The battles, rear, main, and deep, the rear battle has begun.
That is the first part of the battle.
The main force has not yet started its great sweep across southern Iraq, and so far as
we know, the deep battle, which would first include the airborne units, has not yet begun.
Let's go to David Martin at the Pentagon.
Dan, I think it's safe to say now that the flanking movement has begun, and I've had
confirmed to me that one of the lead divisions in this giant sweep is the 24th Infantry Division,
and it's going to go quite far into Iraq.
I think exactly how far will depend on exactly what kind of resistance they meet.
The 24th Infantry Division, for people who do not usually keep abreast of what's in a
division, contains 16,500 men and 290 M1A1 tanks, plus another 270 Bradley infantry fighting
vehicles.
It's a considerable force, and that's just one of the lead divisions.
My understanding is that this operation that we would all think of as the ground offensive
has been underway now for about two hours, starting at roughly 8 p.m. Eastern time.
Although when this whole operation is dissected, I think we will see that there was a lot of
cross-border operations before that.
But in terms of sort of the go-order and people starting to race across the desert, it looks
like 8 o'clock was the real start time for this operation.
The main force is beginning to thrust deep into southern Iraq, as David Martin reports,
the main attack now beginning to roll, a flanking movement which is designed to bottle up not
only the Iraqi forces in Kuwait, but eventually bottle up the elite Republican Guard itself,
all part of what's called the Air-Land Battle Doctrine.
It was designed to have United States forces fight outnumbered and win in Europe.
The hope is that they'll have better luck with this in the open desert against what
is we need to remind ourselves the fourth largest army in the world and a very well-equipped
Iraqi army.
For more on that, let's go to Bob Schieffer in New York with retired U.S. Marine General
George Crist.
Bob?
You know, Dan, as we watch all of this unfold, having with us here General Crist, who was
General Schwarzkopf's predecessor, he can give us a special insight into what is General
Schwarzkopf thinking about right now, General Crist?
What is he worried about right now?
General Schieffer, U.S. Marine General George Crist, former U.S. Marine General
Norm Schwarzkopf is worried about putting together this battlefield ballet that we're
going to look at here.
He's got a lot of things that are going at the same time.
We're having attacks along the frontier here, the potential for an amphibious operation,
a sweep going like this.
Another sweep that probably is going up like this and another one that's going up like
this.
Intricate maneuvers involving armor, helicopters, airborne, all this with supporting aircraft
and all has to be put together in the most careful, careful way.
Now, Bob, if the music misses the dance step here in any one of these things, there can
be a problem.
On the grand scheme of things, I don't think it will affect it overall, but certainly any
part of that can be subject to Murphy's law.
And I think that's what Norm is worrying about now, making sure all this works together.
How long does it take to put together a plan like that?
I suspect that he's been working on that plan long before this battle started.
Certainly I know he was working on it before the invasion of Kuwait and he's had six months
to work this plan since then.
It's a very complex plan.
It's a very ambitious plan, but if it works the way I think he's got it put together,
it's going to bottle that army up and our casualties will be minimized, Bob.
Somebody here said the other day that amateurs deal in strategy, generals deal in logistics.
That's really what this is all about, isn't it?
A tremendous logistic problem with all of this because as you swing these forces wide,
and we're talking about 300, 350 miles on these particular swings out here, they have
to have fuel.
You heard Dan say three to five gallons per mile for those tanks.
Now we're going to be deploying almost 2,000 tanks in this attack, and not to mention however
many helicopters are going to eat up fuel at a great, great rate.
Those fuel trucks and General Pagonas who's responsible for supporting all this from back
here is going to have to keep the fuel moving forward or it stops as Patton did in World
War II.
Now this is truly going to be one of the greatest land battles in the history of warfare.
We all think about Al Alamein, those tank battles.
This is actually a battle of that scope, is it not?
We're pitting a million men on this battlefield.
Now whether it's the greatest battle of all time, I don't know.
It's certainly the first battle of World War III of this type that this army has ever conducted
by.
We've had very small battles, but that front stretches across there, what, some 300 miles.
That's right.
When you go all the way around from here around to here, Bob, you're almost 1,000 miles.
You're almost looking at the front of World War I, for example.
He calls it a battlefield ballet, Dan, and what a complicated operation it is.
Thanks Bob.
I'm going to ask Chris underscoring that as of now with the ground war offensive underway,
the potential is for a million fighting men to be engaged.
That would be roughly 500,000 on the US and allied side and roughly 500,000.
That's what Saddam Hussein has roughly in Kuwait and in southern Iraq.
That does not denigrate in any way the role of women in the US military.
They are many, many women, but they are prevented by law from being in forward actual combat
units, although many of them are very close up to the combat zone tonight.
Let's go to Wyatt Andrews at the White House.
Dan, we are now within two minutes from the president's national address to the nation
in which we expect him to explain why he has found it necessary now to send all these troops
into harm's way.
Why exactly that in his opinion the air war would not do the job and get Saddam Hussein
out of Kuwait.
And, of course, significantly today why he turned down that last minute appeal from Mikhail
Gorbachev to give diplomacy two more days under Gorbachev's argument that in two more
days it might be possible to bring the Iraqi position around.
The president is expected to address that and we have also been told here at the White
House he will take a few questions, but that the operational details of what's going on
will be handled by Secretary Cheney at the Defense Department.
Dan?
Thanks.
Keeping in mind that there's a Defense Department briefing scheduled shortly after the president
finishes his address.
The Defense Department briefing will be roughly 1030 tonight Eastern time.
Now, we have about a minute before the president of the United States is due to begin his address
and his wife said answer some questions.
The battlefield situation now is the main force attack according to David Martin at
the Pentagon has begun that includes that sweeping force across southern Iraq designed
to outflank the Iraqi forces in Kuwait and eventually to help draw out the elite Republican
Guard, either draw them out into an open warfare in the desert or to hammer them as Colin Powell
has said just hammer the hell out of them as long as they stay in their fixed positions.
Now we want to go to the White House as part of our CBS News contingent coverage of the
ground war offensive.
We will be on the air after the president speaks right now the president of the United
States.
Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States.
Good evening.
Yesterday after conferring with my senior national security advisors and following extensive
consultations with our coalition partners, Saddam Hussein was given one last chance set
forth in very explicit terms to do what he should have done more than six months ago,
withdraw from Kuwait without condition or further delay and comply fully with the resolutions
passed by the United Nations Security Council.
Regrettably the noon deadline passed without the agreement of the government of Iraq to
meet demands of United Nations Security Council resolution 660 as set forth in the specific
terms spelled out by the coalition to withdraw unconditionally from Kuwait.
To the contrary, what we have seen is a redoubling of Saddam Hussein's efforts to destroy completely
Kuwait and its people.
I have therefore directed General Norman Schwarzkopf in conjunction with coalition forces to use
all forces available including ground forces to eject the Iraqi army from Kuwait.
Once again this was a decision made only after extensive consultations within our coalition
partnership.
The liberation of Kuwait has now entered a final phase.
I have complete confidence in the ability of the coalition forces swiftly and decisively
to accomplish their mission.
Tonight as this coalition of countries seeks to do that which is right and just, I ask
only that all of you stop what you are doing and say a prayer for all the coalition forces
and especially for our men and women in uniform who this very moment are risking their lives
for their country and for all of us.
May God bless and protect each and every one of them and may God bless the United States
of America.
Thank you very much.
The President of the United States we have been led to believe might answer a few questions
after his short address to the nation, his short talk to the nation.
He chose not to do that I think for understandable reasons.
Everybody and we want to underscore this, everybody is very much concerned that while
we want to give and pass along the most up to date information possible about what's
going on in the battlefield, everybody is concerned about not giving any information
that might benefit the Iraqi forces.
Wyatt Andrews was at the White House as the President spoke, Wyatt?
Dan obviously the whole nation heard the speech exactly as we did here.
The President did not take questions but I would point everyone's attention to a couple
of things.
First of all, on the question, the President seemed to answer the question of why the air
war won't do any longer and why he felt forced to move in to the position to send ground
troops in and that was his line that said that Saddam Hussein was redoubling his efforts
in effect to destroy Kuwait.
That is an obvious reference to the scorched earth policy that the President has complained
about, the 200 oil wells that have been set afire by Iraqi troops.
Reports today of massive explosions inside Kuwait City.
It was obvious to me from here that the President felt compelled to move.
Second point was the very solemn ending to the President's very brief speech in which
he asked for the United States, ever all citizens to pray for our troops.
Very clear to me that the President, despite having ordered this, is quite worried about
casualties.
We mentioned earlier in tonight's broadcast that this is the third time the President
has sent troops into harm's way, Panama, the air war and ground troops, but never in this
administration or since World War II has there been a night like this.
Dan?
Quiet, Andrews.
We can hardly imagine what it means to be at the front tonight, waiting for dawn and
what tomorrow may bring.
We do know many officers because we've met them whose anxieties about looking after their
men won't let them sleep even when there is time to sleep and we do know many combat
GIs because we've met a lot of them, young kids with the gray faces who have in a matter
of weeks lost forever the essence of youth, what Eric Severide once called, that wonderful
feeling that their flesh can never die.
Now they know better.
They have seen the flames of artillery, felt the thump of mortars, and smelled the terrible
black smoke from a Kuwait in flames.
And they now know, all of them, that tomorrow may bring for them the orders to charge to
move forward into the unknown as the orders have already been given to many of our troops
at the front.
Now, speaking of the black smoke over a Kuwait in flames, we have with us Captain Ahmad Al-Sawal,
a Kuwaiti.
He flies a Mirage fighter, that's a French-made fighter for the Kuwaiti Air Force and is a
member of the Royal Al-Sawal family.
Captain, we appreciate you being with us.
We want to mention that you've flown daily missions over Kuwait throughout the war, and
your most recent mission over Kuwait was today.
What did you see up there?
You know, as you know, the Kuwaiti Air Force have here, well, started flying since 17 of
January till today, and we're going to go today for more than 30 missions inside of
Kuwait.
And the last two, three days, we've flown inside of our country.
We saw all our country being Saddam Hussein fire all the oil field in the south area,
and I can say in the south area, more than 150 oil fields.
I saw it by myself and my friends, all the oil fields being fired, and you see the smoke
till here in Dharan.
And yesterday also, we saw the oil field in the north of Kuwait area.
We're now told that more than 200 oil installations have been set afire.
Is the Kuwait theater, is it still what you pilots call target rich?
