28 March 2003
Myers Says Coalition Will Leave Iraq as Soon as It is Stabilized
(Goal is to transition to new Iraqi administration quickly) (3310) The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff says coalition forces will remain in Iraq in a post-conflict transition phase long enough to ensure the territorial integrity of the country, to stop "factional ethnic fighting," and to find, secure and deal with weapons of mass destruction sites. In a March 27 interview with al-Jazeera, Air Force General Richard Myers said the United States wants to make sure neighboring nations don't "try to unduly influence events inside Iraq." All in all, the JCS Chairman expressed the hope that these objectives would be accomplished over "a very short period of time." The goal of the planned transition, Myers said, is to move "at some point to a civilian administration and then to an Iraqi administration ... as quickly as possible." Following is a transcript of the Myers interview: (begin transcript) GENERAL RICHARD B. MYERS Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Interview with Al-Jazeera Pentagon Press Briefing Room Thursday, 27 March 2003 Al-Jazeera: General, thank you for being with us. General Myers: Thank you for the opportunity. Al-Jazeera: My first question is about the military presence in the Middle East and it's about perception. Now the military presence of the U.S. in Iraq is perceived by many in the region and many Iraqis as well as a form of occupation. And many would interpret the acts of resistance that are taking place as an attempt by the Iraqis to resist the possibility of an occupation. General Myers: Well, there were, I think, eight goals laid out by the Secretary of Defense at the start of this campaign. I think they pretty clearly outlined what the objectives are in the region by the coalition forces. The first one of course, and one of the main ones, is to eliminate weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi inventory so they don't fall into the hands of terrorist organizations, but there were several other objectives as well. One was to provide humanitarian assistance where and when it was needed, food, medicine, water. In fact, that is being done today by our coalition forces. They came into the country not only to fight the Iraqi regime and the military forces but to provide humanitarian assistance to those who needed it. One of the other objectives is to leave an Iraq that is better off than under this brutal dictator. I think many of your listeners know of the record of Saddam Hussein and the treatment of his own people, the treatment of his neighbors. One of our objectives is leave an Iraq that has territorial integrity that is intact, that has a form of government that represents all factions in that country, whether they're minorities or majority factions, that is a representative government. And we want to do that as quickly as possible. As President Bush said, we're going to be there to disarm Iraq, to remove the regime, and we'll stay as long as we're needed to provide security, but as soon as the military can leave the military will leave and will leave the reconstruction to others, the U.S. will obviously be a big part of that, but not in the military sense. Al-Jazeera: Concerning the weapons of mass destruction, have your forces encountered anything that shows or indicates the possession of weapons of mass destruction on the part of the Iraqis so far with the thrust towards Baghdad? General Myers: We did find, in one instance, a cache of weapons, not weapons of mass destruction, but weapons, people and 3,000 relatively new chemical suits. Now, I think people know full well that the coalition forces do not have chemical weapons, do not have biological weapons. So the question that must be asked is why does this group of, I think this was the Fedayeen Saddam folks and Ba'ath party folks, why did they have in their cache that was interrupted by the U.S. Marines in this case, why did they have 3,000 chemical and biological protective suits? Having said that we have not found weapons of mass destruction at this point. Al-Jazeera: The other question of concern to many in the region is about civilian casualties, especially in light of the last days occurrence in the Shehaab [sp?] district of Baghdad. What exactly happened there and what strategy will the U.S. forces use to avoid any more casualties, especially that there is a possibility that you might be drawn into an urban combat situation? General Myers: There's a lot of meat in that question you just asked, a lot of specifics and details, but let me say this. In terms of the information we've seen from I think the market area in the district as you mentioned there in Baghdad, Central Command has looked at that, and preliminary indications are that that area was not anywhere near an area that had been targeted by coalition forces, so we don't know what caused that. We will continue to investigate to make sure that if it was coalition forces we will admit that. If it's not, though, there are other things it could have been. We do know the Iraqi forces put their anti-air defenses very close to civilian neighborhoods, close to mosques, close to schools. It's entirely possible that that damage was done by a surface-to-air missile that the Iraqis were trying to fire, or perhaps other things as well. Central Command will continue to do this investigation to try to determine the best they can what the cause was, but right now they cannot confirm that that was coalition weapons. In terms of being drawn into the rest of the fight, one of the things that I think your listenership needs to understand, being a very powerful nation and a very powerful coalition, we have certain things that we think we must do by our principles. One is to protect the civilian population at all costs. We have done this in our targeting so far. We don't know how many civilians had casualties or deaths because we're not on the ground in Baghdad and other places, but we think there are very, very few. Our bombing has