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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 24, 1991)
/ 991 age i tiddle *nged ading ul tes- ; Bra- |The Battalion Vol. 90 No. 79 GSPS 045360 26 Pages College Station, Texas Call to Duty A&M cadet called service by Marines See Life Style Thursday, January 24,1991 vice. idem, Ji'-tion a end I also words. eight- Troops dig in for ground war >vides veil as eel of Grace i, said : most siders d. “If rica is triple r Life id his ig aid taken devel- nstra- ve any ie call said, y de- gpro- r, the DHAHRAN, Saudi Arabia (AP) - U.S. armored cavalrymen skir mished with Iraqis in the first S round clash at the northern bor er, where vast fleets of tanks ma neuvered and dug in on the desert floor Wednesday for the land war just over the horizon. The Americans captured six Ira- flisand suffered two slight casualties, tne U.S. command said. It denied a Baghdad claim that the Iraqis also seized prisoners. Iraq apparently fired off a double- barreled volley of Scud missiles at both Saudi Arabia and Israel. One Scud was intercepted by two Patriot defense missiles over northern Is rael. There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties in either place. The Israeli leadership was hold ing its fire Wednesday at the urging of the United States. Kuwaiti oil installations burned on, sabotaged by the Iraqis, and sho wered nearby Iran with “mack rain.” The skies over Iraq itself began to clear, and allied air commanders , Kuwait:. \ IRAN • Persian Gulf Strait of SAUDI Wi -• Hormu2 ARABIA O ? *-GATAft t Sy Riyadh - E ./^ U.S. Central I V Command OMAN';} apOmitM :/ YEMEN <-*, ^^AmbianSea ... \ jft ZJC mil#* !/ YEMEN pressed their mission-a-minute cam paign in the seventh day of Opera tion Desert Storm. Allied bombers have demolished half of Iraq’s oil-refining capacity, A&M official describes ‘worst-case scenario' commanders said. Iraq announced it was suspending gasoline sales. More and more Iraqis were emerging from their shelters in Baghclacf, said CNN’s Peter Arnett, the only Western journalist allowed to report from the Iraqi capital. Commerce seemed to be resum ing, Baghdad residents were shop ping at the central market and water trucks were making their rounds, he said. The allied army is deployed along the 130-mile Saudi-Kuwaiti border and farther west, along the Iraqi- Saudi border, where the desert- trained 3rd Armored Cavalry Regi- mentTrom Fort Bliss, Texas, is be lieved to be conducting reconnais sance and guarding the allied force’s western flank. Wednesday’s first report of a ground action came from the Ira nian news media, which said Iraq re ported its forces had attacked enemy troops in Saudi territory and cap tured allied prisoners. The U.S. command reported that 3rd Armored Cavalry troopers were manning an observation post near the Saudi-Iraqi border late Tuesday when they came under small-arms fire from an Iraqi patrol and re turned fire. Two Americans were slightly wounded and returned to duty after treatment, and six Iraqis were cap tured, the command said. It denied that any Americans had been cap tured. American armored units contin ued maneuvering into place along the frontier Wednesday after a days- long spell of rain and drizzle that turned desert-dry areas into small lakes and created sinkholes that can bog down a tank. Commanders have begun to slow the pace of combat exercises at the front lines so soldiers can rest and equipment can be kept in good shape for what could be a prolonged ground battle. A ground offensive is not ex pected until February. American tank officers, like Marine Capt. Rob Philon, know it will not be a rollover. Philon’s M-60 tanks will have to go up against Iraq’s Soviet-made T-72s. By MIKE LUMAN Of The Battalion Staff An Arab-Israeli war is part of the “worst-case scenario” for events in the Middle East, the deputy director for administra tion of Texas A&M’s Mosher In stitute for Defense Studies said Wednesday night. Dr. Art Blatr, speaking as part of the MSC Great Issues program titled “War in the Gulf, said an Arab-Israeli conflict could trigger Saudi officials to order U.S. troops off Saudi land. “There would be all kinds of trouble,” Blair said. “If you want to pray at night, pray this doesn’t become an Arab-Israeli war.” To make his point, Blair said the 250 students and faculty at tending the program likely would be sent to the Middle East if the Arab coalition fell apart. He added he did not think events would deteriorate to that point and said allied forces almost certainly will triumph over Iraq. Dr. Alex Mintz, another pan elist and an A&M professor of political science, said he thinks Is rael will retaliate massively if Sad dam Hussein launches chemical See Issues/Page 6 agcl) :er for id the i. to 5 e con- o-Lay, r Inc., : and '1 rep- <gh & ps - The Service 1 range i four- a first- ct Feb. e been an sale ginally st-class ctantly e com- dier in se by a Iterna- to $20 bat we of no ieneral e com- me are chair- board, ime to st-class be first dditio- 3 cents st-class stamp, yellow the se ers in putting al rate Petroleum expert: Events in gulf area determine oil prices Embargo freezes supply, demand ByJAYME BLASCHKE Of The Battalion Staff Iraq’s destruction of Kuwaiti oil fields should have little or no effect on the world’s oil markets, says the head of the Texas A&M petroleum engineering de partment. “The wells in Kuwait and Iraq both, due to the embargo, are shut in for all practical pur poses,” says Dr. W. D. Von Gon- ten. “Whether the well is blow ing out is not going to have any effect on the amount of pro duction areas in the world.” Von Gonten says oil prices might fluctuate in response to events in the Persian Gulf, but not because of changes in supply and demand. “Kuwait has about 300 to 400 oil wells, where the United States has over 600,000 oil wells,” he says. “In comparison, they don’t have many oil wells, but then again they aren’t a very large country.” Von Gonten says destruction of the wells will have little long-term ef fect on Kuwait’s oil business. Kuwait possesses about 100 billion barrels of oil in underground depos its, he says. One well, burning thou sands of barrels a day, would not hurt the nation much, Von Gonten says. “If every well in the country blows (up) and you lose a million barrels of oil from every one, you’ve lost 400 million barrels,” Von Gonten says. “That’s