ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY                                    49

   Basically, the problem we were faced with was this: when you looked at the
troop numbers, they really outnumbered us about 3-to-2, and when you consider
the number of combat service support people we have-that's logisticians and that
sort of thing in our Armed Forces, as far as fighting troops, we were really
outnumbered 2-to-i.   In addition to that, they had 4,700 tanks versus our 3,500
when the buildup was complete, and they had a great deal more artillery than
we do.
   I think any student of military strategy would tell you that in order to attack
a position, you should have a ratio of approximately 3-to-i in favor of the
attacker. In order to attack a position that is heavily dug in and barricaded such
as the one we had here, you should have a ratio of 5-to-i in the way of troops
in favor of the attacker.  So you can see basically what our problem was at that
time.  We were outnumbered as a minimum, 3-to-2, as far as troops were
concerned; we were outnumbered as far as tanks were concerned, and we had
to come up with some way to make up the difference. (Map 2)
   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 sign.
Green represents units that have been attritted below 50 percent strength; the
yellow are units that are between 50 and 75 percent strength; and of course the
red are units that are over 75 percent strength.
   What we did, of course, 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
operation: by taking out all of the bridges and supply lines that ran between the
north and the southern part of Iraq.   That was to prevent reinforcement and
supply coming into the southern part of Iraq and the Kuwaiti theater of Oper-
ations. 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 massive am-
phibious operation in this area. I think many of you recall the number of
amphibious rehearsals we had, to include Imminent Thunder, that was written
about quite extensively for many reasons.    But we continued to have those
operations because we wanted him       [Saddam Hussein] 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 [Saddam Hussein] 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 his eyes, we did what could best be described as the
`1Hail Mary play" in football. I think you recall when the quarterback is