robert springer shared his memories today at 5:30. how he says the persian war continues to effect north carolina. >>> now to the story we mentioned a moment ago. a fayetteville man accused of shooting his mother in the face at his first court appearance a gilbert was in the courtroom when he faced a judge. gilbert joins us live from the news room at the fayetteville observer. gilbert? >> before i went in the courtroom i had a chance to go by the house of the victim and saw and talked with her husband and also her daughter. neither wanted to appear on through pretty tough surgery last night and the victim is in serious condition. as for her brother he stood in front of a district court judge this afternoon and asked for a court appointed attorney. smith made sure kevin powell understood the charges he was going to appoint him an attorney from the public defenders office. authorities say he went into his mother's beauty salon and shot his mother, 44-year-old in the face at point blank range. after he shot his mother he left the beauty

the important event and retired robert springer. thank you for being here. you've been our military expert and announced it's been a long time. first of all walk us back through. how did we get to desert storm. >> as you know his troops invaded kuwait. the united nations to get those troops. they didn't respond. the time gave them an ultimate yum and a specific date and time to have the troops out of there or we would take action. president bush didn't wait very long after that red line pass. >> what i did they have for north carolina troops. >> obviously the first combat they had been in for quite some time. it's amazing when you look back at the young ones fighting in the war. some of them were officers as a consequence of time but we had over a half million troops inserted into that conflict. >> 430,000 of those were americans and many of those were fort bragg soldiers men and women. >> what have we learned as a nation from that war and a state because of operation desert storm. >> what we learned as a nation is the interesting things that for the first t

. >>> joining us now with firsthand perspective is retired air force general robert springer. you were with us 25 years ago when the first bombs started falling on iraq. what is your most vivid memories of that time. >> the massive numbers of people and airplanes and ships and equipment we had. interestingly, we think about that might when they started bombing and the f-117 stealth fighter going in, but the department of defense new well in advance of that, because the first aircraft to be launched was a b-52 bomber from louisiana and it had made but that was just the air. the number of troops that we had involved, over 500,000. that was from the coalition of 31 countries. we had 12 countries involved with aviation, 100 aircraft involve in that. as i might have menned to you earlier, that first night, 24 hours bombing, we hit more distinct targets. >> it is amazing what we can do now. just getting over there logistically was a monumental challenge. talk about what had to happen if that to be successful. >> number one, you get a lot of people that went by air. you had people an