70                                    U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991


    In the earlier stages, we made great progress in the air war.   In the latter
stages, we didn't make a lot of progress because frankly they--the enemy--had
burrowed down into the ground as a result of the air war.
    Now that, of course, made the air war a little bit tougher, but when you dig
your tanks in and bury them, they're no longer tanks.  They're now pill boxes.
That, then, makes a difference in the ground campaign. When you don't run
them for a long time, they have seal problems, they have a lot of maintenance
problems and that type of thing.
    So the air campaign was very, very successful and contributed a great deal.
How effective was the air--ground campaign? I think it was pretty effective my-
self. I don't know what you all think.

    Q. Can you tell us what you think as you look down the road would be a
reasonable size far the Iraqi army, and can you tell us roughly what the size is
now if the war were to stop this evening?
    A: With regard to the size right now, at one time Saddam Hussein was
claiming that he had a 7 million man army.  If he's got a 7 million man army,
they've still got a pretty big army out there.
    How effective that army is, is an entirely different question. With regard to
the size of the army he should have, I don't think that's my job to decide that.
I think there are an awful lot of people that live in this part of the world, and
I would hope that is a decision that's arrived at mutually by all the people in this
part of the world to contribute to peace and stability in this part of the world,
I think that's the best answer I can give.

    Q. You said the gate was closed.  Have you got ground forces blocking the
roads to Basra?
    A: No.

    Q. Is there any way they can get out that way?
    A: No.  That's why the gate's closed.

    Q. Is there a military or political explanation as to why the Iraqis did not
use chemical weapons?
    A: We've got a lot of questions about why the Iraqis didn't use chemical
weapons, and I don't know the answer. I just thank God they didn't.

    Q: Is it possible they didn `t use them because they didn `t have time to react?
    A: You want me to speculate, I'll be delighted to speculate. Nobody can
ever pin you down when you speculate.
    Number one, we destroyed their artillery. We went after their artillery big
time. They had major desertions in their artillery, and ... that's how they would
have delivered their chemical weapons, either that or by air.  And we all know
what happened to their air.  So we went after their artillery big time, and I think
we were probably highly, highly effective in going after their artillery.