Gen. Schwarzkopf's Famed News Conference

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being here. A few days ago I promised some of you that as soon as the opportunity arose I would give you a full rundown of what we were doing and, more importantly, why we were doing it. The strategy. Behind what we were doing, Secretary Cheney asked me to do it this afternoon, so if you'll bear with me, we're going to have a briefing. I apologize to the people here who won't be able to see the charts, but let's go over a complete summary of the operation, this goes back to August 7th and January 17th.

Remember we started our deployment on August 7? Basically, we started against a couple of hundred thousand Iraqis who were In the Kuwait theaters I don't have to remind everyone that we initially brought in defensive forces in the form of the 11th, 82nd and 24th mechanized infantry division, a third Armored Cavalry and, in essence, we had them arranged all the way to the South, behind the Saudi task force, there were also Arab forces here in this area arranged in defensive positions and that is, in essence, the way when we started in mid-November, the decision was made to increase the force because at that time there were large numbers of Iraqi forces had entered the area and generally in the disposition shown here and therefore we increased the forces and we accumulate more forces.

I would tell you that we made a very deliberate decision right now to align all of those forces. inside the boundary looking north toward Kuwait, this is King Khalid's military city, so we lined up those forces to make it look like they were all lined up directly on the Iraqi positions. Also at that time we had a very active naval presence in the Gulf. and we made sure that everyone understood about that naval presence. One of the reasons we did it is because it was very clear to us from the beginning that the Iraqis were quite concerned about an amphibious operation across the coast to liberate Kuwait, that being Kuwait City.

They put a variable, a heavy infantry barrier here and proceeded to build an extensive barrier that went all the way across the border, down, around and up the Kuwait side, so basically the problem we faced was this when we looked at the number. of troops really outnumbered us about three to two and if you consider the number of combat service support people that we have, that's the logisticians and that type of thing in our armed forces in terms of combat troops, we really They were outnumbered two to one, plus they had 4,700 tanks versus our 3,500 when preparation was completed and they had much more artillery than us.

I think any student of military strategy would tell you that to attack a position you must have a ratio of approximately three to one in favor of the attacker and to attack a position that is still heavily dug and barricaded like we had here, you must have a ratio of five to one in terms of troops in favor of the attacker so you can see Basically what our problem was at that time, we were outnumbered at least three to two in terms of super concern, we were outnumbered in terms of Regarding the tanks and we had to find some way to make up the difference in the next frame, please, I apologize.

Because of the busy nature of this chart, but I think it's very important that you understand exactly what our strategy was. What you see here is a color code where green is a go sign or a good sign as far as our forces are concerned, yellow would be a caution sign and red would be a stop sign. Green represents units that have Bennett written on them. Yellow are units that are between 50 and 75 percent strength and of course red are units that are over 75 percent strength. What we did, of course, was an intensive start. air campaign and I briefed you in quite some detail about that in the past, one of the purposes that I told you at the time in that extensive air campaign was to isolate the Kuwait theater of operations by eliminating all the bridges and supply lines that ran between the two countries. in northern and southern Iraq to prevent reinforcements and supplies from reaching the southern part of Iraq and the Kuwait theater of operations.

We also carried out a very intense bombing campaign and many people wondered why the extensive bombing campaign was the reason. Why was it necessary to reduce these forces to a force that would weaken them, especially along the front line barrier that we had to break through? We continued our heavy operations at sea because we wanted the Iraqis to continue believing that we were We are going to conduct a massive, aphid operation in this area and I think many of you remember the number of amphibious trials we had to include it and a thunder that was he wrote quite a bit for many reasons, but we continued to have those operations because we wanted to. him to concentrate his forces what she did I think this is probably one of the most important parts of the whole briefing that I could talk about, as you know, from the beginning we eliminated the Iraqi air force and we knew that it had very reconnaissance means , very limited. and therefore, when we eliminated their air force for all intents and purposes, we eliminated their ability to see what we were doing here in Saudi Arabia.

Once we got his eyes out, we did what could best be described as the Hail Mary play in football. I think you remember when the quarterback is desperate for a touchdown at the end, what he does is he walks up behind the center and, Suddenly, each of his receivers goes to a flank and they all run. down the field as fast as possible and into the end zone and he throws the ball essentially, that's what we did when we knew he couldn't see us anymore, we did a massive troop movement to the west. towards the west end because at that time we knew that he was still fixed in this area with the vast majority of his forces and once the air campaign began he would be unable to move to counter this movement even if he knew that we had arrived. over there.

There were some additional troops in this area, but they did not have the capacity or the time to put up the barrier that Saddam Hussein had described as an absolutely impenetrable tank barrier that no one would ever make a reality. I think those were his words. So this was an absolutely extraordinary move. I must tell you that I do not remember any time in the annals of military history when this number of forces have moved this distance to put themselves in a position to be able to attack, but more importantly. and I think it's very, very important that I make this appointment and it's these logistics bases, we not only moved troops there, but we literally moved thousands and thousands of Buhl tons of ammunition, spare parts, water and food here to this because we wanted to have enough supplies on hand so that if we launched this and got into a battle that we very easily could have gotten into, we would have enough supplies to last 60 days, it was an absolutely gigantic achievement and I can't give enough credit to the logisticians and the shippers who were able to achieve this, to the excellent support we received from the Saudi government and to the literally thousands and thousands of drivers from all national backgrounds who helped us in this move.