Do you still see a lot of Iraqi targets to hit?
You know, the last week, we didn't see a lot of targets inside of Kuwait, but as I mentioned
before, there is a lot of anti-aircraft inside of Kuwait city.
They put all the artilleries above the houses and the buildings facing to the sea.
Facing to the sea, as if they expected that marine amphibious attack.
That's accepted from the Marines.
They will attack from the sea.
That's why they put all the artilleries facing to the sea.
Very interesting.
The Marines, of course, their basic air is the Harrier and also the F-18.
You would agree that's a superior aircraft to the Mirage.
That's better aircraft more than the Mirage.
You know, the main role for the Mirage off-road is interceptor aircraft.
But we use it with the Kuwaiti Skyhawk now.
We'll go together to attack the Iraqi troops inside of Kuwait.
Maybe from tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, we'll start to fly as cabin inside of Kuwait.
Very loud aircraft, of course, is the British Tornado.
It's the Tornado.
A very good aircraft, but the world's loudest combat aircraft.
Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
Good luck to you.
I hope you will be back in your own country soon.
I hope with your help, with the American help.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chauvin.
Let's go back to Washington now.
And United States Congressman Lee Hamilton of Indiana and Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah.
Congressman, what's your hope after hearing the President in that short talk?
One sentence stood out to me, and that was the President said that he wanted those forces
to eject Iraq from Kuwait.
He also spoke in terms of the coalition.
He spoke again in terms of the UN resolutions.
I think that's the appropriate approach for the President to take, to keep within those
resolutions to focus on getting Iraq out of Kuwait.
One could not help but be impressed, of course, with the President.
You have to have compassion for him as he makes these terribly difficult decisions at
this moment.
Senator Hatch, what are you hearing from...
Well, first of all, what are your thoughts after hearing the President's talk?
Well, of course, I'm very concerned about all of our young men and women over there
and all of our coalition forces.
They're very brave people.
They're doing what really has to be done in the interests of the whole world and certainly
in the interest of the Middle East.
The President has done what is right.
He is trying to stop worldwide problems by facing the problems now.
And yes, it's a serious, serious event that's occurring right now, but it's something that
has to happen.
We simply have to stop this man.
We have to stop his use of weapons of mass destruction, and we have to stop terrorism.
And this is a good message that we're sending here tonight.
Congressman Hamilton, what are you hearing from your constituents?
What are the people back home saying to you?
Naturally, you haven't heard much since the ground war itself started, but you've bound
to have been hearing quite a bit over the past few days.
First, I think very strong support for the troops, for the President, for the country.
Secondly, they say to me that they want to get the war over quickly.
And third, they want the troops to come home safely.
Now, I think there's some tension between the latter two, getting the war over quickly
and having the troops come home safely.
But we want both of those objectives, and that's their overwhelming concern.
Just today, I addressed a group by phone to support the troops rally in a small town in
Indiana, Charlestown, Indiana.
Those rallies are taking place all across America, and they really are very heartwarming.
And the troops must feel good about having the kind of support that the American people
are extending to them.
Senator Hatch, do you hear anyone from home saying, listen, I support the troops, I support
the President, but I hope we can get this over with quickly because we have an awful
lot of economic problems at home to solve.
Well, I think everybody's concerned about that too, but I'll just state what Jim Stevenson
of Bonifold, Utah, said, who lost his son to Jan, one of the early casualties in this
war.
He asked me to tell the President, he said, you tell him that my son did not die in vain,
that there are things worth fighting for, there are things worth dying for, and that
I know he's right in what he's doing.
And I have to tell you, I know President Bush is right too, and I know what's on the minds
of those young men and women over there.
They want to know, is Congress going to support them?
Are the people behind them?
They asked Ted Stevens and Sam Nunn and the other senators who were there recently, they
said, we don't want to be treated like the Vietnam veterans were when they came back.
And I think that's on their minds, and I just hope everybody in America rallies behind the
President, rallies behind these brave young men and women, and behind our leadership over
there, and we all do what the President has asked us to do.
Let's pray for them.
Let's pray for a peaceful end of this thing, and let's pray that people like Saddam Hussein
will be put in their place, that this will never happen again, and that this will be
the type of a message that will be given to all people who are like-minded.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Congressman Hamilton and Senator Hatch.
State Line, the United Nations, New York, a spokesman for Iraq's embassy to the United
Nations in Baghdad's first reaction to the start of the ground war on the Gulf, said
today that his country would never surrender.
The spokesman for Iraq's embassy to the UN said, and I quote, Iraq will never surrender.
A lot of Americans will die also, quote, unquote.
There's been some doubt as to how much direct contact any overseas ambassador for Iraq has
had with Saddam Hussein and their own government in Baghdad.
The widespread belief has been that the only embassy with direct contact with Baghdad has
been the Iraqi embassy in Amman.
Joining us now is Fuad Ajami, our Middle Eastern expert from Johns Hopkins University.
Fuad, as you watch this story of the ground war offensive begin unfold, your thoughts?
Well, you know, I really think, I really believe, Dan, that in effect, if you look at the scorched
earth policy in Kuwait, this is very interesting.
There is a direct connection.
This is just my hunch, a direct connection between the scorched earth policy and the
ground campaign in the following manner.
This is exactly what Saddam wanted.
He wanted to go just into an early ground battle.
Therefore he knew that he couldn't win in any other way.
And I thought I was watching President Bush.
And in a way, if you were in that bunker in Baghdad and you were watching the great Democrat,
President Bush, and this is the great despot in the bunker watching him, Saddam underestimated
the resolve of this man.
He underestimated what he was willing to do.
And he underestimated the resolve of this country.
And it's a very interesting confrontation.
It tells you something about the illusions that men like Saddam bring to war and the
onset of war.
Well, it's very difficult, I think, for people to understand when you say, well, in some
ways Saddam is getting what he wanted.
Could you expand on that and put it in context and perspective?
What do you mean when you say Saddam is in effect in one way getting exactly what he
wanted?
Well, you see, Saddam all along knew that in the end he couldn't win any other way,
that he always thought, well, the ground war would be his great comparative advantage.
Any other way he was going to be a beaten man, that in the end he really believed that
when American forces get into a land war that they will be strangers in that world, that
they couldn't really win, that they couldn't really stay the course, that they couldn't
stand the casualties, that this Arab street will come to his rescue, that the military
confrontation would become a political confrontation.
And now there he is.
He is in the midst of the ruin of a lot of what he depended upon.
The great hope that the Arab street turns out to be a dead end street, the great hope
in a way that Israel would be drawn into this war turned out to be for naught.
Israel wasn't drawn into this war.
The great hope that the Arab states would be frightened, that they wouldn't identify
themselves with America, that Arabs wouldn't fight on the side of Americans against, quote
unquote, brother Arabs.
That too turned out to be for naught.
So then in the end, what's he left with?
He's left with this ground war, and he's left with the hope that somehow or another that
the combination that lies at the heart of despotic states, the combination of bits of
patriotism, bits of fear, a lot of fear, will hold his state together and that his state
will cushion him against the foreign invader.
That is really the calculation of this man.
Fouad Ajami, thanks.
By dawn's early light now here in Saudi Arabia, on the front, the bombs are bursting in air,
and there's a lot of rockets' red glare.
Here are the war headlines President Bush announces officially and formally.
The start of the ground war, he asks Americans to pray for their troops in the field.
Allied troops advance into Kuwait.
Iraq says it will never surrender.
Only half an hour after returning from Camp David, Maryland, President Bush made a brief
address to the nation tonight saying he had directed the use of all available forces,
including ground forces, to, quote, eject Iraq from Kuwait, unquote.
The president said this is the final phase of the war.
The ground war actually got underway, we think, about two hours before the president talked.
Allied forces are said to have advanced as far as 12 miles into Kuwait, possibly 18 with
the Marines, in the first wave of attack.
In New York, a spokesman for the Iraqi embassy to the UN issued a statement in which he said
his country will never surrender and, quote, a lot of Americans will die.
Joining me once again is Eric Ingberg, our CBS News correspondent, veteran combat correspondent.
Eric, one focus of the campaign is the Marine push over the Persian Gulf.
What about that?
What's it about?
Well, there are 300,000 American troops on the front lines tonight, Dan, but there are
also 18,000 that haven't touched land in this war so far.
They are in a 31-ship fleet that is poised off the Kuwaiti coast, supported by Harrier
aircraft seen here taking off from the landing and assault ship Nassau.
Now this Marine landing force, which is two regimental landing teams, would be capable
of sowing a lot of confusion behind the lines if it chose to land in Kuwait.
And there has been talk right along that these Marines would make an amphibious landing of
some sort.
The airplanes that they use for close air support these Harriers.
Many people will remember from the Falklands War, they can land and take off straight up
and down off the deck of a carrier and they will provide very close air support for the
Marines, able to drop bombs right ahead of them to help infantry units assault, help
them move forward.
The commander of this assault force has said that he has a big, thick book of plans, Dan,
but it hasn't been announced which one of those plans he's going to use.
That is to say, the Marines might just stay offshore to provide a kind of a feint or a
device that keeps the Iraqis from knowing how to react to them, or they may come ashore
at some point during the war and engage the Iraqis directly.
It hasn't been said what they'll do, but they do remain an ace in the hole for the American
side.
Eric, we haven't said much about the Navy, but seeing those carriers out there, the U.S.
Navy fliers have been extremely busy all through the war, but particularly these last few days.
And we know that the main naval force has moved even farther up in the Persian Gulf.
Both the USS Wisconsin and the USS Missouri have been using their big 16-inch guns to
pound Iraqi positions in Kuwait.
That's I think something we'll see some more of.
In fact, it may already be underway.
The 16-inch guns are the two battleships that are deployed off the coast of Kuwait.
Also, their ability to hurl Tomahawk missiles, the cruise missiles, which were used in the
opening attack is probably something the American forces will also call on.
Dan, one of the reasons it's possible for the Americans to talk about this kind of an
amphibious assault is that in the early days of the war, the American Navy pretty much
sunk the Iraqi Navy.
And that was important because it means the Iraqis no longer have available to them the
Exocet missiles, which are fired from small boats, and that means that Marine helicopters
can fly with relative impunity.
Of course, one of the things that the generals have to worry about is did they get all those
Exocets?
Did they get all the boats?
Did the Iraqis have any left?
It's a powerful, dangerous weapon.
