DESERT STORM: DAY 5

Military

* Much of America awoke today to a videotape broadcast of captured American pilots. The POWs made obviously forced statements criticizing the allied war effort.

* Saddam Hussein still has hundreds of Scud missiles, said Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. But the allies have made significant progress in air attacks on Iraq, he said. The Pentagon chief hesitated to speculate on how long the war might last or what level of casualties might occur once ground attacks begin. “We’ve been very careful not to say it will be over in 27 days or 14 days or six months,” Cheney said. “We’ll stick with it until the job is done.”

* Sorties against Iraqi forces topped 8,000. Two more Iraqi planes were shot down in the past 24 hours. Air Force Gen. Burton Moore said a U.S. Navy F-14 Tomcat was lost during the same time period.

* There were signs communications were breaking down between Hussein and his ground forces in Kuwait, the U.S. military said.

* American Patriot missiles intercepted eight of nine Iraqi Scud missiles fired at Saudi Arabia, the military command said. The ninth landed in the waters of the Persian Gulf.

Political

* “America is angry,” said President Bush, accusing Iraq of “brutal treatment” of POWs. “It’s not going to make a difference in the prosecution of the war,” Bush said upon returning from Camp David, Md. Asked whether Saddam Hussein would be held accountable for the treatment of POWs, Bush replied, “You can count on it.” Bush issued “the strongest appeal” that allied prisoners be treated properly under the Geneva Convention covering prisoners of war.

* Iraq canceled its nonaggression pact with Saudi Arabia. The official Iraqi News Agency said Iraq had abrogated all bilateral accords with the neighboring kingdom.

* Optimism for a quick end to the war has sharply fallen, a poll said.

Financial

* Germany said it is prepared to boost its spending on the war. Finance Minister Theo Waigel made the pledge in a television interview after meeting with U.S. Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady in New York. Brady and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan were the hosts for two days of discussions with their counterparts from Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Canada and Italy.

The stock market retreated today. U.S. interest rates turned upward. Oil prices rebounded, and Tokyo’s stock market dropped sharply--about 2%.