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68534a9452d1deff3b6b07f0d4c0a4b4 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-hl-3067-story.html | Compton : Hearing Scheduled on Plans for Spending Federal Grant | Compton : Hearing Scheduled on Plans for Spending Federal Grant
A public hearing will be held at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Compton City Council chamber so residents can tell city officials how they ought to spend an estimated $2.3 million in federal funds.
This year the city spent the majority of its $2.6 million in Community Development Block Grant money for housing rehabilitation loans and grants and for code enforcement, according to Timothy Iverson, the city’s grants director.
The annual grant, which Compton began receiving 17 years ago, is also used for housing and environmental improvements, playground equipment, and public services such as a senior citizen meal program and crime prevention programs, he said.
In order to qualify for block grant money, cities must have a sufficient number of low- to moderate-income residents, must have some low-income housing, and must work to eliminate slums and blight.
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e4f7aeacc000d8db4dc3f859ec769f46 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-hl-3068-story.html | Norwalk : School Budget Cuts Target 5 Jobs, Administrators’ Pay | Norwalk : School Budget Cuts Target 5 Jobs, Administrators’ Pay
Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District officials are proposing to cut $1 million from next year’s budget to make up for an anticipated loss in federal and state funding.
The proposed cuts would include elimination of five administrative positions and a reduction in pay for seven assistant principals. The positions of two district program specialists, the coordinator of drug and health programs, the staff development administrator and the head of school site projects would be eliminated. Most would be given the opportunity to teach.
Three high school assistant principals and four elementary principals would have the time they work reduced by one month.
By cutting the positions and reducing work time, the district would trim $380,000 from its 1991-92 budget. The projected budget for next year is an estimated $74 million.
In the coming weeks, the district will continue to search for ways to balance the budget, officials said.
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eed7c1923cdde3af88a993bfbc172634 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-hl-3069-story.html | Montebello : New Homeowners Invited to Breakfast Talk at Mall | Montebello : New Homeowners Invited to Breakfast Talk at Mall
New homeowners in the city have been invited to a breakfast mixer Saturday at the Montebello Town Center.
City officials have sent out 1,000 invitations to people who recently have bought homes in Montebello, asking them to attend the New Residents’ Breakfast at the mall between 9 and 10 a.m., when City Council and staff members will tell them about city services and programs. In addition to a continental breakfast, new homeowners will receive a gift package.
Laura Nighswonger, project coordinator for the city’s Economic Development Department, said this is the second annual program for new homeowners. Last year 300 people attended. The list of new homeowners was culled from county property records, she said.
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9c11d5614b0528836f5e4d71dfc0d51a | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-hl-3070-story.html | Bell : Survey of Child-Care Needs Begins Under State Grant | Bell : Survey of Child-Care Needs Begins Under State Grant
As part of an in-depth look at child-care programs offered in Bell, more than 5,000 surveys are being distributed to residents and people who work in the city.
The 90-question surveys, which are printed in English and Spanish, ask residents and employees in the city when they need child care, what they do when they need child care, and what kind of child care they want. Respondents are also asked their age, the number and ages of their children, marital status, occupation and income.
“We know from our school population that there are a lot of kids in our community, and there is a tremendous need to provide adequate, affordable child care for them,” Mayor George Cole said. “We need to find out what those specific needs are so that we can start a (child-care) program that really works.”
The surveys are to be returned by March 15. City officials say that once the study is completed they will have a clearer picture of where and when child care should be offered, how much it will cost and who should provide it. The survey and study are being funded by a $25,000 state Department of Education grant. Bell is one of four cities in the state to receive a child-care assessment grant.
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3a5358a282cd5cfeef076c6b6dbbf078 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-hl-3071-story.html | Lakewood : Surcharges for Excessive Water Use Imposed by Law | Lakewood : Surcharges for Excessive Water Use Imposed by Law
An ordinance imposing fines for misusing water and surcharges for excessive use was adopted Tuesday by the Lakewood City Council, making it the sixth city in the Southeast area to take such action against the drought.
The measure, which calls for voluntary water reduction of 10%, goes into effect immediately. Fines of $25 to $75 will be levied against those caught washing down driveways and sidewalks, using decorative fountains without recirculating water, washing cars with a free-running hose, or not repairing plumbing leaks. Drinking water will not be served in restaurants unless requested, and watering of lawns is prohibited during the day.
For residents who rack up multiple offenses, the city will install flow-restricting devices for 24 hours or 48 hours, depending on the infraction, that reduce water flow to one gallon per minute.
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f4f1a43326de13239667b50c25da055c | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-hl-3072-story.html | Long Beach : Proposed Ordinance Would Tighten No-Smoking Limits | Long Beach : Proposed Ordinance Would Tighten No-Smoking Limits
Nonsmokers could breathe easier under a Long Beach City Council proposal that would tighten local restrictions on smoking in the workplace and restaurants.
The proposal, drafted by a council committee, would prohibit smoking in all common work areas, cafeterias and employee lounges at companies employing two or more people. Currently, those areas must have a nonsmoking section for at least half the seating capacity, and the law only applies to companies with five or more employees.
The ordinance would also increase the amount of space restaurants have to set aside for nonsmokers from one-quarter of the seating area to two-thirds. The proposal represents a compromise between restaurant owners, who argued that the changes would hurt business, and anti-smoking activists, who pointed out the hazards of secondary smoke.
“I’m so frustrated by treating people with cancer, either those exposed to second-hand smoke or smokers,” said Dr. Stephen Brunton of Long Beach Memorial Medical Center.
“I think the recommendations are weak,” Councilman Evan Braude said. “I’d go for no smoking entirely in restaurants.”
But Craig Hofman, president of Hof’s Hut restaurants, complained: “It’s going to really impact our sales. We have a lot of smokers and they’re going to go to other cities.”
The committee will hold another meeting at 12:30 p.m. March 18 in City Hall to discuss the proposed ordinance.
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3ce6025a19de4bc42802c97538ed8fe9 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-hl-3073-story.html | Fund-Raiser in Bellflower Is Shut Down Again : Charity: The attorney general has alleged illegalities in the way American Veterans Committee operates. | Fund-Raiser in Bellflower Is Shut Down Again : Charity: The attorney general has alleged illegalities in the way American Veterans Committee operates.
A Superior Court judge has shut down the American Veterans Committee indefinitely after the state attorney general’s office charged the group engaged in illegal fund-raising for more than a year.
After reviewing documents filed by the state and the committee, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William Huss last Friday issued a preliminary injunction against the group, which had been soliciting funds mainly from a Bellflower phone room. The ruling followed a temporary restraining order Huss issued Feb. 7, halting the committee’s fund-raising for 15 days while legal arguments were prepared.
Until recently, the committee was raising thousands of dollars each week, telling donors their gifts to veterans, blind children and battered women were “100% tax-deductible,” state authorities said. But the organization was denied a federal tax-exemption in April, 1989, and lost its state tax-exemption last May, court documents said.
State officials said the committee, administered by a Glendale businessman, also has failed to file annual financial reports with the attorney general’s Registry of Charitable Trusts for 1987 through 1989, as required by law.
“The key issue here is the lack of the proper accounting that the state requires,” the judge said Friday. “That hasn’t been done.”
Turning to Gerald McNally Jr., attorney for the fund-raising group, Huss added, “If human beings don’t comply until they’re hit over the head, then the state has to come in and hit them over the head. . . . You’re abusing the system, and your client is, too.”
State officials pursued a civil case against the group after Long Beach police and serval residents said they were suspicious of the committee’s fund-raising tactics.
The committee has “engaged in a continuing course of misconduct, in violation of the law,” the attorney general’s staff argued in a civil complaint. “It is anticipated that such misconduct will continue unless enjoined.”
In papers filed with the state, the committee has said that only 5% of the money it raises goes to charity, with the remainder going to the fund-raisers and their expenses.
At last week’s hearing, Huss was told that the group is the target of a second lawsuit filed in August by a Washington, D.C.-based veterans organization, also called American Veterans Committee. In its suit, the Washington group, formed in 1943, alleged that the organization, founded in 1986, “wrongfully and unlawfully” adopted its name “for the purposes of deceiving and misleading the public into donating money.”
Huss agreed to combine the state’s case with the suit filed by the Washington-based committee.
He ordered the two veterans groups and the attorney general’s staff to attend a voluntary settlement conference on April 4. If an agreement is not reached, a trial will be held on whether the court should issue a permanent injunction against the Glendale group.
“I believe that resolving it informally would be a better way,” Huss said.
After the hearing, Frank E. Burford, president of the organization, said the judge’s ruling would have its most serious impact on his fund-raising crew, which numbers about 30.
“The only people he’s hitting over the head now are a lot of poor people who don’t have a job,” he said. “For some people, this is the only work they can do.”
He added: “I think it’s going to be resolved. They’re going to see that everything we’ve sent them is in order. We are not doing anything illegal.”
Burford said his group has been sending financial statements to state officials since April.
“They have just wanted detail after detail after detail,” he said. “We have the best records in the world for this organization. We have sent them volumes.”
But Deputy Atty. Gen. William S. Abbey disagreed.
“The stuff he has submitted is totally inadequate,” he said. “There are 50,000 other charities operating in California that manage to meet the statutory reporting requirements. So why can’t Burford?”
The injunction prohibits further fund-raising or expenditures by Glendale’s American Veterans Committee and its affiliates: Blind Children’s Society, Battered Women’s Society, Child Abuse Network and United Missions.
Burford has said his group seeks donations, then gives money to programs that serve veterans, battered women and others.
Gregory S. Howard, a state charitable trusts auditor, said Burford’s most recent report stated that his organization raised $434,027 during the fiscal year that ended Aug. 31, 1989. From this sum, the group gave $20,814--less than 5% of its revenue--to service programs. Most of the remaining funds covered fund-raising costs, such as solicitors’ fees and office rent.
The percentage donated to charity is far below the average for Los Angeles fund-raisers and the voluntary standards set by national watchdog groups. But the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that states and cities cannot mandate how much a fund-raiser must donate to a charity.
Over the past year, however, city and state regulators have challenged the Glendale group’s bookkeeping and its lack of tax exemptions.
In an April 16 letter included in the court records, state auditor Howard told Burford that critical sections were missing from his financial reports. “When completing these pages, you should consider seeking professional accounting assistance,” Howard wrote.
Burford operates an accounting business in Glendale but is not a certified public accountant.
In the court case, the attorney general’s office presented evidence that the committee
filed an incomplete application to the Internal Revenue Service and was denied a federal tax exemption in 1989. In addition, California officials rescinded the group’s state tax exemption last May, again because it did not provide enough informa tion on its finances.
Residents who were suspicious of the group’s fund-raising tactics have also contacted authorities.
Los Angeles City Fire Department Capt. Norman M. Pate of Van Nuys said his wife received a call Feb. 7 from a solicitor who said the Blind Children’s Society urgently needed cash. Margaret Pate was told to make out her $35 check to “B.C.S.” and leave it in her mailbox for a messenger to pick up.
The next day, the check was gone, and a receipt was left behind, saying the gift was tax-deductible.
The Pates became suspicious when a friend who works at a school for the blind said she had never heard of the organization. They stopped payment on the check and wrote to the Los Angeles Social Service Department, which last year denied American Veterans Committee and its affiliates a permit to seek donations in the city. The Pates’ letter was submitted to Judge Huss.
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ca640d83e66d6a643673dc79cd043ab1 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-hl-3074-story.html | Belmont Team Takes a Bruising From Archrival : Rugby: The Long Beach and San Diego clubs were undefeated and tied for first in league standings until the bloody contest. | Belmont Team Takes a Bruising From Archrival : Rugby: The Long Beach and San Diego clubs were undefeated and tied for first in league standings until the bloody contest.
When the ball at last would emerge from the straining, pushing pack of humanity that formed the scrums and stirred up the sand beneath the sun-swept field, it never seemed to belong to the Belmont Shore Rugby Football Club.
“Our boys are not doing well at all,” said Coach Denis Berg as one of the Old Mission Beach Athletic Club’s swift backs, after catching the last in a series of laterals, raced almost untouched into the end zone for a four-point “try.”
The two-point conversion kick extended the San Diego side’s lead to 16-6 in last Saturday afternoon’s match at Cal State Long Beach between the archrivals, who were atop the eight-team Southern California Rugby Football Union with 6-0 league records.
Berg, a New Zealander with a nose permanently rearranged by 40 years in the sport, further observed, “Our lack of tackling is letting us down right now.”
For Belmont Shore’s supporters in lawn chairs along the sidelines, and the team itself, which had defeated Old Mission Beach the week before in a tournament (which did not count in league standings), the deficit was hard to swallow.
The Belmont Shore club, playing a season that runs from late October to May, has always been serious about rugby. One of the top clubs in the nation in recent years, it has consistently made the prestigious Pacific Coast playoffs. The club has three other teams, composed of players who strive to be among the 15 who were playing with the first side Saturday afternoon.
“They don’t consider it a recreational sport,” said Mike Tracy, 45, the club president who was watching the match from beyond the end zone, near the team’s orthopedic surgeon. “They have the same commitment as Olympic athletes. They practice twice a week and are expected to train on their own.”
The most committed--Ray Nelson, Chuck Tunnaliffe, Jay Wilkerson, Jon Finstuen and Rich Schurfeld--hope to be candidates for the national team that will compete in England this fall in the World Cup.
Thick-thighed men in their 20s, the Belmont Shore players looked like construction workers, though only a couple actually are. Nelson is a banker, Finstuen a geophysicist, Wilkerson a yacht builder. And a blue-jerseyed teammate at the bottom of a sweaty pileup could be a teacher, attorney, doctor, accountant, stockbroker, fireman, bartender or fashion designer.
Players receive no salaries because rugby is strictly an amateur sport, and they must pay their expenses on trips and dues of $150. They take turns washing the jerseys--presumably with cold water to get the blood out.
Trailing 22-6 at halftime, the Belmont Shore players gathered at midfield as Berg and co-coach Bob Wilson, an Australian, blistered them with identical accents.
“It’s . . . disgusting, fellas, we need more urgency, we need to show some . . . guts,” Wilson said. “Nothing but breakdowns every . . . time. We need to put them on the deck.”
But Old Mission Beach, which twice has been national champion, scored again at the start of the second half.
As Belmont Shore’s long afternoon continued, through a dispiriting series of scrums, breakaway runs and kicks that sent the white oblong ball bobbing like a wounded bird, Susan Maddocks kept aiming her video camera, especially at her husband, forward Bryan Sullivan.
“When people see the game for the first time, they say, ‘My God, it’s barbaric,’ ” she said. “My mom said it looked as if they were out there to kill each other.”
She said her husband certainly is not the stereotypical rugby player: “Bryan doesn’t even drink.”
The final score was 44-6, the worst defeat anyone could remember Belmont Shore suffering.
The fans, one of whom said, “We played like the Iraqis today,” formed the traditional tunnel at the end of the field and consoled the players as they ran through it.
Joe McGlinchey had blood on his face as he took off his soaked grass-stained jersey, and Schurfeld limped away with an ice bag on his knee. They shrugged off their injuries, but not their performance. “I’ve never been beat up in so many ways,” Schurfeld said.
In rugby tradition, the host team always provides a postgame party for the visitors. In New Zealand, Australia and South Africa, these are held in clubhouses, in which team photos and jerseys of famous players are displayed on the walls.
“That’s our dream, to have our own clubhouse,” Tracy said. “But it’s difficult when you’re a nonprofit organization, especially in an area where property is expensive.”
So the party Saturday was at the Clipper Sports Lounge in Long Beach, where the walls held only beer signs.
Max Cohen, 64, who wore an ascot, accepted a beer from Phil Drum, the club’s beefy social chairman, and proclaimed, “I played at Stellenbosch University, the most powerful rugby club in the world, near Cape Town, South Africa.”
Cohen, who had come from Santa Monica to see the match, went on: “The way OMBAC played today they could beat most of the rugby clubs in the world.”
McGlinchey had changed into a dress shirt, but his face still looked as if someone had marked it with a red crayon. His wife, Lynda, had of course seen him like that before. “A couple of weeks ago we had to spend a night in the emergency room,” she said. “But that turned out to be just stitches.”
The rival players mingled easily. One keg turned into two, and then a third was tapped, but the fellowship flowed just as freely--and without any ribald songs normally associated with rugby.
“At this level, you don’t see raucous behavior, even at the parties,” said Tony Evans, manager of the image-conscious Belmont Shore club. “There’s none of that hooliganism you see at lower levels.”
No player enjoyed basking in the atmosphere more than Finstuen, 27, who played football at Millikan High School and Occidental College. “I like it better than football,” he said. “I like the spontaneity of having always to react, to kick, pass, run or tackle. I’m just addicted. I can’t imagine stopping until my body stops functioning.”
Bodies were what Beverly Hill, 35, of Hollywood, was thinking about.
“My God, this is a virtual smorgasbord of men,” said Hill, in an off-the-shoulder red sweater dress over black stretch pants.
It had been her first rugby game and now it was her first rugby party. Already she was looking a week ahead, planning a trip to San Diego for Saturday’s rematch.
HOW RUGBY IS PLAYED
The object in rugby, played between teams of 15 on a field 110 yards long and 75 yards wide, is to run or kick the ball into the end zone and down it for a four-point “try.” The conversion kick after a try is worth two points. A three-point penalty goal is scored by place-kicking or drop-kicking the ball through the uprights of the goal posts from the point of a penalty. A three-point field goal can be scored at any time by drop-kicking the ball through the uprights. There are two 40-minute halves and substitutions are allowed only for injuries. Blocking and forward passing are not allowed. There are eight forwards--who, during a scrum, attempt to win possession of the ball--and seven backs. The ball can be advanced by being run, passed laterally or kicked.
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16d85ec0c38b41c1c59204b20bd3d9ff | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-hl-3076-story.html | Jordan, Millikan in Clash for I-AA Title | Jordan, Millikan in Clash for I-AA Title
Jordan High School’s boys basketball team will try to win its first CIF Southern Section championship when the Panthers play Moore League rival Millikan in the I-AA title game Saturday night at 8:30 in the Los Angeles Sports Arena.
The 22-6 Panthers, coached by Ron Massey, advanced to the finals by defeating Lakewood, 78-66, Tuesday night.
Darryl Bryant scored 25 points for Jordan.
Millikan, which lost to Jordan twice this season, defeated Lynwood, 86-74, in the semifinals, as Dante Powell scored 24 points and Pat Thacker added 23.
The Rams are 24-4.
Artesia, the only other Long Beach/Southeast area team alive in the playoffs, will play Woodbridge for the II-A title Saturday at 1 p.m. in the L.A. Memorial Sports Arena.
Wayne Merino’s 24-2 Pioneers, who beat Kennedy, 67-40, Tuesday night, will be trying for their second consecutive CIF title.
Gahr’s season ended Tuesday night with an 86-71 loss to J.W. North of Riverside in a II-AA semifinal. Junior guard Brandon Titus scored 39 points for the Gladiators, who finished 25-5.
Pius X lost to Verbum Dei, 87-78, in a IV-AA semifinal, despite 30 points by Ryan Brass. The Warriors, who had hoped to reach the finals for the first time in 27 years, finished 17-8 under new Coach Rob Orellana.
Valley Christian’s season ended with 25 turnovers and a 77-67 loss to St. Monica in a IV-A semifinal.
The Crusaders (20-6) were led by Todd VanOtterloo’s 22 points.
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22decf77b8ecb0b0159f20eedaefa508 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-me-2533-story.html | College Student’s View on Gulf War | College Student’s View on Gulf War
In reference to Zimmerman’s column: Tongue-in-cheek. The ultimate cynicism. These were my first thoughts. However, the article reflected accurately the thoughts of the eight relatively successful young adults who I asked to read it and share their reaction independently of the others. One added, “Hey, we don’t even have to pay for it or conserve oil”.
As one who does not support this war but who had combat service in World War II, I find this very sad.
JAMES J. SELFRIDGE
Rancho Palos Verdes
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38080e3b59b1470887f00b4403aa444f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-me-2534-story.html | A Foundation for More Housing | A Foundation for More Housing
Millions of poor Americans need affordable housing, but financially strapped governments haven’t the funds to finance massive new construction or rehabilitation projects. Enter a newly formed private consortium funded by seven leading philanthropic foundations and a major insurance company: It promises substantial help for poor neighborhoods.
For starters, the National Community Development Initiative--the vision of Peter Goldmark, president of the Rockefeller Foundation--will provide $62.5 million in loans and grants to neighborhood-based housing developers in 20 cities, including Los Angeles and the Bay Area. The Local Initiatives Support Coalition and the Enterprise Foundation will administer the funds, provide technical advice and select the neighborhood nonprofit developers.
Goldmark corralled funds from the Lilly Endowment, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Knight Foundation, The Pew Charitable Trusts, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Surdna Foundation. It is a bold use of foundation money. Part of the game plan is the hope that this unusual initiative will attract an additional $500 million from the government and private sector. The new money should also reinvigorate non-profit developers who, in recent years, have built so much of the nation’s new affordable housing.
The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. has already committed $100 million to purchase long-term, fixed-rate mortgage loans on low-income rental-housing projects. Freddie Mac’s commitment helps a lot. Its financing will enable banks to market mortgages made on affordable housing projects in inner cities to the investment community. That will give banks a greater incentive to finance what some consider high-risk properties.
The Prudential Insurance Co., which has an impressive social investment program, pledged $15 million to the initiative. The firm’s participation is a challenge that should be accepted by other major corporations.
At least 8,000 poor Americans and their families can initially expect to benefit from this fine example of charity at home.
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425355f273f98411ab65869bc0de1479 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-me-2535-story.html | Comparing Hitler and Hussein | Comparing Hitler and Hussein
Isn’t it convenient for Germany to have the excuse of a constitutional prohibition against sending its sons and daughters to fight alongside coalition troops? Not only does this excuse save Germany from the tragedy of dead and wounded German soldiers, it also prevents the black irony of Germans killed by German gas or by gas produced with German know-how and German equipment.
Fifty years ago Germany’s industry eagerly bid for the right to supply gas and gas-processing equipment to carry out the genocide nightmare of the Nazis. Now we learn that the same German industry has been supplying Iraq with the ability to rain death gas on our troops, Israel and on Iraq’s Gulf foes.
It’s time the world recognized that as long as there’s a tyrant willing to use chemical weapons, there will be Germans willing and eager to supply the means.
LEONARD TACHNER
Newport Beach
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94622b85efef0654000ece7ea10c1be6 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-me-2538-story.html | Comparing Hitler and Hussein | Comparing Hitler and Hussein
How refreshing to see the commentary by Enzensberger. He stated what I have been thinking since last August; that is, Saddam Hussein is nothing more and nothing less than the second coming of Adolf Hitler. We and the coalition forces should be devoting our time to ferreting out this psychopathic monster before he commits suicide in his bunker. He could then be placed in solitary confinement for the rest of his natural life, a very fitting punishment for one who survives only by being surrounded by people whom he feeds off of.
D.L. SMALL
Orange
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bdaa1f48aea36a78aa2d6d3da2af7769 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-me-2539-story.html | Comparing Hitler and Hussein | Comparing Hitler and Hussein
In response to Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s column “Like Hitler, His Enemy Is the World” (Commentary, Feb. 14):
I found myself asking the question “and how about us Americans?” If Saddam Hussein’s basic guideline is self-preservation, how about us Americans? Is not preserving the American way of life a significant reason for what we are doing in the Gulf War? If his enemy is the world, and his desire is to die last, how about us Americans? Is not our plan to destroy his army as much as possible through technological weaponry, without real knowledge of the loss of civilian life involved, our main priority being the saving of American lives?
If the fanatical hatred evident in Germans of Hitler’s time is showing itself among Hussein’s people and other Arab peoples, how about us Americans? Isn’t it possible that the current euphoria of American patriotism can blind us to our own anti-Arab attitudes at this time? If Hussein is capitalizing on his people’s sense of humiliation, how about us Americans? Haven’t we been determined to resolve this military crisis through military force because we cannot accept the humiliation of patiently waiting for a solution through nonviolent means?
I raise these questions to keep us from losing all objectivity about ourselves and falling any further into the same obsessions and craziness that Enzensberger sees in his comparison of Hitler and Hussein.
FATHER JOHN WOOLWAY
St. John’s Seminary College
Camarillo
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7293614e6011f8f8d6bf9596e1f84524 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-me-2541-story.html | Twain Manuscript | Twain Manuscript
I write in praise of the anonymous librarian who shunned possible great wealth and the illumination of fame. What she had in her possession was the greatest literary treasure of the 20th Century, certainly of the American 20th Century. It was the manuscript of the first half of Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” more than 600 pages in Twain’s own hand. After affirming the authenticity of the document, she decided to send it to the Buffalo Public Library where it seems it was promised in the 1880s by her grandfather (Part B, Feb. 15). The manuscript of the second half of this work is there also. When a medal is given for integrity and veracity, she deserves the brightest.
ETHEL L. BLUMBERG
Los Angeles
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2e6f27dde0eb160d2f9d1d6e163d6574 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-me-2542-story.html | Burma Is on the Wrong Road : Leader arrested for the startling offense of winning an election | Burma Is on the Wrong Road : Leader arrested for the startling offense of winning an election
Aung San Suu Kyi. She is a symbol of both the hope and despair of Myanmar, the Asian country formerly known as Burma. Nine months after a stunning election victory, Suu Kyi, leader of the victorious National League for Democracy, remains under house arrest. The country’s iron-fisted military refuses to relinquish power and figures that by keeping her out of sight, she will slip into oblivion. The world cannot let Suu Kyi be forgotten.
Her sad story illustrates the unrelenting repression of the Burmese people and the denial of their human rights. The military is contemplating putting her on trial as the world takes note of her plight: The European Community recently awarded her the Sakharov Prize. Czechoslovakia’s President Vaclav Havel has nominated her for a Nobel Peace Prize. Norway has awarded her its Rafto Human Rights Prize.
Myanmar, meanwhile, has become an increasingly dismal and hopeless place. Not only has the State Law and Order Restoration Council refused to yield to those elected last May, but it also has jailed more than 50 of them. Others have fled. Even the country’s revered Buddhist monks have not escaped the military crackdown. Meanwhile, Myanmar’s so-called “beautification” program to clean up cities was conducted less for aesthetics than to make it hard for anti-government protesters to assemble.
Still the spirit of democracy endures. Other elected officials who managed to escape recently formed a rival government, the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, with Sein Win, Suu Kyi’s cousin, as prime minister. They are backed by the Democratic Alliance of Burma, an organization of 21 groups fighting the military.
The U.N. Human Rights Commission received a confidential report this week in Geneva on human rights conditions in Myanmar. The international community should insist the report, which reportedly is highly critical, be made public. It would provide the basis for world sanctions against the military regime.
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cdd067ece98327369de7585a6fb9ae56 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-me-2544-story.html | Ethics Director’s Pay | Ethics Director’s Pay
An editorial (“The Ethics Commission Is a Special Case,” Feb. 11) raised the issue of the salary for the Los Angeles Ethics Commission’s executive director, and advised the City Council to “leave the matter alone.” I’d like to set the record straight.
Your editorial stated that the council “cut” the $89,700 salary offered by the commission. In fact, the City Council never cut the salary. When the Ethics Commission was created, the council set the salary for its executive director at $76,254, and further directed that any higher starting salary would have to be recommended by the commission and approved by the council.
Before the name of the nominee for the post was known to me or any of my colleagues, I informed the general manager of the City Personnel Department that the council in general, and I in particular, were highly unlikely to support the higher salary. The reasons for this were simple.
First, the Ethics Commission can and will find an outstanding candidate for the job of its director at a salary of $76,254 a year. Where I come from that is still a lot of money. Moreover, given the city’s unique and generous compensation package, this salary will climb to nearly $85,000 in just six short months. This job is already a well-paying job.
Second, we are trying to set a tone in city government for reduced expectations and spending when it comes to salaries and benefits. The city, like most cities around the country, is facing a massive financial crisis.
Eighty percent of the city’s budget can be attributed to salaries. How can we expect our 35,000 employees to tighten their belts and lower their expectations when we are not willing to demand the same “sacrifice” of this one employee?
The commission should find a qualified person for the job at the $76,254 salary, knowing full well that the salary will immediately begin to climb, making it one of the best-paying jobs in city government.
ZEV YAROSLAVSKY
Chairman, Budget and Finance Committee
Los Angeles City Council
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2643741374914ecd0a2b375f5535f367 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-me-2545-story.html | College Student’s View on Gulf War | College Student’s View on Gulf War
Young Joshua Zimmerman, a journalism student in the Princeton class of 1991, presents himself to us as, essentially, an Ivy League chicken hawk (“Make War in the Gulf--But I Just Want to Watch,” Campus Correspondence, Opinion, Feb. 17). From the comfort and safety of an elite campus he cheers on this Gulf War, but leaves it to be fought for him by less privileged young American “mercenaries.”
Perhaps his essay is Swiftian satire. Perhaps he wants to expose the not very pretty socioeconomic aspects of our volunteer military and this war. If so, he’s done a clever enough job.
If the essay represents Zimmerman’s real-life views, however--and it does seem to do so--then it is terribly sad. And shocking. Oh, not that he thinks that way. Many do. We know that. What is shocking is that Zimmerman is so shamelessly open, so public and unabashed about his class-based snobbery. I’ve never before seen in print so icy an unconcern about the fate of so many young men and women--Zimmerman’s fellow Americans. Thousands of young people--on both sides--may be killed in a bloody war that some of us continue to see as tragically misguided. We cannot share Zimmerman’s sophisticated and heartless detachment.
CHARLES STINSON
Hollywood
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115774365465ef371090e88c1bd5e09f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-me-2546-story.html | Comparing Hitler and Hussein | Comparing Hitler and Hussein
Enzensberger’s essay contains an insight that all should note well, especially in light of the flap over Iraqi civilian casualties: Like the Germans in 1933, the Iraqis today have the government they want. No one should doubt that 17 million Iraqis (or any determined portion thereof) could get rid of one megalomaniac if they wanted to.
And, just as for the Germans in 1945, so for the Iraqis today: The bill is coming due.
“Innocent” Iraqi civilians have sustained Hussein in power for years, permitting him to butcher his opponents or chase them into exile. Well, then, let the “innocent” Iraqi civilians now learn what the Germans and Japanese learned about military aggression in 1945. And let us teach them that lesson quickly and unambiguously, and then get ourselves clear of this folly before it teaches us some unpleasant lessons as well.
ROLF P. COLT
El Cajon
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2e62c4085c5187b4a1686e7bb630279b | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-me-2606-story.html | Shelter for Addicted Mentally Ill to Close Next Month | Shelter for Addicted Mentally Ill to Close Next Month
Friend to Friend, the only transitional housing program in San Diego devoted solely to mentally ill homeless adults with drug and alcohol dependencies, will close next month due to lack of funding, a director said Wednesday.
