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Politics : Piffer Thread on Political Rantings and Ravings -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gypsees who wrote (9757)	2/27/2003 8:22:35 PM
From: X Y Zebra	Respond to of 14610

Interview with General Norman Schwarzkopf, Commander-in-Chief, Central Command (CENTCOM) <clip> Q: At Safwan--the planning for what would happen there-- What did you want to achieve? Schwarzkopf: When the Iraqis arrived at Safwan I wanted to make very sure that they completely understood the overwhelming military power that their armed forces had faced on the ground and I also wanted to make it very clear to them that we were completely capable of resuming hostilities at any given time and quitely frankly, inflicting great damage upon them if we chose to do so. I didn't want them to arrive thinking this was a meeting of equals, I wanted them to clearly understand that this was the victor over the vanquished when they sat down at that table. Q: What do you remember about your encounter with them? Do you remember asking about the POWs? Schwarzkopf: Well, my first order of business was the POWs and we knew exactly how many people were missing and we wanted an accountabilityof how many were alive, how many were dead, how many were POWs and this sort of thing. So he sat down and said "I'm prepared to give you that information" And I said "Would you give it to me now?" And they reeled off the status of each one and how many bodies they had and this sort of thing. And at that point I said "OK, I want to now talk about the return of the dead bodies." And he interrupted me and said "Wait a minute, how about our POWs? I want to know the status of our POWs." And I said to him "Well very good. We have fifty thousand," I believe the number was I gave him, "we have fifty thousand and we're still counting." And his whole face just changed. Up until that time they had been a little bit arrogant I think, but I think at that moment they came to understand the magnitude of their defeat. I don't think they had the slightest idea how many people they had had captured and when I told them fifty thousand, their whole demeanor changed. And then subsequently, when we were.. I was showing them the demarcation lines on the maps, and they said "Well, you know, why is it that our troops have to draw all the way back to these demarcation lines?" And I said "You don't understand, my troops are considerably forward of these demarcation lines! We're the ones that are drawing back to establish these buffer zones so that we are not going to shoot each other".And again this was the subject of a great deal of conversation and murmuring. I think, once again, they were shocked at how far we had advanced. pbs.org