And I know that up until 48 hours ago, the generals were still debating whether or not
they had in fact eliminated that Exocet threat.
Eric Ingberg, let's go down to CBS News correspondent David Martin at the Pentagon.
He's inside waiting for the start of the briefing by Secretary of Defense Cheney.
As a matter of fact, I think, David, do we hear an introduction of Cheney underway just
now?
He'll be here in two minutes.
What we're hearing, Dan, is a two-minute warning, meaning he'll be in the briefing room in two
minutes.
Perhaps you saw Secretary Cheney in the background when President Bush arrived back at the White
House, and then when he was giving that brief statement in the briefing room, Secretary
Cheney was at the White House, and now he is obviously about to enter here.
We should not expect much in the way of detail here.
Usually one of the signs that you're really going to find out something at a briefing
is if they have an easel set up here for a map which would give us some idea of the disposition
of forces.
There is no easel here, so I think we're going to get a statement and probably not much more.
So we're still going to be lacking many, many details.
I think for most of the day, Secretary Cheney was here and then went over to the White House
as it came down to the final hours before the start of the ground offensive.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell, has not been in sight
at all all day, and I'm sure that was not by accident.
This has been a very, very tight-holed operation.
In fact, I would say this is the tightest hold I have seen on anything in the time that
I've been covering this building.
Just a very, very few number of people knew when this operation was going to kick off,
and I guess there's some sort of irony there that what is clearly the largest single U.S.
military operation, well, we won't know the final numbers on how many are in action until
quite some time, but probably the largest since World War II, was known to such a small
number of people.
Obviously, Dick Cheney was one of them.
We're going to be hearing from him shortly, and we'll get what detail we can.
But again, I have to say that the amount of information we get here is probably going
to be pretty slim.
Here comes Pete Williams, the Pentagon spokesman now.
Good evening.
The secretary has just come back from the White House where he listened along with everyone
else to the president's statement.
As a short statement, take a very few questions, and then he'll have to go.
Mr. Secretary.
Thank you very much, Pete.
Just a short time ago, you heard the president announce that coalition forces of Operation
Desert Storm have begun a large-scale ground operation against Iraqi forces inside Kuwait.
This phase of the combined air, land, and sea campaign has been carefully planned to
force Iraq out of Kuwait with a minimum number of casualties to allied forces.
Up to now, we've been as forthcoming as possible about military operations.
But from this point forward, we must limit what we say.
We've now undertaken a major military operation.
Allied military units are on the move.
Their positions, movements, and plans must be carefully safeguarded.
We must assume that the enemy is confused about what is happening on the battlefield.
And it is absolutely essential that we not do anything inadvertently ourselves to clarify
the picture for him.
Everything we say about the operation from this point forward, every detail we offer,
would increase the likelihood that the military forces of Iraq could learn more about our
operations.
Such information would put military operations at risk, and even the most innocent-sounding
information could be used directly against the men and women whose lives are on the line
carrying out these operations.
We cannot permit the Iraqi forces to know anything about what we're doing.
And for that reason, I will not say anything tonight about the operation that is currently
underway.
We will have nothing to say about it for many more hours.
When it is safe to begin discussing the operation, we will do so in as much detail as we prudently
can.
But for now, our regular briefing schedule here at the Pentagon and in Riyadh is suspended
until further notice.
I want to assure all of you that we understand our solemn obligation to the American people
to keep them informed of developments.
But I am confident that they understand that this policy is necessary to save lives and
to reduce American casualties, as well as those of coalition forces.
I will be happy to take a few questions about the background to the decision that's been
made, but let me reemphasize once again, I will not answer any questions about the military
operation underway.
And at the end of my remarks, we will then, as I indicated previously, suspend all further
briefings for the time being.
Yes, sir.
When did the President make the decision to go ahead with the groundwork and to give Schwarzkopf
the authority?
Final decision, of course, to go forward wasn't really resolved until it was clear today that
the deadline had come and gone and Saddam Hussein had refused to comply with the UN
resolutions.
But this has obviously been a massive undertaking with hundreds of thousands of people involved,
enormous logistical planning, a great deal of preparation required to undertake this
kind of operation.
So for some period of time now, we've had a planning date and a planning hour that was
selected by General Schwarzkopf based upon when he believed his forces would be ready,
based upon when he felt we would have accomplished all we could with the air phase of the campaign
by itself, based upon preparations of coalition forces, and that became a planning date.
It was subject to change up to the last minute based upon such considerations as weather
and the changes in the diplomatic situation.
If Saddam Hussein had come into compliance with the deadline and announced by noon today
that he was prepared to withdraw unconditionally his forces from Kuwait, then we would have
stopped the preparations for an execution of the operation.
So in that sense, up until noon today, the President had the option to say stop.
He had approved the original date, again based upon the planning considerations that I indicated.
Q. Was the original date today?
A. That's correct.
To the extent that we had a specific planning date in mind for some period of time now,
Kuwait was this particular day and a particular hour.
But because there are different units involved going at different times, I don't want to
be any more precise than I'm already.
Q. You mentioned that this was a large-scale ground operation against Iraqi forces inside
Kuwait.
By that, did you mean to say that the ground operation will take place only inside Kuwait?
A. David, I simply am not going to talk about the operation.
I am not in a position to be able to say anything about the operation without compromising the
security of the operation, and I simply am going to refuse to accept all such questions.
Q. Mr. Secretary, do you know yet to the extent that the Iraqi forces are resisting?
A. I do not have any detailed reporting at this point on the operation.
It's still very early, in the early stages of the operation, and I would not expect that
we will receive any comprehensive reporting here in the Pentagon for some period of time.
Q. Mr. Secretary, you have repeatedly said that the ground operation would not begin
until you were confident that the air campaign had gotten to a point where much of the risk
had been eliminated for the ground troops.
Can you share with us what the progress in the last 30 but eight days has been and why
you are now confident that there is a minimal risk or however you want to characterize for
our ground troops?
A. Well, I would not say that there is minimal risk.
This is a major military operation against a well-equipped, well-fortified opponent.
I would not want to underestimate the difficulties of the task at all.
What we have said repeatedly was that we wanted to conduct an air campaign for as long as
possible to destroy as much as possible of the Iraqi force and to make it easier for
us to undertake the ground phase of the operation when that became possible.
We obviously have reached that point where we think it's appropriate to kick in the next
phase of the campaign.
Mr. Secretary, the President said he has consulted with all the allied coalition members.
Can you give us a rough percentage of how many coalition members actually have committed
ground forces and have actually are on the move?
I don't want to do that tonight.
That again gets us into the business of talking about specific forces, specific units, and
what they might be doing in connection with the operation.
A significant number of our allies are in fact participating in this phase of the campaign.
Can you tell us about the process of consulting with them or at least informing them before
we went ahead with the ground mission?
Can you give us a little bit of sense of the reaction as you told them we're going in?
There's really been work at two levels.
There's been work at the military level between General Schwarzkopf and the other commanders
in the field in terms of planning, the details of the operation, preparing the forces to
carry them out.
There has also been extensive consultation by the President and Secretary Baker with
the political leadership of those nations involved.
Mr. Secretary, the goal of this operation was to free Kuwait and the Syrians up to
this last moment had an agreement by the Iraqis to pull out of Kuwait.
What was the sense of urgency to move down to extract Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in
light of that agreement?
Well it's been stated repeatedly, but I'll state it again, that the only acceptable solution
to this conflict is for complete compliance by the Iraqis with the UN Security Council
resolutions.
That includes the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of their forces from Kuwait.
As made clear by the President yesterday, we wanted an indication from them that they
would begin that withdrawal by noon today and we gave them seven days in which to complete
it.
They refused to do that.
It included as well consideration for the fact that the offer you talk about, the proposition
that the Soviets and the Iraqis developed, involved a ceasefire prior to any Iraqi withdrawal.
We made it clear repeatedly we were not interested in any ceasefires.
That a ceasefire would simply have allowed Saddam Hussein to regroup his forces, resupply
them and could conceivably have cost even more casualties.
It's also true that that proposition embodied within it the repeal of all the other UN sanctions
and resolutions that had been voted by the Security Council.
We felt that was totally unacceptable.
We've seen just in the last 72 hours what would appear to be a deliberate effort on
the part of the Iraqis to further destroy what's left of Kuwait, to put the torch to the oil
fields, reports of executions of Kuwaiti citizens inside Kuwait City.
And under the circumstances, the notion that Saddam Hussein should be permitted to get
away scot-free without being held accountable for his actions or without having to pay reparations
for example, was unacceptable from the standpoint of the coalition.
The President's statement yesterday was very clear, it was very concise in terms of what
we wanted from Saddam Hussein by way of compliance with these resolutions.
It was agreed upon by the coalition.
It was consistent with the UN Security Council resolutions.
He would have been wise to accept it.
He refused to do so.
Mr. Secretary, again, can you put yourself in the position of disavowing any effort to
change the government, the leadership, the political structure of Iraq by means of fully
enforcing the UN resolutions?
Suppose you knock him out of Kuwait and he says, I'm still not going to pay reparations.
Do you then go on to Baghdad to set up a government that will pay the reparations?
We've made it clear repeatedly that if Saddam Hussein were to be replaced by another government,
we would not shed a tear over his demise.
But we've also made it clear that it is not an objective of U.S. policy to change the
government of Iraq.
If that happens, so be it.
With respect to the future application of the sanctions that have already been voted
by the UN Security Council, how they would be applied or altered with respect to this
government of Iraq or some future government of Iraq is really a matter that the UN Security
Council will have to address in due course once they're driven out of Kuwait.
I'll do one more question.
Mr. Secretary, have you had any sort of communication whatsoever today from Saddam Hussein in any
form?
None that I'm aware of.
Mr. Secretary.
Again, let me, by way of closing, emphasize what I mentioned at the outset, that we recognize
we have an obligation to provide as much information as we possibly can to the press and to the
American people.
But we are currently engaged in an extremely complex military undertaking.
The lives of literally thousands of Americans and allied personnel are at stake, and we
simply have to operate on the basis that we are going to, for the time being, put a lid
on further briefings about the operation.
As soon as it's possible to do so, General Swartzkoff and Riyadh, General Powell here
at the Pentagon, will be happy to provide as much detail as possible about the campaign
itself.
But that's going to have to await developments.
Thank you very much.
Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney making it clear that the briefings on the war are going
to be suspended for a while because there is indeed for secrecy.
We said before that the ground war offensive has begun.
