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★阿修羅♪
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そろそろ本当の戦死者数を公表する為の下準備ですかな。
Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=3J0FIISTH3ZI2CRBAE0CFFA?type=focusIraqNews&storyID=2481066
US Said Prepared to Pay 'High Price' to Oust Saddam
Mon March 31, 2003 03:30 PM ET
By Jim Wolf
AS SAYLIYA CAMP, Qatar (Reuters) - The United States is prepared to pay a "very high price" in terms of casualties to capture Baghdad and oust President Saddam Hussein, a senior official of the U.S. Central Command said Monday.
"We're prepared to pay a very high price because we are not going to do anything other than ensure that this regime goes away," the official told reporters, adding that U.S. casualties in the 12-day-old war had so far been "fairly" light.
"If that means there will be a lot of casualties, then there will be a lot of casualties," said the official, who spoke on condition that he not be named.
Referring to nights in World War II "when we'd lose 1,000 people," he added: "There will come a time maybe when things are going to be much more shocking."
Forty-six Americans have been killed, and 17 reported missing, in the Iraq war. Britain has reported 25 deaths.
The official, addressing reporters at the Central Command's forward headquarters in Qatar, said the net result of reporting by correspondents with the invasion force was creating a false impression of "constant, ferocious battle."
"That's not what's going on out there," he added. "It's military action at places primarily of our time and choosing."
The official said there were "an awful lot of ominous signs" that Saddam had prepared his forces to use banned chemical weapons. He listed the discoveries of chemical detection equipment, protection suits, new masks and atropine injectors used to protect against nerve agents.
'CHEMICAL OPERATIONS'
"To me, as a soldier, it indicates that he was preparing his troops for the possibility of chemical operations," the official said. "Will people hesitate to act on those orders? I can only say, I hope so."
The official predicted Saddam would probably mount a "layered" defense of Baghdad, with his best troops, the Republican Guard, arrayed on the city's outskirts.
An inner cordon would most likely include officials of Saddam's ruling Baath party, militia and Republican Guard infantry, he added.
The official said the United States was paying a price for failing to protect uprisings by Shiite Muslims in Iraq's south and Kurds in the north after a U.S.-led alliance drove Iraqi invaders from Kuwait in 1991.
"I think we bear a certain responsibility for what we didn't do in 1991 and it's playing itself out on the battlefield," he said. "I mean you let somebody down once, you don't want to let them down twice. I guess I'm being too candid."
The official said the United States had underestimated the fear instilled by Saddam loyalists and the difficulty Iraqis would have revolting until Saddam was known to be ousted.
But he said he sensed anti-Saddam popular uprisings were "near" in the southern city of Basra and in Nassiriya, midway to Baghdad. "I think once the tipping point comes, it starts to spread," he said.
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