Here, and of course, great credit goes to the commanders of these units who were also able to maneuver their forces here and put them in this position, but as a result, by February 23, what we found is this situation: the front lines had been in RIT up to a point where all of these units were at 50% or below the second tier basically that we had to face and these were the really tough fighters we were worried about, here we retreated to somewhere between 50 and 75 percent , although We still had the Republican Guard located here and here and part of the Republican Guard in this area that was very strong and the Republican Guard up in this strong area and we continued to attack the bridges throughout this area to make absolutely sure that there were no more reinforcements.

I went into battle, this was a situation on February 23, experts, oh wait, I should, I'm sorry, I shouldn't forget these guys, that SF means special forces, we put special forces deep in enemy territory, they came out in strategic recognition. for us and they let us know what was going on there, they were the eyes that were there and it is very important that I do not forget those people below, please, this was the morning of the 24th, our plan had initially been to start from new here in this area and do exactly what the Iraqis thought we were going to do and that is to take them directly into their most heavily defended area and at the same time we launch amphibious feints and naval fire in this area so that they continue to think that we were going to attack along this coast and therefore fixing their forces in this position our hope was that by fixing the forces in this position and with this attack over here in this position we would basically keep the forces here and they would not know what was happening in this area and I think we didn't achieve it very well.

At four in the morning, the Marines, 1st Marine Division, 2nd Marine Division launched attacks through the barrier system, they were accompanied by the 2nd Tiger Brigade. The US Army Tiger Brigade of the 2nd Armored Division, at the same time as the Saudi task forces, also launched a penetration through this barrier, but while doing so at 4 in the morning, The French 6th Armored Division, accompanied by a The 82nd Airborne Brigade also launched a ground attack on their objective in this area also at Amman airfield and the weather slowed us down a bit, but at 8 In the morning the 101st Airborne Assault Brigade launched an air assault deep into enemy territory to establish a forward operating base here, let me talk about each of those moves, first of all, the Saudis here in the East coast they did an excellent job, they faced a very, very resistant barrier system.

They broke the barrier very effectively, moved aggressively and continued their attack along the coast. I can't say enough about the two marine divisions. If I use words like brilliant, it would really be an under-description of the absolutely magnificent job they did. When breaking the so-called impenetrable barrier it was a classic, absolutely classic, military, breaking a very, very hard minefield of barbed wire, fire trenches, narrow barrier, they crossed the first barrier as if it were water, they crossed towards the second line of barrier even though they were under artillery fire at the time they continued to open that gap and then brought both divisions flowing through that gap.

An absolutely excellent operation, a textbook and I think it will be studied for many years to come as to how to do it. I would also like to say that the French did an absolutely excellent job of moving quickly to reach their objective here and they were very successful, as were the one hundred and one, and again we still had the Special Forces located in this area, what we found was so soon As we got over these hurdles here and started putting pressure on, we started getting a lot of surrenders and I think I talked to some of you about that this afternoon when I reported to you on the night of the 24th, we finally got a lot of surrenders, we also found out that these forces here we are getting a lot of surrenders and we are having great success, we were worried about the weather, the weather was going to get a lot worse next time. day and we were worried about launching this airstrike and we also started to have a lot of atrocities of the most unspeakable kind committed in the center of Kuwait City, including reports that the desalination plant had been destroyed and when we heard that we were quite worried Because of what might be happening based on that and the situation that was developing, we made the decision that instead of waiting until the next morning to launch the rest of these forces, we would go ahead and launch those forces that following afternoon, so this was a situation that was seen on the afternoon of the 24th, the marines continued to make great progress getting through the gap in this area and we are moving rapidly north, the Saudi task force on the east coast was also moving rapidly towards the north and was doing very, very well.

In progress, we launched another Egyptian Arab force at this location and another Saudi force at this location again to penetrate the barrier, but once again to keep the enemy thinking that we are doing exactly what he wanted to do and that is to conduct an assault front towards a very, very difficult barrier system, a very, very difficult mission for these people here, but at the same time, what we did was continue to attack with the French, we continued, we launched an attack by the entire seventh corps, where the 1st Infantry Division was. Through an obstacle and a barrierof minefield a fairly large gap was opened through which we passed the British 1st Armored Division at the same time as we launched the 1st Armored Division and the 3rd Armored Division and due to our deception plan the way It worked, we didn't.

We don't even have to worry about a barrier, we just surround the enemy and are behind them in no time in the 2nd Armored Cavalry Division and I should talk and the 24th mechanized division was also launched here in the Far West. and I should talk about the one hundred and first because this is an important point, once the one hundred and first established their forward operating base here, they went ahead and launched themselves into the Tigris and Euphrates valley. There are many people who still say that the one hundred and first The goal of the United States of America was to capture Iraq and it caused the fall of the entire country of Iraq, ladies and gentlemen, well, we were here, we were 150 miles from Baghdad. and no there was no one between us and Baghdad, if our intention had been to take Iraq, if our intention had been to destroy the country, if our intention had been to invade the country, we could have done so unopposed for all intents and purposes. from this position at that time, but that was not our focus, we never said it was our intention, our intention was simply to expel the Iraqis from Kuwait and destroy the military power that had come here, so this was a situation at the end of On February 24th and the following afternoon, please, the next two days went exactly as we thought.

