WILLIAM WALLACE ALERT!!
OK, maybe not that William Wallace, but that's such a cool gif, I couldn't resist.
Posted on 05/07/2003 2:46:18 PM PDT by demlosers
ARLINGTON, Va. — American forces have collected “plenty of documentary” evidence suggesting Saddam Hussein had an active program for weapons of mass destruction, the commander of U.S. Army troops in Iraq said.
The reason Saddam didn’t use them against invading forces may be that they were buried too well to retrieve in the face of the fast coalition dash to Baghdad, said Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace, commander of the Army’s V Corps.
“It’s taking us a while … to sort through the documentary evidence,” Wallace told Pentagon reporters in a videoconference from the Iraqi capital.
“A lot of the information that we’re getting is coming from lower-tier Iraqis who had some knowledge of the program but not full knowledge of the program, and it’s just taking us a while to sort through all of that.”
He did not elaborate.
Acknowledging that it was only one of his theories, Wallace said the reason they never were used was that the Iraqis had to hide them from U.N. weapons inspectors up until the last days before the war.
“Inspectors only left Baghdad a few days before the start of the campaign,” Wallace said. “Because they were so clever in disguising them and burying them so deep, they themselves had a problem getting to it.”
And insufficient manpower was not the reason U.S. troops did not stop widespread looting in Baghdad in the days after the city’s fall, Wallace said.
“It was not so much an issue of the number of troops as the fact that we were still fighting our ass off as we went into Baghdad,” he said.
The plain-spoken three-star led 110,000 soldiers during the campaign to remove Saddam Hussein’s regime from power as U.S. troops fought their way from the Kuwait border to Baghdad and beyond in less than a month.
On Monday, Pentagon officials said that Maj. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, commander of the Germany-based 1st Armored Division, will be the next commander of “Victory Corps.”
Wallace shrugged off a question that comments he made early in the war have caused repercussions from senior defense leaders.
“I don’t think I’ve been treated poorly by anyone,” Wallace said.
As a major sandstorm slowed movement and U.S. ground forces fought Saddam’s paramilitaries in southern Iraq, Wallace told reporters that “the enemy we’re fighting is a bit different than the one we war-gamed against.”
At the time, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld suggested to reporters that the general had been taken out of context.
But when asked by a reporter Wednesday to “put his remark in context,” Wallace declined the opportunity to backpedal.
“I make no apologies for those comments,” he said. “The enemy we fought [as the troops approached cities in southern Iraq] was much more aggressive than what I expected him to be.”
Wallace took command of V Corps in July 2001. His departure date is not known because the Senate must confirm Sanchez for the post.
Asked where he will go from V Corps, Wallace replied, “I don’t have any idea what my next assignment is.”
— Stars and Stripes reporter Lisa Burgess contributed to this report from Washington.
WILLIAM WALLACE ALERT!!
OK, maybe not that William Wallace, but that's such a cool gif, I couldn't resist.
?Because they were so clever in disguising them and burying them so deep, they themselves had a problem getting to it.?Let this be a lesson to us all. If you have WMDs, be prepared to use them quickly.
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