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incredible acts of bravery going on.   This afternoon we had an F-l6 pilot shot down
We had contact with him,  he had a broken leg on the ground. Two helicopters from the
101st,  they didn't have to do it, but they went in to try and pull that pilot out
One of them was shot down, and we're still in the process of working through that.
But that's the kind of thing that's going on out on that battlefield right now.   It
is not a Nintendo game -- it is a tough battlefield w~ere people are risking their
lives at all times.   ~here are 9reat heroes out there, and we ought to all be "ery,
very proud of them.

      That's the carnpaign to date.   That's the strategy to date   I'd now be very
happy to take any ~e~ions anyone might have.

       0:  ~ want to go back to the air war.   The chart you showed there with the
attrition rates of the various forces was almost the exact reverse of what most of us
thought was happening.   It showed the front line troops attritted to ~5 percent or
more,  and the Republican Guard, which a lot ~f public focus was on when we were
covering the air war, attritted less than ~5.   Why is that?  How did it come to pass?
       A:  `let me tell you how we did this. We started off, of course,  against the
strategic targets.   I briefed you on that before.  At the same time,  we were hitting
the Republican Guard.   But the Republican Guard1 you must remember,  is a mechanized
armor force for the most part, that is very, very well dug in,  and very, very well
spread out.   So the initial stages of the game, we were hitt~ng the Republican Guard
heavily, but we were hitting them with strategic-type bombers rather than pinpoint
precision bombers.



       For lack of a better word, `what happened is the air campaign shifted from the
strategic phase into the theater.   We knew all along that this was the irriportant
area.   ~he nightmare scenario for all of us would have been to go through, get hung
up in this breach right here, and then have the enemy artillery rain chemical weapons
down on troops that were in a gaggle in the breach right there.   That was the
nigh~mare scenario.   So one of the things that we felt we must have establi~hed is an
absolute,  as inuch destruction as we could possibly get, of the artillery, the direct
support artillery,  that would be firing on that wire   That's why we shifted it in
the very latter days1 we absolutely punished this area very heavily because that was
the first challenge.   Once we got through this and were moving, then it's a different
war.   Then we're fightin9 our kind of war.  Before we get through that,  we're
fighting their kind of war, and that's what we didn't want to have to do.

      At the same time, we continued to attrit the Republican Cuard,  and that's why I
would tell you that, again, the figures we're giving you are conservative, they
always have been conservative.   But we promised you at the outset we weren't going to
give you anything inflated, we were going to give you the best we had.

          0:  Ne seems to have about 500-600 tanks left out of more than 4,000, as just
    an example.  I wonder if in an overview, despite these enormously illustrative
    pictures, you could say what's left of the Iraqi Army in terms of how long could it
    be before he cou1~ ever be ~ regional threat, or a threat to the region again?
          A:  There's not enough left at all for him to be a regional threat to the
    region,  an offensive regional threat. As you know, he has a very large army, but
    most of the army that is left north of the Tigris/Euphrates Valley is an infantry
    army, it's not an armored army,  it's not an armored heavy army, which means it really
 )  is~'t an offensive army.   So it doesn't have enough left, unless someone C21O0~es to
    rearin them in the future.

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