DESERT STORM: DAY 23 : Military

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived today at an Air Force base in western Saudi Arabia as they began a quick trip to assess the progress of the war and prepare advice for President Bush on moving into the ground phase of the campaign. Cheney told U.S. airmen and women they are part of history’s most successful air campaign. But he also said amphibious and ground assaults are needed to make Saddam Hussein’s army more vulnerable to continued air strikes.

Iraq has organized “execution battalions” to punish soldiers attempting to desert on the battlefield, said the commander of Saudi and other Arab forces in the Persian Gulf War, Prince Khalid bin Sultan. He said information about the death units came from prisoners of war, and indicated the units probably have killed Iraqi soldiers. Khalid told a military briefing in Riyadh that allied forces have taken 936 Iraqi prisoners since the war began and that 418 Iraqi troops had surrendered in the 5 1/2 months before the war.

Allied bombers demolished a major communications center in Baghdad and completed the destruction of a key bridge across the Tigris River. U.S. warplanes knocked out an Iraqi mobile missile launcher and scored possible hits on three others overnight, U.S. military sources said. Patriot missiles blasted another Iraqi Scud missile out of the skies over Riyadh. And U.S Marines mounted their first ground action since Monday, firing artillery shells across the border into Kuwait. Off the coast of Kuwait, a British Royal Navy helicopter blew up an Iraqi patrol boat.