There's a great deal that we don't know, but there's a great deal we do know.
We're trying to be careful about such things as identifying specific units in exact locations.
We've been asked to do that, and we will comply.
Think of the ground war offensive, if you like, in this way as three main parts.
There was the rear, the main, and the deep.
The rear battle, if you want to think of it this way, was basically the battle of the
scuds being thrown into two rear areas.
The main force battle was sprung tonight.
It's the forces moving into Kuwait, the forces moving the main thrust flanking movement into
the southern part of Iraq.
Now the deep part of the battle, which may go as far as the Euphrates River, and may
include units of the 101st Airborne and the 82nd Airborne, the deep part of the battle
we have to see whether it ever develops.
If you can think of it, the rear part of the battle is basically over at the moment.
The main part of the battle has started.
Whether the deep part of it ever comes to pass or not, we will simply have to wait and
see that the so-called air-land battle doctrine, this is the way American forces fight wars.
Nothing secret about this.
It's published.
Everybody knows it.
Saddam Hussein's military leaders and Saddam himself have studied it very carefully.
These are the main tenets of American military doctrine developed to fight possibly the Russians
in Europe now being applied to the desert.
These are the main parts of it.
First of all, initiative.
The United States military is known worldwide for our emphasis on individual initiative
at all levels of the chain of command, sergeants, corporals, and privates, as well as colonels
and generals.
Agility.
We expect to be flexible and opportunistic and to what the military people call stay
inside the enemy's decision cycle.
What that means is stay alert to any moves he makes and then hop on them cat quick, eagle
fierce.
Any time the enemy makes a move, for example, if the Republican Guard begins to move out
of its positions in southern Iraq right up against Kuwait, we jump on them.
In depth, the United States forces expect to fight three battles, rear, main, and deep,
using all forces.
That's what we talk about, going in depth.
They don't intend to just stay close to the border areas.
And the third is synchronization, that the United States military forces always believe
they can achieve a combat power advantage by the properly timed arrival and concentration
of forces at the decisive point of battle.
General Schwarzkopf has made it pretty clear he considers that decisive point of battle
to be a southern Iraq, not inside Kuwait itself, at least in the early stages.
Let's go now to David Barton at the Pentagon.
Basically, what Secretary Cheney said was that we have to keep the enemy in the dark,
so therefore he's going to keep the rest of us in the dark too.
And I guess that's just going to be a fact of life here.
It's true that Saddam Hussein can monitor what's being said in this country, so anything
he said would be of aid to Saddam in trying to figure out what to do about this multi-pronged
offensive.
Remember now, he said that this is a large-scale ground offensive against Iraqi forces inside
Kuwait.
That does not mean the fighting is going to be limited to inside Kuwait.
This is a theater-wide ground offensive.
Mr. David, we were holding on for just a second.
I wasn't sure whether we were going to replay some of what Secretary Cheney said.
Cheney, in effect, has announced almost a total news blackout, at least for a temporary
period.
Let's go to Susan Spencer, who covers the United States and Allied Theater Command under
General Norman Schwarzkopf in Riyadh.
Susan, what are you hearing there?
Dan, this is the complete example of the news blackout.
We've been having as many as six briefings a day, and we were just told about 10 minutes
ago that we aren't having any more until further notice.
And here we sit right across the street from Central Command, where General Schwarzkopf
is presumably directing this war with his staff.
And believe it or not, when we talked to the Joint Information Bureau, they have told us
that they can't even confirm at this point that the ground war has begun.
So that's where we are.
Apart from that, we can give you a little bit of information about that Scud that fell
here about two hours ago.
That was the 22nd Scud fired at Saudi Arabia.
Our information now is that it fell on or near a school.
This was on the outskirts of the city.
It did apparently not too much damage.
We have not any reports of casualties, and we have nothing to tell us that it was anything
but a conventional warhead.
If we find out any more about that, we'll get back.
Susan, thanks.
Stand by there.
We have on the telephone now, for how long we do not know, CBS reporter Bob McEwen, who
is one mile from the border with Kuwait.
Bob, tell us what you see and hear and what's going on there.
Well, Dan, it's first light here, and this is one of the areas where oil wells have been
burning, so there's a great deal of oily gray in the sky.
We are, as you said, located just over a mile from the border between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait,
and eastern Saudi Arabia.
Until yesterday morning, the front line was a quarter mile from our position.
We could see it.
It was a line of light artillery vehicles.
Yesterday, at 8 o'clock in the morning, a column of tanks moved in from the west, and
something quite unusual happened.
Usually the bombardment here in the time we've been here for the past four or five days has
taken place mostly at night.
At 9 o'clock yesterday morning, there was bombardment from every direction, from a warship,
presumably the Wisconsin or the Missouri out in the Gulf, from artillery and overhead from
bombers.
Under that cover, the tanks that had arrived from the west moved up along the sand wall,
the 12-foot sand wall that's a mile from us along the border, and moved into position.
So the front moved up.
We at first light this morning can't see them.
We don't know if they're still there.
We don't know if they've moved over the night.
But one thing we can tell you is that the bombardment last night, and it continues to
this moment, has been exceedingly heavy, heavier than anything we have heard.
We were watching it last night.
Because of the oil in the sky, we couldn't see the flashes.
We could hear the booms.
The ground rumbles every time a bomb falls in Kuwait a mile from us, or one of the warships
fires its big 16-inch guns.
And we can literally hear the shells from the Gulf, from the warship, whichever is the
Wisconsin or the Missouri going overhead.
So exceedingly heavy bombardment here that continues to this moment.
Bob McKeown, we believe yours to be the very first report, certainly the first independent
report from the battlefront itself.
As dawn breaks, what are you seeing and hearing?
And have you talked to troops, talked to Marines up there?
What's their mood?
What's their morale?
We're behind the allied line.
Most of the troops in this area are Saudi infantry and artillery and armored vehicles
run by the Qataris.
To be very honest, we haven't approached them because we don't want them to know that we
are here.
But when certainly last night got the sense that something was happening, before the bombardment
began, which was 10 o'clock our time, 2 p.m. Eastern, it was very, very quiet.
On previous nights, you could hear voices, you could hear yelling, you could hear people
off in the distance.
There was none of that last night.
It was eerily quiet.
Here in the day, we had heard the discharge of machine gun fire.
We presume it was just the Saudi army testing their equipment.
So there was an eerie calm last night, followed by the heaviest bombardment that we have seen
up here for four or five days.
Let me just give you a sense of what we have seen in this area.
I don't think there are any military secrets here.
This is what everyone knew existed up here.
We're driven west along the front line, literally in front of the artillery.
And it's the impossibly flat Saudi plain here.
It's desert and it just goes on forever.
And if you looked out across it, you saw what appeared to be Gulf War hills.
What they were as you got closer were sand walls, and behind each of them would be a
light artillery piece, a heavy gun, or a tank.
We presume, we didn't venture out there yesterday for fear of being detected, but we presume
that a lot of that has moved up towards the border.
We saw a lot of movement on the roads yesterday.
Bob, of course, the guns being silent for a period, that's classic when you're going
to launch a big offensive.
Then the signal is given for the terrific barrage, and so it played itself out just
by the book.
Bob, is there any indication there as to whether the Iraqis are still in their first line of
defense, or whether they have moved back to their second line of defense as the allies
begin to bombardment and indeed move across the border?
Well, all we have on that is a few discussions we've had with various individuals in this
area, and again, they've had to be couched in the most tactful way.
But the original expectation up to a couple of days ago was that the initial Iraqi line,
and we are a mile from the border where I'm speaking to you now, the Iraqi line was about
eight kilometers or five miles behind that, and it was presumed that from the border back
to that Iraqi position five miles farther back, there was a classic defensive system
that the Iraqis have set up, the minefields, the trenches, perhaps filled with oil to capture
tanks, and behind that the troops who have had at this point more than six months to
dig in.
There's no way of knowing that.
Frankly, we can see into Kuwait on a good day, before the oil wells started to burn
two days ago, we could see into Kuwait.
We still couldn't detect that, so they're farther back than our line of sight.
They're not very far away, and the ground here rumbles.
Everything shakes when a bomb hits over there, so we're that close.
We have no way of knowing whether they're still at that five-mile point or whether they've
moved even farther back.
As part of our CBS News live coverage of the beginning of the ground war offensive, we're
talking to Bob McEwen, a CBS News reporter who's one mile from the Kuwaiti border.
Bob, any indication of how far up you think the allies are now?
Well, all we know is that when the sun went down yesterday, we could see the tanks along
the sand wall a mile from us.
Now, these are what they call the berms that they've built all the way along the border.
What you would see from my position, if it were that kind of day again, and with the
oil in the air, it's not likely to be today, you see a Saudi border tower.
You see the first village across the border in Kuwait, the border crossing, and between
that, this 12-foot wall yesterday lined with, I presume, Saudi and Qatari tanks.
I don't know if they're still there, but the bombardment's been ferocious overnight, and
I presume that they haven't ventured too far into it, so I presume they are still there,
just waiting for this bombardment to take its toll and then to make their move.
And ground to air, that is to say, air to ground attacks from... Have you seen much
air attack through that smoke from the burning oil wells?
Well, we hear the planes overhead all the time, and it's just impossible to see anything.
It's like an oily tapauan hanging over our heads here, but you can certainly hear them.
Some of the other sounds you do hear, the spotter plane, which is not very high tech
and which you can distinguish.
It sounds almost like a Cessna overhead, and before the warships fire, what you hear is
what they call the drone, and it is an automatic 12-foot plane, essentially, which goes out
and takes surveillance photographs of the Iraqi positions and sends them back to either
the Missouri or the Wisconsin, whichever has been firing recently.
And that is absolutely...
I'm only kidding, if I may, yeah.
... called the drone, and it's drones.
So those are some of the sounds we've been hearing, the spotter planes, the bombers high
overhead, the drone coming out from the warships, and this constant rumble beneath our feet.
I mean, literally, I am vibrating as I speak to you as the bombs go off a mile or five
miles or 10 miles into Kuwait.
Bob McEwen, we're going to sign off now.
For one thing, we'd like for you to be able to get back to us with this firsthand reporting
from the front, you're one mile from the Kuwaiti border.
We want to sign off now.
Get back in touch with us later.
There's some concern about detection, if you understand what I mean.
So we hope to be talking to you later.
Bob McEwen at the battle front.
Here are the war headlines of the hour.
President Bush orders the start of the ground war.