The 14-bed residence for men and women, started on a shoestring budget a year ago, is about $20,000 in the red and has relied on its sponsor, Episcopal Community Services, to stay alive the past couple of months, said Ann King, director of transition programs for ECS.
Most of Friend to Friend’s residents are referrals from San Diego County crisis centers that are able to accommodate them for only a few days. Friend to Friend has provided each of its residents with a bed and a roommate in one of seven rooms rented at the Palm Hotel on 12th Avenue, as well as referrals to narcotic and alcohol rehabilitation programs and vocational counseling, King said.
The residents otherwise depended largely on themselves--planning outings, attending group meetings and making sure each “friend” had food and support through the “bad days,” she said.
Residents were allowed to stay for up to six months. Four people in the program graduated last fall to live on their own, obtain new jobs or enroll in school. Ten more are scheduled to graduate before the shelter closes March 15.
“They don’t graduate to become rocket scientists,” King said. “But if they get to the point that they feel pretty good about themselves, they get off drugs and maybe find a job, they’re doing a damn good job.”
The impending closure puts an additional strain on services in downtown San Diego, where 1,250 beds are available each night for about 3,600 homeless, said Frank Landerville, project director for the Regional Task Force on the Homeless. About a third of the 3,600 homeless downtown suffer from some form of mental illness, he said, most of it related to the homelessness itself.
“The real value of that program’s service to the community is that they were taking people who were dually diagnosed, absolutely the last population that people want to take in or are equipped to deal with,” he said.
A number of county mental health and crisis center workers echoed Landerville’s remarks.
“We’re going to be at a loss, a severe loss, for a place to refer our patients,” said Barry Levin, a coordinating counselor at Isis Center, a short-term in-patient psychiatric facility downtown. “I can’t think of one program that was so necessary, of all the programs that have started up in the past few years, and now it’s being axed. It’s a real shame.”
“There’s not enough residences or shelter programs for homeless persons or homeless mentally ill persons in this county,” said Henry Tarke, a manager for the county’s Mental Health Services, which provided some of Friends’ start-up money but was unable to give permanent funding. (The program’s staff and service costs are about $17,000 a month.) Tarke called the closing “distressing.”
In the meantime, the program is scurrying to find places for its 14 residents so they won’t have to continue their recoveries on the streets, King said.
Bob, 33, has been in the program since December, two months after he suffered a relapse from a mental breakdown and lost 60 pounds over two months from using crystal methamphetamine. Describing himself as “manic depressive with psychotic episodes,” Bob said he was refused by 10 or 12 residences before getting into Friends.
“When you’re on medication, they don’t want anything to do with you,” he said.
Bob said he doesn’t know where he’ll go from here, but intends to spend the next couple of weeks on the phone asking other shelter programs to accept him.
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c17b50a461231035f5db0fb9c8243c11 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-me-2704-story.html | Boundary Plan Criticized at 2nd Hearing : Schools: Parents from the Saticoy and Cabrillo Village areas oppose the Ventura district’s proposal to shift some students to new campuses. | Boundary Plan Criticized at 2nd Hearing : Schools: Parents from the Saticoy and Cabrillo Village areas oppose the Ventura district’s proposal to shift some students to new campuses.
In a public hearing Wednesday on a controversial plan to redraw Ventura’s school boundaries, several of the more than 200 parents, echoing comments from an earlier hearing and from school board meetings, asked the district to throw out the plan.
Other parents who addressed a panel of administrators said the proposal, which would change the boundaries for most of the 23-school district, was unfair to some students because they would be bused to schools beyond those closest to their homes.
Parents from the Saticoy and Cabrillo Village areas also came out strongly against the plan. Alicia Solis read a statement from parents in those neighborhoods, saying, “Our communities do not and will not accept this. . . . It would only accomplish segregation in east Ventura.”
Under the plan, a bilingual program would be moved to Saticoy Elementary School, increasing minority enrollment from 32.9% to 53.7%.
She said the plan would deprive students in those heavily Latino areas of exposure to other cultures and that it would promote gangs and violate individual rights, since parents weren’t consulted during the drafting of the plan.
The meeting at Anacapa Middle School, conducted in both English and Spanish, was the second of four scheduled hearings on a proposal to change school boundaries in the 15,000-student district. About 150 parents attended the first hearing last week.
Using large maps showing the district’s present boundaries and the proposed ones, administrators outlined the plan to parents in the audience.
Under the plan, 3,440 students would be assigned to schools other than those that they would attend under present boundaries.
District officials have said the plan would allow more children to attend the same schools together through the 12th grade, would reduce busing and would cut transportation costs. Officials said that in implementing the plan, they would maintain the racial balance in the district’s 23 schools.
A district report estimated that the plan would save 420 busing miles a day for the district’s elementary and middle school students. But after parents questioned the figure, officials acknowledged that the mileage savings would depend on a new middle school being built to replace the aging Cabrillo Middle School.
Officials have said the plan would not take effect before the 1992-93 school year at the earliest, and that if redrafts are needed, it could be as long as five years before the plan is implemented.
The district owns land for a new school but has no money for construction. A bond issue is being studied as a way to raise money for new schools.
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70a0bac64e9514cf93f1fd7033658fe6 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-me-2710-story.html | Palmdale Closes City’s Only Adult Bookstore, but It Reopens After Threat of a Lawsuit | Palmdale Closes City’s Only Adult Bookstore, but It Reopens After Threat of a Lawsuit
A fight over the sale of sexually explicit material in Palmdale escalated Wednesday as the city tried to close the area’s first and only hard-core adult book and video store.
City officials ordered Sunshine Gifts and Things closed Wednesday morning, in keeping with a 5-0 vote by the City Council Tuesday night not to grant operating permits that the store was required to obtain under an ordinance that took effect in October.
But five hours later, after the store’s attorney threatened to sue the city, the store was allowed to reopen, at least until a scheduled court hearing in April.
“This is just the first round in the boxing match,” said Gene McConnell, founder of Concerned Citizens of Antelope Valley, a new anti-pornography group. “We took a major blow to them the other night. And we’re not letting up in the future.”
The council vote came at a meeting attended by about 600 people, many of them connected with the anti-pornography group.
Store opponents charged that it promotes crime and its collection of magazines and rental videos is obscene and harmful to customers. A few people spoke in favor of the store, however, saying it has a First Amendment right of freedom of expression to sell sexually explicit material.
The city’s decision to close the store stemmed indirectly from a charge by an attorney for McConnell’s group that two officials of the company that operates the bookstore had criminal records.
Although not providing any proof to the city, attorney Fred Cassity of Pasadena said that the president of N.L. Management Co., a Denver company that runs a chain of adult bookstores in Southern California, was convicted of kidnaping and rape in Indiana about 10 years ago. Cassity also said the official, Ken Greentree, was arrested on obscenity charges in Dallas in 1987 and 1988.
Cassity told the council that company officer Edward J. Wedelstedt was convicted of interstate transportation of stolen pornographic material in Iowa about 10 years ago and also was convicted of federal income tax evasion and served time in prison.
The Times could not verify the accuracy of those allegations Wednesday. An attorney representing N.L. Management Co., David M. Brown of Beverly Hills, declined to comment on the statements. Brown said they are legally irrelevant to whether the company is entitled to obtain city permits.
City Atty. Bill Rudell disagreed, saying such convictions could be considered by the city.
Brown said the city still had no legal basis for denying the store’s permits.
“My client fulfilled all the conditions of the city’s business-license ordinance,” Brown said. “City staff recommended approval of the permits. And the council then denied them without any basis.” He accused the council of caving in to public opposition by refusing to grant the permits, which were for operating an adult bookstore and an adult picture arcade.
Located in a rundown commercial strip along Sierra Highway just north of City Hall, Sunshine Gifts operated for years under a prior owner as an adult novelties store, drawing little notice. Protests began after a new company took over last year and began carrying more hard-core material.
The company brought a lawsuit against Palmdale in federal court in November, after the city halted plans by the company to install video viewing booths in the store. Now, Brown said, the company will file an amended complaint challenging the city’s latest action.
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b13d6ecdb615cbf8a17ed978e50286c3 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-me-2714-story.html | SIMI VALLEY : Firm Wins Contract to Build Connector | SIMI VALLEY : Firm Wins Contract to Build Connector
A Simi Valley construction firm has been awarded the contract to build the long-awaited connector for the Simi Valley and Moorpark freeways, and work is expected to begin in early April, officials said Wednesday.
C. A. Rasmussen Inc.'s bid of $33,097,902 was the lowest submitted by eight contractors, said Bill Charbonneau, director of construction and maintenance projects in Ventura County for the California Department of Transportation. Rasmussen, which will be the project manager, will do the work with Sacramento-based C. C. Myers Inc., a bridge-building company.
Rasmussen spokeswoman Connie Ferrey said construction will begin within the next five weeks. The project is expected to take two years.
The four-lane connector, which has been in the planning stages for more than six years, will close a 2.2-mile gap where the Simi Valley and Moorpark freeways end in Moorpark. Ferrey said Rasmussen does not expect traffic to be interrupted during construction.
Rasmussen’s bid, which was $10 million lower than transportation officials had estimated for the project, was approved Monday after a 30-day review by Caltrans officials, Charbonneau said. Because Rasmussen is a local firm, it was able to substantially reduce the cost of the project, he said.
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ff0d347feaabb85136fc4e59b3fe9b42 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-me-2718-story.html | Santa Clarita Law Raises Specter of Rationing Despite Ample Water | Santa Clarita Law Raises Specter of Rationing Despite Ample Water
While most of Los Angeles County prepares to enter the war against The Drought, Santa Clarita will join the battle as a volunteer instead of a conscript.
While most communities face mandatory rationing programs, Santa Clarita residents are being asked to voluntarily conserve water as officials tap additional local wells to make up for drastic cuts in state deliveries.
“We’re better off than most of the rest of the state because we have not just one, but two aquifers in the area,” said Dan Masnada, vice president of Valencia Water Co., one of four local purveyors.
The suburban valley is relatively impervious to recent state cutbacks in water deliveries because it relied on local wells to supply about half the 44,000 acre-feet it used last year, Masnada said.
Santa Clarita residents aren’t entirely off the hook.
City officials warn that mandatory rationing might become necessary if residents fail to voluntarily reduce their usage by 25%.
But some people could not resist gloating Wednesday over the area’s relative good fortune.
“I don’t have any friends down in L.A., but if I did I might take pity on them and let them take a shower at my house if they started getting too rank,” said Jack Boyer, a longtime resident who served on the city’s incorporation committee about three years ago.
“I wouldn’t have moved to Los Angeles anyway, but now I’m doubly glad we didn’t,” said Claire Dickinson, who moved to Santa Clarita from Seattle just last month.
The ordinance passed Tuesday by the City Council is intended to reduce water usage by one-fourth by prohibiting practices such as hosing off sidewalks and driveways, and by limiting landscape watering to every other day, some of the same steps Los Angeles took in past years. The ordinance also frees residents from having to comply with landscaping requirements imposed by developers or homeowner associations.
But council members did not set reduction goals for each household and business. Instead, they expressed confidence that residents would conserve water voluntarily and rejected a proposed ban on new pools.
“We should leave it up to the people. If you’d rather water flowers than take a bath, it should be up to you,” Councilwoman Jan Heidt said.
However, to promote compliance, the city will hire a code enforcement officer for about $40,000 per year to enforce the regulations. First-time violators will be warned. A second violation will result in a $50 fine, a third in a $100 fine and subsequent infractions in $300 fines.
The city is trying to get the local water companies to pay for the enforcement officer, but “we’re saying, ‘no way,’ ” said Masnada of the Valencia Water Co.
“Our losses will already be well past $1 million” if people reduce their water usage by 25%, Masnada said.
A drought committee composed of a member of the public, city officials and water company representatives will monitor the effect of the ordinance and recommend rationing if it becomes necessary. The committee will meet twice a month.
Mayor Pro Tem Jill Klajic cast the sole vote against the ordinance, arguing that the city should not give grading permits to developers as long as the five-year, statewide drought continues. The ordinance approved by the council allows developers to do grading only with water unsuitable for drinking.
“I cannot ask my neighbors to restrict the number of times they shower and flush their toilets when we continue to build new showers and toilets,” Klajic said.
Because the ordinance was an emergency measure, a public hearing is scheduled March 13.
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0aaf2661af7853538aa4f6c06085ea41 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-me-2726-story.html | Missing Police Sergeant Suspended From Duty | Missing Police Sergeant Suspended From Duty
A Los Angeles police officer, who was the subject of an intense search in December when he disappeared for five days, has been suspended from duty as punishment, his commanding officer said Wednesday.
Sgt. Christopher Vasquez, 41, told supervisors after he safely returned home that he had hitchhiked to Northern California to think over personal problems. A 20-year veteran assigned to North Hollywood, Vasquez returned to work after his Dec. 10 disappearance, which has been under review by the department. He was recently suspended without pay for an undisclosed number of days, Capt. Bruce Mitchell said.
Mitchell acknowledged that the suspension was related to Vasquez’s disappearance but declined to discuss it in further detail. He added, however, that “people are expected to come to work and, when they don’t, they are usually disciplined.”
“He’s an outstanding employee in every other way,” Mitchell said.
Vasquez also declined to discuss the suspension, which was approved by Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, except to say, “I’m in agreement with what the chief wants to do and I’ll abide by his decisions.”
A force of more than 250 people, many of them off-duty police officers, combed 45 square miles of Ventura County in a futile search for Vasquez, who failed to report for his 3:30 p.m. shift as an assistant watch commander despite a reputation for being consistent and reliable. Officers sent to his Moorpark townhouse found his two cars, a wallet and police identification but no sign of Vasquez, who had recently separated from his wife.
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5a895f81eac26a1febc4658e261920ae | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-me-2733-story.html | The Rev. Jesse S. Perry; Retired Minister | The Rev. Jesse S. Perry; Retired Minister
The Rev. Jesse S. Perry, who established a Pentecostal church in Newhall, has died at his residence in Holmen, Wis. He was 84.
Perry died Sunday of cancer, said his son, Luther (Luke) Perry.
Born in Columbus, Ohio, Perry came to California in 1953. He worked as a tool and die maker for Stainless Steel Products in Burbank while serving as an assistant pastor at the United Pentecostal Church of Van Nuys and the United Pentecostal Church of San Fernando. Perry, who built and established the United Pentecostal Church of Newhall in 1963, served as its minister until his retirement in 1985, at which time he moved to Wisconsin. While in Newhall, Perry was active with the Los Angeles County Senior Nutrition Program.
He is survived by his wife of five years, Loretta Perry; sons Paul Perry of Sylmar, Samuel Perry of Newhall, David Perry of Canoga Park, Jesse Perry of Madison Heights, Mich., John Perry of River Falls, Wis., and Luther (Luke) Perry of Las Vegas; daughters Martha Mitchell of Canoga Park, Doris Rogers of Granada Hills, Esther Eastman of Onalaska, Wis., Mary Hayes of Madison, Wis., and Rebecca Godwin of Onalaska, Wis.; sister Alberta Pyles of San Antonio, Tex.; three stepsons; five stepdaughters; 50 grandchildren; 14 step-grandchildren; 56 great-grandchildren, and 19 step-great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his first wife, Doris Perry, who died in 1983, and a son, Daniel Perry, who died in 1987.
Visitation is planned from noon to 4 p.m. Sunday at Eternal Valley Mortuary, 23287 N. Sierra Highway, Newhall, which is handling the arrangements.
A funeral is scheduled at noon Monday at the Village Church, formerly the United Pentecostal Church of Newhall, 24802 Alderbrook Drive, Newhall. Burial will follow at Eternal Valley Memorial Park.
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45b43299f9c6d375479923df9292e64f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-me-2734-story.html | Hotel, Golf Project Should Be OKd | Hotel, Golf Project Should Be OKd
Judging from the recent spate of letters to various local newspapers, there appears to be an organized opposition developing in regard to the proposed hotel/golf course at the former Marineland site. These letter writers obviously want no new development at the site and have predicted that the proposed development will be a money-losing white elephant that will detract from the beauty of the current site. Such hogwash!
This entire situation reminds me of a similar proposed development at the Santa Barbara beachfront in the early 1980s. A 360-room hotel and conference center was proposed for a large and dilapidated area near Santa Barbara’s beautiful beachfront. Even though the area for the proposed hotel was quite dilapidated and unpleasant to view, much like the current Marineland site is, there still persisted a small vocal group of people that objected to any change or development. The hotel development issue was finally put before the voters for their approval. The voters overwhelmingly approved to allow development to proceed. Today, some 10 years later, the Fess Parker/Red Lion Inn stands as a wonderful addition to Santa Barbara’s unique beachfront.
The opportunity that now exists for a similar wonderful addition to the Rancho Palos Verdes environment should not be stifled by a vocal minority. Any questions about the financial viability of the proposed development are best left to the developer. He has the financial stake in this matter. The combination of tax revenues to the city, along with a beautiful addition to our community, is too much to pass up.
D. W. MOORE
Rolling Hills Estates
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2e7f27c3eda465b62a174a7958fc6a42 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-me-2735-story.html | Redondo Official Replies to Critics | Redondo Official Replies to Critics
On Tuesday night (Feb. 12), at what I considered an improper special meeting, I was falsely accused of “actively campaigning” for a personal friend. Contrary to what was said, it is important for me to set the record straight.
First and foremost, I have not been nor shall I “actively campaign” for any candidate; though I may do so if I choose under the Constitution of the United States of America. And, last time I checked, Redondo Beach is, still, part of America.
I told my friend when I was asked to publicly endorse him that I could not; because of my professional position as elections officer. Further, most endorsements aren’t worth a hill of beans anyway.
I have been in politics for over 20 years and learned early on that elections are won through hard work, courage, and believing in yourself. It takes a lot of guts to present yourself at the door of a voter in hopes of gaining their support.
While campaigning for my own election, I have been chased by dogs, attacked by someone’s pet parrot, even had a woman’s child urinate on my new cowboy boots. To help soothe the embarrassment of the lady I stated, “Well, I guess I know how this child feels about politicians.”
Each day you must persevere regardless of your success or failures from the previous day. Your commitment and ability to discipline yourself must be carried to the very end.
Each of the candidates who are running for the council seat in District 5 have received the same advice I gave my friend: “If you want to win go out there,” where there are doors to be knocked, dogs waiting to chase you and another woman’s child who hates politicians. Good luck.
JOHN OLIVER
City clerk, Redondo Beach
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5b276060a7705c4a9bbb8c475c69f200 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-me-2737-story.html | Ella M. Skleba; Hospital Volunteer | Ella M. Skleba; Hospital Volunteer
Ella M. Skleba, who volunteered 33,000 hours over 20 years at Glendale Memorial Hospital and Health Center, has died in a Glendale senior citizens complex. She was 85.
Mrs. Skleba died Sunday of cancer, said her son, Bill MacNider.
Born Ella M. Halfen in Chicago, she came to California in 1952 and settled in Glendale. She joined the Guild of Glendale Memorial Hospital and Health Center after her husband, Dr. Leonard Skleba, a Glendale general practitioner, died in 1967. She volunteered for a number of positions, including working on the information desk and overseeing candy stripers. She retired in 1989, having volunteered more than any other person at the hospital, said Jackie Aasen, former guild president. Mrs. Skleba had been a member of the Order of the Eastern Star and the Grandmothers Club, both in Glendale, and was an honorary life member of the hospital’s guild.
She is survived by MacNider of Dubuque, Iowa; five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
A funeral is scheduled for today at 10 a.m. at Kiefer & Eyerick Mortuary, 314 E. Harvard St. in Glendale, which is handling the arrangements. Burial will be in Chicago. Donations can be made in Mrs. Skleba’s name to Glendale Memorial Hospital and Health Center or to Windsor Manor Convalescent Lodge, 1230 E. Windsor Road, Glendale 91205.
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268ccc659153e2550ebd9db29fa8c712 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-me-2790-story.html | Guard for Studio Said He Set Fire, Court Told : Arson: An investigator testifies Michael Huston admitted starting last November’s Universal blaze with a cigarette lighter. | Guard for Studio Said He Set Fire, Court Told : Arson: An investigator testifies Michael Huston admitted starting last November’s Universal blaze with a cigarette lighter.
Hours after the $25-million Universal Studios fire erupted last November, a private security guard admitted to authorities that he started the blaze with his cigarette lighter, an arson investigator told a Los Angeles judge Wednesday.
The security guard, Michael J. Huston, was questioned for several hours before telling authorities he started the Nov. 6 fire in a paint shed on the studio lot, Los Angeles County fire investigator David Westfield said. Fed by high winds, the fire damaged or destroyed about 20% of the exterior sets at the sprawling movie complex.
“He said, ‘I can’t lie any more,’ ” Westfield testified. “He had a cigarette package and a lighter. He picked up his lighter and said, ‘This is what I used.’ ”
Westfield’s testimony came during the second day of a preliminary hearing to determine whether there is enough evidence to try Huston on charges that he set the fire, which destroyed movie sets used in films such as “Dick Tracy” and “The Sting.”
Westfield said Huston repeated his admission to investigators from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and MCA, owners of Universal Studios.
Huston allegedly told authorities during the 3 a.m. confession that he had a split personality and “it was the other person inside himself” who started the fire, Westfield recalled.
Huston, 40, of Tujunga, was employed by Burns International Security Services and had been assigned to keep watch over an area of the studio that included a street of brownstone facades used to simulate New York and other cities. A new Sylvester Stallone movie, “Oscar,” had concluded filming in the area hours before the fire.
Westfield said Huston first told him he accidentally started the fire in a paint storage shed after chasing a raccoon there and then tossing a lighted cigarette into a trash can. But when confronted with inconsistencies in his account, Westfield testified, Huston admitted he intentionally started the blaze.
Huston said he tried several minutes later to extinguish the fire but that it had grown too big, Westfield testified.
Huston’s attorney, Charles R. English, conceded that the arson investigator’s testimony was damaging to his client but said there is no such confession in a two-hour interview tape-recorded by authorities.
“I’m obviously suspicious about investigators waiting until 3 a.m. for an interview,” English said.
Authorities have speculated that Huston may have set the fire to earn praise for quickly reporting it to his superiors.
Richard Shaw, a dispatcher for the private security company that employed Huston, testified Wednesday that Huston telephoned him to report the fire about 7:15 p.m.
“He said it was a small one and before he hung up he said, ‘It’s getting larger,’ ” Shaw testified.
If convicted, Huston faces a maximum sentence of eight years in prison on the arson charge.
The preliminary hearing before Los Angeles Municipal Judge Jon M. Mayeda is scheduled to continue March 11.
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25c4b3190dcac1c4ef0707255e12ccf4 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-me-2799-story.html | Student Shot on Campus; Gang Links Suspected | Student Shot on Campus; Gang Links Suspected
A 16-year-old student was shot Wednesday morning on the Centennial High School campus in Compton in what school and city police are calling a gang-related incident.
Michael Wynn was listed in stable condition at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center after being shot in the abdomen with a small-caliber handgun, according to Compton Police Cmdr. R.E. Allen. He said Wynn was shot about 10:30 a.m. at close range in the school yard by a 14- or 15-year-old rival gang member.
However, sources in the school police force said that the gunman fired at Wynn from the door of the band classroom at the school, which is on the city’s northeast side. Sources in both police departments said they have identified a suspect and that he is being sought. Both police forces also reported that the two youths had argued earlier in the morning.
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265a5c1e9e80ef5ff49cfc178a225416 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-me-2932-story.html | SEND IN THE MARINES: Camp Pendleton’s 1st... | SEND IN THE MARINES: Camp Pendleton’s 1st...
SEND IN THE MARINES: Camp Pendleton’s 1st Marine Division and its leader, Brig. Gen. James M. Myatt (above), were singled out for special praise Wednesday. . . . Desert Storm commander Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf said the Marines did a “brilliant, absolutely superb job.” The 20,000 Leathernecks stormed into Kuwait from Saudi Arabia by helicopter, tanks and armored vehicles Saturday, crossing minefields and ditches in their nonstop drive to Kuwait city. In a battle at Kuwait International Airport, the Marines bested an Iraqi force with more than 100 tanks. . . . Schwarzkopf called the assault a classic operation that will be closely examined by military students.
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c33c1834abd7302b7bbc3bd940d3f3ec | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-me-2936-story.html | First Wave of 3 Storm Fronts Causes Flooding, Snarls Traffic | First Wave of 3 Storm Fronts Causes Flooding, Snarls Traffic
The first of three storm fronts blowing across the Pacific struck Orange County on Wednesday, causing severe flooding and scores of traffic accidents, including one fatal collision.
The rain left many county streets and freeways virtual parking lots and forced hundreds of commuters to sit in their cars for hours.
“This isn’t necessarily the drought-buster we all needed, but it’s a step in the right direction,” said Daniel Bowman, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., which provides weather forecasts for The Times.
Up to 2 inches of rain fell in some parts of the county Wednesday. By 9 p.m., Yorba Linda recorded 2.01 inches, Anaheim 2.05 inches and San Juan Capistrano 1.81 inches.
But year-to-date rainfall totals remain low. Santa Ana reported 2 inches Wednesday, but that brings its total since July 1 to just 3.21 inches. Last season at this time, it was 6.91 inches. Normally, the city’s the rainfall to date is 9.23 inches.
The California Highway Patrol had a “unbelieveably busy” day, responding to more than 150 county traffic accidents, said Linda Burrus, a CHP spokeswoman.
About 5 p.m., a major traffic collision involving several vehicles occurred on Coast Highway near Emerald Point in Laguna Beach and caused critical injuries to at least one person, who was flown by helicopter to Western Medical Center-Santa Ana. All southbound lanes of the highway were closed for several hours.
A short time later, the CHP reported another traffic accident in which at least one person was killed. The accident occurred on Irvine Boulevard near P Street in El Toro. Details on that accident and the victim were not available.
In another incident, two tow trucks got stuck in the mud trying to free on overturned truck on the San Diego Freeway near the Costa Mesa Freeway, Burrus said. The CHP had to summon a third, larger tow truck to pull the first two free.
“Then, one of our patrol cars got stuck out there too. That’s the kind of a day it’s been,” she said.
The rain caused concern among county public works officials, who ordered the opening of the storm operations center at noon, said Richard Schooley, a public works supervisor.
Flooding closed the slow lane on northbound Interstate 5 near Laguna Canyon Road, the CHP said.
Authorities also reported flooding on all lanes of the northbound San Diego Freeway north of Jamboree Road about 7 p.m. and posted signs to warn motorists of the situation, but officials did not close the freeway.
Sporadic power outages occurred throughout the county. More than 6,000 residents San Juan Capistrano, South Laguna and Laguna Niguel were left without power for several hours, said representatives of San Diego Gas & Electric, which supplies those areas with electricity.
Residents should gear up today for moderate to heavy rain. Up to 2 inches of rainfall are expected in the coastal areas and 2 to 4 inches in the mountains through Friday, Bowman said.
Snow levels will remain above the 8,000-foot level. Bowman said daytime temperatures will remain in the low- to mid-60s.
Bowman said that by early today, the first and largest of the three storms is expected to have passed over Orange County. Heavy rain is likely, with an occasional thunderstorm through mid-morning, he said.
“The thunderstorms will be winding down on Thursday. But by Thursday night, another storm is expected to bring another round of rain or showers. In fact, with the third storm hanging out there, our chances for decent moisture are good for both Saturday and Sunday,” Bowman said.
A small-craft advisory from Point Conception to the Mexican border was issued for southerly winds at 10 to 20 knots today.
The forecast for more rainfall meant both good and bad news for growers in the county, said Nancy Jimenez, Orange County Farm Bureau executive director.
“Strawberries need to be picked on a pretty timely basis. When they peak, they need to be picked. Period. But the rain will delay that for some farms, although we need the moisture,” Jimenez said.
“It’s a temporary setback for us strawberry growers because in the short term we have to delay harvesting. But you’ve got to look at the overall picture because it will help the industry in the long run,” a spokesman at Murai Farms of Irvine said.
Growers also expressed concern that warm weather and intermittent showers with a high humidity could cause the strawberries to get moldy on the vine.
Temperatures are expected to remain slightly warmer than usual, because the storms are arriving on the jet stream’s southern branch, which skirts a warmer area north of Hawaii to the California coast.
Because of the five-year drought, many of the county’s growers have begun water conservation efforts that have included recycling water, using drip systems, and using reclaimed water.
Additionally, Orange County avocado and citrus growers complained of “leach burn” on the tips of tree leaves that turn brown because of the lack of heavy rains that are needed to wash out destructive salts from the soil.
“We haven’t had any good leaching rains in the last number of years in the county, and it has allowed the salts to build up and that’s detrimental,” said Carl Lindgren, general manager of Treasure Farms of Irvine.
Lindgren and other tree growers hoped that this week’s rain will bring at least 2 inches of rain, which “will go a long way toward helping” the problem.
At UC Irvine, the rain did prompt organizers of the popular Engineering Week’s Nerd Contest to move its activities indoors.
STORM’S RAINFALL FIGURES*
Anaheim: 2.05"
Yorba Linda: 2.01"
Santa Ana: 2.00"
Cypress: 1.97"
San Juan Capistrano: 1.81"
Fullerton: 1.77"
Huntington Beach: 1.73"
Silverado Fire Station: 1.65"
* As of 9 p.m. Wednesday
Source: WeatherData Inc.
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7d678941ecf46a63977245c86df56ed7 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-me-2941-story.html | CLIPBOARD : O. C. Hospital Births--January | CLIPBOARD : O. C. Hospital Births--January
Hospital Births St. Joseph 400 UCI 379 Fountain Valley Regional 373 AMI Medical of Garden Grove 292 Martin Luther 268 Hoag 262 Santa Ana Medical Center 259 Kaiser Permanente 239 Saddleback Memorial Medical Center 215 Mission Regional Medical Center 193 FHP 185 St. Jude-Fullerton 174 Friendly Hills Regional Med. Center 153 Western Medical Center-Santa Ana 135 Coastal Communities 134 Humana-West Anaheim 134 Los Alamitos Medical Center 87 Placentia-Linda 75 La Palma Intercommunity 73 South Coast Medical Center 60 Samaritan Medical Center 60 Anaheim General 52 Chapman General 43 Humana-Huntington Beach 30 Irvine Medical Center 21 Humana-Westminster 17 TOTAL 4,313
Source: Individual hospitals
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116b53947302095e6fb4cedf12dc1cb8 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-me-2942-story.html | STANTON : Arson Suspected in Market Blaze | STANTON : Arson Suspected in Market Blaze
Sheriff’s deputies on Wednesday investigated a possible arson fire at a market where the owner had complained to authorities that he was being harassed repeatedly by gang members.
No one was injured during the blaze, which caused about $150,000 in damage to the market and an adjacent video store on the 7700 block of Katella Avenue.
“It appeared that the rear door (of the market) had been pried open just enough to stuff paper towels soaked in an undisclosed substance into the building,” Sheriff’s Lt. Richard J. Olson said. The paper towels apparently were lit and used to start the fire, he said.