The Saudis continued to make great progress on the eastern flank, maintaining pressure on the Marines in the flank. Here the Special Forces won and began to operate. small boat operations in this area to help clear mines, but also to threaten the flanks here and continue to make them think that we were actually going to conduct amphibious operations, the Saudi forces that came in and took the Arab forces that came in and took these two initial objectives, turned to attack on the fly in the direction of Kuwait City, located right in this area, here the United Kingdom passed and continued attacking on this flank and of course the 7th Corps entered and attacked in this address I showed him. here the 24th Infantry Division made an incredible move all the way to the Tigris and Euphrates valley and proceeded to block this avenue of exit, which was the only avenue of exit left because we continued to make sure that The bridges remained down so that there was no way out.

Once the 24th was in this area and the 101st continued to operate here, the French, having managed to achieve all their objectives, then established a flanking position, a guard position. flank here to make sure no force gets in and out. We from the flank at this point had destroyed or rendered completely ineffective over 21 Iraqi divisions, please, and of course that brings us to where we are today: we now have a solid wall along the north of the 18th Airborne Corps that consists of the unit shown here attacking directly to the east we have a solid wall here again from the 7th Corps also attacking directly to the east the forces they are fighting right now are the Republican Guard forces again today we had a very important when Arab forces coming from both the west and the east approached and moved into Kuwait City, where they are now in the process of completely clearing the city and ensuring that we are absolutely safe.

The 1st Marine Division continues to control Kuwait International Airport. The 2nd Marine Division continues to control Kuwait International Airport. continues to be in a position where it blocks any exit from Kuwait City so that no one can leave To date we have destroyed more than 29 destroyed or left inoperable. I don't like to say destroyed because that gives you the vision of absolutely killing. everyone and that's not what we're doing but we have rendered over 29 Iraqi divisions completely ineffective and the doors are closed there was no way out of here there is no way out of here and the enemy is fighting us in this right place here we continue, of course, to have overwhelming air power; the air has done a great job from start to finish and supporting the ground forces and we have also had great support from the Navy both in the form of naval gunfire and in support of the aircraft carrier error, that is the situation at the current time next please peace is not without a cost these have been the united states.

The casualties to date, as you can see, were the casualties we had in the air war. Then of course we had the terrible misfortune of the Scud attack the other night, which again due to the weapon failing unfortunately caused death instead of functioning properly and then of course these are the casualties in the ground war to the death, the total is as shown here, then wait, wait, wait a second, one second is the next place. We'll make all of these graphics that we have available to you later. I would just like to comment briefly on that picture of casualties, the loss of a human life is intolerable for any of us who were in the army, but I would tell you that casualties of that order of magnitude considering the work that has been done in the amount of forces that are involved, it is almost miraculous in terms of the latest number of victims, it will never be miraculous with the Moroccans, with the families of those people, but it is miraculous anyway, this is what has happened to date with the Iraqis : they start with more than 4,000 tanks like Today we have more than 3,000 confirmed destroyed and I mean destroyed or captured and, in fact, that number is low because 700 can be added to that as a result of the battle that is being fought right now with the Republican Guard, so that number is very, very high and we have almost completely destroyed the offensive capacity of the Iraqi forces in the Kuwait theater of operations.

The number of armored vehicles is also very, very high and of course you can see that we are causing great damage to the artillery. The battle is Still, I suspect these numbers will increase considerably next. I wish I could give you a better number on this to be very honest with you, this is just a wild guess, it's an estimate that the field sent us today at noon. but the prisoners that are out there are so numerous and so numerous and we're obviously not in the business of counting noses right now to determine exactly what the exact number is, but we are very, very sure that we have over fifty thousand prisoners of war right now and that number is continually increasing.

I would remind you that the war is going on even as we speak right now, there is fighting out there even as we speak right now, there are incredible acts of bravery that occurred this afternoon. We had an F-16 pilot shot down. We had contact with him. He had a broken leg on the ground. Two hundred and first helicopters. They didn't have to, but they went in. trying to get that pilot out, one of them was shot down and we're still in the process of figuring it out, but that's the kind of thing that's happening on that battlefield right now, it's not an assist, it's a difficult battlefield where people are risking their lives at all times and they are great heroes and we are all very proud of that is the campaign to date, that is the strategy to date and now I would be very happy to answer any questions that anyone may have.

Yes, sir, the graph you showed there with the attrition rates of the various forces was almost exactly the opposite of what most of us thought was happening. It showed that front-line troops receive 75% or more treatment and the Republican Guard, which many of The public's attention was focused on when we were covering the air war. I treated it less than 75. Why is that? I mean, how did it happen? Look, that's the graph again. Roger, please let me tell you how we did this. We begin. Of course, against strategic objectives, I briefed you on that earlier, at the same time we were attacking the Republican Guard, but you have to remember that the Republican Guard is a largely mechanized armored force that is very, very well entrenched and very , very good.