Defense Secretary Cheney suspends military briefings.
Iraq vows it won't give up.
In a brief address to the nation tonight, President Bush said he has directed Desert
Storm Commander Army General Norman Schwarzkopf to use all forces, including ground forces
now to end Iraq's occupation of Kuwait.
Just after the president's talk to the nation, Defense Secretary Cheney told reporters that
to safeguard the troops, very little information in their movements will be given.
He announced virtually a news blackout.
He said military briefings will be suspended at least for the time being.
It is known that U.S. and other allied tanks and troops have penetrated at least 12 miles
into Kuwait, some reports say as much as 18 miles.
In New York, a spokesman said the black will never surrender and, quote, a lot of Americans
will die.
That from the Pentagon, it's been reported by our correspondents there that the main
force is also on the move.
Now, the main force was to move into southern Iraq.
There never was an intention to take on straight on World War I trench style that deeply dug
in Iraqi forces in Kuwait.
There are probes going on there, some thrusts there, but the main movement is to be a sweeping,
flanking movement through southern Iraq.
And David Martin reports that that main force has already begun to move.
Let's check in at our listening post in Amman, Jordan, with CBS News correspondent Doug Donnell.
Dan, that news blackout isn't coming only from the Pentagon.
Radio Baghdad this morning has yet to give any word of a change in the battle to the
beginning of the ground offensive.
Most Iraqis, if they're listening to it, are not aware.
They're on Radio Baghdad simply reciting verses from the Koran interspersed with some martial
music.
Earlier, however, Radio Baghdad did go on the air with a statement from the ruling Revolutionary
Command Council.
It was a response, the first response to the American ultimatum.
It came after the deadline had already passed, and it said basically that Iraq would not
heed the American deadline.
That statement also said that the United States is, quote, out to complete the crime of destroying
and annihilating Iraq.
It also reminded all Iraqis and especially Iraqi troops that they were fighting to defend
their homeland.
Just a few moments ago here in Amman, we've spoken with a Jordanian official who says
privately that the Jordanians and himself are angry and disappointed more than anything
else that the ground war has begun.
And he said that the ultimatum that was issued by the president was not followed by any real
serious diplomacy.
He said Jordan will continue to seek a peaceful solution, but that the forum for that should
be the Security Council.
Dan?
Noting, Doug, that Jordan has been perhaps the best ally, certainly one of the most vocal
allies of Saddam Hussein, King Hussein and Jordan trying to keep a delicate balance,
but leaning very far towards Saddam Hussein.
Our CBS News coverage of the beginning of the ground war offensive live from Saudi
Arabia will continue in a moment.
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With a ground war offensive underway and a news blackout proclaimed from Washington by
Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, the Baghdad radio has been monitored in Nicosia.
Baghdad radio began broadcasting with recitations of the Koran and later began broadcasting a
religious program.
More than 40 minutes later, it still had not reported the start of the ground offensive
in the Gulf War.
That matches what Doug Donnell reported a few moments ago from Amman, Jordan, where they're
also listening to Iraqi radio broadcast.
CBS News reporter Bob McEwen, with the first independent reporting from the front itself,
told us via telephone a short while ago that the ground was literally shaking underneath
him one mile from the Kuwaiti border as allied artillery, in this case, artillery belonging
to the Pan-Arab force and tank fire, roared through the very early morning hours.
Now, as you can see, it's beginning to be just a short while past dawn here in the Saudi
Arabian desert, and the tremendous advantage that U.S. and allied forces have with their
night fighting equipment begins to be neutralized by the daylight.
Let's go to Bob Schieffer now in New York, Bob.
Well, Dan, unlike Bob McEwen, who we just heard from, who's just one mile from the Kuwait
border, we're well out of the line of fire back here in New York.
But I'm with General Bob Wagner, an old tank commander.
In fact, one of the units you commanded is in the thick of this thing right now, General.
And I could tell as we were listening to Bob that you wanted to be there.
My heart is with him, Bob.
We thought we might try to flesh out some of the details that we've been getting about
what it's like up there, and asked General Wagner to tell us, we talk about the forces
that are up there, what those forces are composed of, and that would be mobile artillery, armored
personnel carriers, the tank in the Apache helicopter.
Let's start at the beginning, the M109.
And we have some information and some graphics about this.
This is what amounts to a self-propelled howitzer, is it not, General?
Bob, these are the systems that make a mounted or an armored division work.
And we're going to start from the rear and work up.
This is a self-propelled artillery piece.
It throws a large HE round almost 30 miles.
The thing you have to understand about this is with every small unit to the front, there's
a small fire direction team that can direct this fire right in front of our advancing
troops.
Now, that goes along with the Bradley fighting vehicle, and basically that is a personnel
carrier.
That's an infantry carrier, carries nine infantrymen.
It is armed with a twin-toe missile, which is an anti-tank defeating.
And also has a 25-millimeter chain gun, which will defeat all Soviet-made armored personnel
systems.
A very powerful system in itself that carries an infantry squad.
All of our mountain squads travel in this vehicle.
And then from above, while all that is going on, while the Bradley is moving forward along
with that self-propelled artillery, from up above the Apache attack helicopter.
And unlike tank battles in the past, this is something new, is it not, General?
Yes.
And they cope that the Apache has had tremendous success.
As you know, they've captured a lot of people on the ground, which is amazing.
First time in history.
This is equipped with a Hellfire anti-tank system, rocket system.
It has the Hydra 70 anti-personnel rocket system.
And it also has a 30-millimeter chain gun.
So it has a system that takes out dismounted personnel, indirect fire, its own organic
artillery and an anti-tank rocket all in a single helicopter, Bob.
An awesome weapon system, all weather, all weather capability.
And then the backbone of this force, and that is the M1 tank.
And we want to look at that now.
Tell us about this tank, General.
Well, of course, I'm a tanker, and this is near my heart.
This is the centerpiece of the battle that we will see.
The most awesome weapon system in the theater on the ground.
67 tons of rolling death, 125-millimeter gun, fires at night, fires under all kinds of conditions,
fires on the move as accurately as it fires from a static position.
An awesome system, the best tank in the world.
And also the fastest.
And it will prove it.
All right.
So let's see what it looks like up there, Dan.
Thanks, Bob.
Dateline, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
A Patriot missile knocked out a Scud fired as the ground war offensive began.
A Scud was fired at Riyadh.
A Patriot missile is reported, knocked it out at 30,000 feet.
It's also reported by the Saudis that Allied forces have captured the small island of Falakka.
That island commands the sea approaches to Kuwait city.
It was captured right at the start of the ground phase of the Gulf War.
U.S. Marines moved in and captured it.
Fighting was said to be heavy on that island.
Now we're going to take a station break and our CBS News live coverage of the beginning
of the ground war will continue after we take this opportunity to let our stations identify
themselves.
This is CBS.
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Today the Allies have destroyed 270 tanks, including some of Iraq's best.
I wouldn't say it's one-sided.
I would just say that we're enjoying success.
Where we're meeting the enemy, we're defeating the enemy.
More than 500 oil wells are on fire in Kuwait, half the wells in the whole country.
The Iraqis are taking out their vengeance on Kuwait and its people.
Additionally, numerous facilities throughout Kuwait city are being systematically destroyed.
atrocities of the worst sort are continuing to come in through reports.
Enemy prisoners continued to surrender in droves. 18,000 in two days. Allied
commanders said they were not surprised. I think we're gratified by the number of
prisoners being taken. This after all is what the Alliance had planned for with
the conditioning of the battlefield over the last few weeks. In the Persian Gulf
Iraq fired a Chinese-made silkworm missile at the US Battleship Missouri. The
British shot it down. The Scud missile attack here in Saudi Arabia a few hours
ago killed at least 12 US servicemen and wounded 25. 40 others are still missing.
Harry Smith was the first reporter on the scene.
The routine Monday night Scud warning was not followed by the usual Patriot
missile intercept. The alarm was followed by disaster.
One of these ambulances has to go up there. All the people are up here.
A flimsy warehouse converted into a barracks for US Army personnel was blown
to bits inside more than a hundred American soldiers. Knew right away that
this was a direct Scud hit just judging by the way that it shook the ground and
by the enormously loud explosion of the score. Big fire and then I heard boom.
Fully 20 minutes after the attack chaos reigned. Ambulances clogged the single
alleyway leading to the compound. For some of the wounded the only way out was
medevac choppers. The time between warning and impact was short, perhaps two
minutes. The US military says it appeared the Scud may have broken up in flight
but clearly the results suggest otherwise. It's total. The whole thing's gone.
Everybody in it is either wounded or dead. Never before had an Iraqi Scud hit an
American target. The attitude towards Scuds in this part of the world had
become blase. And so I think people were just taking it for granted that they
weren't going to get harmed but one of these Scuds was going to get through and
actually make contact and today unfortunately it did. Baghdad Radio hailed
its heroic missile corps while US forces stood shocked by Saddam Hussein's act of
terrorism. Harry Smith, CBS News, Saudi Arabia. The military people think of the
rear, the main battleground and then the far forward. The Scud hit in the rear.
Now as for the main battlegrounds think of them as west and east in the southern
Iraqi desert and then up against the Persian Gulf. It's not quiet on either
front. On the western front where allied forces are punching into Iraq Scott
Helley is there. On the second day of the invasion US and French forces moved
rapidly into the Iraqi homeland advancing under cover of a massive
artillery barrage. The thrust came west of Kuwait part of the effort to cut off
enemy supplies and reinforcements. All along the western front resistance was
light. Here there were no US casualties the first 24 hours. I'm very surprised
right now I thought that they would put up more of a fight. Iraqi soldiers
surrendered en masse. By the second morning they were being taken in
caravans of buses. The advance was slowed while French and American troops stopped
to search and arrest the enemy soldiers. The Iraqis were under allied artillery
bombardment for hours and when the French infantry moved through this sector
they said the Iraqis threw down their arms without firing a single shot.
No war. No war. But these are far from Saddam's best troops. This frontline
force has little training and poor equipment. Many of the men did not have
boots to wear. Most were armed with outdated broken down weapons. Iraqis
killed in battle are being buried by US soldiers. This soldier was killed in an
air attack while apparently carrying food to the front. The US is preparing
for thousands of enemy dead. We'll have to have to get approval from from
commander in order to open a mass grave but in my opinion that would be the best
way to handle it. In the first two days heavy artillery was the key to
withering Iraqi resolve. Howitzers were constantly on the move north. Talk to me
talk to me. Despite the speed soldiers were warned repeatedly to sight their
targets with care. The smallest error here could bring shells down on friendly
forces. In the first day the invasion of the Iraqi sector ran far ahead of
schedule but as the guns were pulled deeper into enemy territory some
soldiers became apprehensive. The initial surge was swift but the toughest
battles may lie ahead. Scott Pelley CBS News with allied forces in southern Iraq.
