Press Briefing 27 FEB 91

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Subject: Press Briefing 27 FEB 91

CENTCOM News    Briefing
General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, USA
Riyad,  Saudi Arabia
Wednesday, February 27,  1991 - 1:00 p.m. (EST)

      General Schwarzkopf:     Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.  Thank you for being
here.

      I proimised some of you a few days ago that as soon as the opportunity presented
itself I would give you a complete rundown on what we were doing,    and more impor-
tantly,   why we were doin9 it -- the strategy behind what we were doing.    I've been
asked by Secretary Cheney to-do that this evening,    so if you will bear with me-, we're
going to go through a briefing.     I apologize to the folks over here who won't be able
to see the charts, but we're going to go through a complete briefing of the opera-
tion.

        (Chart)

      This goes back to ~ August throu~h 17 January.     As you recall, we ~tarted our
deployment on the ~th of August.    Basically what we started out against was a couple
of hundred thousand Iraqis that were in the Kuwait theater of operations.     I don't
have to remind you all that we brou9ht over,   initially,  defensive forces in the form
of the 101st,   the 82nd,  the 2~th ~echanized Infantry division, the 3rd Armored
Cavalry,   and in essence, we had them arrayed to the south,-behind the Saudi tas)c
force.    Also there were Arab forces over here in this area,  arrayed in defensive
positions.    ?het, in essence, is the way we started.

      (Chart)

      In the middle of November,    the decision was made to increase the force because,
by that time,   huge numbers of Iraqi forces had flowed into the area,  and generally in
the~disposition as they're shown right ~ere.    Therefore, we increased the forces and
built up more forces.

      I would tell you that at this time we made a very deliberate decision to align
all of those forces witbin the boundary looking north towards Kuwait       this being
King Knalid Military City over here.    So we aligned those forces so it very much
looked like they were all aligned direct~y on the Iraqi position.

      we also,    at that time, had a very active naval presence o~t in the Gulf, and we
made sure that everybody understood about that naval presence.      One of the reasons
why we did that is it became very a~parent to us early on that the Iraqis were quite
concerned about an amphibious operation across the shores to liberate Kuwait -- this
being Kuwait City.    They put a very, very heavy barrier OL infantry along here,  and
they proceeded to build an extensive barrier that went all the way across the border,
down and around and up the side of Kuwait

      Basically,    the problem we were f~ced with wa~ thi~:  ~hen you looked at the
troop numbers,    they really outnumUered us about three-to-two, a:id when you considc-r
the number 0Ł comb~t service support people we have -- t:~a~'s lo~istic~a.s arid ttat