Olson said that the fire was under investigation and that no arrests had been made.
Richard Thompson, owner of 4 U Market, said he didn’t know who may have started the blaze, but he speculated that the incident may have been gang-related.
Olson said Thompson and his wife apparently had been the target of abuse from members of a local gang known as Big Stanton.
“The local youths have verbally threatened them in the past by calling them ‘white trash,’ ” Olson said. “They have also made threats against the store.”
On Friday, a member of the gang, Baltazar Flores Medina, 19, of Stanton, was arrested on suspicion of a civil rights violation and street terrorism for allegedly calling Thompson “white trash” and saying that he did not belong in the neighborhood, Olson said.
The market also has been vandalized several times over the years, Thompson said. He said windows have been broken, the back door has been pried open and the roof damaged.
The 43-year-old owner added that he also has a problem with shoplifting and customers trying to shortchange him.
Recently, a customer grabbed a quart of milk, opened it and started drinking from the container before paying for it, Thompson said. “When he got to the counter, he didn’t have enough money. He knew how much it cost, and when he asked if he could have it anyway, I said, ‘No.’ ”
The customer threw the quart of milk at Thompson’s head and walked out of the market, he said.
Thompson said most of the trouble is cause by “a bunch of little jerks” in the neighborhood who “think they’re more powerful then the sheriff’s deputies.”
Despite the harassment, Thompson said he will not be driven out of the predominantly Latino neighborhood. The law, he said, will eventually catch up with his tormentors.
“I’m not going to leave,” he said. “I’m just waiting to see them all rounded up.”
In the meantime, he added, it helps to have the market “fully insured.”
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16dd1148508d1e2a7ad51ede9661962c | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-me-2945-story.html | SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO : Historic Home in Artistic Hands Now | SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO : Historic Home in Artistic Hands Now
If the ghost of Judge Richard Egan still roams the halls of his 19th-Century downtown home, he undoubtedly has a smile on his face.
For even Egan, dubbed the “king of Capistrano” by Madame Helena Modjeska around the turn of the century, could not have foreseen his Harmony Hall--as the old home on Camino Capistrano is called--commanding the $725,000 purchase price recently paid by local gallery owner Sue DiMaio.
DiMaio, who will relocate her Galeria Capistrano to the Egan home, said she also plans to spend “about another $200,000" fixing up the 3,000-square-foot, solid-brick home, which was built about 1885.
The total cost of nearly $1 million could have purchased large tracts of land and many homes back in 1868, when Egan arrived. But while he didn’t have $1 million, Egan was by no means a poor man.
As told in Pamela Gibson’s book, “Dos Cientos Anos en San Juan Capistrano” (Two Hundred Years in San Juan Capistrano), Egan was an Irish immigrant lured to San Francisco during the Gold Rush years and eventually migrated south with a fortune (a route also taken by another Irish immigrant, James Irvine).
Egan arrived in San Juan Capistrano and first purchased 160 acres of farmland near the confluence of Oso and Trabuco creeks. Later he bought 600 more acres east of Mission San Juan Capistrano, before building his Harmony Hall and moving downtown.
Egan was said to be a surveyor, although no one seems to know for sure, just as no one seems to really know if he was really a judge.
“How Egan got to be a surveyor no one knows,” said Tony Forster, whose great-grandfather, Marcos Forster, was once Egan’s next-door neighbor. “But he was always a surveyor with two types of chains, including ones made of rubber for his friends.”
If not officially a judge, he certainly was a local arbiter, Forster said.
“He might have been a justice of the peace--I’m not sure. He was sort of a self-taught guy in many respects. Perhaps he was just a little better educated than anyone else,” Forster said.
Egan was hired in 1883 to build Marcos Forster’s Casa Grande, a two-story brick residence that sat behind Harmony Hall in what is now Birtcher Plaza, Forster said.
“The story is that Egan and Marcos were friends and Egan was placed in charge of construction of Casa Grande,” Forster said. “When he ordered the bricks, there just happened to be enough left over for another two-story home. Those leftover bricks wound up building Harmony Hall.”
The home eventually became a showplace of Gay Nineties San Juan Capistrano, according to Gibson’s book. Harmony Hall was the site of lavish dinner parties, piano recitals and town meetings for the ranchers and socialites who enjoyed those days of prosperity in the 1890s.
Egan, a lifelong bachelor, a school trustee for 32 years and Los Angeles County supervisor from 1885 to 1889 (before Orange County existed) was part of a grand group who entertained in their mansions.
Egan’s home had recently been abandoned after being sold to two attorneys who had planned to make it an office, but never completed the renovation.
DiMaio, who has been in business in the area for about 40 years, says she hopes to make the home available for community events and performances.
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e996e5a3085c564393bf7fbee3bcbeba | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-me-2947-story.html | PLACENTIA : Deep Cuts Outlined by School Officials | PLACENTIA : Deep Cuts Outlined by School Officials
Placentia Unified School District officials outlined a preliminary proposal to eliminate all school counselors and nurses, as well as some physical education and music programs in elementary schools, in an effort to trim $9.2 million from the district’s budget.
The proposals also include cuts in special ninth-grade language arts programs and first-grade part-time reading teachers, layoffs of all school psychologists, streamlining of bus routes and increasing class sizes.
“We are really concerned,” school trustees were told by Loretta Benson, one of 40 parents at Tuesday night’s board meeting. “Our children love the music programs. . . . (The cuts) are really scary. They make my knees shake.”
The trimming proposals came in response to reports that the district could face a $9.4-million deficit. District officials said they could lose $2.8 million in state revenue if Gov. Pete Wilson’s proposed budget is adopted in full and if lottery revenues continue to decline. The district is also faced with $6.6 million in new expenditures for employee raises, property tax hikes and new county fees for collecting taxes and assessments for sewers.
“We have to prepare for the worst-case scenario,” said Timothy VanEck, assistant superintendent for personnel services. “This is going to hurt bad. It’s one of the most painful things I have been through.”
In all, 158 positions would be eliminated under the district’s plan. State law requires that certificated staff members, including teachers, nurses and some principals, be given notice of possible layoffs by March 15. The school board is expected to vote Tuesday on whether to issue the notices.
VanEck stressed that many employees could be hired back later this year if the state budget picture changes.
“This is preliminary information only,” district Supt. James Fleming told the board. “But we have to take some action now to keep the district from going bankrupt.”
The most devastating impact on the district would come from a suspension of Proposition 98, which calls for public schools and community colleges to receive at least 40% of state general fund revenues.
The district’s proposed cuts are heavy in management and staff positions because 83% of its budget goes toward personnel, VanEck said. School officials are attempting to leave core academic programs intact, he said.
The proposals include combining classes and eliminating courses with low enrollment, which could save the district $1.6 million, VanEck said. The cuts would also include six high school athletic department positions, 16 assistant principal positions and several English-as-a-second-language teaching positions.
School trustees were dismayed at the prospect of eliminating programs and employees.
“This is horrendous, this is awful,” said trustee Barbara Williams, who added that she can remember “the agony the district went through in establishing these programs.”
Steve Parmenter, a sixth-grader at Yorba Linda Middle School, presented a petition with 228 signatures urging the board not to cut choir programs.
“Music is not a luxury, but a necessity for our education,” the boy told the school board. Officials said the choir programs were not threatened by the cuts.
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242e623aa3034180e3a982dc7d3cd98a | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-me-2951-story.html | The Mosleys: Parents of a Fighting Man | The Mosleys: Parents of a Fighting Man
Chuck and Marie Mosley dreamed of leaving a legacy to their youngest son. They didn’t expect it to be war.
Today, they wear buttons with a picture of their son, a Marine on the front lines in the Gulf.
Chuck Mosley Sr., a Marine veteran, fought in Vietnam. Since then, he has gone to college, created a company and worked to build a business for his son to take over some day.
At the height of the war this month, Mosley, 42, said: “My fear is my son may not be here to carry on my legacy. We, as black people, do not leave legacies. That’s really been my whole essence in grooming and raising him, to leave him something to grab onto and expand upon.”
After he left the Marine Corps 17 years ago, Mosley got a bachelor’s degree in business management. In 1986, he and a partner formed the Costa Mesa company Balloons by Design, which creates custom displays for corporate and commercial clients.
Mosley said he had often talked with his son, the youngest of four children, about running the company.
Instead, at age 19, the young man followed his father’s footsteps into the Marines, using a delayed entry program even before he graduated from Saddleback College.
The path was well worn. At the same age, Chuck and Marie Mosley’s daughter Annette had joined the Army, abruptly dropping out of Rancho Santiago College.
Today, Annette McIntyre, the mother of two, is in a reserve unit in Germany, on stand-by for duty in the Gulf.
But it is Chuck Jr. whom the Mosleys worry about most, because he has been in the battlefront.
“Before he went, we had a long talk about, ‘Why him?’ ” Mosley senior said he told his son that the Lord may be preparing him for some other hardship in life with the combat experience.
On a recent lunch-hour trip to her Santa Ana home to check the mail, Marie Mosley, 46, a supervisor at Comast Cable, found a note in which her son talked about being “scared and excited all at the same time.”
“Scared, just thinking about what could happen to me. Excited, because of the experience I’m about to go through and because I get to go to the crib (home) after this mess.”
The Mosleys said they are happy that their children chose to join the armed forces because the skills and benefits they receive will help them the rest of their lives.
And their son’s letters have been a particular source of pride.
“Chuckie is my hero,” Mosley senior said. “My son is my hero.”
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b44df0c3d1354ac04cc4cbe3f593736c | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-me-3012-story.html | County’s Hispanic Population Up 86% | County’s Hispanic Population Up 86%
Reflecting statewide trends, San Diego’s population became more racially and ethnically diverse in the 1980s, with the county’s white majority shrinking while Hispanics and Asians recorded sizable increases, U.S. Census data shows.
Hispanics now account for 20% of the county’s nearly 2.5 million population, while the number of Asians more than doubled during the past decade to surpass blacks as the region’s second largest minority group.
Despite the large percentage gains recorded by various racial or ethnic minorities, nearly three-quarters of San Diego County’s population--74.9%--remains white, the census figures show. San Diego’s Anglo population--non-Hispanic whites--makes up 65.4% of the countywide total, while Hispanics’ 86% increase, to 510,781, during the 1980s raised them to 20.4%. Asians and blacks, meanwhile, represent 7.4% (185,144) and 6% (149,898) of the county’s population, respectively.
Overall, the county grew 34% during the 1980s from 1,861,846 to 2,498,016. More than a third of that growth was attributable to the city of San Diego, which increased 27% from 875,167 in 1980 to 1,110,549 last year, according to the census data.
Of the 18 incorporated cities in the county, only two--Del Mar and Solana Beach--shrank during the 1980s. Del Mar, which has established some of the toughest growth restrictions in the county, dropped 3% from 5,017 to 4,860, while Solana Beach--which, like a number of other cities, contests the Census Bureau’s 1990 figures--declined 1% from 13,047 to 12,962.
Elsewhere in the county, three cities--Chula Vista, Escondido and Oceanside--surpassed the 100,000 population threshold in the 1980s. Of the three, Escondido recorded the largest percentage increase--69%--as it grew from 64,355 to 108,635, while the populations of both Chula Vista and Oceanside increased by about 50,000 each, to 135,163 and 128,398, respectively.
Countywide, Anglos are outnumbered by other racial and ethnic groups in only two cities, National City and Chula Vista.
In National City, the number of Hispanics increased by nearly half during the 1980s, rising to 50% of the South Bay city’s overall total of 54,249. In contrast, Anglos make up only 26% of the city’s population, followed by Asians (16%) and blacks (8%).
While the 67,302 Anglos living in Chula Vista represent that city’s largest single racial or ethnic group, they represent slightly less than a majority--49.8%--of its overall population. Hispanics constitute 37% of Chula Vista’s population, while Asians account for 8% and blacks, 4%.
With its 86% growth in the local Hispanic population, San Diego County was one of a handful of counties statewide where the rate of increase exceeded California’s 69% average. San Diego’s 121% increase in Asian population, meanwhile, was only slightly less than the statewide average of 127%.
Both Hispanic and Asian leaders attributed most of their respective communities’ growth in the 1980s to the presence of large pockets of Hispanics and Asians throughout San Diego County when the decade began, which in turn acted as magnet for new immigrants.
“With so many other (Asians) here, it feels a bit like home,” said Theresa Do, a Vietnamese immigrant who is vice-chairman of San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor’s Asian Advisory Board.
The growth in San Diego’s Hispanic community played a pivotal role in last year’s San Diego City Council redistricting process, resulting in the creation of the city’s first Hispanic-majority district.
While citing that as one of the positive steps taken by local officials to accommodate the changing needs posed by the region’s growing ethnic population, longtime Hispanic leader Jess Haro argues that local government remains “more reactive than creative” in that regard.
“I don’t think there’s as much responsiveness as there is awareness,” said Haro, a former San Diego City Councilman and board member of the San Diego County Chicano Federation. “I don’t see them initiating very much or offering greater services. But I think you’ll start to see those changes in the next 5 to 10 years as some of these people who have moved here establish deeper roots and begin to expect more of government.”
San Diego County Cities -- 1990 Census
CARLSBAD
1980-'90 % of Total Percent 1990 Population Change Total TOTAL 63,126 +78 -- Anglo 51,555 +75 82 Hispanic 8,700 +82 14 Asian 1,916 +147 3 Black 702 +230 1 Indian 205 +97 0.3 Other 48 -72 0.1
Dwelling Units: 27,235
CHULA VISTA
1980-'90 % of Total Percent 1990 Population Change Total TOTAL 135,163 +61 -- Anglo 67,302 +18 50 Hispanic 50,376 +157 37 Asian 10,885 +138 8 Black 5,721 +254 4 Indian 622 +59 0.5 Other 257 -53 0.2
Dwelling Units: 49,849
CORONADO
1980-'90 % of Total Percent 1990 Population Change Total TOTAL 26,540 +57 -- Anglo 21,589 +42 81 Hispanic 2,191 +180 8 Asian 849 +99 3 Black 1,766 +477 7 Indian 127 +122 0.5 Other 18 -85 0.1
Dwelling Units: 9,145
DEL MAR
1980-'90 % of Total Percent 1990 Population Change Total TOTAL 4,860 -3 -- Anglo 4,514 -4 93 Hispanic 177 -6 4 Asian 124 +50 3 Black 33 +83 1 Indian 12 -41 0.2 Other 0 -100 0
Dwelling Units: 2,514
EL CAJON
1980-'90 % of Total Percent 1990 Population Change Total TOTAL 88,693 +20 -- Anglo 70,793 +8 80 Hispanic 12,387 +111 14 Asian 2,267 +129 3 Black 2,449 +238 3 Indian 682 +44 0.8 Other 115 -73 0.1
Dwelling Units: 34,453
ENCINITAS
1980-'90 % of Total Percent 1990 Population Change Total TOTAL 55,386 +46 -- Anglo 44,881 +39 81 Hispanic 8,446 +92 15 Asian 1,566 +98 3 Black 281 +130 1 Indian 164 +21 0.3 Other 48 -71 0.1
Dwelling Units: 22,123
ESCONDIDO
1980-'90 % of Total Percent 1990 Population Change Total TOTAL 108,635 +69 -- Anglo 77,507 +47 71 Asian 3,775 +247 3 Hispanic 25,380 +171 23 Black 1,254 +377 1 Indian 601 +27 0.6 Other 118 -63 0.1
Dwelling Units: 42,040
IMPERIAL BEACH
1980-'90 % of Total Percent 1990 Population Change Total TOTAL 26,512 +17 -- Anglo 15,528 +1 59 Hispanic 7,502 +55 28 Asian 1,982 +38 7 Black 1,185 +86 4 Indian 260 +38 1 Other 55 -78 0.2
Dwelling Units: 9,525
LA MESA
1980-'90 % of Total Percent 1990 Population Change Total TOTAL 52,931 +5 -- Anglo 44,419 -1 84 Hispanic 5,176 +63 10 Asian 1,539 +105 3 Black 1,528 +73 3 Indian 221 +4 0.4 Other 48 -86 0.1
Dwelling Units: 24,154
LEMON GROVE
1980-'90 % of Total Percent 1990 Population Change Total TOTAL 23,984 +15 -- Anglo 15,888 -1 66 Hispanic 4,764 +64 20 Asian 1,245 +115 5 Black 1,835 +91 8 Indian 184 +51 0.8 Other 68 -51 0.3
Dwelling Units: 8,638 NATIONAL CITY
1980-'90 % of Total Percent 1990 Population Change Total TOTAL 54,249 +11 -- Anglo 14,080 -28 26 Asian 8,608 +59 16 Hispanic 26,914 +44 50 Black 4,265 +1 8 Indian 258 -1 0.5 Other 124 -83 0.2
Dwelling Units: 15,243
OCEANSIDE
1980-'90 % of Total Percent 1990 Population Change Total TOTAL 128,398 +67 -- Anglo 81,813 +56 64 Hispanic 28,982 +105 23 Asian 7,188 +111 6 Black 9,520 +70 7 Indian 670 +35 0.5 Other 225 -57 0.2
Dwelling Units: 51,109
POWAY
1980-'90 % of Total Percent 1990 Population Change Total TOTAL 43,516 +35 -- Anglo 37,046 +28 85 Asian 2,604 +188 6 Hispanic 3,023 +79 7 Black 599 +48 1 Indian 199 +5 0.5 Other 45 -74 0.1
Dwelling Units: 14,386
SAN DIEGO
1980-'90 % of Total Percent 1990 Population Change Total TOTAL 1,110,549 +27 -- Anglo 651,735 +8 59 Hispanic 229,519 +76 21 Asian 123,413 +129 11 Black 98,852 +30 9 Indian 5,052 +34 0.5 Other 1,978 -82 0.2
Dwelling Units: 431,722
SAN MARCOS
1980-'90 % of Total Percent 1990 Population Change Total TOTAL 38,974 +123 -- Anglo 26,469 +80 68 Hispanic 10,702 +379 7 Asian 1,058 +298 3 Black 497 +554 1 Indian 196 +127 0.5 Other 52 -46 0.1
Dwelling Units: 14,476
SANTEE
1980-'90 % of Total Percent 1990 Population Change Total TOTAL 52,902 +12 -- Anglo 44,849 +7 85 Hispanic 5,685 +65 11 Asian 1,448 +126 3 Black 557 +60 1 Indian 320 +11 0.6 Other 43 -84 0.1
Dwelling Units: 18,275
SOLANA BEACH
1980-'90 % of Total Percent 1990 Population Change Total TOTAL 12,962 -1 -- Anglo 10,585 -5 82 Hispanic 1,907 +23 15 Asian 377 +47 3 Black 45 +45 0.3 Indian 32 +14 0.2 Other 16 -67 0.1
Dwelling Units: 6,346
VISTA
1980-'90 % of Total Percent 1990 Population Change Total TOTAL 71,872 +101 -- Anglo 48,014 +73 67 Hispanic 17,804 +189 25 Asian 2,617 +155 4 Black 2,961 +642 4 Indian 352 +86 0.5 Other 124 -40 0.2
Dwelling Units: 27,418
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bc4b9e3e26b2226a98446c3e615cfcef | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2639-story.html | Five More Youths Slain in Medellin | Five More Youths Slain in Medellin
Unidentified assailants dragged five youths from their homes and shot them to death Wednesday in western Medellin, police said.
It was the latest in a string of massacres often attributed to gangs backed by the city’s powerful cocaine cartel. The slayings occurred hours after gunmen killed nine teen-agers who were playing soccer Tuesday at a Medellin recreation center.
Two teen-age boys were killed Monday when gunmen burst into their high school classroom in Medellin. Assailants opened fire Sunday from a moving car on vendors at an outdoor market, killing five people and wounding six others.
Police said they have arrested 183 suspects in connection with the shootings, but in most cases the actual gunmen escaped.
So far this year, 10 attacks in Medellin have resulted in the deaths of 80 people.
The most deadly attack occurred 10 days ago when drug-backed terrorists were blamed for detonating a 450-pound bomb outside a Medellin stadium as thousands of spectators were leaving the season’s last bullfight.
The blast killed 24 people, including 10 police officers, and injured about 170, police said.
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89c1195a413b0c72517be800ceea404d | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2640-story.html | World IN BRIEF : BANGLADESH : Zia Party Leading Parliament Election | World IN BRIEF : BANGLADESH : Zia Party Leading Parliament Election
The party headed by Khaleda Zia, widow of assassinated President Ziaur Rahman, and the party of Sheik Hasina, daughter of another slain president, held early leads in Bangladesh’s first parliamentary elections that represent Bangladesh’s first democratic transfer of authority in 20 years of independence. Unofficial returns for 84 of the 300 seats showed Zia’s Bangladesh National Party capturing 41 seats and Hasina’s Awami League winning 22.
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5536c9aa6b8d47cf69663d25959373d1 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2641-story.html | World IN BRIEF : SOVIET UNION : Officers Accuse 8 of Vilnius Coup Plot | World IN BRIEF : SOVIET UNION : Officers Accuse 8 of Vilnius Coup Plot
An investigation by pro-reform military officers accused eight Communist Party leaders of plotting a coup attempt in Lithuania, and said President Mikhail S. Gorbachev must have known about the plan. The officers concluded that Soviet troops were responsible for the deaths of 15 people during an attack last month on the television station in Lithuania’s capital of Vilnius. Their report was published in the liberal weekly Moscow News.
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d235643cda32e61e55cb44aef1ae83b6 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2642-story.html | World IN BRIEF : PERU : Cholera Resurgence Found in Port City | World IN BRIEF : PERU : Cholera Resurgence Found in Port City
Doctors reported a strong resurgence of cholera in the northern port city of Chimbote, five weeks after the first outbreaks of the disease were reported there. Reporters who visited Chimbote said doctors began seeing an increase in the number of cholera patients over the weekend, and that all hospital beds were filled. The health ministers of seven South American nations--Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, Chile and Brazil--gathered in Lima to discuss ways of ending the epidemic.
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0c8776ece14ca277ec4a7b6a7481fabe | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2643-story.html | World IN BRIEF : ETHIOPIA : Rebels Claim to Hold Two More Towns | World IN BRIEF : ETHIOPIA : Rebels Claim to Hold Two More Towns
Rebels claimed to have seized two more towns in a 5-day-old offensive that has pitched the country into what the government says is a “dangerous and critical situation.” However, Western diplomats in Addis Ababa said at least two of three major highways stretching north from the capital appeared to be open, contrary to earlier reports. Traffic seemed to be moving on the country’s main north-south artery, which is vital to famine relief in the province of Tigre, the diplomats said.
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1097c915557d395c7790839701b6fbcc | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2644-story.html | World IN BRIEF : INDIA : New Delhi Extends Rule Over Kashmir | World IN BRIEF : INDIA : New Delhi Extends Rule Over Kashmir
India vowed to crush separatism in the mostly Muslim state of Kashmir, and Parliament voted to extend New Delhi’s direct rule over the state until September. At least 2,000 people have been killed in Kashmir since the central government took direct control a year ago to try to crush factions seeking independence or annexation by Pakistan. Police in Srinagar, Kashmir, reported that the daughter of Saifuddin Soz was kidnaped by militants, apparently while Soz was calling for the end of the government’s rule of Kashmir.
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6526b0b43520fe89e1ccefa314f2c77d | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2645-story.html | FIRSTS IN THE GULF | FIRSTS IN THE GULF
Here are some of the firsts in the Persian Gulf conflict:
* Largest helicopter assault in military history: The Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne Division, with 300 attack helicopters, blasted deep into Iraq in the first days of the ground war.
* 100,000-sortie mark passed in a matter of weeks: About four times the missions flown against Japan in last 14 months of World War II.
* Record number of tanks destroyed in one day: Two U.S. pilots who fly as a team reported destroying 23 Iraqi tanks Feb. 26.
* First woman reported killed in the war: Army Spec. 4 Christine Mayes, 22, of Rochester Mills, Pa., was among 28 Americans who died in an Iraqi Scud missile attack Feb. 25 on their Saudi barracks.
* First double kill by a coalition flier: In a Jan. 24 skirmish, a Saudi pilot shot down two Iraqi jets carrying Exocet missiles.
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b60ab98cdb1e1a158066820998111170 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2646-story.html | U.S. ‘Phantom Brigade’ Spearheads Drive : Offensive: 3rd Infantry unit met little opposition but mass surrenders slowed its assault. | U.S. ‘Phantom Brigade’ Spearheads Drive : Offensive: 3rd Infantry unit met little opposition but mass surrenders slowed its assault.
This 1st Armored Division is part of the massive American armored force that roared nearly 100 miles into Iraq, virtually unopposed, across miles of empty desert in an overland assault slowed only by need to round up the Iraqi troops who surrendered in its path.
The division closed in on this crossroads town on Monday after a 26-hour charge across Iraq that saw its tanks and armored vehicles stretched out in a flying wedge battle-formation across miles of enemy territory.
To each side was another Army division, with cavalry units to the north, on a rumbling charge that created a dust storm of its own as the armor headed northward.
But the attack slowed significantly as this lead brigade--known as the ‘phantom brigade'--confronted enemy positions that provided almost no opposition but offered up mass surrenders by Iraqis who took much of the afternoon to be rounded up.
“You’ve been victimized by success,” the division commander, Maj. Gen. Ronald H. Griffith, assured his subordinates by radio. But the slowdown wasfrustrating to American commanders whose prisoner collection resources were quickly overwhelmed.
There were reports elsewhere in the division of resistance that led to skirmishes against Iraqi forces. But this lead brigade faced no enemy fire in continuing a northward charge that began Sunday afternoon and did not find a need to lock-and-load its weapons until more than 50 miles inside Iraq.
In its only engagement until the artillery bombardment Monday night, the brigade opened fire with artillery, mortar and tanks at an Iraqi training camp believed to shelter a small resistance force.
But the facility had been deserted, as its defenders fled into the desert and then turned themselves over to U.S. troops. By nightfall, the brigade had taken nearly 400 prisoners, about half believed to have come from the compound.
The brigade had launched into Iraq at 4:30 p.m. Sunday, roaring through pre-exploded holes in an Iraqi border berm in a wide-flank armored attack in which commanders were so confident of encountering no immediate opposition that all headed into battle with hatches open to the sky.
The unit, attached here from the 3rd Infantry Division, served as the advance guard for the 1st Armored Division in the centerpiece of the VII Corps attack.
The massive Army overland assault, from a position well to the west of Kuwait, was launched about 12 hours after the U.S. ground offensive began, in what was to be the main American strike force in a bid to penetrate deep within Iraq.
“The soldiers know this is the way home,” said Maj. Roy Adams, the brigade operations officer, as thousands of tanks, armored personnel carriers and other vehicles began to head north in a battle formation that stretched across the horizon. “And it’s the right thing to do.”
Soldiers wore chemical protective suits and had taken pills designed to ward off the effects of nerve gas. But with intelligence reports showing no enemy forces immediately in front of the Army forces, the probe across the eight-foot tall, double-walled border berm was launched with little apprehension.
Instead, commanders have long focused their attention on what they would encounter after reaching this northern city, not far from the positions where Republican Guard divisions has established set defenses.
The initial attack came on a gusty, gritty day that turned the desert dusky with blowing sand; most helicopters were grounded, and tanks rumbled in vast formations across the desert with no forward guard.
But Griffith, the division commander, hovered at the border to watch as the division’s hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles crossed into Iraq.
A gunner held up a sign that said “Welcome to Iraq,” and the brigade commander, Col. James Riley, came on radio to remind his men--attached to this division--that they were about to qualify for the combat duty patch that soldiers wear on their right side.
“When we cross that line,” he said, “shift that Marne (3rd Infantry) patch from the left side of your helmet to the right, because that’s where it will belong.”
The division met no enemy resistance in its first hours of battle, and suffered its only casualties in a minor auto accident and the explosion of a dud artillery shell that left three soldiers wounded.
Indeed, despite concerns about enemy minefields, the principal threat to the U.S. advance in those first hours of the attack came from unexploded ordnance, believed to have been left over from an earlier U.S. bombardment.
Some units had to pick their way through areas where bombs and shells lay scattered on the ground; later, terrain that proved unexpectedly difficult to negotiate also slowed the Army advance.
The absence of opposition, at least in the initial forward surge, came as a relief to officers here whose units had begun to spot Iraqi drones flying over U.S. positions south of the border in surveillance missions some feared would cause Iraq to shore up its defenses.
Instead, as the division charged its first 30 miles into Iraq, its forward elements found terrain as barren as that of northern Saudi Arabia, with only rusty oil drums and the remains of observation posts to suggest that Iraq had ever maintained a military presence.
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818db0f904cbc036d46e584e39c492c7 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2648-story.html | Better Care of Allied POWs Urged : Troops: A new group has begun a letter-writing campaign asking Iraq to treat prisoners properly and to release them when the fighting ends. | Better Care of Allied POWs Urged : Troops: A new group has begun a letter-writing campaign asking Iraq to treat prisoners properly and to release them when the fighting ends.
Aided by the wife of a captured Camp Pendleton Marine, a newly formed organization Wednesday demanded better treatment by Iraq of allied prisoners of war and their immediate release when the fighting stops.
The POW/MIA Liberty Alliance for Operation Desert Storm announced it has begun an international letter-writing campaign urging Iraq to improve conditions for prisoners and to disclose the names of all coalition troops it holds, including those officially listed as missing in action.
“Our goal is to effect the immediate release of all coalition POWs upon the cessation of hostilities,” said alliance President Pat Antosh, whose husband took command of a Marine aircraft unit from Camp Pendleton after two of its officers were captured.
They are Lt. Col. Clifford Acree and Chief Warrant Officer Guy Hunter, whose OV-10 Bronco was shot down on a reconnaissance mission in southern Kuwait days after the war began. Acree had commanded the unit.
Cindy Acree, the colonel’s wife, has helped the alliance and issued a statement Wednesday saying: “I feel encouraged and optimistic by the news that the war is in its final stages and victory is near.
“I am also heartened by President Bush’s commitment to keep the POW/MIA issue at the forefront of peace negotiations.”
Iraq is holding 13 American military personnel as prisoners; another 28 are unaccounted for, according to the nonprofit alliance that is funded by private donations and works closely with families of POWs.
“Some of them are working with us behind the scenes,” Antosh said. “We have agreed to keep their names private.”
Acree and the alliance want to initiate an international letter-writing campaign aimed at the Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations seeking more humane care for prisoners.
So far, “several thousand” letters have been directed to the ambassador, but there has been no reply, Antosh said.
Retired Navy Capt. Bill Stark of Coronado, a six-year prisoner of war during the Vietnam conflict who is assisting the alliance, said the letter-writing effort will bring pressure on Iraq.
“World opinion is not a force to be ignored or flaunted,” he said.
Stark added that “the sickening sight of watching (allied POWs) beaten and coerced” by Iraq “hammered home for me the sad conclusion that once again, POWs are being brutalized and exploited for propaganda purposes.”