That's the western part of the main battlefield. Now for the eastern part
inside Kuwait. CBS News reporter Bob McEwen is moving up with an allied force
headed straight for Kuwait City. Allied armor rolled up the highway towards
Kuwait City today 24 hours into the invasion 25 miles down and 45 to go. This
attack force of Saudis, Kuwaitis, Omanis and US Marines encountered little
resistance for the first half of their journey but a burned out Iraqi tank
marked the beginning of a more dangerous stretch of road. In the area towns such
as this one with pockets of Iraqi resistance and snipers and a few miles
ahead enemy artillery sending it round after round hitting houses nearby and
pinning down the convoy. As Saudi tanks moved into position US jets worked the
skies launching flares to distract ground air missiles high-tech vultures
searching for their prey. As the battle continued at the front at the border
vehicles continued to pour into Kuwait including buses to bring back prisoners
of war and along the route north the desert was a massive minefield being
swept by Kuwaitis in helicopters and Saudis on foot. All afternoon the jets
kept circling overhead the artillery coming in and going out. As the second
day of the ground war came to an end the troops hunkered down here along the
highway. Hope that this will turn out to be just a rest stop on their road to
Kuwait City. In addition to the constant rumble bombardment here on the eastern
front tonight there's been something else to think about a ghostly glow from
burning oil wells in the northern sky leading the allies to wonder what
exactly they'll find along the road to Kuwait City tomorrow. Dan?
Bob earlier you talked about the ground rumbling and shaking underneath you as
the guns from the battleships Missouri and Wisconsin offshore fired has it been
any of that firing during the night? The last artillery barrage came in here about dusk. We haven't heard anything from the Gulf, from the warships. Here we have seen in addition to that glow you saw a moment ago is a
tremendous light show out towards the north. We've seen floors lighting up the desert. We've seen tracers. We've seen allied rockets going over our heads. We've seen a tank battle down a couple of miles in front of us. The Iraqis are that close at this point.
There are burning oil wells behind me as well as you can see. Two of them have been burning for a couple of days now. A third, which is inland a bit, is obscured by smoke right now. It erupted tonight. We're not exactly sure whether this is one of the hundreds of wells that are alleged to have been set by the Iraqis in the past few days.
Or whether that was brought aflame in some other way. Along the highway towards the front today, we bumped into an Italian, a tank battalion of Kuwaitis. They told us they were going off to rake some Iraqis out of that oil field. And it is possible that that third fire, which you may or may not see at the moment, came about in that way.
Barbequen, live from deep inside Kuwait. Now just above, in front of where Barbequen is, U.S. Marines have been engaged for some hours in a furious battle against a counter-attacking Iraqi armor division.
This special edition of the CBS Evening News, live from Saudi Arabia, continues in a moment with the latest on the strategy from the Pentagon and the White House.
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We want to make clear that throughout our coverage, we are sensitive to the safety of American and allied troops. We try to report nothing that will be of military use to the Iraqis.
What we report in our own exclusive reports from the battlefront and from pool coverage is all aimed at trying to tell you at home what you want to know, what you need to know, without endangering lives over here.
With that in mind, CBS News correspondent David Martin has the latest war overview from the Pentagon. David?
David Martin, CBS News. David?
Dan, officials here say that the campaign schedule is still about 12 hours ahead of schedule.
But today, I think, was clearly a tougher day of fighting than yesterday, particularly for the Marines and U.S. Army units who were fighting in Kuwait.
The Iraqi Army committed some of its armored reserves, and the Marines and the U.S. Army had to take them on. They did well and are moving ahead.
But there was an engagement there, which was, I think, the first real tank battle of the war.
David, I'll pause for just a second because we thought we were getting a late report in. In fact, the reports from the battle scene indicate that the Marines have done very well against that Iraqi Armored Division.
And for the Iraqis to bring an armored division out of their holes into the open where it can be hit upon by air power and the Marines to hold against that is no small accomplishment.
What should we be looking for on the two main battlefronts, southern Iraq and inside Kuwait, over the next eight to 12 hours?
Well, inside Kuwait, the thing to look for is the assault on Kuwait City itself, the attempt to liberate the city.
That's going to involve house-to-house fighting. Out west in Iraq, I think we're still probably 24 to 36 hours away from this great tank battle that everybody is anticipating
between all of the U.S. armored forces that are inside Iraq and the Republican guards, which are still hunkered down in southern Iraq.
Dan?
Thanks, David. Saddam Hussein's latest maneuver, this announcing that he'd ordered his troops out of Kuwait, came as President Bush said.
The war was going well and the president cautioned against overconfidence. White House correspondent Wyatt Andrews has late reaction there, Wyatt.
Dan, the president gave what in effect was his first report card to the nation today, reporting that things were going well.
But he spoke just hours before that scud hit the army barracks outside of Dharan and almost as if he predicted or foresaw that attack.
Mr. Bush predicted that the allies would suffer some setbacks.
The liberation of Kuwait is on course and on schedule. We have the initiative. We intend to keep it.
We must guard against euphoria. There are battles yet to come and casualties to be born.
Despite his appeal for caution, the president is obviously confident. He's already talking about what comes next.
And our success in the Gulf will bring with it not just a new opportunity for peace and stability in a critical part of the world,
but a chance to build a new world order based upon the principles of collective security and the rule of law.
As it turned out, the entire national security team was briefing the president at the very moment that the scud attack on the army barracks was launched.
The White House later termed that attack tragic, but saw it as a bit of luck that will not alter the outcome of the war. Dan?
Thanks, Wyatt. Coming up next on tonight's CBS Evening News Live from Saudi Arabia, we'll be checking in in Baghdad.
Correspondent Betsy Aron talking about this latest maneuver of Saddam's.
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The ground war. Allied forces continue their massive push into Kuwait.
The father joins Charles Carrault and Leslie Stahl on a special one-hour edition of America Tonight.
Saddam Hussein calls it the mother of all battles.
In Washington, Saddam's moves, even his latest supposed order, pull out of Kuwait are viewed more as a mother load of miscalculations.
Mark Phillips reports.
One by one, the great golf gambler has played his cards.
His hand may not have been as strong as first feared, but those who have studied him say he isn't finished yet.
I'd never want to play cards with this guy as my partner.
He tried the Israeli card, and last week he tried the Soviet card, and that was a failure.
The only card he has left to play is to use chemical weapons and to commit extraordinary acts of violence in the hope that somehow we will overreact
and that that will win him some grace in the next world.
But Saddam still seems concerned with this world.
And, unconstrained by political pressure at home, and seemingly unconstrained by conscience, he can sacrifice armies.
He can put lands to the torch.
When he is backed into a corner, he can become dangerous to the extreme and really lash out.
And I believe he is now in that lash-out mode.
In his radio address as the ground war began, Saddam claimed the mother of all battles would be a more even fight.
For the first time though, Saddam acknowledged the possibility of defeat, and this man who has been compared to Hitler may be capable of Hitlerian actions.
I always see an analogy here with the closing days of World War II, as the Allies moved deeper into Germany and saw what Hitler had done, the mood stiffened.
And I think when the television finally gets into Kuwait city, and the world's press starts unearthing what this army has done for the past six months,
the mood is going to harden even more.
There may be, however, one element of the Hitler comparison that doesn't hold true.
Unlike Hitler, to whom he has been likened, who is suicided at the end, I believe Saddam desperately wants to survive, and survive with a portion of his power base still retained.
The successful gambler though knows when to fold a losing hand, and that may be behind today's withdrawal offer.
For Saddam this has been a quest to find a way out that preserves some sense of honor, and getting up with at least part of his army would provide that.
And as Saddam showed today, even in defeat, he's still capable of making the Allies pay for their victory in blood.
Mark Phillips, CBS News, Washington.
Back in the United States tonight, a new poll shows overwhelming support holding up for the ground war.
That story and more when the CBS Evening News continues live from Saudi Arabia.
...quip for combat but armed with overwhelming support from the American people. The support for U.S. forces were strong going in. The support continues for forcing Saddam Hussein out.
Bruce Morton reports these feelings run wide and deep on the home front.
Americans want Saddam Hussein out.
A CBS News New York Times poll last night asked, even though the United Nations authorized the use of force only to get Iraq out of Kuwait, should the U.S. continue fighting until Saddam is removed from power? A solid majority said yes, get him out.
If he could ever come back to get you, he's going to come back to get you. You know, what I call ghetto fighting, and you fight to the end.
I think we should take him out of power entirely.
Even if removing Saddam cost several thousand additional American lives, those who want him out said it would be worth that cost.
We don't wish to have any casualties. We expect them, and we can't stop at this point because we've taken a few casualties.
Three quarters of our sample thought President Bush had done the right thing in starting the ground war instead of waiting longer to see if bombing alone would win.
And by an even bigger margin, our sample thought the U.S. and Iraq were so far apart, a negotiated settlement was not possible.
No, there's enough diplomacy. I think if they would have waited any longer, more Kuwaiti citizens would have been butchered, mass murdered.
The people we polled think the war is going well so far, not surprising since the military briefers have said that.
But our sample knows that that could change. A majority thought the war would last weeks or months. Only about one person in five thought it would be over in a matter of days.
I personally think that by the end of March, the war will be pretty much over with.
Asked if the war was worth several thousand American lives, our sample said yes. Men thought the sacrifice worthwhile by better than two to one. Women were evenly divided.
People look to us to lead, and I do think we did the right thing, yes.
Given this strong approval of the war, it's not surprising our sample thinks President Bush is doing well.
Eighty-seven percent to prove of the job he's doing as president. That's the same approval rating Harry Truman got after VE Day, after the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.
I think Bush is doing all right. I don't have any problems with the man. I don't think there was any other way he could have avoided the war.
People we polled were less happy with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. Asked if his efforts to negotiate a settlement were meant at bringing about peace or at increasing Soviet influence in the Gulf, our sample lopsidedly said Gorbachev was seeking not peace, but Soviet power.
Bruce Wharton, CBS News, Washington.
