
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, February 11, 1991                   TAG: 9102110157
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: WITH U.S. FORCES, SAUDI ARABIA                                LENGTH: Medium

VOW TO TROOPS: QUICK, DECISIVE VICTORY

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

Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and Gen. Colin 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 returned 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 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."

At each stop on the base, Cheney and Powell repeated their message that new weapons like the Stealth had performed magnificently. The airmen agreed. "We're all real proud of how things are going and our role in the war so far," said Tech. Sgt. Michael Battaglione of Vineland, N.J. "I hope the president will keep using the Air Force before the grunts have to go low-tech. Maybe we should just hammer away at the Iraqis until we starve 'em out."

Powell told the men and women that, wherever he goes in the United States, people want to shake his hand and pat him on the back. "But it's your hand they're shaking when they reach for mine; your back they want to pat," he said. "It's easy to be chairman in this environment."

by CNB