After their capture, Acree and Hunter were shown on Iraqi television Jan. 20, looking haggard and seemingly speaking under intimidation. Other pictured allied prisoners clearly appeared to have been beaten.
The alliance hopes that through its efforts prisoners will be permitted to receive correspondence from their families through an international organization recognized by the Iraqi government.
Antosh wants all servicemen to be accounted for when Operation Desert Storm is completed. The alliance wants the Red Cross or its Iraqi equivalent, the Red Crescent, to obtain a list of allies held captive to clear up any questions about missing individuals.
Iraqi officials have refused to let the Red Cross see prisoners, but Antosh hopes a massive letter-writing drive will “pressure Iraq to let them in.”
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d7878dcdbf060d93a6c195f7a788bcfa | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2649-story.html | TV AND THE GULF WAR : Victory Covered With a Sense of Celebration | TV AND THE GULF WAR : Victory Covered With a Sense of Celebration
Television’s coverage of the Gulf War on Wednesday already looked like a mop-up operation.
President Bush’s dramatic TV statement at 6 p.m. that “Iraq’s army is defeated” and that the allies were suspending offensive combat operations made it clear the nightmarish conflict could, indeed, be passing into history.
“This war turned 6 weeks old today. Few expect it to get much older,” Harry Smith, anchor of “CBS This Morning,” had said early Wednesday.
That was the TV picture, all right, as stories suddenly focused on such subjects as how to rebuild Iraq--and whether it should be allowed to have a sizable fighting force.
Almost nothing negative appeared on TV to dilute the celebratory atmosphere of the allied victory and the freeing of Kuwait city.
For a fleeting moment, CNN showed anti-American protesters in Amman, Jordan. But with polls indicating that 80% of Americans support the war, the conflict appeared to be winding down perfectly for TV, which always favors the majority.
KABC Channel 7, for instance, has promoted a clearly fearless report subtly titled “In Support of Our Troops.” And NBC titled one report “Bombs Over Baghdad,” which sounded like a World War II B movie.
If the U.S.-led coalition was using TV to humiliate Iraqi President Saddam Hussein worldwide in the possible last days of the war--to assure his demise--it was succeeding. At every political and military turn, he was belittled on TV.
The ultimate put-down came from Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of U.S. forces in the Gulf, in an hourlong briefing Wednesday carried by ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN.
A reporter lobbed one down the middle for Schwarzkopf, asking him to assess Hussein as a military leader, and the general knocked it out of the park.
“As far as Saddam Hussein being a great military strategist,” said Schwarzkopf, “he is neither a strategist, nor is he schooled in the operational art, nor is he a tactician, nor is he a general, nor is he a soldier. Other than that, he’s a great military man.”
The TV impact of the statement was such that it will probably be repeated in retrospectives for years, as Schwarzkopf delivered the line with impeccable, theatrical timing.
He was, in fact, in an obvious good mood, summing up the entire military conflict in a TV performance that told how victory was achieved.
“I’ll be very happy to take any questions,” he said at one point. In another sure TV sound bite that immediately was picked up after his session, he used football terminology--the “Hail Mary play"--to describe a maneuver.
He was even playful after one question: “You want me to speculate? I’ll be glad to speculate. Nobody can ever pin you down if you speculate.”
Schwarzkopf’s briefing was so colorful that ABC planned to rerun it in its entirety, with an introduction by Peter Jennings, after Wednesday’s “Nightline” broadcast.
But the allies put-down of Hussein on TV had heightened earlier with distrusting rejections of Iraqi offers to pull out of Kuwait.
Early Wednesday, Iraq’s latest attempt to come to terms caused another brief TV flurry, but White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater quickly shot it down, saying it “falls far short” of allied demands.
The way things were going on the TV screen--victory in Kuwait city, Iraqi soldiers surrendering in large numbers--the allies clearly wanted nothing less than a total political wipeout.
CBS correspondent Richard Threlkeld said in Kuwait that six Iraqis surrendered to a CBS News crew, “which is an indication of how desperate they are.”
“I gave them some military rations and water,” he said.
And in another apparent worldwide TV maneuver to separate Hussein from other Arabs, the allied military briefing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia--carried by CNN--was conducted by Col. Ahmed Al-Roboyan of the Joint Arab Forces.
There seemed to be far fewer censored TV reports Wednesday after the media breakout from pool reporting to cover the freeing of Kuwait city. And why would censors care that much anyway? Just about all the news was good for the allies.
Images will remain, however, of the bombed-out barracks in Saudi Arabia, where 28 Americans were killed and 100 wounded. And images will remain of the bombed-out bunker in Baghdad, where hundreds of Iraqis died.
But was it all finally ending? TV apparently thought so. On Wednesday, Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather were in Kuwait city to do their nightly newscasts, and Ted Koppel was set to present “Nightline” from Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, as the networks moved in for the kill.
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61a2c5d991aa354006008dda4570bb8d | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2650-story.html | Iran, Iraq to Trade POWs | Iran, Iraq to Trade POWs
Baghdad is sending home 76 Iranians captured in its 1980-88 war with Iran and Tehran will repatriate 76 Iraqi prisoners captured in the war, Mohammad Ali Nazaran, an Iranian official in charge of POW affairs, said Wednesday.
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41f7826d61af312cfa9f0943736b67ae | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2651-story.html | 3 Cars Burned at U.S. Base | 3 Cars Burned at U.S. Base
Vandals set ablaze three cars owned by personnel at the U.S. Air Force base at San Vito dei Normanni on Wednesday and police said they believed the arson was to protest the Persian Gulf War.
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55de4b85f8e72260f73cc91ac7f8f0ca | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2652-story.html | New York OKs Covenant House Reorganization | New York OKs Covenant House Reorganization
The state attorney general on Wednesday concluded an investigation of Covenant House by approving organizational changes that he said would restore public confidence in the troubled shelter for teen-agers.
Atty. Gen. Robert Abrams formally approved previously agreed on changes in auditing methods, hiring practices, the board of directors’ responsibilities and procedures for awarding contracts.
“By operating in a proper and prudent manner, under the terms of this agreement, Covenant House will go a long way toward restoring the public’s confidence in this refuge for troubled young people,” Abrams said in a statement.
The shelter serves more than 28,000 homeless teen-agers and runaways each year in 19 locations in the United States, Canada and Central America. Donations have dropped by $20 million--nearly 25%--in the last year.
Abrams announced also a separate agreement with Father Bruce Ritter, the shelter’s founder and former president who resigned last March amid allegations, which he denied, that he had sex with young men who sought help.
The agreement bars Ritter for life from serving as trustee of any charitable trust and requires him to pay interest on an interest-free loan he received from Covenant House in violation of state charity laws.
Abrams also barred Ritter from receiving severance pay.
Last year, Manhattan Dist. Atty. Robert M. Morgenthau dropped a criminal investigation into Ritter’s operation of Covenant House, saying there were questionable financial transactions but nothing sufficient to warrant charges.
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4dbdc297027b3f5af71bc9c8f14b3be4 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2653-story.html | California IN BRIEF : EUREKA : Offshore 4.2 Quake Causes No Damage | California IN BRIEF : EUREKA : Offshore 4.2 Quake Causes No Damage
A magnitude 4.2 earthquake occurred off the coast of Northern California, officials said. The temblor was centered about 75 miles southwest of Eureka and resulted in no damage or injuries on land, said Lu Page, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park. This is a very common occurrence, Page said. “It happens almost every week. It’s nothing extraordinary.”
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f100fa4008e44e649d59ccca21952fb1 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2655-story.html | California IN BRIEF : SACRAMENTO : Thrill Killer Breaks His Weekly Pattern | California IN BRIEF : SACRAMENTO : Thrill Killer Breaks His Weekly Pattern
A serial thrill killer who broke his weekly pattern by lying low is still out there and “certainly could kill again,” the county’s top homicide detective warned. Sheriff’s Lt. Ray Biondi said a night of heavy patrolling by a large force of detectives and deputies in the north Sacramento area resulted in several unrelated arrests, but the killer did not strike again. “I’m elated the pattern has been broken,” a weary Biondi told reporters. Detectives had feared a repeat of the execution-style slayings of six people during robberies the previous two Tuesday nights.
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33af3f874d3f235b9ac1a8ced50ede6f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2754-story.html | * Nathan Ehrlich; Longtime Leader of Cake Bakers Union | * Nathan Ehrlich; Longtime Leader of Cake Bakers Union
Nathan Ehrlich, 87, a union leader who baked cakes for presidents. Ehrlich led the Cake Bakers Union, Local 51, in New York, for more than 40 years. “The people in his union were the artisans of the cake industry,” his daughter, Sandra Banner, said. She said her father was born in Poland and emigrated to New York in 1923. “He worked in basements, in horrendous conditions--rats, no ventilation . . . they were practically slaves,” Mrs. Banner said. Her father organized the union to improve working conditions. Ehrlich baked cakes for the presidential inaugurations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson as well as cakes for Eleanor Roosevelt, Prince Philip, senators and foreign dignitaries including Israel’s Golda Meir. In Los Angeles on Friday.
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3867323a6fd32a8be9923a411cc5f478 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2778-story.html | California IN BRIEF : SAN FRANCISCO : 3 Insurers Accused of Unfair Practices | California IN BRIEF : SAN FRANCISCO : 3 Insurers Accused of Unfair Practices
State Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi filed charges of unfair practices against the California State Automobile Assn. and two other insurers. Garamendi charged the CSAA Inter-Insurance Bureau with unreasonable delays in payment of health insurance claims on 18 separate cases, each of which could be punishable by a $10,000 fine. A spokesman for CSAA said the company had not been informed of the specific cases named by Garamendi, but he said CSAA looks forward to a full airing of its efforts to counter what he called “an endemic, systemic problem” of insurance fraud by consumers. Garamendi also charged Provident Life & Accident Co., a Tennessee-based life insurer, with failure to pay interest on death claims, and Santa Ana pet insurer Veterinary Pet Insurance Co. with misleading advertising and delays in handling claims.
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232668bd99a2ef6f8112fc205dd0b522 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2829-story.html | Bush Halts Combat : ‘War Is Now Behind Us,’ He Says : Gulf conflict: The President lays out conditions for a permanent cease-fire. Iraq must immediately free all prisoners and comply with U.N. resolutions. | Bush Halts Combat : ‘War Is Now Behind Us,’ He Says : Gulf conflict: The President lays out conditions for a permanent cease-fire. Iraq must immediately free all prisoners and comply with U.N. resolutions.
President Bush announced a suspension of hostilities in the Persian Gulf War Wednesday night, declaring to the nation and the world: “Kuwait is liberated. Iraq’s army is defeated. Our military objectives are met.”
Speaking from the Oval Office just 97 hours after U.S. and allied forces stormed into Iraq and Kuwait, the President said the coalition would suspend all offensive combat operations at midnight EST, and laid out conditions that Iraq must satisfy to make the suspension permanent.
“We must now begin to look beyond victory in war,” Bush said. “This war is now behind us. Ahead of us is the difficult task of securing a potentially historic peace.”
Bush said the next steps are up to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. He said Iraq must:
* Return immediately all coalition prisoners of war it holds, any citizens from other countries, and the remains of U.S. and allied soldiers killed in the conflict.
* Release all Kuwaitis it has seized. According to some reports, the number is in the thousands.
* Inform Kuwaiti authorities about the location and characteristics of any mines its forces planted at sea or on land.
* Comply fully with each of the “relevant” resolutions passed by the U.N. Security Council in an effort to force the Iraqi occupiers out of Kuwait.
Among the resolutions, Bush said, were those demanding that Iraq rescind its annexation of Kuwait as its 19th province, and requiring it to pay compensation to Kuwait for the destruction it caused during the occupation.
Late Wednesday, Iraq’s U.N. ambassador received a letter from his nation’s foreign minister, Tarik Aziz, authorizing him to tell the Security Council that Iraq is prepared to accept all 12 resolutions the council adopted after Iraq invaded Kuwait last Aug. 2.
The letter was received before President Bush’s address and does not speak to the issue of prisoners held by Iraq, particularly the thousands of Kuwaiti citizens taken to Iraq by Saddam Hussein’s soldiers.
According to diplomatic sources, U.S. officials will take the position that Iraq has come a long way in complying with the demands of the Bush Administration, but that the new Aziz letter is still deficient and further clarifications are needed.
Bush’s declaration suspending hostilities--coming 209 days after Hussein sent his troops into Kuwait--brought the United States to the brink of an achievement it has not seen in nearly half a century: unquestioned victory in war.
But success was not without its price:
Altogether, 537,000 U.S. troops were assigned to the Gulf--the largest overseas deployment of American servicemen and women to a theater of combat since the Vietnam War. Of that total, as of late Wednesday, 79 were killed in action: 28 in the land battle, 23 in the air war and 28 when an Iraqi Scud missile struck a barracks outside of Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, Monday night. In addition, 44 were listed as missing or prisoners, and 213 were wounded.
There was no official word on Iraqi casualties, but the six weeks of bombing, and the final four days of ground combat, were believed to have taken a toll in the tens of thousands.
Bush called on the Iraqi government to designate military commanders to meet with their counterparts in the allied forces within 48 hours to complete the military arrangements for the cease-fire. The President said he had asked Secretary of State James A. Baker III to call for a meeting of the U.N. Security Council to work on the necessary cease-fire arrangements.
The cessation of hostilities, Bush said, is contingent upon Iraq’s halting all attacks on coalition forces and ending its Scud missile attacks on any nation in the Persian Gulf area.
“If Iraq violates these terms, coalition forces will be free to resume military operations,” the President declared.
Bush said he would dispatch Baker to the region next week to resume consultations with allied leaders.
Personal Satisfaction
For the President, Wednesday’s developments appeared to be a source of great personal satisfaction. He seemed to be barely suppressing a smile throughout the eight-minute speech, as he reminded the nation that seven months ago, “America and the world drew a line in the sand” and declared that “the aggression against Kuwait would not stand.
“Tonight, America and the world have kept their word,” he said.
For the coalition, the official goal of Operation Desert Shield, and its eventual offensive component, Operation Desert Storm, was Iraq’s ouster from Kuwait, the establishment of political stability in the Gulf, restoration of the government of Kuwait’s emir, Sheik Jabbar al Ahmed al Sabah, and the safety of foreigners in Kuwait.
But Bush had another, more personal goal: the destruction of Hussein’s military machine--a massive force built over more than a decade. With the reportedly successful completion of the war’s climactic tank battle Wednesday, that objective apparently has been achieved.
“Kuwait is once more in the hands of Kuwaitis, in control of their own destiny,” Bush said in his televised address. “We share in their joy, a joy tempered only by our compassion for their ordeal. Tonight, the Kuwaiti flag once again flies above the capital of a free and sovereign nation, and the American flag flies above our embassy.”
The Final Goal
Left unresolved is a final, unstated goal: the removal of Hussein--weakened, now, at least temporarily--from any position from which he can work his will on the volatile Middle East.
“It is not with the people of Iraq that the United States has any quarrel--"but instead with their leadership, and above all with Saddam Hussein,” Bush said.
“This remains the case,” he said.
“You, the people of Iraq, are not our enemy. We do not seek your destruction. We have treated your POWs with kindness,” he continued. “Coalition forces fought this war only as a last resort and look forward to the day when Iraq is led by people prepared to live in peace with their neighbors.”
Bush told the nation that “this is not a time of euphoria, certainly not a time to gloat” over the crushing allied victory.
“But it is a time of pride--pride in our troops, pride in our friends who stood with us during the crisis, pride in our nation and the people whose strength and resolve made victory quick, decisive and just,” he said.
“And soon we will open wide our arms to welcome back home to America our magnificent fighting forces.”
Earlier Wednesday, with its vaunted Republican Guard under heavy allied attack, the Iraqi government scrambled to save the remnants of its army, demanding an immediate U.N.-mandated cease-fire. In return, the Iraqi regime offered to rescind its annexation of Kuwait and accept the terms of at least three U.N. resolutions on Kuwait.
But the Bush Administration promptly rejected the offer as “far short of what’s necessary.”
A letter from Foreign Minister Aziz, broadcast by Baghdad Radio just after 6 p.m. Baghdad time, said the regime would comply with Security Council resolutions on Kuwaiti sovereignty and Iraqi payment of war reparations, and promised to release allied prisoners of war once a truce is in place.
But the message, delivered to U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar through Soviet diplomatic channels, also demanded that the Security Council lift the economic embargo on Iraq and the American-led air and sea blockade deployed to enforce the embargo in the weeks after Iraq’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait.
Before the embargo was ordered last August, more than 90% of Iraq’s income came from the export of oil. Exports were blocked by the shutdown of pipelines through Turkey and Saudi Arabia and the interdiction of tankers at sea.
The conditions were much like others advanced during Baghdad’s frantic series of diplomatic maneuvers since early August to avoid the outbreak of war and, since Sunday, to forestall defeat of Iraq’s forces in Kuwait and southern Iraq.
Baghdad Radio said the Iraqi leadership had made an open appeal to the Soviet Union to push the cease-fire plan through the U.N. Security Council in the face of likely vetoes by permanent members whose military forces provide the muscle of the attacking allies--the United States, Britain and France.
After meeting with Bush on Wednesday, British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd rebuffed the earlier Aziz letter, saying any such Iraqi statement must “clearly” come from President Hussein and must accept all 12 Security Council resolutions aimed at Baghdad.
In addition, Britain’s U.N. ambassador, David Hannay, said the Security Council president, Ambassador Isack Mudenge of Zimbabwe, would stress that Iraq should set a precise time period for the return of all prisoners of war, including all Kuwaitis taken captive.
“He will raise the very serious and worrying matter of the Kuwaiti civilians who we believe in rather large numbers are being held in Iraq,” Hannay said.
“There is the text of a letter that’s been published on Baghdad Radio along with an accompanying statement which indicates the Iraqis are still conditioning their acceptance of the resolutions on lifting the economic embargo,” said Thomas R. Pickering, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. “If that’s the case, it’s obviously not what we are looking for.”
Canada’s U.N. ambassador put it more succinctly.
“It’s not for him to say the sanctions will be canceled,” said Yves Fortier. “It is too little, too late again.”
“I wish they had a one-sentence letter,” said a top diplomat from Yemen.
At one point during a day when diplomats and U.N. translators strained to grasp the precise meaning of Iraq’s official note to the council’s president and to Perez de Cuellar, Iraq’s Ambassador Abdul Amir Anbari tried from a phone booth near the delegates’ lounge to gain instructions through his nation’s embassy in Jordan.
Talking to reporters later, he noted that the sanctions against his nation were imposed by the council because of Iraq’s refusal to withdraw its troops from Kuwait. “Now we are complying,” Anbari said.
Both Hurd and Baker made it clear that they would fight any effort to relax the embargo on shipping arms to Iraq.
“Our position is as long as that particular government continues in power, we’ll want to make certain, at least with respect to arms, that there are some sort of constraints on rearmament and the shipment of arms into that country--and particularly weapons of mass destruction,” Baker said.
An Administration official, speaking anonymously Wednesday, said the continuation of the sanctions, the seizure of Iraqi assets that have been frozen in other countries, and the continuation of controls on the flow of Iraqi oil exports through Turkey and Saudi Arabia are among the options available to pressure Iraq to comply with the U.N. resolutions.
Looking to Future
The White House, meanwhile, began looking beyond the final shots in the war toward the economic and military pressure that will remain at its disposal to shape Iraq’s future role in the region.
White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said Bush is focusing on such issues “more and more,” and that other allied foreign ministers--among them Roland Dumas of France and Hans-Dietrich Genscher of Germany--would be visiting Washington in coming days to discuss the future of the region.
And in Saudi Arabia, the new U.S. ambassador to Kuwait, Edward Gnehm, was given word to take up his post in Kuwait city.
State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said several dozen staffers will get the embassy “up and running,” restoring basic operations by providing “political, economic, consular, public affairs and administrative types of functions.”
Tutwiler said the Kuwaiti government already has awarded dozens of contracts--including one to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers--to rebuild the war-torn emirate.
She said the Corps of Engineers, which is authorized to perform construction work in friendly countries and long has been active in the Gulf region, has agreed to handle emergency repairs of Kuwait’s transportation system and public infrastructure. The corps plans to subcontract some of the work to international construction firms.
In addition, a special Army reserve unit has been sent to Kuwait to advise the government on the restoration of public services.
In London, British Prime Minister John Major said Wednesday that allied forces operating in Iraq do not plan to remain in that country after hostilities cease.
“We are not planning to occupy territory or dismember Iraq,” he said in remarks made outside his office-residence at No. 10 Downing St. “In due course, things will return to normal.”
Similarly, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said Wednesday in a speech to the American Legion that the coalition has “no intention of staying” in Iraq indefinitely--just “long enough to stabilize the situation” and make sure that Hussein, or his successors, do not “use the enormous wealth of Iraq to simply build a brand new military machine that once again threatens the peace and stability in the region.”
“Some sort of arrangement will have to be made for the security of Kuwait in the not-too-distant future,” Cheney said.
An aide to the British prime minister said that in the event of a peace agreement, “We’ll get our forces out as soon as possible.”
The official said it was not allied policy to target Saddam Hussein personally, and that eventually the West might still have to deal with him if he remains head of state.
“Distasteful as it is,” he said, “that is the reality.”
Israel Retaliation?
Asked whether Bush’s suspension of hostilities would preclude retaliatory Israeli attacks on Iraq, Uriel Savir, Israel’s consul general in New York, said: “The only yardstick upon which we will act is the security and safety of Israel.”
Iraq has fired 39 Scud missiles at Israel since the Persian Gulf War began, killing two people and wounding about 230.
French leaders said Wednesday they would not allow their troops to go to Baghdad as part of a military expedition to overthrow the Iraqi leader despite growing support in France for the removal of Hussein from power.
“There is no question of going to Baghdad,” French President Francois Mitterrand said after he emerged from a meeting of government ministers. “The field of battle is Kuwait and the zone around Kuwait.”
However, support for the removal of Hussein grows stronger each day in the French press as it savors victory with very few casualties among the 13,000 French troops in the Gulf.
Writing in the influential French newspaper Le Monde, commentator Michel Tatu asked: “How can one imagine that the man who placed Kuwait in fire and blood and, doing this, placed his people and his army in the worst situation possible, can suddenly erase everything and retreat with his Praetorian guard into the Bunker of Baghdad and rule like nothing happened?”
Holding Hussein responsible “for the damage and the destruction that he’s imposed upon his neighbors” and making Iraq “pay reparations for the grief that they’ve brought upon such a large part of the world” are a “key part of our requirements,” Cheney told the Legionnaires.
The Pentagon chief said that over the next six to 12 months, as postwar security arrangements are put in place in the region, there will be “a continuing role for the United States.” But, he said, Bush “has made it clear that we are not interested in maintaining large ground forces in the region indefinitely.”
Gerstenzang reported from Washington and Williams from Amman, Jordan. Times staff writers William Tuohy in London, Rone Tempest in Paris, John J. Goldman and Stanley Meisler at the United Nations and Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.
A HALT IN FIGHTING--WITH CONDITIONS
President Bush’s announcement that the allied forces would permanently halt combat operations against Iraq was dependent on what he called “requirements.” Among them:
* POWS. Iraq must release all coalition prisoners of war, hostages of third-country nations and the bodies of any allied war dead.
* U.N. RESOLUTIONS. Iraq must comply with all United Nations resolutions, including reparations to Kuwait. Iraq authorized its U.N. ambassador to tell the Security Council that Baghdad is prepared to accept all 12 U.N. resolutions.
* SCUDS. Iraqi forces cannot fire upon coalition troops or fire Scud missiles at any nations.
* MINES. Iraq must notify the allies about the location of sea and land mines.
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ed8cca270d0332abde19a5de7ec5a71b | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2831-story.html | COLUMN ONE : Feeling on Top of the World : The prevailing sentiment across the country is that the nation showed its greatness in standing up to Saddam Hussein. But some still doubt whether war was necessary or wise. | COLUMN ONE : Feeling on Top of the World : The prevailing sentiment across the country is that the nation showed its greatness in standing up to Saddam Hussein. But some still doubt whether war was necessary or wise.
And so the war had come to this, few Americans killed, the enemy turned tail, the “mother of all battles” no more than a shrinking violet easily plowed under.
Wednesday, exactly six weeks after the fighting began, people across the nation took stock of what had occurred and by and large felt darned good about it.
“I tell you, at school we say the pledge of allegiance every day, but those kids lately, they say it like they mean it,” said Vernon Paul, high school principal in the tiny West Texas town of Seminole.
Frances Trigo, a bookkeeper in Costa Mesa, pounded her hand down on a table as if a platoon of Iraqi soldiers were scattering underneath. “They know we mean business now,” she said.
Sea to shining sea, the prevailing sentiment was much the same: Hooray for us! We kicked butt! America the Great! We take no guff from no one no more no how.
And what of George Bush? Certainly, the tag “wimp” has been swept over by the desert sand. Now the President is spoken of as something of a John Wayne with an Ivy League diploma.
“When (Bush) ran for office, I wasn’t for him; I always thought he was weak,” said Mary Baldimar, owner of a small flower shop in Honolulu. She thought his wife was the tougher of the two. Now that makes her chuckle.
Bush really stood up to the Butcher of Baghdad, she said: “And he didn’t let anyone else push him around either, not even Congress.”
This week, the images being imprinted in the American psyche seem largely ones of a gutsy, resourceful nation. America is no longer the aging slugger who can’t get the bat around on a fast ball. It is a lithe warrior and a cunning strategist and a heroic liberator.
Of course, that is not everyone’s view. To some, the new world order has merely turned out to be as murderous as the old. And America is arrogant and foolhardy and selfish.
There is a lot of sorting out to do.
This is a window into some of that sorting, a view that changes, person to person, room to room, city to city.
Richard Hull, 42, raises hogs in Graham, Tex. His face looks kind and gentle beneath his cowboy hat. He said he was surprised the war had gone as well as it did:
“I thought they would put up a better fight. He (Hussein) had us bluffed pretty good, had us thinking he was stouter than he really was. I am not an advocate of war. But with this experience, it just shows you that some people don’t understand any other language but force . . .
“We have a great country, and this situation just reminded everyone how great America is. They woke up a sleeping giant. It makes me feel real great.”
Hull was attending a livestock show in Houston. So was Diana Blount, a thin, deeply tanned woman from Olton, Tex. She had brought her son to the big city to enter his pigs in competition.
“George Bush showed he was stronger than anyone thought he was,” she said. “I didn’t vote for him, but I’m for him now. He didn’t back down; he showed he had a spine.”
To many, the war has erased a generation of lingering hurt, as if the newsreel footage from the war in the Gulf has been recorded over that of the war in Vietnam.
“After Vietnam, we’ve now regained our credibility,” said Pat Martinez of Irvine. “We looked namby-pamby before, (but) now we went in decisively.”
She was out window-shopping at Orange County’s posh South Coast Plaza with her two little boys and a friend, Christie Anderson. The two women agreed in their approval.
“With all the air bombing, (the Iraqis) didn’t stand a chance,” Anderson said pridefully. “It was an excellent plan.”
Others were more analytical. Some stressed that Saddam’s actions during the war forever settled the question of whether economic sanctions would have driven him from Kuwait.
“It would have just dragged on interminably,” said Dick Kornbluth, a retired businessman visiting Denver from his home in Vestal, N.Y. “Even now in Baghdad you see photos of plentiful food supplies . . .
“We have an aggressive dictator brought to heel, with no colonial aspirations on the part of the coalition. It sets a precedent. Others in the world with aspirations similar to Saddam Hussein will think twice before they undertake such a venture.”
Yet amid this praising hum remains a residue of doubt. Was America right to fight? Will the war leave much of the Arab world thirsty for vengeance?
Terry Yackley, 35, a county sheriff, is not so impressed at the U.S. military success. He was taking a break from lifting weights in a downtown Detroit health club. The war was a mismatch, he said. Who boasts of beating up a lesser?
“I think Bush is going a little too far,” he said. “He’s trying to humiliate Saddam Hussein now. It’s like the bully picking on the little kid. He’s got him beat up and now he wants to make him say ‘uncle.’ ”
In the last few months, Yackley has learned some disturbing things: “I heard on a radio news show that we sold him weapons, and our ambassador told him he could do whatever he wanted with Kuwait. That kind of bothered me. If we had nothing to do with Iraq and we went in to defend Kuwait, that would be one thing. But when we’re involved in this under-the-table-type-thing, I don’t know. I’m kind of disillusioned.”
Ovester Pennington lives in Detroit. He is a construction worker. During his lunch break, he said it was hard to take much pride in a military victory when so many problems at home are neglected.
“The war is a cover-up,” he said. “It’s taking attention away from what’s really going on in America. The economy is a mess, race relations are terrible. The war is keeping our minds off how bad things really are . . .
“I’m not going to clap my hands and make American soldiers no heroic welcome. For what? There’s no heroics in this. The bully jumped on the little guy, and now we’re pretending to be heroes.”
Lisa Horvath Blume, 25, works in the development office of the Denver Art Museum. “I’m glad it’s over, but I’m worried that the Arabs are going to feel they’ve been humiliated and will retaliate,” she said. “Face is very important in the Arab culture.”
Besides, to her, U.S. policies seem oddly inconsistent. “If (the war) was against aggression toward an unarmed nation, why didn’t we take similar actions to help the people in (China’s) Tian An Men Square?”
Leo Lott, 71, lives in Missoula, Mont. He is a retired political science professor at the state university there. He sees only alarm in America’s fast cruise to victory.
“We’re a rotten, spoiled country,” he said. “We regard it as a right to consume whatever resources we want at whatever price we want to pay.”
It was a chilly Tuesday evening at UC Irvine. Hundreds of students headed for a night of watching basketball at the new Bren Center on campus.
But physics graduate student Karl Yee stood outside, bundled in a red-and-blue scarf. He was virtually alone. He swept leaves off the concrete floor of an anti-war “tent city.” It had been home for him and about a dozen other students for the last two weeks.
“To tell you the truth, I had this dream when we started about having 50 or so tents lined up the hill,” Yee said. “I think the peace movement really got its butt kicked this time.
“The point we tried to make is there are practical alternatives to war. But our problem was that Hussein was just not a very nice guy. In a lot of people’s minds, being pro-peace is the same as being pro-Hussein.”
He went back to sweeping leaves.
Things were much the same in Seattle, at the University of Washington. Business student Matt Frank, 21, was wearing his sunglasses as he walked across the campus. “The guidelines were to win decisively, with as little loss of human life as possible,” he said approvingly. “And I think we’ve done that.”
James Daab, 57, works in a waste water treatment plant in Phoenix. Wednesday, he did his grocery shopping wearing a yellow ribbon affixed to his Dallas Cowboys cap. He flies the flag at home.
“I definitely support Bush,” he said. “I’m proud of him. I’m proud of all the countries who joined with us, too.”
