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Many of Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear arms sites are "deeply buried" and would be difficult to destroy using air power alone, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Monday.
He refused to say how Washington might go after such deadly arms stores and research facilities, but lashed out at recent and conflicting reports of U.S. planning for a military ground and air assault to remove President Saddam Hussein from power.
"The Iraqis have a great deal of what they do deeply buried," he said, responding to questions at a press conference on the campus of the U.S. Joint Forces Command in Suffolk, Virginia.
Mobile trailers, Rumsfeld said, were another problem for air power alone.
"A biological laboratory can be on wheels in a trailer and make a lot of bad stuff. And it's movable and it looks like most any other trailer," he told one questioner who asked why the United States did not simply bomb "weapons of mass destruction" sites.
"So the idea that it is easy to simply go do what you suggested ought to be done from the air is a misunderstanding of the situation ... it is a bigger task than that suggests."
Repeated vows by U.S. President Bush to remove Saddam from power and a spate of media reports about U.S. military planning, especially in the New York Times and Washington Post, have raised speculation -- and fears -- worldwide about a possible U.S. attack.
"DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ"
Rumsfeld said that the Iraqis had benefited from information from American spies and learned how to conceal the "precise location, actionable locations" of military targets.
"You don't believe everything you read in the newspaper, do you?," he quipped to laughter when asked about a weekend Post report that many senior U.S. military commanders favored continuing the current U.S. policy of "containment" of Saddam rather than trying to remove him with military might.
Defense analysts have said such an invasion could require 250,000 or more U.S. troops and hundreds of aircraft and could result in high casualties.
The New York Times reported on Monday that U.S. officials were exploring the idea of seizing Baghdad and one or two key command centers and weapons depots in the hope of toppling Saddam's government.
The article, which drew no substantive comment from the White House, was the latest in a series of newspaper accounts of possible U.S. military strategies toward Iraq, ranging from a three-pronged mass assault from Kuwait, Jordan and Turkey to U.S. generals lobbying against any attack at all.
The newspaper stories have angered Bush and Rumsfeld, who has said anyone disclosing such top secret information could put U.S. soldiers in danger and should be jailed.
Bush, whose father, former President George Bush, drove Iraq from Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War, has branded the country part of an "axis of evil" seeking weapons of mass destruction and has made no secret of his desire to see Saddam go.
KILL OR ISOLATE SADDAM?
Seeking to tamp down speculation of an imminent attack, the president has repeatedly said that there are no plans for attacking Iraq on his desk.
Citing senior administration and Defense Department officials, The Times said the aim of seizing Baghdad first would be to kill or isolate Saddam and to preempt Iraq's use of weapons of mass destruction, whether against an incoming force, front-line allies or Israel.
Such a Baghdad-first or "inside-out" approach would capitalize on the U.S. military's ability to strike over long distances, maneuvering forces to envelop a large target, the Times said. Advocates of the plan say it reflects the desire to avoid committing a quarter-million American troops, yet hits hard enough to succeed, the newspaper said.
A New York Times report in early July cited a highly classified draft U.S. military plan to invade Iraq using air, land and sea-based forces attacking from three directions, with tens of thousands of soldiers probably invading from Kuwait.
(China Daily July 30, 2002)
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