We spread out so that in the early stages of the game we were attacking the Republican Guard heavily, but we were attacking them with strategic-type bombers rather than precision bombers, for lack of a better word. What happened is that the air campaign went from the strategic phase to the theater. and we knew from the beginning that this was the important area, the nightmare scenario that the nightmare scenario for all of us would have been to go through, get caught in this gap right here and then have the enemy artillery come down on the chemical weapons troops. we were in a group in the breach right there, that was the nightmare scenario, so one of the things we felt we should have established is the absolute possible destruction of the artery, the direct support artillery that would be firing on that artery . cable, that's why we changed it in the last few days, we punished this area very hard because that was the first challenge once we got over this and we're moving, so it's a different war than we were fighting our kind of war before We have to understand that we are fighting their kind of war and that is what we did not want to have to do at the same time that we continue to attack the Republican Guard and that is why I would tell them that again the numbers that they were giving you are conservative, they have always We've been conservative, but we promised him from the beginning that we weren't going to give him anything inflated, we're going to give him the best we had, yes, sir, oh, it looks like you have something that he would see.

There seem to be around five or six hundred 4,000+ tanks left as just one example. I wonder if in the big picture, despite these huge illustrative images from Lee, you could tell what's left of the Iraqi army in terms of how long it might last. before he can go back to being a regional threat or a threat to the region, well, there's not enough left for him to be a regional threat to the regional offensive. Regional threat, since you know it has a very large army, but most of the army that has come out north of the Tigris and Euphrates valley is an infantry army, it is not an armored army, it is not a heavy armored army, which means which isn't really an offensive army so it doesn't have enough left unless someone decides to rearm it in the future you said you had all these divisions along the border that were seriously written up.

It is estimated that there are about 200,000 soldiers. Maybe we are there. You have 50,000 prisoners. Where is the rest? There was a very, very large number. of dead in these units a very, very large number of dead, we even found them when we entered the unit ourselves and found them in the trench lines there were very numerous desertions at one point we had reports of desertion rates of more than 30 percent cent of The units that were along the front here, as you know, we had a fairly large number of prisoners of war that came across and that was the case.

I think it's a combination of defections, there's a combination of people who were killed, there's a combination of people who we. I've captured it and there's a combination of other people who are just flat and keep running. Yes sir, it seems you have done so much that the job is effectively done. Can I ask you what you think really needs to be done more because the forces If your forces are not destroyed, they are certainly no longer capable of posing a threat to the region. They seem to want to return home. What's left to do? Place the last graph.

Please, the last arrow. The big arrow. If I want to achieve the goal. The mission I was given is to ensure that the Republican Guard is rendered unable to carry out the type of heinous act that they have carried out so often in the past. What needs to be done is for these forces to continue attacking here and end the war. The Republican Guard is out of business, we are not in the business of killing them, we have psychological operations planes in operation, we tell them over and over again, all they have to do is get out of their tanks and walk away and they won't kill them, but they "We continue to fight and as long as they continue to fight, we will continue the fight with them, that is behind that far-left movement that came 150 miles from Baghdad, was that also part of the plan that the Iraqis might have thought was going to Baghdad and that would have contributed to the deception.

I wouldn't mind at all if they got a little nervous about it. I really and I, and I say this very sincerely, have been delighted if they got very, very nervous about it, frankly, I don't think so. that they never knew it was there I think they never knew it was there until the door had already closed on them, yes, right there, I wonder how much there is still resistance in Kuwait and I wonder what he would say to the people he would say. that heThe purpose of this war was to get the Iraqis out of Kuwait and now they are out.

What would you say to that audience that is thinking that At this point I would say that this war had much more purpose than simply getting the Iraqis out of Kuwait. The purpose of this war was to enforce United Nations resolutions. There are about 12 different resolutions in the United Nations, not all of them. have been accepted by Iraq to date, as I understand it, that's fine, but I have to tell you that in the military business of a military commander my job is not to go ahead and at some point say "well, that's great", just now retired from Kuwait, although they are still shooting at us, they are moving backwards and therefore I have accomplished my mission, that is not the way to fight and that is not the way I would fight from behind please , Yeah. then you talked about the intense press coverage of the impending Thunder from the beginning and how it helped fool the Iraqis into thinking it was a serious operation.

I wonder if you could talk about other ways the press contributed to the campaign. I don't want it, I'd rather not, first of all, I don't want to characterize even a thunderclap as just a hoax because we didn't have every intention of doing fibia operations if they were necessary and that was very, very real rehearsal as were the others essays. I guess the only thing I would tell the press that I loved was in the early stages of this operation, when we were here preparing and we didn't have much. On the ground, all of you were given credit for a lot more here and as a result, that gave me a sense of confidence that maybe we wouldn't be attacked as quickly as I thought we were going to be attacked other than I wouldn't want to go in In the rest of the question here yes sir, what kind of fight is happening with the Republican Guard?

Are there more fights going on in Kuwait as Kuwait essentially out of action no, the type of fight that is going on with the Republican Guard right now is just a classic tank battle, you have the fire and the maneuver you have, they continue fighting and shooting, shoot us. As our forces advance and our forces are in business without flanking them, taking them from behind using our attack helicopters using our advanced technology, I would tell you that one of the things that has been particularly prevalent in this battle here is our technology. We had excellent weather for the air war, but right now and for the last three days it's been raining out there, it's been dusty out there, there's black smoke and fog in the air, it's good weather for infantrymen.