Like many in Ventura County, Yosh Suyama, 49, of Oxnard, has carried a flag on his car ever since the war started. But this week, the ex-Army soldier breathed a sigh of relief.
“I knew we were going to win,” he said as he sat on a bench at The Oaks mall in Thousand Oaks. “We had too much technology on our side.”
Tony Moutsoulas, 33, owns a Greek restaurant along a busy roadway in Lynn, Mass. He came to this country from Greece in 1966 at the age of 9. He considers himself a great patriot.
“There’s just one good lesson we’ve given the rest of the world: that nobody can fool around with the United States,” he said, relaxing at one of his tables. “You just can’t push us around, here, there or anywhere in the world.”
Pat Condon, a Miami truck driver, backed his 18-wheeler up to the loading dock of a supermarket. There were frozen foods to unload. But his thoughts only pulsed with news of a military victory. He described his feelings as plain as he could.
“I think we’re bad ass,” he said. “I don’t think anyone will mess with us after this.”
Contributing to this story were staffers Lianne Hart, Ann Rovin, Amy Harmon, Doug Conner, Anna M. Virtue, Edith Stanley, Eric Lichtblau and Psyche Pascual as well as free-lance contributors Mike Clary, Dan Baum, Laura Laughlin, John Laidler and Susan Essoyan.
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853b5287eda262ba6391ce42555fc264 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2833-story.html | Ethics Panel Says Cranston Broke Rules in Keating Ties : Thrifts: He is the only one of the five senators involved in the case who is judged to be in violation. | Ethics Panel Says Cranston Broke Rules in Keating Ties : Thrifts: He is the only one of the five senators involved in the case who is judged to be in violation.
The Senate Ethics Committee ruled Wednesday that Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) engaged in “an impermissible pattern of conduct” by intervening with federal regulators on behalf of Lincoln Savings & Loan while soliciting large contributions from its former owner, Charles H. Keating Jr.
Cranston, 76, who already has announced plans to retire at the end of his fourth term in 1992, was the only one of the “Keating Five” senators whose actions were judged to be in violation of Senate rules. His case is expected to be referred to the full Senate after he is given one more opportunity to reply to the charges.
The Ethics Committee concluded that there was “substantial credible evidence” that Cranston engaged in improper conduct by soliciting $994,000 in political contributions from Keating during the mid-1980s while agreeing to intervene on his behalf with officials of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, which was investigating mismanagement at Lincoln.
The senator was in California recuperating from treatment for prostate cancer. But his office in Washington responded to the committee action with a one-sentence statement that did not indicate how strenuously the senator intends to fight the charges.
“It’s clear that I’ve been unfairly singled out despite the evidence in all five cases,” the statement said.
Although the panel found no evidence that the four other senators broke any Senate rules, it concluded that the actions of Sens. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.) and Donald W. Riegle Jr. (D-Mich.) “gave the appearance of being improper” and that Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and John Glenn (D-Ohio) had exercised poor judgment in assisting Keating.
Although the six-member committee originally was divided along partisan lines, the final decision in all five cases was unanimous.
The ruling was a big victory for DeConcini, whose role in the Keating affair--after that of Cranston--caused the most controversy within the committee. Although Republicans initially insisted on citing DeConcini, a former county prosecutor, the panel’s Democrats refused to do so.
Common Cause, the self-styled citizens lobby that initiated the case against the five senators, condemned the committee’s decision to drop charges against DeConcini, Riegle, McCain and Glenn as “a cop-out” that compromises the integrity of the Senate.
Still, the Keating Five investigation long will be remembered as a watershed in the evolution of congressional ethics. Wednesday’s findings are expected to redefine the limits of propriety for all members of Congress who take action on behalf of campaign contributors.
Even though Cranston was the only senator charged by the committee, all five senators have witnessed a sharp decline in their home-state popularity as a result of the committee’s 15-month investigation and three months of televised public hearings.
Being singled out by the Ethics Committee was a devastating blow to Cranston, who has insisted that he did nothing wrong and believes that the panel is making a scapegoat of him because he has decided to retire from the Senate. Through nearly four decades as a dominant force in California politics, he always had enjoyed a reputation for honesty.
It is only the second time in modern Senate history that a member has been charged with wrongdoing by the Ethics Committee for behavior that did not involve allegations of bribery or improper personal gain. The previous offender was Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy (R-Wis.), who was condemned by the Senate in 1954 for charges stemming from his investigations of alleged communists.
The contributions Cranston received from Keating included $39,000 for his 1986 reelection committee, $85,000 for the California Democratic Party to conduct a get-out-the-vote drive in 1986, $10,000 to help retire debt from Cranston’s unsuccessful 1984 presidential bid, $10,000 to his personal political action committee and $850,000 to voter registration groups founded by the senator. This total far exceeded the amounts solicited from Keating by the other four senators.
Intervention by Cranston and others allegedly discouraged federal officials from placing the Irvine-based thrift under federal control for two years. The ailing institution finally was seized in April, 1989.
The failure of Lincoln is expected to cost taxpayers $2 billion. Keating’s mismanagement of the institution has made him a national symbol of the thrift executives whose high-flying investment techniques led to the industry’s $500-billion collapse.
The investigation revolved primarily around two meetings between the five senators and Home Loan Bank Board officials in April, 1987, in which DeConcini allegedly tried to negotiate with regulators on Keating’s behalf. Although the senators learned in those meetings that Lincoln was the subject of a criminal investigation, Cranston and DeConcini continued to assist Keating until the thrift was seized two years later.
The Ethics Committee listed four occasions on which Cranston “engaged in an impermissible pattern of conduct in which fund-raising and official activities were linked:”
--He solicited a $100,000 contribution from Keating in 1987 for America Votes, a voter registration organization, while attending the two meetings with federal regulators.
--After a $250,000 check for voter registration was delivered to the senator’s office in November, 1987, by Lincoln lobbyist Jim Grogan, Cranston called Keating and agreed to contact then-bank board Chairman M. Danny Wall on behalf of Lincoln.
--At a dinner in Los Angeles in January, 1988, Keating offered to make another contribution to the voter registration effort and Cranston agreed to arrange a meeting for Keating with Wall. Keating met with Wall on Jan. 28 that year as a result of the senator’s efforts, and Cranston received checks totaling $500,000 on Feb. 10.
--Cranston’s fund-raiser, Joy Jacobson, solicited another contribution from Keating in early 1989, at the same time the senator was trying to persuade the bank board to approve the sale of Lincoln to a group that later was accused of secretly fronting for Keating.
In addition, the committee found that Cranston’s “Senate office practices further evidenced an impermissible pattern of conduct” in which there appeared to be a link between fund-raising and actions taken by the senator on behalf of Keating.
It specifically cited the activities of Jacobson, who frequently attended meetings in Cranston’s office in which the senator was discussing legislative or regulatory matters with potential contributors. Jacobson was not a member of Cranston’s Senate staff.
When Keating or Grogan could not reach Cranston or Carolyn Jordan--his aide on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee--they contacted Jacobson, the committee noted. In addition, it said, Jacobson wrote several memos to Cranston that reflected “her understanding that contributors were entitled to special attention and special access to official services.”
On Jan. 2, 1987, for example, Jacobson wrote a memo to Cranston that listed Keating as one of several big contributors “who had been very helpful to you who have cases or legislative matters pending in our office (and) who will rightfully expect some kind of resolution.”
“Sen. Cranston never told her that her understanding was incorrect, nor did he inform her that such a connection between contributions and official actions was improper,” the committee said.
Technically, the committee action was comparable to the filing of formal charges against Cranston. The senator now has the right to respond before the committee votes formally to pass judgment on the case. He can request another hearing, although that is considered unlikely.
Committee sources said that the panel already has decided to refer Cranston’s case to the floor and that no further investigation by the committee is planned.
The Ethics Committee can recommend censure or expulsion of Cranston, although it is not expected to call for the latter. The full Senate can either accept or reject the committee’s recommendation.
Throughout the investigation, Cranston never quarreled with the facts uncovered by the committee, but he argued that his conduct was consistent with the standards of the Senate.
“I engaged in no unethical conduct,” he told the committee. “You know I broke no law; you know I broke no Senate rule.”
The panel acknowledged in its report that there are no written standards governing the conduct of senators who intervene with federal officials on behalf of a contributor. But it insisted that senators can find “general guidelines” for their conduct in the writings of the late Sen. Paul Douglas (D-Ill.) and in a House legal opinion.
In addition, it recommended that the Senate develop more explicit standards for senatorial conduct in the future. It also said any campaign finance reform legislation enacted by Congress should control “soft money” contributions, such as the $850,000 in tax-exempt donations that Keating made to Cranston’s voter registration drives.
The committee’s statements regarding DeConcini and Riegle were similar to letters of reprimand, even though they were not written as letters. The panel said that it could not condone their conduct, even though they did not act improperly.
DeConcini’s aggressive intervention with federal regulators was described as “inappropriate.” The committee said: “The totality of the evidence shows that Sen. DeConcini’s conduct gave the appearance of being improper and was certainly attended with insensitivity and poor judgment.”
Although the evidence indicated that Riegle played a bigger role in the Keating scandal than he acknowledged, committee members found no evidence that he deliberately misled them. Like DeConcini, Riegle was accused of insensitivity and poor judgment.
Glenn was criticized for poor judgment for arranging a meeting between Keating and then-House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.) after learning in 1987 that the thrift executive was under criminal investigation. Although McCain was likewise cited for poor judgment, the panel said it had no jurisdiction to rule on the flights he took on Keating’s plane while he was a member of the House. McCain did not reimburse Keating for those flights until years later.
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dc1ed3dab9a1be7a4ce6a792fd493ec6 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2834-story.html | Schwarzkopf’s War Plan Based on Deception | Schwarzkopf’s War Plan Based on Deception
The battle plan for vanquishing the Iraqi army mapped out by Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf was one of the most complex military campaigns ever devised, yet it rested upon a fundamental principle as old as human conflict--deception.
From the opening minutes of the air war in the pre-dawn hours of Jan. 17 to the climactic battle with the Republican Guard, the plan was to render Iraq’s army deaf and blind, deceive it on the allies’ true intentions, and then suddenly--and violently--encircle and annihilate it.
Like all successful military undertakings, the U.S.-allied strategy incorporated a set of calculated risks and employed a wealth of weapons--both seen and unseen--to overwhelm a reeling foe.
The plan relied heavily on air supremacy and massive bombardments--blunt tools for killing men and tanks.
But it also employed such subtle touches as well-publicized prewar amphibious exercises to convince the Iraqis that the allies were planning to mount a major seaborne assault; covert operations deep behind enemy lines, and phony radio transmissions that masked the gigantic movement of a seven-division allied force far to the west of the point in southern Kuwait where the coalition troops were expected to attack.
“Once we had taken out his (the enemy’s) eyes,” the ebullient Schwarzkopf said, “we did what could best be described as the ‘Hail Mary’ play in football.
“This was absolutely an extraordinary move,” the American commander said. “I must tell you, I can’t recall any time in the annals of military history when this number of forces have moved over this distance to put themselves in a position to be able to attack.”
Summarizing the campaign on the eve of conquest, the obviously elated general suppressed an instinct to swagger and said, in an understatement: “I think it was pretty effective.”
Military analysts are already calling the Schwarzkopf plan a masterpiece that will be studied for generations and change the way armies fight forever.
The strategy drew on the lessons of a hundred past battles, from Hannibal’s deception and defeat of the Romans at Cannae to the D-Day landing in 1944, during which the Germans were so convinced that the allies were coming ashore at Calais that they did not reinforce their small garrison at Normandy until several allied divisions had already hit the beach.
Roger Spiller, director of the Combat Studies Institute at the Army’s Command and General Staff College, compared it to the plan devised by German Count Alfred von Schlieffen, who swept his forces around the French army in the early days of World War I and crushed it against its own immobile defenses.
Similarly, Spiller said, the frontal assault against the Iraqi army in Kuwait was little more than a sideshow to the massive enveloping maneuver, in which a “tremendous wave of combat power moved in a very elegant and artful way.”
The Army’s AirLand Battle doctrine, on which the Gulf War plan was based, represents the collective wisdom of American generals and strategists, who concluded after years of study that successful military campaigns should be founded on a handful of clearly defined concepts.
Among the doctrine’s guiding principles: Mobile armies almost always defeat static defenses; control of the air and the airwaves is crucial; “synchronization” of air, land and sea forces multiplies the attacker’s natural advantages; force should be concentrated on the opponent’s weakness; success should be exploited and failure abandoned; and planners should identify the “center of gravity” of the opposing force, determine how best to neutralize it, and plan backwards from that point.
The Schwarzkopf plan embodied all those tenets.
While the general’s presentation highlighted the action of the land war that began just four days ago, the execution of the plan began with the arrival of the first cruise missiles and F-117 Stealth fighters over downtown Baghdad during the opening minutes of the war.
Their mission was to “decapitate” the Iraqi high command by cutting communications links, destroying key government ministries and leveling places of refuge of Iraq’s civilian and military leadership. Attacks on Iraq’s command and control network continued throughout the entire air campaign.
Simultaneously, Iraq’s airfields and air defense network were targeted--to deny the enemy the opportunity to challenge the allied aerial onslaught. As a result, Iraq’s air force was never a factor in the war, and allied warplanes operated with impunity from the Turkish border to southern Kuwait.
With much of Iraq’s internal communications network destroyed, the allies could begin to plant false messages with Iraqi field commanders, leaving them confused not only about the allies’ plans but also about the wishes of their own high command.
Meanwhile, U.S. and allied officials further misled the Iraqis with diversionary actions such as amphibious exercises and, later, the saturation bombing of the Iraqi front lines to leave the enemy guessing about where the breach would occur.
These moves prompted the Iraqis to keep numerous divisions pinned to the Kuwaiti coast to guard against the anticipated amphibious assault, and to deploy additional infantry divisions along the Kuwaiti-Saudi border to block the anticipated allied land attack, Schwarzkopf said.
“Our plan initially had been to . . . do exactly what the Iraqis thought we were going to do--and that’s take them on head-on into their most heavily defended area (in southern Kuwait),” the general said.
“Also, at the same time, we launched amphibious feints and naval gunfire (along the coast) so that they continued to think that we were going to be attacking along this coast and, therefore, fixed their forces in this position.”
Schwarzkopf said the goal was to freeze the Iraqi army in Kuwait while unleashing a huge, high-speed wheeling maneuver involving two full Army corps from as far as 200 miles west of the Kuwaiti-Iraqi border. The Army units were to sweep up to the Euphrates River and establish a military as well as a natural barrier to Iraqi escape.
“And I believe we succeeded in that very well,” Schwarzkopf said.
Schwarzkopf unnerved some policy-makers in Washington when he stated flatly that there was “a lot more purpose to this war than to just get the Iraqis out of Kuwait.” U.S. officials have insisted, in public at least, that the ejection of the Iraqi army from occupied Kuwait was the sole military objective of the war.
But the broader mission was obvious from the design and conduct of the campaign plan. The strategy was designed to crush the Iraqi military--particularly the vaunted Republican Guard--and to deny Iraq the ability to conduct offensive operations for at least a decade, a senior Pentagon official acknowledged Wednesday.
Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, too, apparently thought the allies’ goals were more circumscribed. “The Iraqis focused on a piece of real estate--Kuwait. We focused on their army, and destroyed it,” the official said.
During his briefing for reporters Wednesday, Schwarzkopf returned time and again in his description of the battle to the effect of air power throughout the campaign.
The interdiction of supply lines by U.S. aircraft weakened the front-line troops to the point of starvation. The bombing of bridges cut off routes for reinforcement or escape, sealing the trap in which the Iraqi army now finds itself.
Strikes and restrikes on airfields kept the Iraqi air force on the ground for the duration. The destruction of conventional munitions plants denied the Iraqis the ability to replace weaponry destroyed by the bombardment.
The bombing campaign “quarantined” the overall field of battle, Spiller said. Then the warplanes shifted south, to the immediate theater of operations.
Bombs broke down the Iraqi defensive barriers and burned off the oil-filled trenches dug to slow the allied advance. Bombs, rockets and missiles destroyed thousands of Iraqi tanks, armored vehicles and artillery pieces. Each piece of wrecked equipment reduced the tally of allied casualties, Schwarzkopf said.
Meanwhile, the savage and redundant bombing of troop emplacements in southern Iraq and Kuwait broke the morale of thousands of Iraqi troops and produced “a very, very large number of dead” in the front lines, Schwarzkopf said. Many of those who were not killed fled northward, abandoning their defensive positions.
When it came time to breach the Iraqi defenses at the outbreak of the ground war, allied troops had a much easier time of it, Schwarzkopf said. Because of the air campaign, they did not have to confront the “nightmare scenario” feared by U.S. planners--having to hack their way through minefields, ditches and barbed wire while under chemical weapons attack from massed artillery.
“I can’t say enough about the two Marine divisions” who broke through the Iraqi defenses in eastern Kuwait, Schwarzkopf said. “If I use words like brilliant, it would really be an under-description of the absolutely superb job that they did in breaching the so-called ‘impenetrable’ barrier.
“It was a classic--absolutely classic--military breaching of a very, very tough minefield with barbed wire, fire trenches-type barrier,” Schwarzkopf continued. “They went through the first barrier like it was water, then went across into the second barrier line.”
U.S., French, British, Saudi and Egyptian forces poured through their own breaches, meeting unexpectedly light resistance and encountering masses of Iraqis clamoring to surrender.
Meanwhile, worsening weather and reports of Iraqi atrocities in Kuwait confronted Schwarzkopf with a dilemma--and an opportunity.
Allied forces had a chance to accelerate their attack and close in more quickly on the pivotal Republican Guard units north and west of Kuwait. But the various elements of the plan were so intricately meshed that pushing the attacking forces too fast would risk their outrunning their supply lines.
Schwarzkopf and his top officers, assessing the weakness of the Iraqi force, decided it was a risk worth taking--and accelerated the push by half a day.
Good generals take risks, and fools gamble, one senior Army planner in Washington said. A risk-taker can rescue himself if things go bad, he added, but a gambler bets the farm.
Schwarzkopf’s risk paid off. Logistics units were able to keep up with the fast-running armor and airborne units driving toward their rendezvous with the Republican Guard. The general offered effusive praise for his supply troops, who kept fuel, water, food and ammunition close behind his advancing army.
Logistics were the province of Lt. Gen. William G. Pagonis, who said Wednesday that he borrowed his concept of constantly relocating supply bases by studying the World War II desert campaigns of North Africa fought by German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and Britain’s Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery.
The British won the campaign because their supply trucks could keep up with their armor. The Germans couldn’t manage it, Pagonis said.
“Gen. Schwarzkopf told me, ‘Don’t get left in the dust,’ ” Pagonis said. “By that he meant don’t get caught by a fast advance that would outrun the supplies.”
By Tuesday morning, Iraq’s army was disoriented, demoralized and unaware of what was about to befall it, Schwarzkopf said. Virtually the entire Iraqi force within Kuwait collapsed in the first 48 hours of ground combat.
“When we knew that he couldn’t see us anymore, we did a massive movement of troops all the way out to the west, to the extreme west, because at that time we knew that he was still fixed in (Kuwait) with the vast majority of his forces, and once the air campaign started he would be incapable of moving out to counter this move, even if he knew we made it,” Schwarzkopf said.
The allied main force--the armor-rich U.S. VII Corps, supplemented by British and French tank divisions and two U.S. airborne divisions--covered 200 miles in two days against little opposition to assume their attack positions early Tuesday against the Republican Guard.
The French 6th Armored Division set up a screen far to the west to prevent any escape or reinforcement--and also to leave the Iraqis wondering whether they might be the vanguard of a drive toward Baghdad.
U.S. Navy Cmdr. John Proctor, operations officer for the Central Command’s support branch, called the armored sweep “the greatest tactical maneuver ever made.”
Troops from the 101st Airborne (Air Assault) Division secured airfields and blocked egress across the Euphrates. The 24th Mechanized Division formed a further piece of the noose closing around the Republican Guard.
The allied troops paused to rest, refuel and rearm. Then they attacked.
The ensuing battle, which began Tuesday night, was the centerpiece of the entire campaign. U.S. strategists early on identified the Republican Guard as the backbone of the Iraqi military and the power behind Saddam Hussein’s regime. They were the force that initiated the Iran-Iraq War and the troops that stormed into Kuwait on Aug. 2.
Schwarzkopf said ultimately that the war plan had as one single aim: “To put the Republican Guard out of business.”
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d4f512c0004622464ae37fe427f22a3f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2837-story.html | Senate Panel Plans Trip Despite Crunch | Senate Panel Plans Trip Despite Crunch
Even as Gov. Pete Wilson and the Legislature grapple with resolving the state’s unprecedented budget shortfall, the Senate Rules Committee on Wednesday decided to approve a taxpayer-financed visit to Manila and Hong Kong for six senators.
Demonstrating that old habits die hard at the state Capitol even in tough fiscal times, the committee authorized spending an estimated $21,000 to pay for air fare and hotel lodging for the senators to take the journey from March 19 to 29.
The trip also occurs against a backdrop in which about 800 legislative employees were given financial inducements to leave the payroll early so lawmakers could comply with voter-approved Proposition 140. The ballot measure ordered substantial reductions in spending by the Senate and Assembly.
Since then, the Senate Rules Committee has shifted gears and granted generous salary increases to certain remaining employees. The raises were made possible by using money left over after the cost-cutting goals were met.
The Rules Committee decision to proceed with the overseas trip came in the wake of demands by Wilson and some Republican members of the Senate for the Legislature to put aside business as usual and bear down harder and faster to resolve the state’s fiscal crisis.
Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles), who will lead the delegation to the Philippines and Hong Kong, defended the trip as absolutely necessary so senators will better understand the diversity of problems that immigrants face in rapidly changing California.
“In case anybody wants to suggest that this is going to be seven days on the beach, it is not,” Roberti testily told reporters. He noted that the politically volatile Philippines are listed on a State Department alert.
A Senate spokesman said each of the six lawmakers would receive $2,300 for business class air fare and $1,200 for lodging. The government of the Phillipines will pay for local travel and official meals. Hong Kong will pay none of the legislators’ expenses for their two days in the British colony, he said.
Under an ethics reform ballot measure approved in June, legislators are prohibited from accepting junkets financed by private sources, such as lobbies. However, travel financed by governments is exempt.
Signed up for the tour are Roberti and Sens. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles), Cecil Green (D-Norwalk), Dan McCorquodale (D-San Jose), Alfred Alquist (D-San Jose) and Newton R. Russell (R-Glendale).
Defending the excursion, part of which will occur during the Legislature’s spring vacation, Roberti said that California has become a “Third World state” and that immigrants from the Pacific Rim and Latin America arrive with real problems.
He insisted that state legislators must learn more about immigrant health problems and learn why educated professionals such as physicians from outside the state cannot practice in California. By law and administrative regulation, California has especially high standards that must be met before a license is granted, for example, to practice medicine or law.
Roberti argued that an understanding of what immigrants may face when they arrive in California “only can be learned by having some kind of interplay with those nations, with their governmental, economic, health and education leaders.”
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3a7cdd58d5b0d26c9b75c073334a1fe9 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2838-story.html | End of the Road Arrives for Embarcadero Freeway | End of the Road Arrives for Embarcadero Freeway
A symbolic chiseling of concrete from the Embarcadero Freeway, California’s first interstate highway and one of this city’s most infamous landmarks, on Wednesday signaled the long-awaited start of demolition for the earthquake-crippled structure.
In a festive noon ceremony near the beginning of the double-deck freeway, city leaders praised efforts to raze California 480, rendered useless after the Loma Prieta earthquake closed it to traffic more than a year ago.
Dwarfed by the roadway’s massive pillars and a cinnamon-red battering ram, San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos told a crowd of more than 300: “This is a great day to take a freeway down.”
“A generation ago, people believed that they had to make a choice between our city’s beauty and our city’s needs,” Agnos said. “This generation says: ‘We won’t buy that choice.’ ”
Bystanders cheered, “Down! Down!” spurring on the demolition of the viaduct that had blocked a view of the bay for more than three decades.
“I’m glad to see it go,” said Mary Woodward, a retiree who has lived in San Francisco since 1960. “For a long time, I accepted the freeway like everyone else. I didn’t think it would ever come down.”
But others, such as Rose Pak, a consultant to the Chinese Chamber of Commerce who lobbied to save the freeway for Chinatown merchants whose customers depended on the Embarcadero, said this was no time to celebrate.
“I’m very saddened to see it go,” she said of the highway. “I hope they will put the same effort into helping rebuild our community as they did to tearing the Embarcadero down.”
Former freeway designer Robert W. Halligan, who worked on the freeway, shared her sentiments, adding that the Embarcadero freeway served the Chinatown community well by handling 60,000 cars per day and keeping traffic off surface streets.
“It’s their decision,” he said. “I hope they don’t live to regret it.”
To city leaders, though, the ceremony marked the end of a long fight to remove what they consider a blight on San Francisco’s cityscape. Former Mayor Dianne Feinstein, who crusaded against the roadway during her tenure, congratulated the city on the highway’s destruction.
“Mother Nature helped move this demolition along,” she said.
Agnos, at the controls of the battering ram--known as a pulverizer--launched the effort. With a deafening roar that drowned the applause, a two-foot-long, eight-inch-thick metal needle bolted to the machine’s arm pierced one of the concrete pillars and chopped away pieces of the column.
Construction crews then took over the $3.2-million demolition, which is expected to be finished in four months.
The idea for the freeway was hatched during World War II--an era in which progress and growth were equated with bigger and better highways--as a key corridor in a grand scheme to link the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge.
City officials concerned with the drift of jobs to the suburbs, traffic problems and the deterioration of neighborhoods near the piers supported the new structure. But in a rush to build, say historians, state planners failed to consult with private developers and landowners, resulting in a poorly planned freeway.
“The Embarcadero Freeway was out of place from the day it was built,” said David Jones, a transportation consultant and author of “California’s Freeway Era in Historical Perspective.”
Even before the first stretch of the Embarcadero was completed in 1956, community opposition to the elevated highway had mounted. Finally, in the early 1960s, the frenzy to construct more freeways dead-ended when San Franciscans staged a “freeway revolt,” demanding the master plan be thrown out.
After the city’s master plan to extend the Embarcadero collapsed, officials downgraded the freeway from an interstate to a state route, making it ineligible for federal interstate money.
Since then, the 1.7-mile-long, 60-foot-tall freeway has steadfastly weathered community and city opposition. But the Loma Prieta earthquake, which severely damaged the Embarcadero, finally did what more than three decades of resistance had failed to do: It forced even the roadway’s supporters to concede that California 480’s days were over.
With cost estimates from Caltrans to retrofit the highway rising, the city’s Board of Supervisors last September voted to raze the crippled highway. When the dust clears, officials plan to build a below-ground freeway that will allow a clear view of the bay.
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323e450e8d3f3466a714fe2c73af4b3f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2839-story.html | MWD Ready to Fine Water Agencies for Not Conserving | MWD Ready to Fine Water Agencies for Not Conserving
The Metropolitan Water District is preparing to levy stiff fines against more than half of Southern California’s water agencies for failing to conserve water, The Times has learned. Most notably affected is San Diego’s water authority, which may face a penalty as high as $4 million.
MWD officials said Wednesday that the majority of the 27 agencies it serves did not comply this month with rationing guidelines that required an average 17% cutback in usage.
“It looks as if two-thirds to one-half of our members will exceed their allocations for the month of February and will pay penalties in the hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of dollars,” said MWD Assistant General Manager Duane Georgeson.
He declined to disclose which agencies had violated rationing guidelines except to say that the San Diego County Water Authority was among those performing the worst, while the city of Los Angeles was among those in compliance.
Lester Snow, general manager of the San Diego County Water Authority, confirmed that MWD officials advised him on Wednesday that the agency could be penalized up to $4 million for failing to achieve the reduction. Snow said the proposed penalty was for “utilizing water over the February allocation.”
San Diego’s water authority purchased more water than it needed in February knowing that it would be penalized by the MWD, Snow said. But he said he expects the recommended $4-million fine to be offset in future months by savings in water use.
Snow said the extra water was stored to help meet expected summer demand and to help local growers who are worried about crop losses later this year.
“Taking extra water will help the flower and avocado growers now. Later, they will be able to institute drastic conservation programs and save more water during the summer,” Snow said. “On balance, we expect to meet all conservation requirements by the end of summer.”
MWD officials and their water customers will meet in emergency session on Monday, officials said, to discuss various proposals, including the recommended fines.
Each of the water agencies served by the MWD is assigned a monthly allotment of water. For each acre-foot of water it uses over that amount, it must pay a fine three times the normal price of that water. An acre-foot is the amount of water the average Los Angeles family of five uses in 18 months.
The MWD began imposing a conservation plan on its customers as California entered its fifth year of drought. In December, it ordered agencies to reduce consumption by 10%; it increased the reduction to 17% by Feb. 1, then ordered a 31% cutback effective March 1.
At its emergency meeting Monday, the MWD’s board will consider imposing cutbacks of 50% in the wake of the state’s decision to halt all of its water deliveries to the MWD in mid-March. The state’s action will reduce the district’s water supplies by half, forcing it to rely almost exclusively on the Colorado River.
Georgeson said MWD officials were discouraged by the number of agencies that did not meet February conservation requirements and may have to consider new measures, including stiffer fines, distribution of water-saving devices and a $3-million advertising program to promote conservation.
“We have the ability to do what other water purveyors have already done--namely to increase the financial penalties to whatever amount gets the job done,” Georgeson said. “If the triple (charge) doesn’t get the job done, then maybe we will have to go to six, nine or even 12 times the normal charge.”
The MWD is authorized to levy fines or “incentive charges” under the contracts it holds with the individual water agencies.
MWD General Manager Carl Boronkay said he will report to his board of directors March 12 on which agencies are not in compliance with the conservation guidelines. He said he probably will not recommend any changes in penalties until an April meeting.
In the meantime, he said the district is considering buying water-saving devices that would be distributed through water agencies free to residents. One such device, he said, is a plastic tub that could be placed in the bottom of showers to catch water for re-use.
Georgeson acknowledged that some areas, such as Los Angeles, have an easier time complying because they have other sources of water. In addition to the water it gets from the MWD, Los Angeles is supplied by underground sources and the Owens Valley.
Georgeson said San Diego, on the other hand, must rely on the MWD for about 90% to 95% of its supply.
Before fines are actually levied, the MWD will consider its customers’ requests for “adjustments” in allotments. He said some agencies have complained that they have circumstances that warrant higher allotments.
He said agencies that are assessed fines can get some of that money back later in the year if they use less than their allotments in future months.
Times staff writer H.G. Reza contributed to this report from San Diego.
