Cheney, Powell Send Messages Via Bomb

America’s two top military men each inscribed messages to Saddam Hussein on Sunday--on a 2,000-pound bomb--and told U.S. airmen at a secret base they intend to end the war as quickly as possible “in a way everyone will know who won. . . . “

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, making what one of their aides said could be their last visit to Saudi Arabia until they return for the victory party, spoke confidently about both the eventual outcome of the war and continued public support. “You have brought a sense of pride back to America,” Powell said.

Unlike Powell’s visit to U.S. troops here in the early days of the buildup, when soldiers besieged him with questions about when they could go home, no one Sunday raised a complaint or a challenge. At one meeting with several hundred airmen, Cheney and Powell offered to answer any questions they had and not a single voice was raised.

“It’s different now,” said Staff Sgt. Rodrick Hawkins of Los Angeles, who has been here since August. “The main thing we know is that we have a job to do and we’re doing it. We can see the light. We know we’re going home when the job’s done.”

During their two-hour visit to the base, Cheney and Powell chatted with crewmen who fly and service the F-117A Stealth fighter and accepted a Bart Simpson doll, dressed in camouflage fatigues, from Staff Sgt. John Pennell, who has a blond flattop and bears a striking resemblance to the famous underachiever. Cheney promised that the doll would be on President Bush’s desk this morning. When someone asked Cheney and Powell to sign a bomb being prepared for a Stealth mission, they obliged with a black felt-tipped pen.

“To Saddam: You didn’t move it and now you’ll lose it. Colin Powell,” the chairman wrote. Cheney added: “To Saddam, with affection. Dick Cheney. Def. Sec.”

No Iraqi Scud missiles have been directed at the isolated facility, but security has remained extraordinarily high because of the presence of the Stealth squadron, whose missions are cloaked in secrecy. Unlike other servicemen in Saudi Arabia, members of the 37th Tactical Fighter Wing here are not allowed to call their families in the United States and journalists were asked not even to identify the province where the base is located.

Though plagued with electronics problems during its development, the black, one-seater Stealth--the world’s first operational aircraft designed to be undetectable by radar--has performed spectacularly well, U.S. commanders say, and has been virtually invisible during its unescorted nighttime missions. It continues to fly daily, making precision bombing runs against selected targets, though its unique capabilities have become less important since Iraq shut off most of its radar systems.

One of the pilots, Maj. Lee Gustin, told Powell and Cheney his fighter had been plagued by electronic “glitches.” His plane was named Christine--after the killer car in the Stephen King novel--because, Gustin said, “there’s a bug in that airplane that no one can find. It’s just a jinxed jet sometimes . . . but we keep her flying.”

On his jet, Gustin had stenciled drawings of 11 bombs--one for each of the successful missions it had flown.

None of the wing’s men and women missed the political significance of the decision by Cheney and Powell to pick a high-tech air unit for their one troop visit during a busy weekend in Saudi Arabia. The Pentagon will be looking for more funds for high-technology development, and Cheney noted that during his tenure as a congressman from Wyoming, he consistently voted to fund such programs, though “I had a little doubt in my mind . . . whether they would live up to the capability.” That doubt, he said, now had been erased.

At each stop on the base, Cheney and Powell repeated their message that new weapons like the Stealth had performed magnificently. The airmen agreed.

This article was screened by U.S. military authorities.