God loves infantrymen and that's the kind of infantryman that likes to fight, but I would also tell you that our sights have performed fantastically well in their ability to detect through that kind of dust and haze for enemy targets and The enemy sights haven't worked that well, in fact, I've had several anecdotal reports today of enemies telling us that they couldn't see anything through their sights and all of a sudden their tank exploded when their tank was hit by our sights, so that's one of the indications of what story or shakeup you're on. I mean, although it's very difficult, a very, very difficult air environment, obviously, as this box gets smaller and smaller, okay, in bad weather, it becomes more and more difficult to use the air and so Therefore, the air acts more in an interdiction role than any other in the rear.

Yes, the French general journalist, could you tell us why the French were very fast in the desert on the first day they stopped in Salman and when they invited us to stop fighting after 36 hours? Well, that's not exactly a correct statement, the French mission was fine on the first day. Today was to protect our left flank, what we were interested in was making sure that we could find this battlefield on both the right and the left and we didn't want anyone to come in and attack these forces, which was the main attack we It came from his left. flank, so the French mission was to go out and not only see our Salmaan, but also set up a screen on the entire left flank, which was absolutely vital to ensure that we were not surprised, so they definitely did not stop fighting and They continued to carry out their mission. and they did it extraordinarily well.

Yes, sir, the air force disappeared very early in the air war. It was speculated that they might return to provide cover during preliminary work. Did you expect that? Are you surprised they never showed up again? I did not expect it. We weren't. I expected it but I would tell you that we never ruled it out and we were fully prepared in case it happened honey, I got you, they have been completely destroyed, where I have not flown a plane, I will tell you where there are many. They are scattered throughout civilian communities in Iraq, where there is a lot of evidence that we have evidence of that.

Yes, right here, how many divisions of the Republican Guard are they fighting now and an idea of ​​how long it will take? We're probably fighting in the In the order we fought there was a total of five of them up here, okay, one of them we had probably destroyed yesterday, we probably destroyed two more today and I would say that leaves us a couple that we We are in the process of fighting right now. Yes, I asked you two questions first? Did you think this would work out? I realize it took a lot of strategy and planning, but when it happened, did you think this would turn out to be as easy as it seems?

And secondly, what are your impressions of Saddam Hussein as a military strategist? Yes, first of all, if we thought it would have been such an easy fight, we definitely would not have stored 60 days of supplies in these log bases, so, as I said, I told everyone for a long time that it is very, very important that A military commander never underestimates the capabilities of his enemy and when you face an enemy that has more than 500,000 men he has a reputation that he has had of fighting for eight years, being battle-hardened veterans, they had the number of tanks and the type of equipment they had, you don't assume it or anything, so we certainly didn't expect it to be like that to the extent that Saddam Hussein is a great military strategist.

He is neither a strategist nor has he been trained in operational art, nor is he a tactician, nor is he a general, nor is he a soldier. Apart from that, he is a great soldier. I want you to know that you are coming back here. I wonder if you could tell us something more about the Iraqi casualties in the battle that you said were great. quantities, are we talking about thousands, tens of thousands of you? Scale you already know I wish I could answer that question, as you can imagine, this has been a battle that moves very quickly like the desert. war and as a result, even today, when I was asking for estimates, all the commanders said we just can't give you an estimate, it was too fast, we're gone, goodbye, too fast, yes, we are very fast Special Operations people.

Could you tell us what your role was? We don't like to talk a lot about what Special Operations does as you well know, but in this case let me cover some of the things I did first with every single Arab unit that went into battle we had Special Forces troops with them. , the job of those Special Forces was to travel and live at the battalion level with all those people to make sure they could act as communicators with friendly English. English-speaking units that were on their flanks and could also call in airstrikes as needed, they could coordinate helicopter strikes and that kind of thing is one of the main roles that they played and it was a very, very important role, secondly, They did a great job in strategic reconnaissance for us, thirdly, the Special Forces were 100% in charge of combat search and rescue and that is the difficult mission when a pilot is shot down in the middle of nowhere surrounded by the enemy and You are the people who are needed.

Getting in and going after them is a very difficult mission and that was one of their missions and eventually they did some direct action missions as well. In general, there were reports that when the Iraqis left Kuwait City they took several Kuwaiti people with them as hostages, what can you tell us about this? We have heard that they took up to 40,000. I think you've probably heard from the Kuwaitis themselves who were left in the city-state that they were taking people and they've taken them away, so I don't think there's any doubt about the fact that there were a very, very large number of young males x' Kuwaitis taken out of that city in the last two weeks, but that pales, pales into insignificance in comparison to the absolutely unspeakable atrocities that occurred in Kuwait in the last week.

They are not part of the same human race. The people who did that. The rest of us. I understand. I have the dam. That is the case, yes, sir. No sir, I would not like to talk, could you give us some indication of what is happening with the remaining forces in Kuwait? What kind of forces do they have? What size are they? Are they engaged at the moment? Three symbols, any of these up here, I know. the ones from Kuwait the three symbols on the right these ones here yeah, no, I'm not even sure they're here, well, I think they're probably gone, well because we had picked up a lot of signs with the people.