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0a34bd5e3d1486033e19e4231716cd1b | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2841-story.html | Smog Checks to Get in Gear With Air Act : Pollution: The ceiling for repair costs may be increased. Other changes in the state’s program may be required to comply with new federal law. | Smog Checks to Get in Gear With Air Act : Pollution: The ceiling for repair costs may be increased. Other changes in the state’s program may be required to comply with new federal law.
The new federal Clean Air Act will require changes in California’s smog check program, and it’s a safe bet they won’t be universally popular.
The most likely is an increase in the ceiling for repair costs, to an across-the-board $450 from the current sliding scale--which ranges from $50 for pre-1972 cars to $300 for post-1989 models.
It is also possible that a smog check will be necessary every year, rather than every other year, and that vehicle owners will no longer head for the corner gas station at inspection time but to a separate, state-owned facility where passes and fails are issued but no repairs are undertaken.
The proposals, which have angered California officials, will be contained in guidelines scheduled to be issued next month by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as it moves to enforce the new federal law.
Smog checks are in place in 39 states, including California. Florida and Minnesota also are scheduled to start smog checks soon, while West Virginia, Maine and possibly Vermont will be forced to do so under the new law.
If the legislature does not enact the EPA’s mandates, the federal government could withhold highway funds and make it more difficult for highly polluting industries to expand or locate in the state--sanctions that were invoked in the early 1980s.
Eugene Tierney, who oversees the EPA’s vehicle emissions testing programs, said the frequency of testing and centralizing of the inspection stations may be negotiable items, but the state may have to choose one or the other.
As for the $450 cost limit, “there’s no ifs, ands or buts about it, unfortunately, for those people who are going to be faced with those kinds of repairs,” Tierney said.
California officials are upset by the prospect of higher limits on repairs that can be required of motorists, noting that the oldest cars--which generally belong to the poorest people--usually are the ones in need of extensive repairs to pass the emissions test. Owners of newer, heavily computerized cars also could face high costs if repairs are needed.
“I don’t think it makes a lot of rational sense,” said R.J. Sommerville, chairman of the state’s review committee for the program.
“That $450 thing is going to be a serious problem,” said Steve Gould, research specialist for the Bureau of Automotive Repair, which runs the state’s smog check program.
California last year waived repairs for about 69,000 vehicles which required work that would have cost more than the limits now in place, Gould said. “Of those, about half were probably major, in that $450 range,” he said.
Still, those cars probably have a greater impact on pollution than their numbers would indicate, Gould said. The dirtiest 1% of cars contribute about 9% of the carbon monoxide and about 13% of the hydrocarbons spewed into California’s skies by nearly 16 million cars on the road, he said. About 75% of those high-polluting vehicles are more than 15 years old.
Until the EPA publishes its guidelines in final form in June, “we’re assuming that every aspect of the smog check program is open to discussion,” said Bill Sessa, spokesman for the California Air Resources Board. “At this time, we’re not committed to any changes.”
State Sen. Robert B. Presley (D-Riverside), who introduced the bill establishing the sliding scale, said he thinks such an approach “is a lot more fair. We had to take into account that low-income people own a lot of those old cars, and that the old cars will be off the road in a few years.
“It’s never over till it’s over,” Presley said. “There will be a lot of negotiating going on.”
State officials are floating a number of possible compromises: A new sliding scale with higher cost limits; a buyback project that would involve the state paying for and scrapping old cars that need expensive repairs, and a timetable allowing six months or a year to get necessary work completed and paid for.
But they stressed that such talk is no more than preliminary.
Though there is “no leeway” in the $450 cost ceiling, Tierney said, the new clean air law will allow states to avoid the centralized stations and annual inspections if they can show that there are other ways to reduce the same amount of pollution.
The principal advantage of central testing stations, said Tierney, is “the station operator has no interest in the outcome of the test and does not do repairs.” Gas station mechanics who inspect cars belonging to regular customers, Tierney said, “aren’t always failing vehicles that should fail.”
Indeed, the Bureau of Automotive Repair has found that emissions control equipment had been tampered with on 25% of cars pulled over for random roadside testing, while smog check mechanics report tampering on only about 5% to 6% of the cars they test.
The cost of inspections also is lower for centralized programs, Tierney said. In a survey of 14 states with separate testing stations, he said, the fee averaged $8.50. Service stations showing the blue and red “smog check” signs around California advertise fees ranging from $19 to more than $35.
There are disadvantages, however, state officials counter. In the late 1970s, California experimented with a centralized smog-check system in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. “At the end, we made a practical decision,” said Sessa, of the ARB. With the centralized system, “if you’re a consumer, you have to ping-pong. You make an appointment; if your car fails, you have to go somewhere else to get your car repaired, then you go back to the centralized station for another test.”
It was the debate over a centralized system that sparked a heated legislative battle in the late 1970s. The resulting delays in establishing a smog check program led the EPA to impose sanctions on California. But state officials say the sanctions had little effect because no highway projects were up for funding at the time.
Recent changes in the California program--including stricter licensing of mechanics and requirements for new, expensive testing equipment at service stations offering smog checks--"built-in protection to prevent shoddy work,” Sessa said.
As for the annual inspections, he added, “it’s not how often you inspect the car that matters, it’s how well you repair the car.”
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2f96c7183d545cb9137eb43e506bafee | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2842-story.html | Wilson Criticizes Union’s Opposition to School Cutbacks : Budget: If the governor can’t override the funding guarantees in Proposition 98, it will mean $2 million in cuts elsewhere, analyst says. | Wilson Criticizes Union’s Opposition to School Cutbacks : Budget: If the governor can’t override the funding guarantees in Proposition 98, it will mean $2 million in cuts elsewhere, analyst says.
Gov. Pete Wilson stepped up his efforts to suspend $2 billion in school funding guarantees Wednesday, calling opposition by a teachers union “repugnant” and warning that failure by the Legislature to act on his budget balancing plan will mean $500 million in cuts to health, welfare and other programs.
Wilson got support in his bid to suspend the school guarantees contained in Proposition 98 from legislative analyst Elizabeth G. Hill. In a 1,758-page review of the governor’s proposed $55.7-billion budget, Hill said that if Proposition 98 guarantees were untouched, the Legislature would have to cut $2 billion from non-school programs, raise an equivalent in new taxes or enact some combination of the two.
While the debate was heating up on budget issues, Treasurer Kathleen Brown announced that California had sold $1.3 billion in state bonds--a one-day record--and still managed to get the lowest interest rate in 10 years. The bonds will finance a variety of school, prison, water and other construction projects.
The bond sale attracted an unusual amount of interest not only because of its size but also because of earlier warnings that budgetary problems threatened California’s long-term credit rating. The state is expected to end the current budget year June 30 with a deficit of at least $1.2 billion, with the possibility of even more red ink next year.
Brown told reporters after the bond sale that Wall Street firms and investment bankers looked past the state’s immediate budget problems. The winning bid went to a syndicate headed by Goldman, Sachs & Co., which will charge the state an interest rate of 6.35% on the tax-free bonds. “The market today spoke loudly about their long-term confidence in California,” Brown said.
Wilson’s comments about Proposition 98 came in a hard-hitting speech to the California Taxpayers Assn., a business-oriented group.
Wilson noted that the California Teachers Assn., which represents about 230,000 active and retired teachers, is fighting the suspension of Proposition 98 on the grounds that the state is not in a “fiscal emergency.”
The CTA, which led the drive to pass the constitutional amendment in 1988, had argued during the campaign that Proposition 98 contained an escape clause allowing it to be suspended during emergencies, Wilson reminded his audience. The union is arguing that the emergency it was referring to involved natural disasters, such as earthquakes.
Wilson said the union was “going back on its word.”
“By God, if we’re not in (a fiscal emergency), I don’t want to see one,” he told the audience of business and government executives.
Proposition 98 requires at least 40% of state general purpose tax revenues to go to public schools and community colleges. Wilson’s spending plan would drop the schools’ share of the budget to 37.5%.
Wilson again blasted the CTA for a television commercial it is running on stations statewide that shows a schoolgirl expressing alarm over the possible suspension of Proposition 98. The ad, which implies that the girl is from California, is part of a multimillion-dollar campaign organized by the CTA.
The Republican governor noted that the actress actually is a 20-year-old from Chicago. “She’s not from Calistoga, or Santa Cruz or Sacramento,” Wilson said. “She is from Chicago. I hope she is making enough to afford a fine private school.”
Wilson added: “Let me tell you what the union ads won’t say. They will not tell you that if we don’t suspend Proposition 98 it will force an additional $500-million cut in health, welfare and other basic services. It will mean cuts to programs that serve poor pregnant women, or perhaps indigent patients, perhaps the homeless. And don’t think that children would necessarily escape the brunt of these cuts (if Proposition 98 is protected) because everything would be on the chopping block.”
A CTA official accused Wilson of “setting up a false choice.”
The official, who asked not to be identified, said Wilson continues to refuse consideration of further tax increases to head off the kinds of budget cuts he mentioned as the price for saving Proposition 98.
“He is protecting tax loopholes that favor the very rich, the ones that are his basic constituency. The choice isn’t between the elderly and school kids; it’s between the wealthy and the rest of us.”
School interests and others in recent weeks have been urging the governor and Legislature to consider returning the top level of the personal income tax from its current peak of 9.3% to 11%, along with enacting a host of proposed taxes on oil companies, corporations and others. The top tax rate was reduced in sweeping tax legislation enacted in 1987.
Wilson, in his speech, vowed to “veto any tax proposal that would chase jobs out of California.”
The legislative analyst, in her assessment of Wilson’s proposed 1991-92 budget, again concluded that Wilson’s spending plan “overestimates revenues and underestimates expenditures.”
Shortly after Wilson unveiled his budget, Hill boosted the projected budget shortage over a two-year period from the $7 billion outlined by the governor to $9.9 billion.
During a news conference Wednesday, she said she was sticking by the higher figure, although she said a quick conclusion to the Persian Gulf War and the effects of the drought could upset budget projections.
“If the Legislature did everything that the governor has proposed in terms of a solution, in our view it would be $1.5 billion short,” she said.
Hill and her staff recommended hundreds of changes in the governor’s proposed budget, which collectively would produce a $440-million spending reduction.
Hill, however, made no specific recommendation on what to do about Proposition 98.
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9ecacd91d228ca527392d6e976d381f0 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2867-story.html | A First: ‘Lenin’ Gets Out of Town | A First: ‘Lenin’ Gets Out of Town
For the first time in the history of the Soviet Union, a town named after V.I. Lenin has been renamed.
The official Tass news agency said Wednesday that the Parliament of the Central Asian republic of Tadjikistan had decided that the town of Leninabad would revert to its former name of Khudzhand.
“Deputies think that the change of name is just a step to restoring historical justice and not an attempt to harm the memory of Lenin,” Tass reported.
The Tadjik Parliament had passed a law banning the practice of naming towns in the republic after people, it added.
Until recently, the founder of the Soviet state was revered as almost infallible. But he has come under criticism from radicals for his career before, during and after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.
Several cities and towns in the giant Russian Federation that were renamed in honor of leading Communist Party figures have reverted to their original names in the last few years.
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ab50a33748cfb3d33910dd6619b65eab | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2868-story.html | 20,000 Marchers Demand That Aquino Quit, U.S. Bases Be Shut | 20,000 Marchers Demand That Aquino Quit, U.S. Bases Be Shut
More than 20,000 protesters demanded Wednesday that President Corazon Aquino resign, in a rally that brought together leftists, rightists and former supporters of the Philippine leader.
Speakers charged that Aquino betrayed the “people power revolution” that swept her into office on Feb. 25, 1986.
The largest anti-government rally in years brought together former Aquino Administration officials, leftists and rightist supporters of the late President Ferdinand E. Marcos.
They raised fists as march organizers read a manifesto declaring that “we do not wish this heartless government to remain in power.” Protesters also carried banners demanding that the government close the six U.S. military bases in the country.
The Philippines and the United States are finalizing details of an agreement renewing the lease of the U.S. facilities, including the giant Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base.
“It is no longer a question of criticizing the Aquino government but . . . of establishing a new government that will serve the majority and not the few,” said Nick Elman, spokesman for the left-wing May First Movement.
About 200 riot police prevented the protesters from marching to military camps where hundreds of thousands of Filipinos staged the 1986 uprising that toppled Marcos and propelled Aquino to power.
Police ordered them to disperse about half a mile from the camps. They later relented and allowed the rally to proceed after organizers said they were simply exercising their rights, which Aquino boasts of having restored.
“This is just a test,” said Oliver Lozano, a prominent Marcos supporter. “This is the first time the (Marcos) loyalists and the leftists marched together. This could intensify into true people power.”
Police estimated the crowd at more than 20,000. Some independent Manila radio and television stations put the figure at about 50,000.
Public discontent has been increasing because of double-digit inflation, including a 70% increase in fuel prices in the wake of the Persian Gulf War.
Critics warn that government belt-tightening moves, negotiated with the International Monetary Fund, will add to the economic burdens of the 60 million Filipinos.
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756360a83f8265166da7cd8e344e74cc | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2869-story.html | Experts Will Confer on Shuttle Cracks | Experts Will Confer on Shuttle Cracks
NASA managers canceled a key launch review Wednesday and headed to Houston to discuss whether the shuttle Discovery can be cleared for liftoff next week despite door hinge cracks.
“It’s just a matter of trying to tie up loose ends,” said Leonard Nicholson, shuttle program director at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Discovery, along with a seven-man crew, is tentatively scheduled to blast off at 12:49 a.m. PST on March 9 for an eight-day mission.
But managers and engineers appear to be split over whether to launch Discovery without fixing the hinge cracks, or making repairs that likely would delay the flight for several weeks.
A final decision on how to proceed had been expected by Friday, after a two-day flight readiness review at the Kennedy Space Center. But the review was canceled Wednesday after NASA Administrator Richard H. Truly ordered top shuttle administrators to fly to Houston to discuss the hinge cracks with key project officials.
The concern centers on two cracks in the hinge assemblies of two, 50-square-inch fuel line doors in the belly of the shuttle.
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847269545184f5b60d7381e6d88da6b5 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2870-story.html | Drug Cartels’ Easy Access to Arms Told : Narcotics: Mercenary testifies before Senate panel probing terrorist training. He says weapons are ‘readily obtained’ from Eastern Europe. | Drug Cartels’ Easy Access to Arms Told : Narcotics: Mercenary testifies before Senate panel probing terrorist training. He says weapons are ‘readily obtained’ from Eastern Europe.
Mortars, submachine guns and other modern military weapons can be “readily obtained” by Colombian drug traffickers from Eastern European manufacturers, a self-styled British mercenary told a Senate subcommittee Wednesday.
The mercenary, David Tomkins, said that the late Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, a notorious Colombian narcotics trafficker, once received 50 tons of military equipment shipped by a Warsaw Pact nation and routed through Panama.
Tomkins, who allegedly trained paramilitary units employed by Colombian drug cartels, refused to identify the nation of origin of the weapons. Rodriguez Gacha was killed in a shootout with Colombian authorities in December, 1989.
Tomkins said the destinations of such shipments routinely are disguised through bogus end-user certificates, which falsely state that the weapons are being sent to equip the armies of smaller countries in Africa or Latin America.
Tomkins’ testimony highlighted the opening of hearings by the investigations subcommittee of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee into terrorist training provided by foreign mercenaries to Colombian drug traffickers.
Sen. William V. Roth Jr. of Delaware, who is directing the inquiry as the panel’s ranking Republican, said that the easy access to weapons of terror adds a new dimension to the power of Latin American drug traffickers.
Major drug organizations “would be less of a threat to Colombian citizens as well as to U.S. law enforcement if they did not have such easy access to large numbers of machine guns and other conventional weapons,” Roth said.
The hearings come as U.S. and Colombian law enforcement officials are seeking a new level of cooperation to curtail the power of drug cartels and bring traffickers to justice. The subcommittee will hear testimony today about a scheme in which Israeli-manufactured weapons were sent to Rodriguez Gacha through the small Caribbean nation of Antigua.
Tomkins, while acknowledging that he used illegally obtained assault weapons in working with Rodriguez Gacha, sought to distance himself from charges that he had helped further the aims of drug profiteers.
He said that Rodriguez Gacha had paid him in 1989 to try to attack and kill rival drug lord Pablo Escobar at his remote hideaway but that the mission was aborted when an assault helicopter crashed and Tomkins and a colleague were injured.
A year earlier, Tomkins said, he had helped train a group of Colombians in the use of weapons and explosives. But he rejected allegations that his trainees were members of a paramilitary group employed by drug traffickers. He insisted that Colombian military officers whom he refused to identify had hired him for his expertise in helping farmers and ranchers combat leftist guerrillas in the countryside.
Before Tomkins’ testimony, the subcommittee released a staff report alleging that British and Israeli mercenaries have aggravated the problem of international narco-terrorism by teaching drug dealers or their hired guns how to kidnap or kill opponents.
The problem has been complicated by the indifference of Colombian authorities and by inadequate law enforcement on the part of Britain and Israel to curb the activities of their citizens, the report said.
The subcommittee screened a training film made by Tomkins that showed an exotic array of semiautomatic weapons and C-4 plastic explosive devices.
“Do you consider yourself an expert in explosives?” Roth asked the witness.
“I’m an enthusiastic amateur,” Tomkins replied.
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45d0f41490a28666f89e5e6b4c49a46b | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2871-story.html | Decision to Fire Gays Stirs Anger : Rights dispute: A restaurant chain says it has discontinued the practice. Activists criticize the policy as ‘archaic.’ | Decision to Fire Gays Stirs Anger : Rights dispute: A restaurant chain says it has discontinued the practice. Activists criticize the policy as ‘archaic.’
A country restaurant chain that fired several employees because they were homosexual, then apparently backed off the policy, has set off a struggle with gay rights activists who Wednesday contended the “institutionalized bigotry” was being quietly continued.
The controversy involves Cracker Barrel Old Country Stores, based in Lebanon, Tenn., which runs 98 eateries, many located along Southeast interstate highways. The chain recently issued a policy that cited “traditional American values” and declared that it “is perceived to be inconsistent with those of our customer base to continue to employ individuals in our operating units whose sexual preferences fail to demonstrate normal heterosexual values which have been the foundation of families in our society.”
Rights activists said the policy has led to a number of firings, not only unfairly depriving people of livelihoods but also inciting community fears against homosexuals and forcing many to hide their lifestyle for fear of discrimination.
Amid outrage from homosexual rights advocates, Cracker Barrel officials put out a second statement, conceding that the initial policy may have been an “overreaction to the perceived values of our customers,” and adding: “We have revisited our thinking on the subject and feel it only makes good business sense to continue to employ those folks who will provide the quality service our customers have come to expect from us.”
Nevertheless, rights activists remained angry because Dan Evins, company chairman in Lebanon, Tenn., was quoted in the Tennessean paper of Nashville as saying that homosexuals would not be employed if their presence posed the potential for disruption in rural communities.
In Washington, D.C., Robert Bray, spokesman for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, said that, in the past, homosexual employees have been fired because of their sexual orientation, but companies tended to “disguise the terminations. This Cracker Barrel policy is unprecedented because the company has codified and institutionalized bigotry and discrimination.”
In interviews Wednesday, Cheryl Summerville and Wylie Petty, who were fired, both said they had felt happy and secure in their jobs and were appalled when told they were being dismissed.
Petty, who said he was fired after working 15 months as a waiter in Tifton, Ga., said: “It was like someone had cut off my arm. I loved my job.” He said he had discussed his lifestyle with colleagues.
Summerville, who had worked eight months as a cook near Douglasville, Ga., said she was “shocked. I thought people had gotten past that point.” Since her firing, she has been asked to return but has not made up her mind whether to accept.
Abby Rubenfeld, who co-chairs the Tennessee Gay and Lesbian Alliance, said the policy showed that “overt discrimination is still alive and well in pockets of the country. As a Tennessean, I regret that one of those pockets is here.”
Bray provided reporters copies of the original Cracker Barrel policy and the later statement that apparently rescinds the policy. Both were signed by William A. Bridges, vice president of human resources, and dated Feb. 21 and Feb. 22, respectively.
In a letter to Evins on Wednesday, the Tennessee Gay and Lesbian Alliance castigated the policy as “archaic, unenlightened thinking.” The group called for a meeting to discuss the matter and threatened “direct actions protesting the policy at your franchises.”
Researcher Edith Stanley contributed to this story.
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ce06403199d59165d8e03749bd38e322 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2872-story.html | NEWS ANALYSIS : Hussein Playing His Final, Desperate Card : Iraq: Once again he appeals to nationalist pride, casting country as the invaded rather than the invader. | NEWS ANALYSIS : Hussein Playing His Final, Desperate Card : Iraq: Once again he appeals to nationalist pride, casting country as the invaded rather than the invader.
Playing a final political card for survival, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein on Wednesday tried to recast his unpopular, losing battle for Kuwait as a nationalist struggle for Iraq itself against an invading force determined to destroy it.
For the first time since allied divisions crossed into Iraq at the outset of the land war three days before, Hussein’s mouthpiece, Baghdad Radio, finally informed the Iraqi people at noon Wednesday that the allies actually had taken up positions on Iraqi soil.
“Their aim has clearly become to invade Iraq,” Hussein’s spokesman declared in the broadcast disclosing that a force of U.S. paratroopers landed in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah. However, it made no mention of the massive air and tank war on Iraq’s Republican Guard near Basra and elsewhere on the southern front.
Restating the Iraqi president’s latest campaign in a commentary broadcast just one hour after Baghdad tried to swap two U.N. resolutions for a cease-fire, the spokesman added, “Now that Iraq has agreed to withdraw . . . the allies have exposed the hatred they have for the Iraqi troops.”
Most military and political analysts said Hussein deliberately delayed informing his nation of the allied presence in Iraq until after he issued official pronouncements that all Iraqi forces had been withdrawn from Kuwait, which came earlier Wednesday. The aim, they added, is now to transform Iraq the invader, into Iraq the victim of invasion. And they stressed that the new strategy is clearly Hussein’s last hope of recapturing and winning support at home and abroad.
One Arab analyst who knows the Iraqi president personally indicated that the strategy primarily is meant for critical audiences in the Iraqi army and his ruling party.
“His own people internally are going to cling to him as much as possible in this time,” said Dr. Abdullah Toukan, an adviser to Jordan’s King Hussein. “The Iraqis already are absolutely convinced the West is out to destroy Iraq.”
Other analysts added that Hussein’s very survival now depends upon his ability to appeal to that nationalist pride, which he has manipulated deftly during the 12 years he has been in power.
Those analysts added, however, that Hussein’s internal popularity had hit an all-time low several weeks into the air war, when most Iraqis felt that keeping Kuwait was not worth sacrificing Iraq. And they stressed that his strategy suddenly to wrap what most Iraqis sense was a bitter defeat in Kuwait into the flag of a patriotic war for the Motherland may well be his only protection from assassination or overthrow in the short term, as it will continue to fuel his support as long as the allies remain in Iraq.
Such a strategy, though, also seeks to win Iraq new-found support in Moscow and other capitals where there is a natural suspicion of the West’s motives. Prominent Middle East analysts see in that a danger for the allies--and for Iraq itself--in the event of a prolonged military presence on Iraqi soil.
Jordan’s Crown Prince Hassan, an acquaintance and keen analyst of the Iraqi leader and his people, indicated that each day the allied troops remain in Iraq, they expose themselves not only to international condemnation but also to an increasing likelihood of triggering an all-out guerrilla war, particularly from Iraq’s heavily armed civilian militia.
Further, according to military analysts who witnessed Iraq’s eight-year war with Iran, if the allied forces continue to push into Iraq, they may meet with increasing resistance from Iraq’s regular army, including the use of chemical weapons.
Noting that the Iraqi forces were “not fighting on their home turf” in defending Kuwait, Prince Hassan said the Iraqi army will fight much harder to hold its own ground.
Asked whether the Iraqis are more likely to use chemical weapons now that allied troops are pushing into Iraq, Toukan, a nuclear physicist who advises King Hussein on scientific and environmental issues, replied: “Of course. They will use every single weapon they have to defend Iraq.”
During the Iran-Iraq War, observed Toukan and other analysts who witnessed it, Iraq’s forces fought the hardest when they were either defending their own territory or reclaiming land lost to Iran.
It was clearly to play to that home audience sentiment within the army itself that Hussein sharply altered his propaganda tactics, as thousands of his soldiers continued to fall through surrender, death or capture throughout Kuwait and southern Iraq on Wednesday.
Realizing that not only the outside world but many of his own people had begun to view his invasion and occupation of Kuwait as illegal expansionism, Hussein sought to use the same argument now to condemn Kuwait’s liberators.
Ever since Hussein came to power more than a decade ago, he has manipulated the Iraqis’ deep desire for symbols of national pride. Each major military advance that Iraq achieved filled the Iraqis with as much pride as it fueled the fears of Iraq’s enemies and the West.
Throughout the allied air war that destroyed most of those symbols of military strength and progress, as well as Iraq’s modern bridges and highways, Hussein’s propaganda machine continually reminded his people that the attacks were aimed at reducing their nation to the poverty and powerlessness that prevailed before Hussein’s Arab Baath Socialist Party came to power two decades ago.
But Wednesday’s pronouncements took that campaign much further. Coming just 24 hours after Hussein announced he was relinquishing his hold on Kuwait, the strategy, analysts say, is a desperate attempt to deflect popular criticism of the failed war effort and a possible challenge from within his own party.
“Saddam has survived because he has convinced his people that they needed him to survive,” said one diplomat based in Baghdad until just before the war began.
“He may be a dictator, but he’s their dictator. When he holds the world to ransom, the Iraqi people hold the world to ransom. But if his weaknesses ever become their weaknesses, and his own people think he’s leading them to the gallows, I’m not sure they’ll all decide to hang together.”
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411ba791fa55794ef8d3f5871b789455 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2873-story.html | The Day in the Gulf | The Day in the Gulf
BUSH HALTS ATTACK: What was called the largest U.S. tank battle since World War II was halted when President Bush ordered the allies to hold their fire. The battle pitted the U.S. Army’s VII Corps against Iraq’s Republican Guard about 50 miles west of Basra in southeastern Iraq. It involved as many as 800 U.S. tanks and armored vehicles and up to 300 Iraqi tanks.
KUWAIT CITY RETAKEN: Kuwait city was liberated. Kuwaiti Radio said allied troops were entering the Kuwait capital in a “majestic parade.” Kuwait’s international airport also was retaken by the allies after an armor battle, a Pentagon source said. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said the allies were on the verge of “complete and total victory” in freeing Kuwait and destroying Iraq’s offensive military capability.
ANOTHER IRAQI OFFER: Iraq’s U.N. ambassador said he has been authorized to tell the Security Council that Iraq is prepared to accept all 12 resolutions the council adopted after Iraq invaded Kuwait last August. U.S. officials called for further clarifications.
SCHWARZKOPF BRIEFING: Reviewing the war, the U.S. commander, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, said allied strategy relied on two feints that apparently took the Iraqis by surprise. One was the threat of an amphibious assault on the Kuwaiti coast, designed to force the Iraqis to concentrate their forces along the coast--which they did. The other was a last-minute shift of vast numbers of allied soldiers from east to west, allowing them to drive deep into Iraq.
ALLIED TOLLS: An American warplane mistakenly fired on two British infantry vehicles, killing nine soldiers, the British military reported. The French reported the deaths of seven American soldiers operating under French command. Allied combat deaths in the war totaled at least 126.
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cc1f90ab07d8fbbba9291a8d53b58b43 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2876-story.html | THE GULF WAR: The Battle Front : Luxury Bunkers | THE GULF WAR: The Battle Front : Luxury Bunkers
American troops who had heard accounts of starving Iraqi soldiers are surprised by some of the WELL-APPOINTED BUNKERS they’ve found. Pvt. Reuben Perez, a combat engineer from La Puente, Calif., said he cleared a bunker with a large velour sofa, a generator-powered TV, a small refrigerator and stocks of weaponry. Lt. Curtis Palmer of Douglasville, Ga., said he saw a command bunker with a shower stall, chairs, fresh eggs and fruit--and even a VCR. “They’ve been living pretty well.”
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5764185bcdf3b37798cd32981e41f6ec | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2877-story.html | THE GULF WAR: The Battle Front : Chinook CH-47 | THE GULF WAR: The Battle Front : Chinook CH-47
The giant transport helicopter played a key role in Sunday’s air assault into Iraq, the largest helicopter-led operation in military history. Chinooks ferried ammunition, aviation fuel, field artillery and even trucks to newly established allied fueling stations in Iraq. Chinooks have also been used to transport Iraqi POWs from the front to rear holding areas. Crew: 2 pilots, 1 crew chief Length: 51 feet Payload: 15,873 pounds or 33 troops Maximum speed: 188 m.p.h. Range: 300 nautical miles Endurance: 2.2 hours
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6f26e20179082dd02f2888300c40ac8b | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2878-story.html | THE GULF WAR: The Battle Front : Gulf Weather | THE GULF WAR: The Battle Front : Gulf Weather
Forecast low Wednesday night, high today:
Dhahran Partly cloudy 43/71 Riyadh Partly cloudy 46/75 Kuwait city Partly cloudy 41/67 Baghdad Cloudy 39/62
Outlook: Northern Iraq will experience mostly cloudy skies Friday, while partly cloudy to sunny skies prevail elsewhere with patchy morning fog. Saudi Arabia will be sunny.
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780169fd0eae99b3835165b52b5fa908 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2879-story.html | ACCIDENTAL DEATHS | ACCIDENTAL DEATHS
Military experts say that death by “friendly fire"--accidental attacks by one’s own forces--is always a risk in war. On Wednesday, the British military said that friendly fire killed nine of its soldiers. Among the friendly fire incidents in the Persian Gulf War:
Feb. 27: During a battle with Iraqi troops, a U.S. Air Force A-10 attack plane mistakenly fires on two armored personnel carriers, killing nine of 13 Britons. “The cruel fact of war is that no matter how many procedures are put in place, this kind of thing does happen,” said British Army Col. Barry Stevens.
Feb. 17: Two soldiers killed when U.S. Apache attack helicopter destroys two U.S. military vehicles in a border skirmish.
Feb. 2: U.S. Marine killed in cluster bomb attack on a U.S. convoy.
Jan. 29: Seven U.S. Marines killed in light armored vehicle when U.S. warplane hits Marine reconnaissance vehicle during tank battle along the Saudi-Kuwaiti border.
BACKGROUND
* One in every 50 of the U.S. soldiers who died in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War was a casualty of friendly fire.
* In Normandy, in July, 1944, 112 American soldiers were killed by U.S. warplanes when bombs fell short of their mark. They included Lt. Gen. Leslie McNair, commander of ground forces in Normandy and the highest-ranking officer to be killed by his own side.
* Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf, has described his own close call, when U.S. bombs were accidentally dropped near him in Vietnam.
* In the 1989 Panama invasion, two of the 23 U.S. soldiers killed were the victims of friendly fire.
