The Battleground: Marching to A Conclusion

The land war had already been under way for hours -- even days, if preliminary probing attacks were counted. But the final, massive and bloody phase of the conflict that began more than five weeks earlier had to be solemnized as only a President can do. So George Bush helicoptered from Camp David to the White House Saturday night for an appearance that was a kind of grim ritual.

Appearing before the cameras at 10 o'clock, the President looked somber, and his sentences were plain, devoid of any rhetorical flourish. Harking back to a Friday-morning appearance in the bright sunshine of the Rose Garden, he remarked that he had given Saddam Hussein "one last chance . . . to do what he should have done more than six months ago: withdraw from Kuwait without condition or further delay." Saddam, he said, had responded only with "a redoubling" of efforts "to destroy completely Kuwait and its people" -- a reference to the "scorched earth" torching of oil wells and systematic executions of Kuwaitis, some allegedly snatched at random off the streets of Kuwait City. So, he said, the war that began Jan. 16 with the start of history's most intense bombing campaign had "entered a final phase" that he hoped could be concluded "swiftly and decisively." The President asked all Americans to stop whatever they were doing for a moment to say a prayer -- and that was all.

It was enough, though. By the time the President spoke, the deadline he had set in the Rose Garden ultimatum had expired 10 hours earlier. The interval had been filled with diplomatic flopping around that looked increasingly like playacting -- or simple stalling. Iraq had accepted, that morning in Moscow, a Soviet-brokered proposal for withdrawal that Baghdad and the Kremlin both knew the U.S. and its allies would not take. Vague hints emerged from a U.N. Security Council meeting, in progress as the deadline passed, that maybe the Iraqis would respond "positively" to the U.S. ultimatum. The hints came from the Soviet representative; the Iraqi delegate claimed not to know what he was talking about.

When time ran out for diplomacy, the new phase of the war began with stunning swiftness. Less than 24 hours after the deadline, the entire allied ground campaign had taken shape. Among the elements were the predicted sweep by U.S. forces into western Kuwait to isolate the country from Iraq and a massive parachute drop into Kuwait City. By Sunday morning, Eastern U.S. time, the city was on the verge of being taken by allied forces. "So far we're delighted with the progress of the campaign," declared General Norman Schwarzkopf, the allied commander. Schwarzkopf said resistance had been light, with the exception of one Marine unit that ran into and repulsed an Iraqi counterattack. During the first 12 hours of the campaign, Schwarzkopf said, more than 5,500 Iraqi prisoners had been captured. But according to Kuwaiti sources, the actual number of Iraqis surrendering was at least 10 times greater than that.