There's a path that goes around here and out there and I think they're most likely gone, so what you're really relying on is that you end up fighting these Republican Guard Mekin heavy armored units that are there and Basically, what we want to do is capture your teams and see shapes, so in fact, they are, they are all. I can't wait and I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if there weren't groups of people around here who are just waiting to give up as soon as someone finds out, coming at them, but we certainly aren't having any infighting over our lines of communication. or anything like that, a certain general, not to take anything away from the Army and the Marines and achieve maneuvers. house, no, but many of the reports and pools they received from their field commanders and soldiers indicated that these fortifications were not as intense or sophisticated as they were led to believe, is this a result of the beatings they received? that you described before or maybe they were overrated in the first place when you were in the minefield no, all there has to be is a mind and that's intense, okay, there were a lot of minds out there, there was a lot of barbed wire, there was fire. trenches most of which we started ahead of time but there are still some that were there, the Egyptian forces had to go through fire trenches, there were a lot of booby traps, a lot of barbed wire and it was not a fun place to be.

I have to tell you, probably one of the hardest things anyone has to do is go up there and walk up to something like that and walk through it and consider that as you walk through it and clean it at the same time. You're probably under enemy artillery fire, that's all I can say is it was less severe than you expected. I mean, when you're doing something even worse, it was less severe than we expected and just one of the things. I attribute that to the fact that we took extensive steps to try to make it less severe, and we really did.

I didn't mean to be facetious with my answer, I just have to tell you that it is a very difficult mission for anyone, especially in a minefield. Yes, sir, your role is that of the Republican Guard. Their only remaining military objective is in Iraq and I understand there has been some intense fighting. How would you rate this army that you have faced since the Republic? Watching down an army is a difficult thing to do, a large part of the German army's ability is its dedication to its cause and its willingness to fight. You can have the best team in the world.

You can have the biggest one. There are numbers in the world, but if you are not dedicated to your cause, if you do not have the will to fight, then you will not have a very good army. One of the things we learned is to shoot correctly. The start of the campaign which, of course, actually contributed to the timing of the ground campaign is that a lot of people were deserting and I think you've heard this about the Iraqis taking down execution squads whose job it was to shoot people. On the front I have to tell you that the soldier does not fight very hard for a leader who is going to shoot him at his own whim, that is not what military leadership is about and that is why I attribute much of the failure to him. of the Iraqi army to fight against their own leadership, they committed themselves to them with a cause they did not believe in, they all say that they did not want to be there, they did not want to fight against their fellow Arabs, they lied to them. they were deceived and when they went to Kuwait they didn't believe in the cause and then when they got there they had a leadership that was so indifferent towards them that they didn't feed them properly, they didn't give them water properly. and in the end they kept him there only at gunpoint, so now I can't, the Republican Guard is completely different, the Republican Guard is the one that went to Kuwait in the first place, they pay them more, they treat them better and Oh, by the way , they were also in therear here, okay, so you could be the first ones out, okay?

When the battlefield began to fold, while these poor guys up here who didn't want to be here were the first place to bear the brunt. Well, it didn't happen. Could you tell us something about British involvement and perhaps comment on today's report of ten dead by fire? Yes, I have to tell you that the British have been absolutely magnificent members of this coalition from the beginning. I have great admiration and respect for all the British people out there and in particular for General Sir Peter de la BA, who is not only a great general but has also become a very close personal friend;

They played a very, very key role in the movement of the main attack I will tell you that what they had to do was get through this gap in one of the most difficult areas because as I told you they had reinforced here there were a lot of forces here and what the British had What to do was get through the gap and then set up the blockade so that the main attack could continue without forces over here, the mechanized forces over here attacking that main attack on the flank and that was a major role, the British did it absolutely magnificently and then They immediately continued the main attack and are still there fighting right now, so they did a great job.

Yes, here, these forty thousand Kuwaiti hostages taken by the Iraqis, where are they now? There are quite a few people. in the line of fire we know if oh no, we were told over and over again and this is a lot of this anecdotal. Okay, they told us they were taken back to Basra. They also told us that some of them were taken the entire time. On the way back to Baghdad they told us hundreds of different reasons why they would take a number one as a bargaining chip if the time came when bargaining chips were needed, another was for retaliation because of course at that time Iraq was saying that these people No, Kuwait, these were citizens of Iraq and therefore they could do whatever they wanted with them, so I just pray that they all return safely in no time.

Yes, sir, of course, no. The other day on television, the Soviet deputy foreign minister said. They were already talking about rearmament of the Iraqis again and there are some indications that the United States also believes that Iraq needs a certain amount of weaponry to maintain the balance of power. Do you think that your troops are in danger of ending this when the politicians already Are they talking about rearming the Iraqis? How do you feel about it? Well, I certainly don't think so. I don't want to argue, you know, what the deputy foreign minister of the Soviet Union says, that's very outside my field.