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703f8ec14712dc5e378a9e69da12fdfb | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2880-story.html | SCHWARZKOPF’S STRATEGY | SCHWARZKOPF’S STRATEGY
The strategy was launched Aug. 7, just five days after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. It was relentlessly executed through months of U.N. negotiation, six weeks of allied bombing and five days of lightning-fast ground war against experienced Iraqi forces that greatly outnumbered allied combat troops. While pockets of Iraqi resistance remain, the Iraqi army is effectively out of commission.
Aug. 7, 1990-Jan. 17, 1991: DECEPTION
In early August, a limited defense force was put in place behind a Saudi task force along Saudi Arabia’s border with Kuwait and Iraq. By November, in response to massive numbers of Iraqi troops pouring south to the border, U.S. and Arab forces were built up in defensive positions aligned north against Iraqi positions in Kuwait. At the same time, the U.S. Navy built up a conspicuous presence in the Gulf. When diplomatic efforts failed, a massive air war was begun to weaken the Iraqi forces, particularly along the border.
The Strategy: Make the Iraqis think that their main engagement with the allies would occur along the Kuwait border, forcing them to concentrate troops there. Lead them to expect an amphibious assault, something they greatly feared. Isolate Kuwait, preventing Iraq from resupplying, reinforcing or communicating with troops. Put as many Iraqi units out of commission as possible.
Saturday, Feb. 23, 1991: THE ‘HAIL MARY’
Schwarzkopf and other allied commanders evaluated the number Iraqi divisions still functioning after more than five weeks of bombing and saw much better odds than those that existed in August. The destruction of their air force left the Iraqis blind to what the allies were doing. Schwarzkopf launched what he called his “Hail Mary” play--moving a massive number of troops and tons of materiel far to the west at blitzkrieg speed, knowing that the dug-in Iraqis were essentially immobilized along the Kuwaiti border.
The Strategy: The allies along the Kuwait border faced units at only 50% to 75% of their original strength. And they were then in position to flank the Iraqis on the west, while the Iraqis still expected the assault at the Kuwaiti border.
Sunday morning: THE FEINT
Against a background of amphibious maneuvers and naval gunfire, the 1st and 2nd Marine divisions and Saudi forces launched attacks and breached the barriers in the south. The Iraqis apparently believed tha they had guessed right, and they were totally unaware of what was going on to the west: a deep thrust by French armored and U.S. airborne divisions to take an Iraqi airfield at Al Salman. At the same time, the U.S 101st Airborne established a forward base deep inside Iraq.
The Strategy: To rivet the Iraqis’ attention on the assault in Kuwait while establishing a left flank deep in Iraqi territory. That would allow allied troops to move through areas with little to no opposition to positions behind the dug-in Iraqis.
Sunday afternoon: MOVING ON THREE FRONTS
1. The U.S. 1st and 3rd Armored divisions and 2nd Armored Cavalry Division thrust north, encountering minimal Iraqi resistance. The 101st Airborne drove farther into Iraq. At this point, allied troops were within just 150 miles of Baghdad.
2. The U.S. VII Corps breached the barriers and pushed into Iraq, followed by the British 1st Armored Division.
3. In what Schwarzkopf called a “superb operation,” the Marines pushed ahead toward Kuwait city, encountering heavy artillery fire, mines, barbed wire, booby traps and fire-filled trenches. They met with thousands of surrendering Iraqis. Arab forces penetrated the border defenses in southern and southwestern Kuwait.
The Strategy: The deception continued to work: The Iraqis believed the allies were mounting an all-out assault in the east while U.S., French and British forces quickly went around enemy fortifications and blocked the Iraqis on the west. For the Marines, strategy gave way to the hard work of capturing Kuwait city.
Monday and Tuesday: TIGHTENING THE NOOSE
1. The 24th Infantry Division punched all the way through to the Tigris and Euphrates Valley, blocking any escape route along the rivers by the Republican Guard.
2. The 101st Airborne also helped seal off northern positions, while the French set up a defensive flank to the west.
3. British forces and the VII Corps turned east to fight Iraqi forces from behind.
4. Arab troops turned east to meet up with the forces closing in on Kuwait city.
5. The Saudis and Marines pressed on north toward Kuwait city.
6. Special Forces teams cleared mines in the Gulf and performed other small-boat maneuvers that might precede an amphibious landing.
The Strategy: To finally trap the Iraqis on all sides.
Wednesday and Today: ‘CLOSING THE GATES’
The 18th Airborne Corps has created a solid wall across the north, with the VII Corps just to the south. Both are attacking the Republican Guard directly to the east. Arab and Kuwaiti forces are securing Kuwait city, and the 1st Marine Division holds the airport there. The 2nd Marines are blocking escape routes out of the city. In Schwarzkopf’s words, “the gates are closed.”
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8bb5c50fd72a924e72e2693df06c0507 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2881-story.html | No Poison Gas--a Mystery for the Allies : Military: Officers are baffled but relieved that Hussein did not use chemical weapons. | No Poison Gas--a Mystery for the Allies : Military: Officers are baffled but relieved that Hussein did not use chemical weapons.
As Iraq’s once-vaunted Republican Guard went down to final defeat in the last battles of the Persian Gulf War, one of the great puzzles of the conflict was why Saddam Hussein did not use the most fearsome weapon in his arsenal--chemical weapons.
Military interrogators are expected to put this issue high on their priority list of questions to ask Iraqi prisoners of war.
“I don’t know the answer but thank God they didn’t,” Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, U.S. commander of Operation Desert Storm, said Wednesday, reflecting both the bafflement and the relief felt by allied military officials over an issue that loomed as a potential nightmare from the beginning.
Although TNT is more effective, pound for pound, than chemicals in killing people, Hussein had repeatedly threatened to gas U.S.-led coalition armies as well as Israel. Chemical weapons were found in at least two Iraqi bunkers overrun in Kuwait, according to reports, and Iraqi field commanders were said to have had authority to use it since mid-January.
Still, if a definitive answer is not yet available, U.S. military experts and other analysts said that several factors appear to have deterred and prevented Iraq from using the terror weapon.
Schwarzkopf suggested that the key reason was the early and extensive destruction of Iraqi artillery, one of the two main delivery methods for the chemicals. “We went after the artillery big time,” he said.
Iraqi aircraft, the other potential delivery method, had either fled, been forced into hiding or been destroyed, he indicated.
Another major factor was the speed with which coalition troops broke through Iraq’s maze of minefields, razor wire and trenches along the Kuwaiti border, according to Pentagon officials. The allies overran Iraqi artillery positions or put the artillerymen to flight before the weapons could be used effectively.
The rapid advance was a deliberate U.S. tactic planned beforehand to lessen the vulnerability to chemical attack--the “dirtiest trick,” as one U.S. Army officer called it. The other tactic was to avoid massing, or concentrating, forces within Iraqi artillery range to minimize the effects of a gas attack if it came.
“We went through so fast, things were so confused, they (the Iraqis) didn’t know where to shoot,” a Pentagon official said. “At times, they hit their own men with H.E. (high explosive) rounds. And remember, with chemicals you can’t just fire one round. It has to be a barrage of many rounds to create a lethal cloud.”
Very little chemical poison is needed to kill: only one milligram of the volatile nerve gas sarin when inhaled, or five drops (200 milligrams) of the non-volatile nerve agent VX on the skin. But very large amounts must be delivered with accuracy and proper timing to be militarily significant.
One ton of nerve gas--or about the contents of 300 artillery rounds--are needed to produce heavy casualties among unprotected populations in an area one-third of a square mile, according to Harvard specialist Matthew Meselson. Winds must be light and the air moderately stable.
In Kuwait this week, weather conditions were not good for using either poison gases or nerve agents. Heavy rain fell and winds were turbulent and not blowing in their usual patterns for this season. In such conditions, chemicals could have been either quickly dissipated, neutralized or hurt Iraqi troops more than coalition forces.
Indeed, Vice Adm. Stanley Arthur, commander of U.S. naval forces in the Persian Gulf, said he believes that Hussein would have used chemical weapons against advancing allied forces if the wind had not changed shortly before the attack was launched early Monday morning.
“Right after the land campaign kicked off, the wind started going a little squirrelly,” Arthur said. “Here, in the middle of all this, we started picking up some southerly winds . . . I’m fairly sure the poor folks who were sitting in the field, looking at the prospect of the stuff flowing right back on them” simply decided against using it.
Still another factor could have been the leaflets and loudspeaker broadcasts warning Iraqi commanders that they would be held responsible if chemical weapons were used. “If you know you’re going to be overrun soon,” explained an Army officer, “you might not want to throw gas at the other guys. They may not treat you kindly when they arrive.”
Nevertheless, said Elisa Harris, a chemical warfare specialist at the Brookings Institution, “I’m surprised the Iraqis didn’t fire some chemicals to at least slow our troops down. Not necessarily lethal amounts, but enough to keep our guys in that heavy protective gear, maybe forced them to begin decontamination procedures and avoid contaminated areas, and become much more vulnerable to high explosive rounds.”
The fact that Hussein did not use chemical warheads on the Scud missiles fired against Israel also was puzzling despite various explanations.
The Jewish state escaped, U.S. intelligence sources said, because Iraq failed to develop a fuse for a Scud chemical warhead so that it could blow up most effectively--in the air to create a cloud or near the ground to spread poisonous liquid. All of the roughly 80 Scuds fired so far by Iraq have used only high explosive warheads.
Another possible reason is that Hussein feared he might accidentally gas Palestinians, his biggest supporters, with the inaccurate ballistic missiles, according to Amy Smithson, a chemical warfare expert at the Henry L. Stimson Center here. Four of the 39 Scuds fired at Israel landed in the occupied West Bank.
Nonetheless, if Hussein’s goal had been to bring Israel into the war and thereby split off the Arab coalition members, it remains surprising that he did not load at least one Scud with chemicals and fire it at Israel, experts agree. The presence of poisonous chemicals in a warhead, however ineffective, could well have driven Israel to retaliate.
In terms of battlefield use, Schwarzkopf said two other factors may have deterred Iraq: fear of U.S. nuclear retaliation and degradation of Iraqi chemical munitions in storage. He suggested that because of “the damage we did to their chemical production facilities, they were unable to upgrade the chemicals within their weapons.”
Non-government experts like Harris were skeptical, however. “I can’t believe Saddam Hussein really feared an American nuclear strike,” she said.
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a1c115d997590f386b70524214befda8 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2882-story.html | Marines Are Still at Sea--and Unhappy : Combat: The amphibious force proved an effective diversion for Iraqi forces. But the troops were hoping for a piece of the action. | Marines Are Still at Sea--and Unhappy : Combat: The amphibious force proved an effective diversion for Iraqi forces. But the troops were hoping for a piece of the action.
As the allies’ air-and-ground war against Iraq reached a rousing climax Wednesday night, many of the 17,000 members of the much-feared Marine amphibious assault force felt an understandable twinge of regret.
“So now we know what it’s like if they gave a war and nobody showed,” said one of the American fighting men who sat on the sidelines as the forces of the anti-Iraq coalition swiftly routed the enemy occupiers of Kuwait.
But that’s not to say that the amphibious force didn’t play an important role anyway in the greater scheme of things.
Indeed, its mere presence in the northern Persia Gulf led Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to keep a defensive force of 60,000 to 80,000 troops along the Kuwaiti shoreline. That deployment significantly lessened the threat to the coalition’s ground invasion of Kuwait and Iraq.
” . . . It became very apparent to us early on that the Iraqis were quite concerned about an amphibious operation across the shores to liberate Kuwait,” Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of Operation Desert Storm, said during a Wednesday night briefing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. “We continued our heavy operations out in the sea because we wanted the Iraqis to continue to believe that we were going to conduct a massive amphibious operation . . . (and) to concentrate his forces, which he did.”
To further freeze in place the Iraqi troops guarding against an amphibious assault, the Marines, elements of the 4th and the 5th Marine Expeditionary Brigades, actually feigned a full-fledged beach landing just after the ground invasion of Kuwait and Iraq began.
That ploy kept the Iraqis in place, bracing for an amphibious assault. Instead, they were rousted by allied ground forces that poured across the Kuwaiti border from Saudi Arabia.
Still, many members of the amphibious assault force, which has been sailing aboard U.S. vessels in the gulf for months, expressed mixed feelings about missing out on the action.
“I’d be very disappointed--to be among the first ones out here, to be on the first ship to sail, and not do anything,” said 1st Lt. Bob Wondra.
Cmdr. William Marshall, captain of the amphibious assault ship Gunston Hall, understood.
“We have been here for six months--training and preparing, and if we never got to do anything, I’d be disappointed,” said Marshall. “Then again, if we did an assault, there would be casualties.”
“If I had my druthers, I’d just as soon the war ended tomorrow and not have to expend those lives,” he said.
The Gunston Hall has been plying the Persian Gulf since Sept. 14.
As Schwarzkopf made clear in his hourlong briefing Wednesday, massive deception was a significant component of his overall war strategy, and the constant threat of a Marine amphibious assault was central to that plan.
Indeed, the expectation had been so high that there would be such an assault that the BBC actually broadcast a report four days ago saying the Marines had successfully landed on the well-fortified and strategically located Faylakah Island in Kuwait Bay, about 20 miles offshore from Kuwait City.
But elements of the 4th and the 5th Marine Expeditionary Brigades were hardly the only ones who have sat out the war.
This report was compiled in part from Pentagon pool reports reviewed by military censors.
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001494c148bfab278bb43691d4487cff | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2883-story.html | Iraqis React With Disbelief, Defiance as War Comes to Their Country : Baghdad: Residents learn of battles on their territory. They believe the allies mean to destroy the nation. | Iraqis React With Disbelief, Defiance as War Comes to Their Country : Baghdad: Residents learn of battles on their territory. They believe the allies mean to destroy the nation.
Surveying the wreckage of their shattered capital and the spectacle of their armed forces retreating under fire from allied artillery and aircraft, many Iraqis seemed convinced Wednesday that they face a daunting enemy whose main goal is their nation’s humiliation, not the liberation of Kuwait.
Baghdad Radio reported for the first time Wednesday that coalition paratroops had landed in southern Iraq, blocking the “dignified” pullout that had been sought by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
With the news that the fighting was occurring on Iraq’s soil, many people reacted with disbelief as the consequences of their government’s actions became clear.
“We are obliged to fight, for our nation and honor,” said Haider Jabouri, 53, owner of a clothing store.
But had Iraq gained anything from the conflict? He shook his head. “Until now, nothing,” he said.
The losses here have been catastrophic. There is no electricity, and water is scarce. Three of the busiest bridges in the heart of Baghdad have been destroyed by allied air raids. Fuel in one of the world’s biggest oil producers is extremely difficult to find and very expensive.
On the road that leads west from Baghdad to the Jordanian border, the mangled carcasses of destroyed trucks form a grim gallery on the side of the road. In some sections, the road is pockmarked from allied aircraft strafing.
Along the road, most communication towers are still standing, but they apparently have been rendered useless by pinpoint bomb or missile strikes at transmission centers.
As the danger seems to shift from the reversal of their conquest of Kuwait to the territorial integrity of Iraq, people appear to feel more directly threatened. Kuwait may or may not have mattered to Iraqis, but their own nation clearly does.
“Bush is coming in order to invade Iraq and destroy our country, not to free Kuwait,” Suhad Salien, 22, a housewife, said in an interview outside of Shorja market, the city’s oldest and largest. “We’re proud of our history and our heritage and we’ll never let Bush impose his will on the Iraqi people.”
Many people interviewed in the course of three hours of brief interviews in downtown Baghdad appear to view the war in intensely personal terms, perhaps more so than they had in the past, when what was at stake was a tiny emirate that few had ever seen.
“It’s true we’re only 18 million, but all of us are ready to fight,” said Fawzi Hussein, a 45-year-old lawyer. “In the new world order, which Mr. Bush is so concerned with, he is not prepared to respect Iraq’s strength and independence.”
Like many others, Hussein said that Bush, in league with Israel, had used Kuwait as a pretext for the destruction of Iraq. But through the bitterness and recrimination and conspiracy theories involving the supposed American-Zionist alliance, there is also a frank recognition here that Iraq has suffered tremendously from its president’s decision to invade Kuwait.
In the sprawling capital of 4 million, a visitor can drive through some neighborhoods admiring the beauty of shrines and the Tigris River, then turn a corner and encounter utter devastation. Around the corner from Shorja market, which is piled with trash from an interruption in pickups but otherwise undamaged, there is the ruined complex of the Central Bank, its roof collapsed, its pillars buckled inside their masonry lining. Crushed vehicles lie scattered on the ground.
Next door is the Souk al Benat, where youngsters used to window-shop for the latest fashions. Now it is a mess of splintered glass and boarded-up windows, a victim of “collateral damage,” in Pentagon terms, from the hit on the nearby Central Bank.
Although commercial life has been impaired by the relentless bombing and missile attacks, it has by no means ground to a halt. In the Shorja market, a busy retail trade goes on, squeezed but not choked by shortages and higher prices.
Candles, which are in great demand as the main source of light, have quadrupled in price. Eggs, like many other farm products that must be trucked to the capital amid fuel shortages, cost five times as much as before the war. But candies, nuts and spices, kitchen utensils, children’s clothing, shoes and paper products are all in abundant supply.
At first blush, the impression is that life in the Iraqi capital has become difficult, but not impossible.
“We are living as normal a life as possible and tending our offices despite the lack of petrol,” said Soad, 25, a typist.
Was the annexation of Kuwait worth so much destruction and suffering?
“There were many more important matters,” she replied.
This report was reviewed by Iraqi censors.
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304b247ac7ac001e3718b1260dae31c0 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2884-story.html | THE GULF WAR: The Battle Front : Embassy Reopening | THE GULF WAR: The Battle Front : Embassy Reopening
The U.S. EMBASSY IN KUWAIT CITY should be back in business within the next few days, the State Department said. Spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said that Ambassador Edward W. Gnehm Jr., at left, will reopen the embassy. It was closed Dec. 13 when the last foreign diplomats left Kuwait, including ex-ambassador W. Nathaniel Howell III. Gnehm was sworn in last month, but worked in Saudi Arabia.
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8cd08bd35ecb97cde2285f6b152c640a | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2885-story.html | U.S. ‘Phantom Brigade’ Slowed by POWs : Offensive: 3rd Infantry unit, spearheading the drive into Iraq, meets little opposition. But mass surrenders are frustrating. | U.S. ‘Phantom Brigade’ Slowed by POWs : Offensive: 3rd Infantry unit, spearheading the drive into Iraq, meets little opposition. But mass surrenders are frustrating.
They seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, prisoners materializing in the desert, white flags suddenly visible across the sand.
Tattered, thin and hungry, many had fled a remote Iraqi training camp as it was taken under fire by this advancing U.S. Army brigade. Now they were coming forth from all directions to tender their surrender.
Others said they had been walking for days, headed south from their military posts and the horror of the allied air bombardment and toward the promised generosity of the American invaders.
Some still carried the leaflets dropped as part of a U.S. psychological warfare campaign, each one depicting a crude caricature of a forlorn Iraqi soldier encircled by American battle tanks.
And as this 1st Armored Division plowed northward over little-defended terrain, its tanks and armored personnel carriers in a flying wedge across the desert, it seemed for most of the afternoon as if that cartoon had become reality.
“Iraq is Arab, and Kuwait is Arab,” one apologetic Iraqi soldier told his Army captors. “I don’t know why we want Kuwait.”
U.S. officers in this brigade, which took its first three prisoners early Monday afternoon, started off according to a grand plan that called for military police to escort each small group toward interrogators at the rear.
But the numbers soon swelled beyond imagination as the Army continued its northward march, with more white flags and handkerchiefs waving at every mile, and soon the task of taking prisoners had become almost overwhelming.
Tanks and other armored vehicles waited in their tracks and an entire division halted its advance as soldiers scurried to round up the Iraqis who made clear long before a shot was fired that they would rather quit than fight.
“You’ve been victimized by success,” the division commander, Maj. Gen. Ronald H. Griffith, assured his subordinates by radio.
But the slowdown was frustrating to American commanders whose prisoner collection resources were quickly overwhelmed.
“What does Saddam do?” asked one stunned American soldier, a driver in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, “just take people off the streets and give them guns?”
“Ain’t going to be nobody left to fight,” grumbled his commander, Maj. Roy Adams, only half in jest as he stood grimy-faced in the turret. As brigade operations officer, he had become a director of the roundup.
A few miles forward, a Cobra attack helicopter was hovering behind two dozen prisoners, herding them as they marched south obediently. In their haste to surrender, they had flagged down the chopper as it patrolled the desert.
Another Cobra fired a few shots at an Iraqi armored vehicle before its passengers and crew piled out in haste, waving the white flags they seemed to have ready for the occasion.
But more typical as the prisoner tally for this brigade alone climbed from the scores into the hundreds were the Iraqis who walked toward advancing armored vehicles, unarmed and their uniforms almost unrecognizable, often carrying little but a canteen and a rudimentary gas mask.
First, there would be two or three appearing in the middle of the desert. And then, as the brigade moved in to attack the training camp, they came in groups of 20, 30 or more, having scattered in four directions as the Americans rumbled north.
By nightfall, what began as a novelty had clearly become a burden. Asked how many prisoners he had gathered in what was perhaps his battalion’s 15th roundup of the afternoon, Lt. Col. Pat Egan had given up his careful count.
“I got a ‘load of ‘em,” he said.
The brigade had launched into Iraq at 4:30 p.m. Sunday, roaring through gaps blasted through an Iraqi border berm in a wide-flank armored attack in which commanders were so confident of encountering no immediate opposition that all headed into battle with hatches open to the sky.
The unit, detached from the 3rd Infantry Division, served as the advance guard for the 1st Armored Division in the centerpiece of the 7th Corps attack.
The massive Army overland assault, from a position well to the west of Kuwait, was launched about 12 hours after the U.S. ground offensive began, in what was to be the main American strike force in a bid to penetrate deep within Iraq.
A gunner held up a sign that said “Welcome to Iraq,” and the brigade commander, Col. James Riley, came on radio to remind his men that they were about to qualify for the combat duty patch that soldiers wear on their right side.
“When we cross that line,” he said, “shift that Marne (3rd Infantry) patch from the left side of your helmet to the right, because that’s where it will belong.”
The division met no enemy resistance in its first hours of the offensive, and suffered its only casualties in a minor auto accident and the explosion of a dud artillery shell that left three soldiers wounded.
“The soldiers know this is the way home,” said Maj. Adams, the brigade operations officer, as thousands of tanks, armored personnel carriers and other vehicles began to head north in a battle formation that stretched across the horizon. “And it’s the right thing to do.”
The initial move north came on a gusty, gritty day that turned the desert dusky with blowing sand; most helicopters were grounded, and tanks rumbled in vast formations across the desert with no forward guard.
Soldiers wore chemical protective suits and had taken pills designed to ward off the effects of nerve gas.
This report, held up by the Pentagon’s pool system and reviewed by military censors, was written before the U.S. VII Corps plunged into a tank battle against Iraq’s Republican Guard.
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61f80fc81891a75a83f217241e6e89e2 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2887-story.html | THE GULF WAR: The Battle Front : Words on the War | THE GULF WAR: The Battle Front : Words on the War
“The calls for ‘punishment of the aggressor’ and for ideological restructuring of Iraq have an all-too-familiar ring. The 1980-88 Iraq-Iran War dragged on as long as it did because the Iranians stubbornly demanded that Saddam and his regime be punished for invading Iran. Iran’s revolutionary dogmatists insisted that long-term peace was not possible with Saddam and his regime still in power. Today’s Iranian leaders wisely warn of pending disaster should Iraq’s army be gratuitously destroyed. Attempts to impose a Pax Americana could result in a classic anarchical quagmire. Iraq’s remaining military and citizenry should deal with Saddam in their own way, which surely they will.”
-- W. SCOTT HARROP, teacher of Gulf politics, University of Virginia.
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932ac2c0de77127900164cefa8e5b526 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2888-story.html | Baghdad May Not Have Full Power for a Year | Baghdad May Not Have Full Power for a Year
The government will need at least one year to restore full electricity supplies to Baghdad because of severe bomb damage, a senior Iraqi engineer said Wednesday.
The engineer, Thakir Ismail Qubaisi, said U.S.-led air raids in the first week of the Gulf War destroyed all 10 of the Iraqi capital’s substations, used to distribute power to Baghdad’s 4.5 million inhabitants. There was no independent confirmation of his claim that all substations had been knocked out.
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ad01170711be725d92322e073810d0e0 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2890-story.html | THE 12 U.N. RESOLUTIONS | THE 12 U.N. RESOLUTIONS
These are the 12 resolutions adopted by the U.N. Security Council since the invasion of Kuwait. Baghdad Radio said the Iraqi leadership had agreed to abide by three of the resolutions--660, 662 and 674. White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said the statement fell short, adding that the Iraqis had rejected resolutions 661, 665 and 667. Here are all 12:
* Aug. 3. One day after Iraq invaded Kuwait, the Security Council voted 14-0 for Resolution 660 to condemn the invasion and demand the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Iraq’s troops.
* Aug. 6. The council voted 13-0 on Resolution 661 to impose a trade and financial embargo of Iraq.
* Aug. 9. In Resolution 662, the council voted 15-0 to declare Iraq’s annexation of Kuwait null and void in international law.
* Aug. 18. In Resolution 664, the council voted 15-0 to demand that Iraq free all detained foreigners.
* Aug. 25. The council voted 13-0 on Resolution 665 to give the United States and other naval powers the right to enforce the economic embargo.
* Sept. 13. The council voted 13-2 on Resolution 666 to allow humanitarian food aid into Iraq or Kuwait only “to relieve human suffering.”
* Sept. 16. The council voted 15-0 on Resolution 667 to condemn Iraq’s aggressive acts against diplomatic missions in Kuwait, including the abduction of foreigners in the buildings.
* Sept. 24. On Resolution 669, the council voted 15-0 to stress that only its Sanctions Committee has the power to permit food, medicine or other humanitarian aid to be sent into Iraq or occupied Kuwait.
* Sept. 25. The council voted 14-1 on Resolution 670 to explicitly expand its economic embargo to include all air cargo traffic in or out of Iraq and Kuwait, except for cargoes of humanitarian aid specifically authorized by its Sanctions Committee.
* Oct. 29. The council voted 13-0 on Resolution 674 to hold Iraq liable for war damages and economic losses, to ask nations to collect evidence of grave human rights abuses by the occupying forces, to demand that the Western embassies in Kuwait City be restocked with food and water, and to demand that all hostages be released.
* Nov. 28. The council voted 15-0 on Resolution 677 to condemn Iraq’s alleged attempts to drive out Kuwaitis and repopulate their country, and it asked U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar to take possession of Kuwait’s census and citizenship records for safekeeping.
* Nov. 29. The council voted 12-2 on Resolution 678 to give Baghdad “one final opportunity” until Jan. 15 to comply with all previous resolutions. After that date, nations allied with Kuwait are authorized “to use all necessary means” to force Iraq to withdraw and honor the resolutions, a phrase that all council members agree would permit a military strike.
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952944b69c742db1b0c652baff4e2f82 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2891-story.html | THE GULF WAR: The Diplomatic Front : In the Mideast | THE GULF WAR: The Diplomatic Front : In the Mideast
In Damascus, SYRIAN President Hafez Assad and LEBANESE President Elias Hrawi held talks on the future of the Middle East after Saddam Hussein’s defeat in Kuwait. Prime Minister Mudar Badran told JORDAN’S Parliament that Iraq’s retreat from Kuwait was not a defeat but only part of Iraq’s plan to defend its country. “The south of Iraq will become a large graveyard for every invader against this pure land,” he said. Jordan is officially neutral in the war, but many Parliament members support Iraq. In LEBANON, thousands of Palestinians marched through the Ein el Hilwa refugee camp in the port city of Sidon chanting anti-American slogans.
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6730bb1feac6a2e4eb72d74a6aa4025c | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2893-story.html | Congress Steps Up Pressure on Allies to Pay Their Share : Costs: Anger and frustration are mounting over unpaid pledges. Lawmakers worry that the money won’t arrive. | Congress Steps Up Pressure on Allies to Pay Their Share : Costs: Anger and frustration are mounting over unpaid pledges. Lawmakers worry that the money won’t arrive.
The war in the Persian Gulf is rapidly drawing to a close. American and coalition troops are liberating Kuwait and trouncing the Iraqi Republican Guard. Now comes the hard part: Getting U.S. allies to help pay for the short but expensive conflict.
With the war all but won after just a few days of ground fighting, anger and frustration are rapidly mounting in Congress over the failure of many of the allies to ante up the cash they pledged.
Now, policy-makers say they fear that the allies, both major powers such as Japan and Germany and rich Gulf states such as the United Arab Emirates, will not follow through on their pledges once the fighting ends and the pressure on them has eased.
As the war winds down in the Middle East, the issue is escalating rapidly on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers, flush over the U.S. victory and embarrassed over their earlier reluctance to support the war, are looking for a way to “do something” to claim America’s due.
“We have this the-check-is-in-the-mail syndrome going on, with countries like Japan that have the most to gain from secure oil supplies doing absolutely nothing,” said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, (D-Vt.).
Congress members are especially upset at Japan, which has refused to send troops to the Gulf.
“I have never seen such condescension on the part of the Japanese, who wouldn’t even send a medical team to the Gulf,” Leahy said.
And feelings about Germany are intensifying. German firms played a key role in helping Iraq develop its military and terrorist facilities, and some Germans have been vocally opposed to the U.S. effort, with some German physicians even refusing to treat American wounded.
“It is going to be very hard to get the money after the crisis is over,” complained Sen. Dale Bumpers, (D-Ark.). “And frankly, I don’t think we’re going to get it.”
Although the Bush Administration has been promised about $53 billion in cash from Germany, Japan, Saudi Arabia, the exiled government of Kuwait and others backing the allied effort, only about $14 billion actually has arrived in cash transfers and in-kind payments.
Japan, the world’s second-largest economy after the United States, has still not approved any assistance for 1991. Indeed, the war will almost certainly be over before its Parliament comes through with a vote of support for about $9 billion in promised financial aid.
In addition, the Gulf War is bloating the U.S. budget deficit. Although the White House insists that the United States should only have to ante up $15 billion in added spending to complement the foreign pledges, private analysts are dubious at best.
They warn that the federal budget deficit could rise to between $320 billion and $330 billion in fiscal 1992 if the allied money does not come through.
Although Japan has pledged $10.7 billion in cash or equipment and supplies for 1990 and 1991, only $1.3 billion actually has come in, all of that during 1990. The remaining funds require approval by the Japanese Parliament.
Germany, meanwhile, has sent the Pentagon $2.1 billion of its pledged $5.5 billion for 1991, in addition to some in-kind aid for 1990 that ironically included more than $500 million in shoddy surplus East German military equipment.
Even the Persian Gulf states of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, along with the United Arab Emirates, are the targets of mounting criticism.
