Persian Gulf War

A year ago, America was basking in the afterglow of Desert Storm. The much-feared ground offensive into Iraq and Kuwait had turned into a nearly-unopposed romp across the sands. The cease-fire was two days old.The pendulum of popular culture has already swung, as the orgiastic excess of the post-war pride has become an oddly-distant memory, clouded by the economic storms of more recent troubles.That's a year later. What about five, ten, 20, maybe 50 years from now? How will the war in the Persian Gulf go down in history?

WASHINGTON -- Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates said the Army needs more money, not just to make up for the losses suffered in Iraq but also for chronic underfunding since the end of the Cold War. But Gates suggested that rather than using additional money to rebuild conventional war capability, the Army should ensure that it does not again forget the painful lessons it was forced to relearn in Iraq about fighting against an insurgency. Gates argued in a speech yesterday that after the Vietnam War, the Army "relegated unconventional war to the margins" of its training and spending priorities.

If you think you have budget troubles, you ought to try balancing the books for the network news departments in the wake of the war.If NBC's war costs -- almost $45 million in expenses and lost ad revenues, the network says -- are similar to those of ABC and CBS, it means the trio has spent about $135 million covering the war.We don't know for sure, because only NBC is saying how much the coverage cost it, but it's unlikely that the numbers are very different...

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa -- It's a beautiful Saturday evening, and more than a hundred Iowans are gathered on the green at the Ushers Ferry Historic Village to hear a speech by John Edwards. He's scheduled to appear at the Linn County Democrats Family BBQ, which has attracted not only local voters but a clutch of activists manning booths for other candidates and causes. As the crowd waits, partaking of hot dogs and hamburgers, the loudspeakers blare Bonnie Tyler singing, "I need a hero." When he arrives, sporting faded jeans and a light blue shirt, Mr. Edwards does a fair impression of one. In 2004, he offered himself as an optimistic centrist who could attract independent and Republican votes.

The nation went to war against Iraq in January.While the PersianGulf war was being waged half a world away, its effects hit Carroll hard, as a Manchester serviceman lost his life in a non-combat incident.Charles L. Bowman Jr., a 20-year-old Army specialist, was killed in southern Iraq on April 2, weeks after the war ended, when a bomblet exploded in his hand.Bowman, who was buried in Garrison Forest Veterans Cemetery in Baltimore County, was the only countian -- and one of six Marylanders -- killed in the war.The son of Sandra and Charles L. Bowman Sr., he had joined the Army after graduating from North Carroll High and was stationed in Friedburg, Germany, as a mechanic for the Bradley fighting vehicles in the 3rd Armored Division.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush is sending his top two military advisers back to Saudi Arabia tomorrow to determine in part whether the time has come to launch a ground offensive in the war against Iraq.Mr. Bush said that a decision to send troops into a potentially bloody ground war was not necessarily imminent but that he was emotionally "prepared" to make it.At a White House news conference, Mr. Bush also insisted that the allied pounding of Iraq would go on until Iraqi forces undertook "a credible, visible, totally convincing withdrawal" from Kuwait.

Greencastle, Ind.THE STATE of Indiana is famous for wearing its patriotism on its sleeve. From its two dominating war memorials in the center of Indianapolis to its array of American Legion and other veterans' groups across the state, Indiana reveres its military perhaps as no other single state.So it was not surprising, on a short drive down Route 40 from Indianapolis to this small town that is home to DePauw University, to see flags and large yellow ribbons tied to telephone poles in every community along the way, augmenting elaborate signs that say things like, "We Support Our Hoosier Forces in Operation Desert Storm."

The yellow ribbons, those few that remain in view, are faded and tattered.The red, white and blue flag-emblazoned T-shirts are stuffed in the back of the closet, forgotten ornaments of another era.Does anyone remember the Persian Gulf War?A year ago today the war began, a war that would be played out live on television. Suddenly everyone was talking about Scuds and sorties and collateral damage. People succumbed to "CNN syndrome," remaining glued to their TVs, unwilling to miss a moment. Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf and Gen. Colin L. Powell became instant heroes, Saddam Hussein instant enemy, and the "mother of all battles" fodder for comedians coast to coast.

WASHINGTON -- A Pentagon team is on a secret mission to Iraq, searching the desert for the remains of the first U.S. pilot shot down in the Persian Gulf war in 1991.The mission, undertaken with the approval of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, represents a small but potentially significant step in Iraq's attempts to end its deep isolation. Since the end of the gulf war, Iraq has been an international pariah, subjected to strict economic sanctions.Though the mission is under the leadership of the International Committee of the Red Cross, it represents the first official visit of U.S. military officers to Iraq since the war's end.U.

The good news is that the stock market thinks the recession is over. The bad news is that the market is always wrong.Mikhail Gorbachev wants to sit at a Western economic summit, soon, before the folks back home dump him.The disarming United States will soon be in no position to fight another Persian Gulf war. Ditto, of course, for Iraq.There may not be global warming. There sure is U.S. warming.Cheer up. Baltimore set the style in propeller beanies.

