and consider refusing to join the war, which, he said, ``the Catholic church considers unjustified and immoral.''
On Jan. 12, 1991, after an emotional debate, Congress gave Bush the authority to wage war.
Three days later, the U.N.-imposed deadline for an Iraqi pullout passed. Hussein, showing no sign of budging, told his people to prepare for ``the mother of all battles.''
The air war was under way.
In just over two weeks, allied pilots flew 40,000 missions - some 10,000 more than were flown against Japan in the final 14 months of World War II.
On Jan. 18, a jet based at Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach was shot down over Iraq and its two aviators listed as missing. Two days later, blindfolded prisoners of war were paraded through the streets of Baghdad. Three haggard-looking American POWs were interviewed on Iraqi TV.
On Feb. 13, allied planes destroyed an underground shelter in downtown Baghdad. U.S. officials said it was a military command post, but Iraq said 500 civilians were killed.
Mikhail Gorbachev, then-president of the Soviet Union, tried to intercede with a last-ditch peace plan. But Bush rejected it and ordered Iraq to begin pulling out of Kuwait within 24 hours.
On Feb. 23, the allies launched their ground assault, punching through two stretches of the Saudi-Kuwaiti border in America's first desert land war since World War II.
At Virginia Beach's Mount Trashmore, a crowd of nearly 300 braved chilly winds and a steady rain for 90 minutes to show their support and pray for the troops.
On Feb. 26, Iraq announced its unconditional withdrawal. Allied forces conducted bombing raids on the retreating Iraqis.
Just 100 hours after the ground war began, it was over.
On the bomb-spattered highway north of Kuwait City, dogs tugged at the corpses of Iraqi soldiers. The horizon was a surreal landscape of pulverized vehicles, bones and empty boots.
At Norfolk's Waterside, a jubilant crowd chanted ``U.S.A.'' and sang patriotic songs at a victory rally.
Estimates of Iraqi deaths in the war varied widely, from 25,000 to 100,000. The Center for Defense Information in Washington puts the number at 40,000.
There were 392 American deaths.
Some critics, noting that Hussein is still in power today, argue that the allies shouldn't have stopped when they did.
But Gen. Colin Powell, who directed the war effort as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, disagrees. In an interview last fall, Powell noted that the mission authorized by the United Nations was the liberation of Kuwait, not marching on Baghdad and overthrowing Hussein.
``It's a legitimate criticism to say that we could have killed more, we could have destroyed more tanks,'' Powell said. ``But was the Iraqi army in Kuwait killed as an entity that is occupying Kuwait, and never again to rise to its level of prominence? I think I can make a case, yes, it was killed. The Iraqi army of today has about 25 divisions in it. Pre-gulf war it was 60-something. . . .
``I'm also reasonably sure that Saddam Hussein will pass. . . . He's going to go at some point, and when he's gone, then people can take a look and see whether or not it all worked out or didn't work out. I think history will be kind to the decision.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photos]
ASSOCIATED PRESS
File
One of the more vivid scenes from the Gulf War was anti-aircraft
fire lighting up the night sky, as above, on Jan. 18 over Baghdad.
The U.S. and allies began their many air attacks against Iraqi
forces on this day, Jan. 16, five years ago.
BILL TIERNAN
The Virginian-Pilot
During the war, at Norfolk's Bayview Baptist Church, the parents of
Army Sgt. Jeffrey P. Taylor, Joe C. and Nancy L. Taylor, and his
niece, Precious Dawn Chappell, 9, pray for his safe return.
BILL TIERNAN
The Virginian-Pilot
Army Capt. Gordon Oglesby hugs his son at Langley Air Force Base
after returning from the Persian Gulf.
KEYWORDS: GULF WAR ANNIVERSARY by CNB