been very precise. In fact you hear that from Baghdad. The lights are on, the water works. They say that during the day it's pretty much business as usual in many neighborhoods there in Baghdad, so we've been taking great care to only apply power to the regime forces that are resisting. I can guarantee you that we will apply sufficient power to ensure that the end is never in doubt. In fact, I can assure you that we will win this war against the Iraqi regime-not against the Iraqi people-and we will disarm Iraq. There should be no doubt about that. Al-Jazeera: Is the strategy in this case is to lay siege to cities so as to avoid getting into an urban combat situation? General Myers: Well it will probably vary depending on the city. What you see going on in Basra right now, we have a population there, a Shia'a population, that we know very clearly wants to be rid of this regime and the oppression that they've been under for years now. And so what will happen is that we will slowly work with the people that have been sent down there by the regime to essentially put a gun to the heads of the people that want the regime to go, forced them to fight. We will work that problem over time, and we're going to be patient about that. There have been some signs down there we are getting lots of help from the indigenous people of Basra to help us identify where the Ba'ath party leadership is, give the Fedayeen Saddam. I think there's another word for them, regime death squads really because what they are doing is executing and shooting people that are not supporting the regime. They are obviously feared throughout Iraq and locating pockets of those so we and the British forces can take them on. We still have a lot of tough fighting to do. We have not engaged the Republican Guard Divisions yet. That should come here in the near future. When it does, I think it will be clear about how much power and might the coalition forces have and eventually we'll get to Baghdad. We're going to have to evaluate that situation when we get there, but I can tell you, one of our considerations will always be for the Iraqi people. We will always try to do this in a way that spares Iraqi civilians to the most we can. Al-Jazeera: Now we are being told that Baghdad is being bombed again. I am going to talk to you about the war especially, and it's all over the American press, it's being brought up by the journalists, has there been an underestimation of the adversary in this war? Have you sent in enough troops? Was the strategy correct? Did you think that the psychological warfare that was conducted in terms of the pamphlets being thrown from the airplane, was it enough? Were the responses that you got from the field encouraging that you thought you might come in and take a capitulating army and you didn't surrounding that, if you could address that? General Myers: I'd be happy to. As far as we're concerned right now, the plan that General Franks and his people devised is essentially on track. We've had a couple of days of really bad weather. As people in the region know, there were some very bad dust storms for a couple of days. Now the weather is better. The plan is basically on track. The number of forces we have in country goes up every day. We have continued to flow forces to the region. Those decisions were made months ago. This plan is playing out pretty much as we expected. The regular army divisions did not put up much of a fight in southern Iraq. They capitulated or deserted or surrendered very quickly. We have over 4,500 enemy prisoners of war. And oh, by the way, we are inviting the International Red Cross in, want them to come in and see the condition of these prisoners, and we'll try to do our best and ensure they're treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention. But the plan is basically on track, and I think the fighting we've seen so far is pretty much what's been expected. There has not been enough resistance to be militarily significant at this point. Al-Jazeera: I want to ask you about the prisoners. Pictures of the prisoners being blindfolded. Some of them military, others would say some of them look like civilians. That brings off a lot of negative feelings in the area. How are you going to remedy that situation? General Myers: Well one of the things, like I just said, we have invited the International Red Cross has been asked to come in and see the enemy prisoners of war that we have. We've invited them in. We want them to come in and look at them. We are taking extraordinary care of those prisoners. In fact some who are wounded went out to the hospital ship, the Mercy, and they're under the care of the best medical staff and doctors that this country has. And we will continue to take care of them as we do all prisoners of war. That's our obligation, and we will do that. We would only hope that the Iraqi regime would allow reciprocal visits and visits by the International Red Cross to the prisoners of war that they hold so they can ascertain their condition and so forth. But your listeners need to be assured that we are going to treat every and each enemy prisoner of war very humanely. That's what we promised to do, and we will do it and we will have it verified by an international committee of the Red Cross. Al-Jazeera: I want to ask you about as situation that's described in the cities. It's a situation of chaos. There is an absence of administration in like Um Qasr. What are you going to do to remedy the absence of administration? General Myers: The best we can tell, and from our reporting, there is no serious food, water shortage any place in Iraq at this time. As I said, when our troops came in they initially brought with them water and rations for the local populace as well. In Um Qasr what we hope to do is we have people that are set up to help get the city back on its feet and my guess is that work has already started. That to the maximum extent possible we'll use the Iraqis that were running the city before, as long as they're not part of the Ba'ath party and they have not been