ANTHOLOGY AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY                                         65


he a general, nor is he a soldier.  Other than that, he's a great military man. I
want you to know that.   (Laughter)

   Q.  General, I wonder if you could tell us anything more about Iraqi
casualties on the battlefield; you said there were large numbers. Are we talking
thousands, tens of thousands? Any more scale you can give us?
   A:  No, I wish I could answer that question.    As you can imagine, this has
been a very fast-moving battle, as is desert warfare, and as a result even today
when I was asking for estimates, every commander out there said we just can't
give you an estimate, it went too fast, we've gone by too quickly.

   Q:  You went over very quickly, the special operations folks.  Could you tell
us what theirftont role was?
   A:  We don't like to talk a lot about what the special operations do, as
you're well aware. But in this case, let me just cover some of the things they
did.
   First of all, with every single Arab unit that went into battle, we had Special
Forces troops with them.  The job of those Special Forces was to travel and live
right down at the battalion level with all those people to make sure they could
act as the communicators with friendly English--speaking units that were on
their flanks, and they could also call in air strikes as necessary, they could
coordinate helicopter strikes, and that sort of thing.  That's one of the principal
roles they played, and it was a very, very important role.
   Secondly, they did a great job in strategic reconnaissance for us.
   Thirdly, the Special Forces were 100 percent in charge of the combat search
and rescue, and that's a tough mission.     When a pilot gets shot down out there
in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by the enemy, and you're the folks that
are required to go in and go after them, that is a very tough mission, and that
was one of their missions.
   And finally, they also did some direct action missions, period.

   Q:  General, there have been reports that when the Iraqis left Kuwait City,
they took with them a number of the Kuwait people as hostages.     W}tat can you
tell us about this.?
   A: We've heard that they took up to 40,000. 1 think you've probably heard
the Kuwaitis themselves who were left in the city state that they were taking
people, and that they have taken them.      So I don't think there's any question
about the fact that there was a very, very large number of young Kuwaiti males
taken out of that city within the last week or two.       But that pales to insig-
nificance compared to the absolutely unspeakable atrocities that occurred in
Kuwait in the last week.  They're not a part of the same human race, the people
that did that, that the rest of us are.  I've got to pray that that's the case.

   Q.  Can you tell us more about that?
   A:  No sir, I wouldn't want to talk about it.