I would tell you that I am one of the first people who said from the beginning that it is not in the best interest of peace in this part of the world to destroy Iraq and I think that the president of nine states has made it very clear from the beginning that our intention is not is to destroy Iraq or the Iraqi people. I think everyone has every right to legitimately defend themselves, except that something that has come through loud and clear over and over again to the people who have flown over Iraq and to the pilots who have attacked our military installations, when you look at the war machine they built , that war machine was definitely not a war machine defense and they demonstrated it more than adequately when they invaded Kuwait and then called it a great military victory.

Yes, before you started the ground phase, how worried were you about the Iraqi planes coming back from Iran? Do we know what happened to the Iraqis? ISM helicopter no, as I said before, we were very worried about the return of the Iraqi planes from Iran, but we were prepared for any kind of air attack that the Iraqis could launch against us and, oh, for the way we are still prepared To do this, we are not going to let our guard down even for a moment as long as we know that the capacity exists until we are sure that this is all over.

The helicopters are another very interesting story and that's what we know where the helicopters were, traditionally they placed them near some of their other equipment and we tracked them very carefully, but what happened is that even though the Iraqis claimed that we bombed indiscriminately targeting civilians, took their helicopters and dispersed them. everywhere in civilian residential areas as fast as they could, but some of them were damaged at the airfields, those we were able to take at the airfields, but the rest scattered back here. I would like to ask you. I mentioned about the Saudi army forces, could you elaborate on the role of the first day?

I mean, I'm sorry for the role of the Saudi military and then the role from day one, yeah, the Saudi military, like I said, the first thing they did. What they did was we had this marine attack that was going to listen to it, of course we were worried that the forces here would hit the flanks again, that's one of the things you don't want to happen to you, you're advancing forces, so this . force here the eastern task force had to attack along the coast to pin down these enemies in this place the forces again the Saudi forces in this area were attacked around here again to pin down all the forces in this area because we did not want those forces moving in this direction and we didn't want those forces to move in that direction, that's a difficult mission, okay, because these people were required to fight the kind of fight that the Iraqis wanted them to fight, it's a very, very mission. difficult, I would point out.

I have to tell you that it was not just the Saudis, that it was the Saudis, that it was those of Kuwait, it was the Egyptians, it was the Syrians, it was the emir of the United Arab Emirate, it was that of Bahrain, which was a country. and it was the ease of Oman and I apologize if I've left anyone out, but it was a great coalition of people who did a good job to recover whatever was left of the Scud or the chemical capacity. I don't know, I don't know, but we're sure we're going to find out if there's one thing you know: the scuds that were fired at Saudi Arabia came from right here, so obviously one of the things we're going to check out when we finally get to That place is what remains.

Yes, of course, yes, please, General, could you tell us in terms of the air war how effective you think it was in accelerating the ground campaign because it has obviously gone much faster than you expected and, in the second part, what so effective do you think? I think the air-land battle campaign has been the air war, obviously, it was very, very effective. You just can't predict things like that. Best guesses can be made at the outset about how quickly certain goals will be achieved, but of course a lot. That all depends on the enemy and how resilient the enemy is, how tough they are, how well entrenched they are in the early stages, we made a lot of progress in the air war, in the later stages we didn't make much progress because, frankly, the enemy had sunk into the ground as a result of the air war, that of course made the air war a little harder, but when you dig up your tanks and bury them, they are no longer tanks, they are now pillboxes and that makes a difference in the contribution and in the ground campaign when you don't use them for a long time they have problems with the seals, they have a lot of maintenance problems and this type of things, so the air care campaign was very, very successful and contributed To a large extent, how effective was the air-land campaign?

I think I'm pretty effective too. I don't know what you all think. What they think as they look into the future would be a reasonable size for the Iraqi army. Can you tell us approximately what the campaign is? The size is now, if the room stopped tonight, I would consider the size right now. At one point, Saddam Hussein claimed that he had an army of seven million men. There is an army of seven billion men. They still have a fairly large army. As? How effective that army is is a completely different question than what size army you should have.

I don't think it's my job to decide that I think there are a large number of people who live in this part of the world and I hope that it is a decision that has been mutually reached by all the people in this part of the world to contribute to peace and stability in this part of the world. I think it's the best time to be able to donate right there. I'm sorry. I'll give you all a minute, yeah, they said the door was closed. Do you have ground forces blocking the roads to Basra? I know there's some way they can get out there.

No, that's why the doors were closed right here, yes, military or. political explanation for why the Iraqis didn't use chemical weapons, we have a lot of questions about why the Iraqis did use chemical weapons and I don't know the answer, but I just thank God they didn't. use them because they didn't have time to react and that's fine, you want me to speculate. I will be happy to speculate that no one could pinpoint you when you speculate number one. We destroy their artillery. We went after their artillery in a big way. big defections in artillery and they are toys that would have been that's where they would have delivered their chemical weapons or in battle by air, we all know what happens with the air, so we went out, it's already a great moment and I think we were probably very are highly troops and go after their artillery.

There are other people who speculate that the reason they didn't make weapons is because they fear that if they used chemical weapons it would be nuclear retaliation. There are other people who speculate that they didn't. use their chemical weapons because their chemical weapons degraded and because of the damage we did to their chemical production facilities, they were unable to upgrade the chemicals within their weapons as a result of that degradation, which was one of the reasons, among others, where we went after their chemical production facilities at the beginning of the strategic campaign, I will never know the answer to that question, but as I say, thank God they didn't do it until back, are they still bombing in northern Iraq and if They are What is the purpose of this now?