A Scud missile has killed Americans inside Saudi Arabia. Americans are engaged in considerable fighting inside Kuwait and inside Iraq.
We'll bring you updates throughout the evening on this CBS station, and I'll be back as part of a war update edition of America Tonight later on.
Now for those stations leaving us now, we say good night. For those continuing with our special one-hour edition of the CBS Evening News, see you in a moment.
CBS's expanded coverage of the Gulf War. A current affair will air at 730 p.m.
Recapping our top stories, a surprise announcement on Baghdad radio a short while ago saying Saddam Hussein now has ordered his troops to withdraw from Kuwait in accordance with the Soviet peace plan the Allied coalition and President Bush had already rejected.
First White House reaction, the war goes on. Day two of the land war brought more allied gains, but more heavy fighting.
Iraq played its terror cards with a vengeance. A Scud missile attack killed at least 12 Americans here inside Saudi Arabia. Eric Ingberg reports.
Iraq's Scud missile campaign, previously dismissed by U.S. commanders as militarily insignificant, tonight brought home the hazards and unpredictability of war.
A Scud or pieces of a Scud that was breaking up tore through the roof of a building housing U.S. troops in northern Saudi Arabia, inflicting the heaviest casualties of any Iraqi action of the war so far.
On the battlefield, U.S. and allied units have now captured from 18 to 20,000 prisoners while destroying 270 enemy tanks as the offensive proceeds along a broad front, but not as speedily as it did yesterday.
We are continuing to attack and continue to achieve tremendous success against the Iraqi forces in the KTO.
American Marines and Saudi forces pushing into Kuwait hit pockets of resistance today.
Forty-five miles south of Kuwait city, houses were ablaze from artillery duels and troops stopped while minefields were cleared away.
Roads were littered with thousands of mines which combat engineers had to use wooden sticks to dig out.
On the western border of Kuwait, Egyptian armored columns have broken through defensive barriers.
The American units, which yesterday surged across the Iraq border today, reported little resistance, continuing their task of building an armored wall between the elite Iraqi troops dug in on the Kuwait border and the rest of Iraq.
Elements of the 18th Airborne Corps, accompanied by French troops, paused to process Iraqi prisoners and, in one case, to bury enemy dead.
The allies said Iraq's scorched earth policy, blamed for 500 oilfield fires, is also becoming a bloodbath in Kuwait city where the Saudi military says the streets are littered with civilian corpses.
They even try to force their own Iraqi young, very young soldiers to kill another Kuwaiti children, those type of things which is, if I liberate it, it's so horrible.
With the allies at the edge of Kuwait city and the Republican guards close to encirclement, Saddam might have thought now was a good time to talk ceasefire, but the scud attacks and the new atrocity reports only made it harder to believe that peace was anywhere near at hand.
Eric Engberg, CBS News, Saudi Arabia.
For analysis, background, and additional insight now on the battles underway, let's go to Bob Schieffer in New York, Bob.
Dan, Saddam Hussein says that he is doing this to comply with a Soviet initiative at the UN, but working with our military consultants, retired Air Force Chief of Staff Mike Dugan, General George Crist, retired Marine General.
I think there may be other reasons for this move that Saddam Hussein has announced tonight.
General Crist, why don't you start? Use the map. Show us what's happened.
Bob, Saddam may now suspect that the jaws of the trap are about to close. The 82nd and the French are moving to block to the west. Our armor with the 7th Corps is now moving up from the south.
He may be very worried that he's going to lose the city of Basra. And Bob, Basra has great symbology. It's the second largest city in Iraq.
They fought for eight years and thousands of lives to try to keep that city out of the hands of the Iranians. If Saddam Hussein loses Basra, he's going to lose his job.
All right. Well, let's talk about this withdrawal, if indeed he does try to do that, General Dugan. What would that involve? That would not be an easy task, it seems to me.
No, Bob, he has told his forces to withdraw orderly. I mean, this is a combat move. This is not an administrative move. And while there is some reference to in accordance with UN Resolution 660, this in fact is a combat withdrawal.
This is a combat move back. Saddam has admitted to his forces that they are under fire and they're going to continue to be under fire.
Well, let's suppose they head north and those U.S. forces are there. Those U.S. commanders are not going to let him come through there with his tanks.
The rules have changed since the discussions last week initiated by President Gorbachev. And we are now putting ourselves in a blocking position, as General Chris mentioned.
And while we're going to encourage withdrawal, we're going to have them drop off their arms, drop off their tanks, leave the chemical weapons behind, and they can get on the road and walk back to Baghdad, I suspect.
Walk back but leave the tanks in place.
I suspect that that's the way the president will give the directions.
All right. Thank you, gentlemen. Back to you, Dan.
Dave McMartin at the Pentagon has some late word. David?
Well, Dan, there's a very confused picture right now with exactly what the Iraqi Army is doing.
There is some movement among Iraqi troops. The first reaction was that they were preparing to launch a chemical attack, but now they're not so sure.
There may be some movement going on, but people say it is much too soon to call this a withdrawal. Dan?
Thanks, David. American troops, Marines, and U.S. Army troops fighting their way deep into Kuwait, first objective to try to take Kuwait city, find themselves burdened by an enormous logistics headache.
Droves of Iraqi soldiers throughout the whole battlefront, at least 18,000, perhaps as many as 20,000 so far, have surrendered. More about that from Martha Teichner.
The sight of hundreds, even thousands of Iraqi soldiers giving themselves up was the first shock of the ground war.
Looks like a bunch of them up in front, but I can't tell.
There is a real danger that so many prisoners will slow down the war.
One advancing unit took a look at the approaching procession and kept right on going, telling the surrendering Iraqis, we don't have time for you now.
Not only might they possibly interfere with our combat actions and cause injury to U.S. soldiers, but we don't want them injured either.
The success of a leaflet campaign encouraging Iraqi soldiers to surrender could become a mixed blessing.
The allied policy is to get prisoners out of the battlefield as quickly as possible, to shuttle them to the rear in trucks or buses.
The allies planned on 100,000 prisoners, but can handle twice that, so there is no need for forced marches on foot yet.
There is a certain element of sympathy for them because they're so poorly equipped and the way they're well-being.
They're human beings also, and we're treating them as such, taking as good of care as we can of them.
An Iraqi soldier's first meal as a prisoner is often an MRE, what U.S. soldiers eat.
Many can expect better treatment as prisoners than they got serving in their own army.
The Saudis even intend to pay them six times more than required by international law, but first they are processed.
We search them, we silence them, we segregate them, speed and safeguard. We do it as quickly as we possibly can in a safe way.
The prisoners taken so far represent not quite 4% of Saddam Hussein's army.
The allies believe that by the time the war is finally over, they will have taken more than 20%.
Numbers that look startling now may look insignificant then.
Martha Teichner, CBS News, Doheran.
One part of this still unfolding story is the expected amphibious landing of Marines offshore in the Gulf.
A report on the Navy's troubles and why that landing hasn't happened yet when the CBS Evening News continues live from Saudi Arabia.
MUSIC
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...in a classic amphibious landing.
Because of Iraqi mines and the U.S. Navy's problems with those mines, it may never happen.
Juan Vasquez has been with the Leathernecks.
HANDS IN THEIR SOUNDS!
The Marines have never been known to run away from a good fight.
That's why the thousands of Marines aboard naval ships in the Persian Gulf were crushed to discover that the ground war began without them.
I'd say for the most part we'd all feel cheated if we didn't get to participate in it.
You know, I would be disappointed if we didn't get a chance to hit the beach because that's our job.
Look in there, see how I shoot a picture?
After months of training, their job is the stuff that Marine legends are made of, an amphibious assault.
They're so eager to fight, they say they can outperform their own heroes.
We'll be more effective, a lot more effective than the old John Wayne type of storming the beach and up and in like that.
But even though they're so close to the action they can smell the smoke, the amphibious landing has been delayed because the sea lanes approaching Kuwait are densely mined.
Just last week, the guided missile cruiser Princeton and the Triple-E, a helicopter assault carrier, were damaged by mines.
The coast of Kuwait may be the most heavily fortified section of coast in naval history.
There are unconfirmed reports of fighting on Fai Laka Island, which may yet be a target for the Marines because of its strategic location.
Even if these sophisticated assault vehicles are never used to carry Marines into Kuwait, commanders say their troops have served a vital purpose.
Keep in mind the number of Iraqi units we have tied down on the coast and as long as they're watching the coast and they're not engaging our units that are working in Kuwait now and for the west.
A ranking naval officer said the Navy was surprised at the extent and complexity of the minefields in the Persian Gulf.
It's the sort of thing that doesn't just slow you down, he said, it brings you to a dead stop.
Juan Vasquez, CBS News, Eastern Saudi Arabia.
Coalition unity in the battle for Kuwait is holding up well.
Reporter Bill Whitaker in London has found that the same cannot be said in the big dollar battle to repair the damage of war.
As allied troops prepare to enter Kuwait city, Kuwaiti exiles brace themselves for the human and physical devastation they will find.
We have assumed the total destruction of electricity, water distillation plants, telecommunication, medical services, medical supplies.
The price tag for reconstruction, $50 to $100 billion, and allies who are fighting together on the battlefield now are battling each other over the high-stakes spoils of war.
The U.S. has won the first skirmish with businesses like construction giant Bechtel and Motorola Electronics grabbing more than 70 percent of initial reconstruction contracts.
Some U.S. officials say that's only fair.
America was called upon to help, and so therefore when that part of the operation is over, then America should be the one to be given the first opportunity again.
But British businesses like Weir, which built this desalting plant in Kuwait before the war, fear the U.S. is trying to squeeze them out.
I think there are undoubted fears, but we've got to get in there and do our bit to make sure that we get a share of what's going.
I think it will be a competitive situation.
The Brits are fighting back with a glossy brochure trumpeting British expertise.
They even sent Foreign Secretary Douglas Heard to Saudi Arabia to promote British interests.
Britain is playing a leading role alongside the United States in the liberation of Kuwait, and we want to play a leading role in the reconstruction of Kuwait.
The Kuwaitis say there's enough to go around, at least for those who fought on the front lines.
I don't want now to say we're separating those who participated from those who didn't, but definitely those who participated will be given due consideration.
The big losers in all this could be the Germans and the Japanese who sat out the war.
But like the battle for Kuwait, the battle in the boardrooms goes on.
Bill Whitaker, CBS News, London.
