Document Page: First | Prev | Next | All | Image | This Release | Search

12

      0:   Is the Republican Guard your only remaining military objective in Ira~?   I
gather there have been some heavy engagements.   How would YOU rate this army you face
-- from the Republican Guard on down?
      A:   Rating an array is a tou9h thing to do. A great deal of the capability of
an army is its dedication to its cause and its will to fight.   You can have the best
equipment in the world, you can have the largest nwnbers in the world, but if you're
not dedicated to your cause, if you don't have the will to fi9ht, then you're not
going to have a very good army.

      One of the things we learned right prior to the initiation of the campaign,
that of course contributed, as a matter of fact, to the timing of the ground
cart~paign, is that so many people were deserting, and I thin)c you've heard this, that
the Iraqis brought down execution squads whose job was to shoot people in the front
lines.   I've got to tell you, a soldier doesn't fight very hard for a leader who is
going to ahoot hizn on his own whim.   That's not whaL military leadership is all
about    So I attribute a great deal of the failure of the Iraqi Army to fight, to
their own leadership.   They committed them to a cause that they did not believe in.
They all are saying they didn't want to be there, they didn't want to fight their
fellow Arabs, they were lied to, they were deceived when they went into Kuwait1    they
didn't believe in the cause,  and then after they got there, to have a leadership that
was so uncaring for them that they didn't properly feed them, they didn't properly
give them water, and in the end, they kept them there only at the point of a gun.

          The Republican Guard is entirely different.  The Kepublican Guard are the ones
    that went into Kuwait in the first place.  They get paid inore, they got treated
)   better, and oh by the ~ay, they also were well to the rear so they could be the first
    ones to bug out when the battlefield started folding, while these poor fellow up here
    who didn't ~ant to be here in the first place, bore the brunt of the attack.  ~ut it
    didn't happen.

       0: Can you tell us something about the British involvement, and perhaps
CoŁnrnent on today's report of ten dead through friendly fire?
       A: The ~ritjsh,  I've got to tell you, have been absolutely superb members of
this coalition from the outset.   I have a great deal of admiration and respect for
all the British that are out there,  and parLicularly General Sir Peter [Delabiyea)
who is not only a great general, but he's also become a very close personal friend of
mine    They played a very, very key role in the movement of the inain attack.  I would
tell you t}\at what they had to do was go through this breach in one of the tougher
areas, because I told you they had reinforced here, and there were a lot or forces
here, and what the Brits had to do was go through the breach and then fill up the
block, so the main attack could continue on without forces over here, the mechanized
forces over here, attacking that ~ain attack in the flank.  That was a principle role
of the British.   They did it absolutely magnificently, and then they immediately
followed up in the ALain attack, and they're still up there fighting right now.   So
they did a great job.

          0:  The 40,000 Kuwaiti hostages taken by the Iraqis.  Where are they right now?
    That's quite a few people.  Are they in the line of fire?  Do we know where they are?
          A:  No, no.  We were told, and a lot of this is anecdotal.  We were told that
    they were taken back to Basra.  We were also told that some of them vere taken all
    the way back to ~aghdad.  We were told 100 different reasons why they were taken.
)   ~~x one, to be a bargaining chip if the time came when bargaining cnips were
    needed.  Another one was for retribution because of course, at that time Iraq was
    saying that these people were not Kuwait is, these were ciLizens of Iraq and there-

Document Page: First | Prev | Next | All | Image | This Release | Search