With a war going on in Iraq and with its neighbor Iran moving steadily toward a nuclear bomb that could change the course of world history in the hands of international terrorists, the question for this year's elections is not whether you are or your candidate is a Democrat or a Republican but whether you are serious or frivolous. That question also needs to be asked about the media. In these grim and foreboding times, our media have this year spent incredible amounts of time on a hunting accident involving Vice President Dick Cheney, a bogus claim that the Bush administration revealed Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA "agent" - actually a desk job in Virginia - and are now going ballistic over a congressman who sent raunchy e-mails to congressional pages.

THIS FALL, expect to hear a lot on the campaign trail about Iraq. Was it a mistake? Can we win? Is it worth it? Even some conservatives seem to wonder. But even after 18 months of negative media coverage, the bottom line is that the war in Iraq was worthwhile. Even critical. Here's why: The United States faces several long-term threats, but the biggest by far is that posed by terrorists. According to Norman Podhoretz, editor at large of the highly influential Commentary magazine, the United States is engaged today in a fourth world war. The Cold War, he writes, was actually World War III. During the Cold War, we knew who the enemy was, and where the enemy was. We could even, to an extent, negotiate with the old Soviet Union.

CHICAGO - John Kerry is a man of great personal courage, which served him well as a naval officer in the Vietnam War. But the man who takes the inaugural oath in January won't be asked to lead a bayonet charge. A more vital quality in a president is moral courage. And trying to detect evidence of that attribute in Mr. Kerry is like expecting Mikhail Baryshnikov to show up at the county fair. The latest proof that Mr. Kerry's backbone is made of goose down was his statement that even if he had known what he knows now about Iraq's yet-to-be-found weapons of mass destruction and mythical partnership with al-Qaida, he still would have voted for the resolution authorizing President Bush to go to war. "I believe it's the right authority for a president to have," he said.

Julia Compton Moore, 75, a military wife whose care for the families of soldiers killed in war was portrayed in the Mel Gibson movie We Were Soldiers, died of cancer Sunday in Auburn, Ala. Her husband of 55 years, retired Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore, was wounded in Korea and Vietnam. He wrote the book We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young based on his combat experience, and Mr. Gibson turned it into the 2002 movie. Mrs. Moore's father fought in Europe in World War II, and one of her sons fought in Panama and the Persian Gulf war. By her family's account, Mrs. Moore challenged the Army's informal practice of delivering combat death notices by taxi to wives and families in small apartments or trailers.

THE LETTER to the mother of the five soldiers arrived over the president's signature. Mrs. Lydia Bixby, of Massachusetts, lost two of her sons on the battlefield. Her sacrifice was great and the commander in chief was humbled by her loss: "I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save," President Abraham Lincoln wrote on Nov. 21, 1864.

The battlefield Firefights involving U.S. troops continue in Mosul, where Iraqis say 17 people have been killed and 18 injured in two days of fighting. Gen. Tommy R. Franks makes his first trip to Baghdad and meets with U.S. military leaders. American forces raid the home of Hussein's biological weapons chief - Rihab Taha, dubbed "Dr. Germ" by U.N. inspectors - and find a recently abandoned terrorist training camp, officials say. The Army's 4th Infantry Division enters combat, exchanging fire with Iraqi paramilitary forces at an airfield north of Baghdad.

For America's youth, the Persian Gulf war is the first in which the United States has been involved during their lifetimes. It is a confusing and troubling time for students who see the war coverage on television, and especially for those who have relatives or friends serving in the gulf. In order to answer questions about the war and about the Middle East, The Sun is publishing today a tabloid section especially for students.

Center Stage raised $105,500 Sunday in its annual WBAL-AM radio auction, the theater said yesterday. The amount was slightly below last year's total of $110,000.Sydney Wilner, the theater's auction coordinator, attributed the decline to the Persian Gulf war and the recession. "It's just amazing we did as well as we did," she said. "It was a real outpouring of support from everybody."The money will go to the theater's annual fund, which has a goal this year of $982,500.

Writing by those who do the actual fighting tells a tale of war unlike any told by observers, however deeply embedded. Whether writ by history's battlefield stalwarts, or by youthful geniuses like Wilfred Owen and Rupert Brooke, who died along with a generation of English soldiers in World War I, these personal battlefield accounts reveal a side of war few noncombatants know. Memoirs, novels and poetry by those who have seen action and lived to tell the tale give a far more revelatory picture of war than any CNN telecast.

KUFAH, Iraq - Hugging a pitifully small pile of gravel, bullets whizzing all around, it became obvious that access would not be a problem. An Iraqi sniper was firing a semiautomatic rifle from a building near the southern city of Najaf. Dozens of U.S. soldiers were shooting back with machine guns and rifle-launched grenades. I lay somewhere in between, having followed Capt. Eric Schuler as he bounded closer and closer to the spot in the sand where a second group of his soldiers was pinned down by the sniper fire.