What are the Germans, the Koreans, and the Japanese to help in the war effort?
More about that when we come back.
Rejected by the Allies, new stress cracks appear today in U.S.-Soviet relations.
The Soviets heaped criticism on President Bush's decision to go ahead with the land campaign.
In Washington, Bill Plant is tracking political fallout from the ground war. Bill?
Then, just before the Iraqis renewed their withdrawal offer through the Soviets,
the Communist Party newspaper proved to reach back for the rhetoric of the Cold War to blast U.S. motives in the war against Iraq.
It said the U.S. was grabbing for world power.
Now, Soviet cooperation, of course, was the key to lining up the coalition and to getting those 12 United Nations Security Council resolutions against Iraq.
But now, in the wake of the Soviet peace plan, which failed initially,
there's speculation that conservatives in Moscow are getting their day, their chance to talk.
Administration officials who went out of their way to praise that Soviet peace plan are downplaying the criticism,
just as they downplay euphoria over Allied successors.
The British, on the other hand, express no caution about the progress of the land war.
Newspaper headlines declaring victory practically jumped off the page in London this morning,
and the British Foreign Secretary, talking about the possibility of having to deal with Saddam Hussein after the war,
openly ridiculed the Iraqi leader.
Saddam Hussein was completely bogus, a puffed-up frog of a man.
U.S. and Britain have been in lockstep since the war began,
but some in Congress expressed concern today that some of the other allies, Germany, Japan, and Korea, aren't doing enough.
There are no three countries on the planet that owe their prosperity and well-being more to the United States than those three countries.
And yet, when we look at the cost of this war, those three countries are really doing the least.
The administration actually gives all of the allies higher marks than that, but it is very wary of attempts to split them off.
Today's withdrawal order is the kind of thing that could do that if it is actually carried out.
Officials here at the State Department say that the U.S. will want to test that offer.
They frankly think at this point that it is probably just a ploy.
Dan?
Bill Plant at the State Department.
Some of the people who have the most at stake in this Gulf War have been heard from the least,
the Palestinians who live in the Israeli-occupied territories.
This is not by accident, as correspondent Bill McLaughlin reports.
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been the invisible people of this war.
They've spent most of it behind the closed doors of their homes,
under a strict, round-the-clock Israeli military curfew that has shut schools, shops, and businesses for weeks on end.
Israel is ready to campaign to destroy the livelihood of Palestinians economically, educationally,
and then I don't need to tell you the psychological impact.
We can't speak, we can't sleep, we can't go, we can't travel, we can't teach, we can't...
All our universities are closed.
Palestinians have also suffered a major political setback in this war
by siding with Saddam Hussein and cheering on Iraqi Scuds aimed at Tel Aviv.
Both Arab and Israeli intellectuals agree that PLO leader Yasser Arafat made a major blunder
in siding so openly with Saddam Hussein.
Not only has the PLO lost the financial support of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states,
it's given the Israeli government the excuse it needed to avoid any talks with Arafat's PLO.
The PLO has been shooting himself in the feet, and for many Israelis, and including the Israeli government,
it is no longer acceptable that the PLO would be included as a partner in a future negotiating process.
But ordinary Palestinians don't see themselves as losers.
Saddam is still their hero, and they still desperately hope he'll defeat the US and its allies.
There is angels work with this man, angels from God work with this man.
I don't know if it is right or wrong, he wants to save me.
What should I think about this man? He's a bad man?
Even if Saddam is defeated and the PLO discredited, the bitterness and despair of the Palestinians will remain.
Israeli military curfews may have made Palestinians invisible for now,
but neither they nor their demands for a land of their own will vanish.
Bill McLaughlin, CBS News, Tel Aviv.
News personnel in Baghdad continue to seek the release of our colleagues and friends Bob Simon, Peter Bluff, Roberto Alvarez, and Juan Caldera.
The four CBS newsmen were seized by Iraqi forces five weeks ago while covering the war near the Saudi-Kawaii border.
Now, I'll be back in a moment with another CBS News exclusive frontline report on the desert warfare, so stay here with us.
Show off your style.
Violence today in Cairo in support of Saddam Hussein. Riot police with clubs and tear gas turned back thousands of Egyptian students who threw stones and chanted,
Iraq will not die. The protesters denounced President Mubarak and Egypt's role in the allied coalition.
That role is large and prominent. CBS News correspondent Richard Threlkeld has an exclusive report from his travels with the Egyptian troops pushing into Kuwait.
Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox in the Second World War, wrote, If you want to understand desert warfare, study the Navy.
True enough, on this day inside Kuwait, an armada of Egyptian armor maneuvers in a sea of sand.
The 32,000 Egyptian troops have one of the toughest combat missions of all to attack the Iraqi defenses head on from the center of the allied line.
There are interruptions, a poison gas alert, one of the hideous hazards of modern warfare for soldiers and combat correspondents alike.
As it happens, a false alarm. A breach has now been made in the Iraqi minefields and trenches just north of here,
and batteries of 122 millimeter rocket launchers paved the way forward like so many deadly Roman candles.
But in the end, this desert war is a war like any other to be won or lost by these Egyptian GIs with names like Ali and Muhammad and Fuad,
who've been gone from Cairo seven months now and just like the American GIs want to get this all over and go home.
The Egyptian government has made a political decision not to cross Iraqi territory, but here in Kuwait, the Egyptian army is punishing the Iraqis with no qualms involved.
In fact, Egyptian commanders have told us they'd like nothing better than to go all the way to Baghdad.
But the mission is to liberate Kuwait, and to our right and left for hundreds of miles, hundreds of thousands of allied soldiers are now doing just that.
Richard Threlkell, CBS News, in one newly liberated corner of Kuwait.
Under a clear sky and a three-quarters moon in southern Iraq, the US 82nd Airborne with the British is reported dashing to the Euphrates River.
Their apparent goal is to cut supply and escape routes against the Republican Guard.
Lower down, the 101st Airborne is doing much the same thing.
They are all covering, in effect, the left flank of a US Army 7th Corps main force.
That American main force appears to be in the early stages of maneuvering to engage the Republican Guard.
This American desert force has an estimated 50,000 men, many tanks. On the Gulf Road leading to Kuwait City, US Marines are engaged in a hellacious fight against an Iraqi armored division.
These may be the decisive hours of the war.
CBS News will bring you updates on the evolving battles throughout the evening and on America Tonight, right after your late local news.
Harry Smith and Paula Zahn will have all the overnight developments on CBS this morning.
Dan Rather, for the CBS Evening News, reporting tonight from Dehran, Saudi Arabia.
Good night.
Chief, every passenger elevator checks out clean. No one was stranded on any of them.
Thank God.
But they've confirmed one death. One of the building engineers on the service elevator, 12th floor.
Chief, excuse me.
Hey man, they found her. They're bringing her down now.
She's okay?
Well, they both took in a lot of smoke, but she is conscious.
So where will they be bringing her out?
Right there. It'll be a little while though.
Yeah, I know. It takes a while to walk down 37 flights of stairs, right?
That's right. You'll be alright.
Okay, thanks.
See you soon, man.
Here we go.
Susan!
I'm not even that old yet.
Chief, I calculated the fall. It would have been on an angle just about like this.
Thanks, Mark.
Thank you.
We have to bring in special equipment.
Great stop, guy. I owe you one.
What about the kid?
I bet he's getting the full number.
Thanks for staying with us, Mr. Doyle.
We needed you.
When your call is over, Chief, I'll buy dinner and we can trade stories about this night.
I look forward to it.
As a result of this fire, Los Angeles City building codes were changed.
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The residential high-rises were not included in this ordinance.
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Stay with us. Up next on the late edition of Eyewitness News 13,
we'll have some details on the Soviet peace proposal.
The West Michigan community goes all out for the troops in the Gulf.
We'll have a report from Ravenna,
about proposed layoffs at Steelcase, Grand Rapids largest employer.
Join us for all the news, weather and sports next.
As a member of a railroading family,
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Hit into the night.
Later tonight on Nightline with Ted Koppel,
Gorbachev's go-between with Saddam Hussein.
And we'll hear from today's meeting in the Kremlin,
Soviet envoy Primakov on Nightline tonight.
I'm Jen London. And Charles Gibson.
Tomorrow updates on the Gulf War, also the future of U.S.-Puerto Rico relations.
Plus Jodie Foster and Grammy nominee Phil Collins.
Tomorrow on Good Morning America.
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I did say, we all did, we take these threats very, very seriously.
There's no reason whatsoever to doubt these threats.
Nevertheless, the Israeli government, supporting America's political aims
and complying with the United States government requests,
decided to refrain from a preemptive attack on those launching pads,
on those missile launchers from which we were threatened.
We knew that this was a calculated risk.
We have now, unfortunately, been forced to give the proof that this actually happened.
So far, the state of Israel and the people of Israel,
and thank God the casualties were not more numerous,
but so far the state of Israel has paid the dearest price of any of the countries in the Middle East
which have faced Iraqi aggression, except Kuwait itself.
And Israel, as I said in the beginning, was not a party to this conflict at all.
This is all I have to say. Thank you very much.
And good night.
The Israeli ambassador, Zalman Shaval, speaking at the Israeli embassy in Washington.
His last point, perhaps worth considering here with our White House correspondent, Brit Hume,
and our national correspondent, John McQuethy,
because he makes the point that Israel, at the urging of the United States,
has refrained from mounting a preemptive strike against the Iraqis.
But in fact, Brit Hume, are you there or John McQuethy? Are they both there?
I'm here.
Well, Jeff, if I may, I'd like to go and continue this political point for just a second
with our national correspondent, John McQuethy, and Brit Hume,
because the ambassador has laid a pretty heavy trip there on the United States.
John McQuethy?
Yes, Peter.
In fact, the United States has mounted the preemptive strike for Israel, one could argue.
When the U.S. attack began almost 28 hours ago, one of the very first targets
were those Scud missile sites in western Iraq, which were closest to Israel.
Am I right or wrong?
Well, the United States has launched a preemptive strike in one form, Peter,
but the Israelis could certainly argue that those missiles have been there for quite a while,
and if Israel felt threatened, Israel also felt restrained by requests by the United States
not to hit those missiles, perhaps weeks ago, when they may have felt threatened by them.
They also felt constrained by the fact that they would have to rely on the United States
to do the preemptive striking and not their own aircraft,
and I'm sure the Israelis feel that if their own aircraft had been involved,
those missiles would not have hit their territory.
Thank you.