unkind to the population of the city. As long as they behaved in a responsible way they can probably continue. But those decisions will be made as people go into Um Qasr. We are trying to get a ship into the port of Um Qasr, the Sir Galahad, which has humanitarian supplies on it, over 300 tons of humanitarian supplies that we're trying to get in so we can move them not only to Um Qasr but also the rest of Iraq. Al-Jazeera: What is your estimation of the Republican Guard and how they will fight? Do you think the regime with its back against the wall its likely to use all options that it has? General Myers: Well, when you say all options, one option that we worry about they could use would be chemical or perhaps biological weapons and we don't know. The answer to that is we don't know. We don't know precisely who is in charge of the regime right now. There is some question about whether Saddam Hussein is in charge or whether others are in charge. But we don't know how the Republican Guard will fight. That remains to be seen. Our intelligence reporting says that some of the divisions are ready to capitulate. Others may fight more fiercely. My guess is it will be proportional to how many folks they have there that are going to threaten them in case they don't fight, if they do want to desert or give up. But I think in the near future we're going to find out just how much fight they have in them, and we're certainly going to be up to the task. Al-Jazeera: You said the military plan was going according to plan, when do you estimate you're going to be in Baghdad? General Myers: Well, I really don't have an estimate right now. Your listeners must know though that we have essentially two armored divisions roughly within about 50 to 60 miles of Baghdad right now. We have a Marine division that is a little bit further out on a different route coming up towards Baghdad. You can't tell in war, you can't put precise timelines on it, but we're basically very satisfied with how the plan is working right now. We're satisfied with our supply lines back down to southern Iraq and into Kuwait. And we're satisfied with our posture in the west, and we're satisfied with our posture in northern Iraq as well. Al-Jazeera: Yesterday there were airdrops of paratroopers on the north. Why light infantry in the north? Are you going to have an armored division there? And what is exactly the plan? I know you can't give me operational details, but how will it look like in the north? General Myers: One of the things, one of the objectives in the north is to provide confidence to the Kurdish population that what happened in '91 will not happen again and that is mass attacks, chemical attacks on them. So we want to provide them confidence that we have enough force there to protect them against any Iraqi action against them. I think we do at this point, combined with the air power, that this ground force can bring to bear. That's one of our primary objectives up there right now. As you said, I can't get into the rest of the operational objectives. It would be giving too much away to the Iraqi regime. I'll just leave it there. But one of the primary ones is to bring some confidence to the Kurdish population that we are there and we're there to support them. Al-Jazeera: The troop reinforcements that were on their way soon from Europe or from Texas, will they originally planned to be in the region or are you calling them up because of the resistance or something is going awry in the plan? General Myers: They've been in the plans and been planning to move for two or three months now. In fact the 4th Infantry Division which was initially scheduled to go in through Turkey and now is on its way to Kuwait, it's been sitting in the Eastern Mediterranean for some time. So they've always been part of the movement of forces. The forces to follow in have also been in the plan for months. So this is exactly as we had planned it to work out. It is not unusual. It is not a reaction to anything we've seen or any of the fighting that's occurred on the battlefield. Al-Jazeera: And my final question, general, is about post-war Iraq. How long does the military expect to be in Iraq after the war ends? And are you planning on a military administration and how long will that be in place? General Myers: I think the military will only be there as long as it takes to ensure the territorial integrity of Iraq, that those countries that are around Iraq do not try to unduly influence events inside Iraq. They'll be there as long as there is any factional ethnic fighting among some of the groups. We certainly don't want that to happen. And they'll be there as long as there are weapons of mass destruction sites that need to be found, secured and then dealt with appropriately. We hope that is a very short period of time. Our goal would be to transition all of this at some point to a civilian administration and then to an Iraqi administration, and you would hope you can do that as quickly as possible. Using Afghanistan as a model, we had an interim Afghanistan government very, very quickly after hostilities. It will remain to be seen how fast this will occur in this case, but it's certainly our hope that the U.S. military won't have to be in there, the coalition military, for any great length of time. I heard an anchorman from Abu Dhabi TV state that he had read a Council on Foreign Relations report that we were going to be there for 15 or 20 years. Nothing could be further from the truth. We don't know how long, but I can guarantee you it won't be near that long. We're hoping a much, much, much shorter period of time. Just long enough to do those things that I mentioned earlier. Al-Jazeera: Has the man who's going to take that post for that brief period of time been chosen? General Myers: Not to my knowledge. No, I don't think he's been chosen yet. Al-Jazeera: Thank you Mr. Chairman, we do appreciate your time. [Speaking in Arabic]. (end transcript) (Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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