only four-tenths of a billion, and Kuwait has 100 billion barrels.” He says that beside losing oilfield equipment, there would be little ac tual loss to Kuwait. Dfcspite the massive amounts of smoke produced by such fires, he says there is little environmental haz ard. “At one time in the Middle East, they flared all the natural gas pro duced with oil, and so millions of cubic feet of gas a day was being bur ned,” he says. Burning oil will have even less of an effect on the environment than natural gas, Von Gonten says. “This is not a catastrophe,” he says. Destruction of the Kuwaiti oil fields poses little additional hazard to U.S. troops, he says. “You’ve got the danger of the fire itself, but since the products of com bustion are going to rise, they’re not going to settle on the ground where soldiers are going to be exposed to them,” he says. “After the smoke is carried by the prevailing winds for a hundred miles, it’s pretty much dissipated,” he adds. The biggest problem will be cap ping the wells, which can’t be done until the area is secured by allied forces, Von Gonten says. “Most of the world’s oil field fire fighting eqipment is based here in Texas,” he says. “If all the wells go up, it will take more crews than we have to put them out and cap them. “That takes anywhere from weeks to months, and you can’t do it if peo ple are shooting at you,” he says. SCOTT D. WEAVER/The Battalion Daniel Cornal of the A&M Maintenance Department mows the outfield stripes in Olsen Field early Wednesday morning. Student Senate backs Bush, allied troops 42-3 By ELIZABETH TISCH Of The Battalion Staff The Texas A&M Student Senate passed a res olution after an emotional debate Wednesday night supporting both President Bush’s policy in the Persian Gulf and allied troops deployed there. Bush has sent an open letter to college stu dents asking for support of the U.S. presence in the Gulf. The Senate voted in favor of the policy, 42-3. Finance Chairman David Brooks, who intro duced the resolution, said the impact of Wednes day’s vote goes beyond politics. “The rationale behind this is much more than a political statement,” Brooks said. “It is our duty as members of the Student Government, the elected voice, to represent how the student body feels.” Senator Julie Chamberlin, one of the three who voted against the resolution, asked the stu- See Senate/Page 6 ne the calls a fign is Bike lanes in, around A&M expand due to parking garages By TROY D. HALL Of The Battalion Staff Commuting by bicycle in and around Texas A&M’s campus probably will be safer and easier this fall after completion of the University Center parking garage. Tom Williams, director of Parking, Transit and Traffic Services, says upon completion of the University Center ga rage, street parking will no longer be necessary, freeing those areas for bike lanes. “We hope to have all of our bike lanes completed by the end of the summer as we are able to move people from the streets into our new parking garage,” he says. Bike lanes need to be developed along streets before bicycle problems can be solved, Williams says. That is only the first step to making bicycle commuting more accessible, he says. “Bike paths then will need to be devel oped around campus in off-street areas where we do not have connections be tween streets,” he says. Student involvement is an integral part of developing an effective bicycling system on campus, Williams says. “We don’t nave an implementation plan, nor do we have rules and regula tions,” he says. “That is something that has to be a student-generated activity be cause it is the students that are going to be affected.” Williams says the A&M Student Gov ernment, through Ty Clevenger’s office, is supposed to be working on a plan im plementing rules and regulations for bi cyclists. Bicycle traffic has gone uncontrolled for so many years that it has become a dangerous situation, he says. “The streets occupying bike lanes are not the best in the world because some of our streets are in such disrepair,” Wil liams says. “Our new Bizell Street is the example of the way we want all streets on the campus to eventually look like.” The future of the bicycle system, how ever, does not stop at the A&M campus. A study co-funded by the University and the Texas Highway Department was conducted by the Texas Transportation Institute. Dr. Joe Blaschke, assistant research engineer with Texas Transportation In stitute, says the study was conducted to determine where routes in Bryan and College Station could be constructed to encourage people to commute by bicy cle. Blaschke says the study found no shortage of bicycle areas on campus, but some areas were used much more than others. A questionnaire survey also was con ducted to determine interest among stu dents, faculty members and staff for de veloping a community-wide bicycle system. Blaschke says 25 percent of the people surveyed say they would ride a bicycle to campus. He says that means approxi mately 12,500 people would commute by bicycle. “I don’t think those figures are quite true, but certainly there are several thousand people who have an interest,” Blaschke says. “That is why we want to corner that market and give them an op portunity to use their bicycles.” He says the survey found bicycle routes would be most useful for people in a one-mile radius around A&M, but there also was interest by people living up to three miles away. “We designated potential routes in residential areas where people re sponded to the questionnaires, where they lived and where they showed inter est In the bicycle routes,” he says. The study results, however, still are in draft form, Blaschke says. “The process will begin once we have a chance to get together with the cities and the Texas Highway Department to get the system approved,” he says. “We are still in the infant stage, but tne Uni versity, through Tom Williams, has done a lot of the work on campus already.” Williams and Blaschke agree the key to the success of an effective bicycle sys tem is time and money. “The key to the whole study was an in terest by a number of people,” Blaschke says. “There is no question there is great potential for a good bicycle system in place on campus; but once such a system is in place, we are talking about lots of additional control.” RICHARD S. JAMESmie Battalion Removal of street parking allows for better bike lanes.