Bombings Kuwait

The images flicker on television screens throughout the giant battleship, with the sultry strains of jazz from the BBC as a soothing audio backdrop. The camera glides over images of stark-still Iraqi troop bunkers, then pans across the Kuwaiti desert to an electronic warfare site. As the bass backs off and the saxophone picks up, the burned-out shells of armored personnel carriers come into view.

Allied warplanes screamed across blinding-blue desert skies to blitz Iraqi troops in the trenches and bunkers of Kuwait and southern Iraq on Friday, and a Saudi commander said the Iraqis have organized "execution battalions" to shoot any of their soldiers who might try to flee. The allies focused their bombing extra tightly on the Kuwaiti theater of operations as Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited U.S.

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, offering the most direct indication to date of how and when a ground assault into Kuwait could begin, said early today that allied troops might launch a land offensive to draw Iraqi troops into a death trap well before warplanes have done their worst damage.

Night after night, the people who have the biggest stake in the defeat of Iraq watch transfixed as the television screen shows allied fighter bombers screaming into the darkness--destination Kuwait. They fall silent, hunched forward in their chairs that are drawn into a semi-circle. Kuwait, their homeland, has been punished as no place on Earth, first by the invading Iraqis who raped and pillaged and killed, and now by one of the greatest armadas of air power ever assembled.

Among the allied nations that have participated in the air war against Iraq so far: United States Britain Saudi Arabia France Italy Canada Kuwait Bahrain Qatar

The Maverick guided missile, although not a smart bomb, is more precise than the conventional bombs it is replacing. Its recent adoption by fighter-bomber pilots in the Gulf is seen as a possible sign that final preparations for ground warfare are under way. The tactical air-to-ground missiles are effective on targets including bridges, armor, air defenses and fuel storage facilities.

The United States stockpiled exotic fuel-air weapons Wednesday for possible use in the battle for Kuwait, and allied officers said American jets intercepted Iraqi warplanes for the first time as they tried to flee toward Iran. American officers said at least two Iraqi planes were destroyed. As an amphibious assault force of 18,000 Marines positioned itself for a possible attack into occupied Kuwait, reporters touring a U.S.

Allied warplanes, flying a mission a minute, bombed deeply into Iraq on Tuesday, taking special aim at the Republican Guard and at President Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, 90 miles north of Baghdad. For a second day, the U.S. battleship Missouri slammed the Iraqis with shells from its 16-inch guns. Six rounds silenced a long-range artillery battery as it fired on allied troops. Another 28 rounds wiped out an Iraqi radar site.

At night, all night, Marines can hear the relentless rumbling. The skyline flickers hot orange. Through the soles of their boots, the Marines feel the sand quiver. Miles from ground zero, they stand in their bunkers and look toward Kuwait at one of the most fearsome sights of modern warfare--the carpet bombing by B-52s. Mixed with their wonder, the Marines find themselves curiously twinged with pity. "They're out there doing the same thing we are," said Lance Cpl.