Although Saudi Arabia has provided billions of dollars of in-kind assistance for U.S. troops, in the form of water, food and fuel, the Saudis have still paid only about $6 billion out of a total of $16 billion in cash assistance they have pledged for 1991.
At the same time, oil industry analysts note that the Saudis have received at least $10 billion in additional oil revenues as a result of the crisis and the initial surge in oil prices.
Normally secretive Saudi officials have sought to underscore their commitment to the coalition by publicly revealing that the government has borrowed $3 billion from Western banks to help pay for the war. But congressional critics complain that the Saudis could do more.
“If we hadn’t moved, Saudi Arabia would be the 20th province of Iraq right now,” said Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.). “Their $16 billion pales in comparison with what they should be doing.”
And despite the Gargantuan U.S. liberation effort, the exiled government of Kuwait has not sent in all of its pledged funds either. It has provided $3.5 billion, more than $12 billion short of the $16 billion it promised.
But some of the greatest congressional scorn is being directed at the United Arab Emirates, which rebuffed earlier Administration requests for up to $7 billion in assistance and has failed to pay up two-thirds of the $3 billion it eventually promised.
As a result, while the Bush Administration continues to insist that the allied pledges will come in, impatient congressional leaders are starting to warn of a national backlash against Japan and other nations that fail to live up to their promises.
“We in Congress have to keep asking for the money, and keep the pressure on,” said House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt, (D-Mo.). “And I think that’s what Congress is going to be doing. . . . They want the allies to do their fair share.”
In fact, some in Congress are starting to call for trade sanctions against Japanese products if the Japanese Parliament refuses to approve that country’s promised assistance.
“If they don’t come up with it, you can come back and put on a Gulf tariff bill,” Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.) said.
“You don’t have to go ask for pledges, you should go tell the Japanese what their fair share is,” Hollings added. “And then if they don’t come up with it, that’s fine, we can go get it from them when their cars show up in the Port of Charleston.”
Bush Administration officials acknowledge that they have not yet figured out how to force allied nations to meet their commitments if those governments feel that the need for the assistance is no longer a high priority once the war is over.
Richard G. Darman, director of the Office of Management and Budget, insisted in congressional testimony that the Administration is convinced that the money will arrive, but he declined to say what the White House might do if it doesn’t.
Michael J. Boskin, President Bush’s chief economic adviser, added that “it wouldn’t make sense for (the White House) to get into hypotheticals on what would happen if they don’t come through.”
But Democratic congressional leaders seem unmollified, particularly in the face of new fears that at least some U.S. forces or equipment may end up staying in the Gulf beyond the war.
Robert D. Reischauer, director of the Congressional Budget Office, warned Wednesday that “the costs of postwar policies, while uncertain, could be substantial, perhaps costing the United States more than the war.”
California Rep. Julian C. Dixon (D-Los Angeles), a key member of the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense, said that if the Administration doesn’t put more pressure on the allies, Congress may place conditions on the use of the $15 billion the White House is seeking for Operation Desert Storm.
“We have got to have some way to force the Administration to turn up the heat on these countries,” Dixon said.
Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Tex.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, agreed.
“Before the Congress votes on additional funds for the war, I think the Administration should press for faster payments,” he said.
For their part, the Japanese seem to understand that their performance has drawn disapproval in the United States.
Japanese officials now say they are confident that Parliament will approve the promised aid package sometime in March and say they expect to send all $9 billion to the Pentagon immediately after legislative approval.
German officials also assert that their funds are coming promptly. A spokesman for the German Embassy in Washington insisted that German cash has been arriving at the Pentagon “as soon as our American friends have put in their requests for it.”
But officials in both countries concede that they may have to rethink their roles in the world in the wake of their reluctance to take the lead in the Persian Gulf crisis.
In both countries, government leaders now understand that they must change their postwar constitutions to allow for their involvement in United Nations peacekeeping forces in future crises so they can do more than just provide cash to the United States military.
“This crisis occurred when Japan was just beginning to realize it was an economic superpower,” observed Hibeaki Ueda, a senior official at the Japanese Embassy in Washington.
“We thought we had at least a vague idea of our role in a new world order, but this Iraqi invasion made us realize that we lack one important fact of power--military power,” Ueda said. “This was a good lesson for us.”
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f64220759071c2c1c881e353e6f7a1de | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2894-story.html | THE GULF WAR: The International Front : Willing to Work Abroad | THE GULF WAR: The International Front : Willing to Work Abroad
U.S. companies with contracts to snuff out hundreds of oil well fires in postwar Kuwait are being deluged with telephone calls from THOUSANDS OF JOB APPLICANTS. But most of the companies aren’t hiring; the teams have been formed for months. Red Adair Co., perhaps the best known of the firms, has taken about 4,000 calls a day this week. Many applicants are urban firefighters looking for bigger battles, but inquiries also have come from laid-off construction workers and day laborers lured by the potential of large paychecks.
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5c6a9248047d2659b535fe0dccaae5d8 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2897-story.html | Soviet Paper Tells of Iraqi ‘Courage,’ Alleges U.S. Blood Lust : Propaganda: The message the journal apparently wants to get across is the continued imperialistic bent of Washington. | Soviet Paper Tells of Iraqi ‘Courage,’ Alleges U.S. Blood Lust : Propaganda: The message the journal apparently wants to get across is the continued imperialistic bent of Washington.
The 1.8 million readers of the arch-conservative daily Sovietskaya Rossiya opened their newspapers Wednesday to a gripping and detailed, if completely outlandish, version of how the war was going in the Persian Gulf:
“Here are the latest reports from the front: Iraqi forces continue their fierce battles with the enemy,” the paper said.
It continued: “Iraqi fighters have courageously taken the first mighty blow, remained standing and in turn, units and detachments of the 3rd Corps under Gen. Salakh Abbud have counterattacked. . . . The Iraqi army has shown its steadfastness, courage and valor.”
Such, at any rate, was the dispatch filed by army Maj. Gen. Viktor I. Filatov, editor-in-chief of the Soviet Defense Ministry’s Military-Historical Magazine, who was sent to Baghdad last week as a special correspondent for Sovietskaya Rossiya, the organ of the ultra-conservative Russian Communist Party.
It was a report that seemed hallucinatory when compared to what other Soviet newspapers and television are saying, but that was quite understandable in the current political context here. The 55-year-old military journalist painted a glowing picture of Iraqi confidence and bravery under fire, contrasted with American blood lust and killer technology run wild.
“From reliable sources, it’s become known to me that the allied attack has bogged down,” Filatov wrote. “If there are five attacking columns, as the Americans boast, they are not really advancing but marking time on the territory of Saudi Arabia.”
Allied soldiers who dare crawl out of their trenches are immediately pinned down by Iraqi infantrymen, he reported.
“Today we went to the Iraqi Foreign Ministry,” Filatov wrote. “I saw beaming faces. People were discussing the latest events. There is not such an ambience in a country’s Foreign Ministry when it stands on the brink of catastrophe.”
Sovietskaya Rossiya, on sale in Moscow news kiosks as Kuwaiti troops were rehoisting the flag in their liberated capital, did not say when Filatov had sent in his dispatch, but that may have been irrelevant anyway. The message both the newspaper and the general apparently seemed to want to get across to readers was the continued imperialistic bent of the United States, despite Kremlin attempts at perestroika in superpower relations.
“In my time, I was in Korea and Vietnam,” Filatov wrote. “I saw what the Americans did there with their B-52s and napalm, their chemical and bacteriological weapons. And now I’m here, in an Iraq at war. I see what the Americans are doing here. And I can say that nothing has changed in the thinking or acts of the GIs since the times of brigandage in Korea and Vietnam.
“I don’t know what else could be bombed--everything is wrecked, damaged and eradicated,” Filatov said of Baghdad. “ ‘Barbarians of the 20th Century.’ Under that headline I once wrote a report from Saigon. Recently, I thought I’d never have to write anything like that again. I thought the Americans, after that war of piracy, had changed. But no!”
Filatov’s article was just the latest example of how the Persian Gulf War has been seized upon by both Communist hard-liners and reformers and coverted into a domestic political cause celebre.
For Soviet progressives, now very much on the defensive, joint U.S.-Soviet opposition to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein at the United Nations has pointed the way to a safer post-Cold War world and to a budding superpower partnership. For the right, in contrast, the conflict has bared very real differences in superpower interests and the neo-colonialist streak they discern in U.S. foreign policy.
“The language of guns and death-dealing B-52 bombers is something we have been familiar with a long time. It has nothing in common with the ‘new thinking’ which the Americans applauded warmly, but did little concrete to support,” Marshal Viktor G. Kulikov, one-time commander in chief of the Warsaw Pact, said in a recent interview with the Communist Party daily Rabochaya Tribuna.
The Soviet press Wednesday also offered an intriguing glimpse of Hussein the leader and the man, as President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s personal envoy to the Persian Gulf described in Pravda the dealings he had with Hussein back in October.
Even then, only two months after he sent his tanks and troops rolling into Kuwait, Hussein acknowledged that he might have to abandon the emirate “under certain conditions,” Yevgeny M. Primakov wrote in Pravda. But Hussein expressed fear about the wrath of his people if he did so, he said.
“After I gave up all the results of the eight-year war with Iran on Aug. 15 and returned the situation to the way it was before the start of hostilities, the Iraqi people will not forgive me for unconditional withdrawal of the troops from Kuwait,” Primakov quoted Hussein as saying.
“ ‘What about an outlet to the sea?’ the people will ask me,” Hussein reportedly said. He told the Soviet envoy that “other problems” in the region, clearly meaning the future of the Palestinians, would also have to be solved.
“If all I have is a dilemma of whether to sink on my knees and capitulate, or fight, then I choose the second option,” Hussein declared.
Primakov recalled asking the Iraqi leader whether he hadn’t developed a “Masada complex,” referring to the band of Jewish Zealots who chose to die rather than surrender their fortress to the Roman legions.
Hussein, Primakov said, “nodded in the affirmative.”
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834630b33bfb377fb1324cfd4c926ab5 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2899-story.html | THE GULF WAR: The Home Front : Musical Protest | THE GULF WAR: The Home Front : Musical Protest
Seventeen members of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra will not take their seats until the playing of the national anthem is done. Kirk Trevor, conductor of the 100-member orchestra, said the protest was not against the Gulf War but AGAINST THE KIND OF ZEALOUS PATRIOTISM that some believe leads to war. In past years, the season’s first symphony performance has begun with the national anthem. But this year, the anthem will open every performance.
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49e15e6b6cb4ce480f8ea817a1f1113b | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2900-story.html | THE GULF WAR: The Home Front : Market Update | THE GULF WAR: The Home Front : Market Update
Oil: Crude rose 49 cents to $18.86 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Dow Industrials: The stock market rallied with renewed force amid increasing signs that the Gulf War was nearing an end. The 30 industrial average rose 24.51 to 2,889.11.
Credit Markets: Government bond prices closed unchanged to slightly lower.
Metals: Gold settled at $361.70 an ounce, up $2.70 from late Tuesday.
Currency: The dollar was mixed in a session dominated by technical factors and fears that a Persian Gulf victory may not lift the United States out of its economic slump.
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abb2670b782f266b012ee2fb9f8ddf27 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2901-story.html | Pennsylvania Area Mourns 10 of Its Reservists Killed by an Iraqi Missile : Casualties: Two of the dead are women. The unit had been in Saudi Arabia only five days and was far from the front. | Pennsylvania Area Mourns 10 of Its Reservists Killed by an Iraqi Missile : Casualties: Two of the dead are women. The unit had been in Saudi Arabia only five days and was far from the front.
The news of imminent victory in the Persian Gulf was not uppermost Wednesday in the minds of residents of this small town and others like it in the western foothills of the Alleghenies.
Rather, their thoughts were of Christine Mayes of nearby Rochester Mills and Beverly Clark of Armagh--two of the first three American women to die in the Gulf War. Adrienne L. Mitchell, 20, an Army private from Moreno Valley in California, also died in the attack.
Thoughts centered also on Anthony Madison and John Boliver and the others. This was a day for tears and prayers.
The families and friends of 10 reservists in the 14th Quartermaster Detachment based here began to learn which of their loved ones had died when an Iraqi Scud missile hit their makeshift barracks Monday in Saudi Arabia.
“The worst fears of the Army Reserves--and of us--has come true,” said Lt. Col. Paul L. Rots of the 99th Army Reserve Command. “When you lose that many from one unit, it’s aunts, uncles, friends. That’s what makes it so tragic. This is something you don’t ever forget.”
The curly-haired Mayes, 22, had become engaged to be married on Feb. 17--the day her detachment left for the Gulf. Athletic, outgoing Clark, 23, was recalled by her mother as fearful she would never return from Saudi Arabia.
Madison, 27, who realized a lifelong ambition when he joined the Army, left behind the high school sweetheart he had married and a young son and daughter.
“I just don’t believe he’s gone,” Norman Madison said in a tear-filled television interview. “He promised me he’d be back.”
Circumstances appeared to make the deaths particularly difficult to accept. The reserve unit had been in Saudi Arabia only five days before the attack. It was in Dhahran, far from the front lines where the ground war was being waged. The 28 soldiers killed represented more fatalities than were inflicted by the previous 70 Scud attacks on Israel, Saudi Arabia and smaller Gulf nations combined.
The missile eluded U.S. military tracking until two minutes before it hit because it was not traveling in the normal arc of a Scud, the military said at a news briefing here Wednesday. This may have been because it was breaking up, officers conjectured.
“The trajectory had been thrown off as a result of something wrong with the Scud, and it was going end over end,” said Maj. Gen. James B. Baylor, commander of the 99th Army Reserve Command.
Moreover, Baylor said, apparently no Patriot missile was fired to intercept the Scud because the Patriot system was temporarily shut down so crews could add a new piece of equipment.
The missile obliterated a transformed warehouse in which many of the troops were sleeping. The 28 killed included one member of the 326 Quartermaster Detachment based in New Castle, Pa., and several reservists from elsewhere in the United States. The incident also left 89 wounded.
Pennsylvania Gov. Robert P. Casey on Wednesday declared a week of mourning for the state’s war dead. Noting the unit’s distance from the actual fighting, Casey said: “The random cruelty of war struck them with full force.
“They were our sons and daughters,” Casey said. “Some have given, in Lincoln’s words, ‘the last full measure of their devotion.’ ”
The blue-collar towns and hamlets spread among the rolling hills here remembered and grieved in various ways.
At Greensburg Central Catholic High School, about 500 students and teachers sang, prayed and lit candles in a memorial ceremony.
At Monesson High School, one of the yellow ribbons on display for graduates in the Gulf was changed to black to commemorate Anthony Madison.
“She was doing what she wanted to do,” Darlene Mayes said of her oldest daughter. “I was proud of her. I don’t hold this against anybody.”
All Christine ever wanted, her mother told a television reporter, was a house, a dog, a pickup truck and a couple of kids.
A friend recalled that Joseph Bongiorni of Morgantown, W. Va., was such an achiever that, as a member of his high school football team, he played the trumpet in the band in his shoulder pads at halftime.
A memorial service was scheduled at the First Presbyterian Church in Greensburg for Saturday. The bodies of those killed were flown to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware Tuesday night and were being returned to the families.
“When there’s a loss of life, everybody sticks together,” a Dayton woman said. “Especially in a little town like this.”
Residents volunteered food and offered to baby-sit or assist in other ways.
The Army is also providing aid by establishing an upgraded family support program at the Greensburg armory. Families of casualties will be offered help with counseling, benefits, medical bills, funeral arrangements and insurance.
More will need it. Notification teams were still making visits to the relatives of the dead Wednesday before the military releases additional names.
Yet, amid the grief and shock, for some, at least, there was relief. It came with calls from husbands or sons or daughters that they had survived the Scud attack.
Edwin McCawley of Greensburg said he was “more relieved (than) I’ve ever been in my life” when his son phoned from the Gulf to say he had only required three stitches in his arm after the attack.
The western Pennsylvania reserve unit, based 25 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, was responsible for water purification. Its 69 members included 44 from the region and 25 from around the country who were deployed to fill out the ranks.
The deaths dominated newscasts on Pittsburgh TV stations.
Word of the impending American and allied triumph against Iraq was, of course, welcomed here as well. But it was bittersweet.
Said one man: “I’ll be glad when it’s over and our people come home.”
Then he added with a shrug: “Some of them, anyway.”
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00480bb09f459f066ba6a4547406a9ce | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2903-story.html | PARTIAL LIST OF SCUD VICTIMS | PARTIAL LIST OF SCUD VICTIMS
Here is a partial list of those killed Monday when an Iraqi missile struck a U.S. Army barracks near Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The names were provided by Army officials and relatives. Specialist Steven E. Atherton, 25, Dayton, Pa.
Specialist John Boliver Jr., 27, Monongahela, Pa.
Specialist Joseph P. Bongiorni, 20, Morgantown, W.Va.
Sgt. John Boxler, 44, Johnstown, Pa.
Specialist Beverly Clark, 23, Armagh, Pa.
Specialist Steve Farnen, 22, Salisbury, Mo.
Specialist Glen D. Jones, 21, Grand Rapids, Minn.
Specialist Frank S. Keough, 22, North Huntington, Pa.
Specialist Anthony Madison, 27, Monessen, Pa.
Specialist Christine Mayes, 22, Rochester Mills, Pa.
Michael Mills, 23, of Panora, Iowa
Pvt. Adrienne L. Mitchell, 20, Moreno Valley, Calif.
Specialist Thomas G. Stone, 20, Jamestown, N.Y.
Specialist Richard V. Wolverton, 24, Latrobe, Pa.
Specialist James Worthy, Albany, Ga.
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a94db42f3d641adc72d0c79aaee62793 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2904-story.html | Police in Santa Barbara Defuse 2 Bombs | Police in Santa Barbara Defuse 2 Bombs
Two pipe bombs, one of which carried an anti-war message, were discovered Wednesday at offices used by a U.S. congressman and a university ROTC program and later disarmed by police.
The bomb left at the Santa Barbara office of U.S. Rep. Robert J. Lagomarsino (R-Ventura) was accompanied by a note, taped to a window, that began: “You Can’t Ignore This War. . . .” The top of the note was still visible Wednesday, but the rest of the message had been removed by authorities.
A group calling itself The Rites of Spring left recorded messages Wednesday morning at several local newspapers and radio stations claiming responsibility.
At the Daily Nexus, the student newspaper at UC Santa Barbara, a reporter said the message indicated opposition to the war and stated: “Somebody has to take a stand.”
The message also stated that a third bomb had been left at the UCSB administration building. But by the end of the day, no bomb had been found.
The two bombs that were discovered were 18-inch pipe bombs with string fuses and powder explosives, said Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s spokesman Tim Gracey. They were disarmed by a joint police and sheriff bomb squad. The FBI also is investigating the case. Police said they had no information about the group.
Late Tuesday night, fire destroyed much of the campus registrar’s office, but authorities are uncertain whether the incident was related, said UCSB Police Lt. Bill Bean. An initial investigation indicated that the fire, which caused about $500,000 in damage, was caused by a faulty electrical outlet. But because of the bombs, arson investigators are conducting a more thorough examination of the building, Bean said.
The bombs discovered Wednesday had been placed in the open--outside the front doors of the two facilities, said Gracey of the Sheriff’s Department. The bomb outside the Reserve Officer Training Corps building was noticed by a campus employee at 2:30 a.m. A note also accompanied the bomb, but police would not reveal the contents.
An employee at the building where Lagomarsino’s office is located saw the second pipe bomb when she arrived for work at 8:30 a.m. Lagomarsino voted to support the use of force to drive Iraqi troops out of Kuwait.
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2bad5dc1a13f7f0e3940234e83cd3808 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2906-story.html | THE GULF WAR : Israel: Soviet Immigration | THE GULF WAR : Israel: Soviet Immigration
The war has drastically reduced the pace of SOVIET IMMIGRATION to Israel, with the February rate--between 180 and 370 a day--running at less than half the December figure of 1,000 a day. At that rate, the Israeli government says, 300,000 Soviet immigrants will arrive in 1991--
100,000 less than earlier projections. Many Arabs fear the influx will displace Palestinians in Israeli-occupied territories.
Soviet Immigration (Immigration in thousands) Feb. ’91--PROJECTION: 5,000-10,000 Source: Israeli Consulate
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b9434000336fb3a5124caec5811f75b7 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2908-story.html | Relief Teams Ready to Help Kuwaitis : Postwar aid: The U.N. meets today to coordinate efforts. A U.S. official says costs could exceed war expenditures. | Relief Teams Ready to Help Kuwaitis : Postwar aid: The U.N. meets today to coordinate efforts. A U.S. official says costs could exceed war expenditures.
International relief agencies have already begun sending humanitarian aid to Iraq, but similar assistance for war ravaged Kuwait will have to wait until disaster assessment teams are allowed into Kuwait city to begin surveying the damage.
Experts from the United Nations, the International Red Cross and the U.S. Agency for International Development have assembled in the Gulf and are waiting for permission to travel to Kuwait city.
“We have teams lined up, ready to go, as soon as we get clearance,” said Ann Stingel, a spokeswoman for the international activities department of the American Red Cross.
The need for emergency relief supplies--especially food, medicine and water purification equipment--is expected to be enormous, one expert said. He added that relief officials could not be more specific until they assess the damage in Kuwait city.
“For the past seven months, Kuwait has been a real dark hole. . . . We really have no idea of the situation there at the moment,” Stingel said.
Saudi Arabia has already pledged up to 10% of its domestic food stocks as emergency assistance for Kuwait.
And the U.S. Agency for International Development has put together contingency plans to construct temporary shelters, provide medical care and cope with immediate sanitation and public health problems, including the likelihood of epidemics.
“We’ve been preparing for this since day one of the war,” said Renee Bafalis, a U.S. AID spokeswoman. “We have contingency plans ranging from small operations to extremely large ones in place and, as soon as we get the word, we can respond within 24 hours.
“But until the assessment teams go in, which we hope will be this week, we won’t have any idea of what’s really needed,” Bafalis said.
Iraq, which barred relief teams from visiting Kuwait, has started to receive humanitarian assistance ahead of its newly liberated neighbor.
A joint team representing the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund has just returned from Baghdad, where it distributed 54 tons of emergency health supplies brought in by trucks from Tehran.
In Geneva, International Red Cross officials announced that the organization will send three water purification units, each capable of distilling 21,000 gallons of water per day, to Baghdad where the supply system has broken down.
“There is a real danger of epidemics breaking out in Iraq and we assume the same is true in Kuwait, although we just don’t know at this point,” a senior UNICEF official said.
U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar has called a meeting of the heads of all major U.N. relief organizations today in New York to coordinate their efforts throughout the Gulf. U.S. AID officials said they would participate in those plans.
While the costs of the relief efforts are not yet known, Robert D. Reischauer, director of the Congressional Budget Office, said Wednesday that the costs of rebuilding Kuwait and keeping U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf could easily exceed those of the war.
He told a House Budget Committee hearing that the total cost of the war will probably not exceed $45 billion.
But that amount could well be dwarfed by the costs of keeping U.S. forces in the region over an extended period of time. Reconstruction aid for Kuwait and Iraq could also cost as much as $5 billion. “The costs of postwar policies represent the source of greatest uncertainty,” he said.
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20a01363d66d46afff1a6a533244f00b | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2909-story.html | THE GULF WAR : No Surrender, No Retreat | THE GULF WAR : No Surrender, No Retreat
Two words that apparently are not part of the Pentagon’s vocabulary: RETREAT AND SURRENDER. At least, no such listings can be found in the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s Official Dictionary of Military Terms. However, the book does contain “WITHDRAWAL OPERATION,” which is defined as “a planned operation in which a force in contact disengages from an enemy force.” When asked about the missing words, a Pentagon spokesman replied, “Up until this point, those two terms have not been defined in our dictionary because their standard English definitions were considered sufficient.” But he pointed out that they may be included in future editions.
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1612f825c89129075652582def9099e2 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2910-story.html | TV AND THE GULF WAR : Networks Beat a Quick Retreat to Business as Usual : News: There were follow-ups to President Bush’s announcement, then a rush to get back to the end of the February ratings sweeps. | TV AND THE GULF WAR : Networks Beat a Quick Retreat to Business as Usual : News: There were follow-ups to President Bush’s announcement, then a rush to get back to the end of the February ratings sweeps.
At 6 p.m., President Bush made his announcement--you know, the one that said “Iraq’s army is defeated.”
By 7 p.m., KCBS Channel 2 was showing “Wheel of Fortune,” KNBC Channel 4 was airing “Entertainment Tonight” and KABC Channel 7 was presenting “Inside Edition.”
Before you know it, prime-time entertainment was filling the screen--"Unsolved Mysteries,” “The Wonder Years,” “The Flash.”
TV heals quickly. It’s withdrawal was quicker than Iraq’s.
True, you never know with Saddam Hussein. But this was history and a big story, and Americans have spilled blood in the Gulf War.
But it didn’t seem to matter on TV as it whipped right by the life-and-death TV show half a world away. It was business as usual--tasteless and in an unseemly hurry.
There were, of course, the immediate follow-up network reports to Bush’s speech--and other specials to come later.
But for TV, it was the final night of the February ratings sweeps--which help set ad prices for TV stations. And first things come first.
CNN, naturally, dug into the human response to the story that had held the world captive for 42 days. A quick visit to the Camp Pendleton Marine base captured the sense of joy and hope.
Earlier in the day, TV’s coverage of the Gulf War looked like a mopping-up operation--a story in search of an ending.
It finally came with Bush’s victory announcement and his statement that the allies were calling a suspension of offensive combat operations.
The end seemed imminent Wednesday as TV suddenly focused on such subjects as how to rebuild Iraq.
It was upbeat TV all the way--with almost nothing negative shown to dilute the celebratory atmosphere of the allied victory and the freeing of Kuwait City.
If the U.S.-led coalition was using TV to humiliate Iraqi President Saddam Hussein worldwide--to assure his total demise--it was succeeding. At every political and military turn, he was belittled on TV.
The ultimate put-down came from Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of Operation Desert Storm, in an hourlong briefing Wednesday carried by ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN.
A reporter lobbed one down the middle for Schwarzkopf, asking him to assess Hussein as a military leader, and the general knocked it out of the park.
“As far as Saddam Hussein being a great military strategist,” said Schwarzkopf, “he is neither a strategist, nor is he schooled in the operational arts, nor is he a tactician, nor is he a general, nor is he a soldier. Other than that, he’s a great military man.”
The TV impact of the statement was such that it probably will be repeated in retrospectives for years, as Schwarzkopf delivered the line with impeccable, theatrical timing. He was, in fact, in an obvious good mood, summing up the entire military conflict in a TV performance that told how victory was achieved.
“I’ll be very happy to take any questions,” he said at one point. In another sure TV sound bite that immediately was picked up after his session, he used football terminology--the “Hail Mary play"--to describe a military maneuver.
Schwarzkopf’s briefing was so colorful that ABC planned to rerun it in its entirety following Wednesday’s “Nightline.”
But the allies’ put-downs of Hussein on TV had heightened earlier with distrusting rejections of Iraqi offers to pull out of Kuwait.
The way things were going on the TV screen--victory in Kuwait City, Iraqi soldiers surrendering in large numbers--the allies clearly wanted nothing less than a total political wipeout.
CBS correspondent Richard Threlkeld said in Kuwait that six Iraqis surrendered to a CBS News crew, “which is an indication of how desperate they are.”
And in another apparent worldwide TV maneuver to separate Hussein from other Arabs, the allied military briefing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia--carried by CNN--was conducted by Saudi Col. Ahmed Al-Roboyan of the Joint Arab Forces.
There seemed to be far fewer censored TV reports Wednesday after the media breakout from pool reporting to cover the freeing of Kuwait City.
Images will remain, however, of the bombed-out barracks in Saudi Arabia, where 28 Americans were killed and 100 were wounded. And images will remain of the bombed-out bunker in Baghdad, where hundreds of Iraqis died.
But TV sensed it might all finally be ending. On Wednesday, Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather were in Kuwait City to do their nightly newscasts and Ted Koppel was set to present “Nightline” from Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, as the networks moved in for the kill.
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550bfad798a037569a46e1bd7f9324fe | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2912-story.html | Trial of Noriega Co-Defendants Opens | Trial of Noriega Co-Defendants Opens
Two co-defendants of Manuel A. Noriega conspired with the former Panamanian dictator to smuggle a yacht “packed to the gunnels with cocaine” into Miami, prosecutors said Wednesday.
But lawyers for Brian Alden Davidow and William Saldarriaga said their clients are victims of political and legal pressures to convict Noriega.
“This story spans continents, spans generations, international intrigue and conflicts,” Richard Sharpstein, Davidow’s attorney, said during opening arguments at the trial for the two Noriega co-defendants.
The two men face two counts each of conspiring with Noriega to import and sell 322 kilograms of cocaine aboard the yacht Krill in March, 1986. They face a maximum penalty of 40 years in prison.
“There were discussions about Gen. Noriega receiving a portion of the proceeds when the 46-foot Krill reached America,” chief prosecutor Michael Sullivan said. “The Krill was packed to the gunnels with cocaine.”
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c64bc89e1b9c70f2d47865e69d82a172 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-02-28-mn-2913-story.html | New York City Schools to Hand Out Condoms | New York City Schools to Hand Out Condoms
After months of debate and a last-minute compromise effort, the Board of Education voted Wednesday night to hand out condoms on request in the nation’s largest school system, as part of a stepped up effort to fight AIDS.
Condoms initially will be available at 30 to 35 schools, then phased in at the rest of the city’s 120 schools, which enroll a total of 260,000 students.
Parents’ permission will not be required, an issue that was the major sticking point for the board, which approved the plan on a vote of 4 to 3. Several board members tried to negotiate an “opt-out” clause, allowing parents to write notes to exclude their children.
Schools Chancellor Joseph A. Fernandez insisted that no “opt-in” be required. He said that to make teens get their parents’ permission would scare them away from the condom giveaways.
The plan is the most liberal such program in the nation because it does not involve sending students to health clinics to get the condoms, said Robin Lewis, spokeswoman for the Center for Population Options in Washington. Trained adult volunteers will provide the condoms, with counseling available but optional.
Students will not have to identify themselves to receive a condom.
Mathilde Krim, adjunct professor of public health at Columbia University and founding co-chair of the American Foundation for AIDS Research, estimates that two of every 100 teen-agers in the city--more than 5,160 public school students--are infected with the virus for acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
Fernandez estimated 80% of the city’s young people have sex by age 19. Dr. Alwyn T. Cohall, who runs three of the city’s 17 school-based clinics, said one in four sexually active high school students gets a sexually transmitted disease before graduation.
Opponents contended that the proposal will not necessarily reduce teen pregnancies or the risk of infection.
Eleanor Kelly, a mother of three teen-agers and past president of a conservative group, Parent Roundtable, said it also would promote “a false sense of security, thereby encouraging more of our young people to engage in high-risk behavior.”
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