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File: DOC_81_CENTCOM_NEW_BRIEF_002.txt
2
sort of thing in our armed forces, as far aS fighting troops, we were r~~lly
outnumbered two-to-one. In addition to that, they had 4,~OO tanks versus our 3,500
when the buildup was complete1 and they had a great deal more artillery than we do.
I think any student of military strate~y would tell you that in order to attack
a position you should have 8 ratio of approximately three-to-one in favor of the
attacker, In order to attack a position that is heavily dug in and barricaded such
as tbe one we had here, you should have a ratio of five-to-one in the way of tr0Op~~
in favor of tile attacker. So you can see basically what our problem was at that
time. We were outnumbered as a min~rnum, three-to-two, as far as troops were
concerned; we were outnumbered as far as tanks were concerned, and we had to come up
with ~oime way to :nake up the difference
(Chart)
I apologize for the busy nature of this chart, but I think it's very important
for you to understand exactly what our strategy was. What you see here is a color
coding 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 si~n. Green repre:ents units
that have been attritted below 50 percent strength; the yellow are units that are
between 50 and ~5 percent strength; and of course the red are units that are over 7S
percent strength
W~at we did, of course1 was start an extensive air campaign, and I briefed you
in quite some detail on that in the past. One of the purposes, I told you at that
time, of that extensive air campaign was to isolate the Kuwaiti theater of operations
by taking out all the bridges atid supply lines that ran between the north and the
southern part of Iraq. That was to prevent reintorcement and supply coming into the
southern part of Iraq and the Kuwaiti theater of operations. We also conducted a
very heavy bombing campaign, and many people questioned why the extensive bombing
campaign. This is the reason why. it was necessary to reduce these forces down to a
strength that made them weaker, particularly along the front line barrier that we had
to go through
We continued our heavy operations out in the sea because we wanted the Iraqis
to continue to believe that we were going to conduct a ma~5ive amphibious operation
in this area. I think many of you recall the numl'er of amphibious rehearsals we had,
to include Iituuinent Thunder, that was written about quite extensively for many
reasons. ~ut we continued to have those operations because we wanted him to
concentrate his forces -- which he did,
I think this is probably one of the most important parts of the entire briefing
I can talk about. As you know, very early on we took out the Iraqi Air Force. We
knew that he had very, very limited reconnaissance means. Therefore, when we took
out his air force, for all intents and purposes, we took out his ability to see what
we were doing down here in Saudi Arabia. Once we had taken out hi~ eyes, we did what
could best be described as the *`~ail ~ary play1, in football. I think you recall when
the quarterback is desperate for a touchdown at the very end1 what he does is he seta
up behind the center, and all of a sudden, every single one of his receivers goes way
out to one flank1 and they all run down the field as fast as they possibly can and
into the end zone, and he lobs the ball in essence, that's what we did
When we knew that h~ couldn~t scc us any ~ore, we did a massive rnovement of
troops all the way out to the wesL, to the extreme west1 because at that time we knew
that he was still fixed in this area with the vast majority of his forces, and once
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