Ah yes, sorry, what is being achieved now, military purposes, is exactly the same as what we tried to achieve before. Well, the war is not over and you have to remember that people are still disappearing. Okay, and those people who are dying are my troops and I will continue to protect those troops in every way possible until the war is over, that's okay here, how soon after you finally defeated those double guards and yellow forces that Lo I threatened: Will he pull his troops out of Iraq, either to Kuwait or back to Saudi Arabia? It is not my decision what you are doing to try to bring to justice the people responsible for the atrocities in Kuwait City and also could you comment on the friendly relationship?

Fire incident in which nine Britons died. Yes, I'm sorry they asked me before and I couldn't do it. First of all, on the first question, we have as much information as possible about the people who were committing the atrocities and, of course, us. We are going through a screening purpose and whenever we find those people who actually committed those atrocities, we try to separate them and we treat them the same way as any other prisoner of war, but the final disposition of those people, of course, may be quite different from that of any other prisoner of war.

The way we would treat any other prisoner of war regarding yesterday's unfortunate incident, the only report we have is that two eight ten aircraft came and attacked two Scout vehicles, British armored vehicles, and that is what caused the casualties. in 9ki a. We deeply regret that there is no excuse for this. I'm not going to apologize for it. I will say that our experience has been based on the extremely complicated number of different maneuvers that were taking place here according to extreme diversity of the number of forces that were out here according to these extreme differences in the languages ​​of the forces. that are out here and the weather conditions and everything else.

I feel like we were very lucky to not have more of this type of incident. I would also tell you that because we had a few before that you know of, we did everything we could to try to prevent that type of thing from happening, it is a terrible tragedy and I am sorry that has happened. Don't know. I'm sorry, I don't think so because I think the information that I had that a forward air controller was involved and can direct it and that would indicate that it was probably during the afternoon, but that was when there was some very, very close combat that is going on. producing in that area at the United Nations General Assembly they talk about peace and, as a soldier, you look at your challenge and get some satisfaction from having achieved it.

Is there any fear on your part? that there will be a ceasefire that will prevent you from fulfilling your mission your mission as a soldier is your mission as a soldier separate from the political objectives that I fear the ceasefire you fear that people will not achieve their goals is that there will be some political pressure on the bell. I think I have made it very clear to everyone that simplyI assumed that the war never started and that we never lost a single life out there that wasn't our choice. We have accomplished our mission and when the decision makers come to the decision that there must be a ceasefire, no one will be happier than me from behind, but I answer a couple more questions and I have to go general.

Today we were told that an A-10 returning from a mission discovered and destroyed 16 scuds in fact and where they located most of those scuds were located in western Iraq. I would tell you that we went into this with some intelligence estimates that I think I have. I have since come to believe that we are extremely inaccurate or that our pilots are lying and I choose to think the former rather than the latter, especially since many of the pilots have backed up what they have been saying through movies and such but we go in with a very, very low number of these mobile mounting launchers that we thought the enemy had; however, at one point we received a report that they could have had ten times as much.

However, I will tell you that last night the pilots had a very successful afternoon and evening when it came to mobile disc launchers, most of them in western Iraq, which would have been used against Israel. One question: Yes, Mr. General, you have said many times in the past that you do not like body counts. We have also been told tonight that enemy casualties were very, very heavy. I wonder, with coalition forces already burying the dead on the battlefield, will there ever be some sort of accounting or head count or something? I don't think there has ever been a successful death count in the history of war and one of the reasons you say and that is because those people need to be laid to rest for many reasons and that happens so I would say No, there will never be an exact count, you know, but probably in the coming days you will hear many stories, either over-inflated or under-plated, depending on who hears them from the people who, unfortunately, will know better. are the families who will not see their loved ones return home one more question right here, yes sir, if the door is really closed as you have said several times and the theories about where these Kuwaiti hostages are maybe in Basra, maybe In Baghdad, where could they be? be and a second quick question was that the timing for the start of the ground campaign was a purely military election or was it a military election with political influence on the correct choice of the date, that is correct, let me when I say the door is closed , I don't know.

I want to give you the impression that absolutely nothing is escaping, on the contrary, what is not escaping are the heavy tanks. What is not escaping are artillery pieces. What is not escaping is that type of thing. That does not mean that the vehicles civilians aren't escaping that doesn't mean innocent civilians aren't escaping that doesn't mean unarmed Iraqis are escaping and that's not the door I'm talking about. I'm talking about the door that is closed on the war machine that is out there now. Your other question was about the start of Earth time for the start of the Earth campaign.

I did a military analysis on when that ground campaign should be carried out I gave my recommendation to the Secretary of Defense and General Colin Powell they passed that recommendation to the president the president acted on that recommendation why do you think we did it at the time mistaken? I wonder if his recommendation and analysis were accepted without change. I am very grateful that the president has allowed the United States military and the coalition military to fight this war exactly as it should have been fought and the president in each case has taken seriously our guidance and recommendations and He has performed magnificently as commander in chief of the United States.

Thank you so much.