2:30 P.M. (EST)

Real Audio of Briefing

COL MACHAMER: Good afternoon, and welcome to the Foreign Press Center. We have with us today Major General Stanley McChrystal, who I am sure you are all familiar with from the Pentagon press briefings. He is here to brief us on targeting planning and procedures. And I know you have heard a lot about our precision bombing campaign, and I emphasize "precision."

And I think it's beneficial to understand just what that means, and the systematic and methodical process that goes on behind it to minimize and prevent collateral damage. General McChrystal will present a briefing on that topic, and then he'll be happy to take your questions.

And with that, General, welcome.

MAJ GEN McCHRYSTAL: Thanks, Rick. Good afternoon. And I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you today about this because it's clearly an important subject and timely with the events of the day.

Next slide, please.

I would just like to start by emphasizing a few points, and they are really highlighted by the quotes shown. First is, the target of the operation that is ongoing now is the regime of Saddam Hussein. It's not the Iraqi people. And so, we believe that it's important that our targeting reflect that same objective, and that is to liberate the Iraqi people by eliminating that regime.

Second is, we have an unprecedented capability now with technology to achieve precision in our targeting. We have the ability to hit, in most cases, exactly what we try to hit, and scale the munitions appropriately to the task. We also believe that that capability comes with it a responsibility. Because we can be more discriminating in the use of force, it gives us a responsibility to be more discriminating.

As you know, international law draws a clear distinction between combatants and civilians in any war. The principle that civilians are protected during operations lies at the heart of the international law of armed conflict. And it's that distinction that we believe is important. And it's also a distinction that I would, at the beginning, say is so contrary to some of the practices we have seen such as the use of human shields by the Saddam Hussein regime in some of the operations to date.

Next slide, please.

Start by defining what we mean by collateral damage and unintended casualties. Really, they are two separate and distinct things, but they both are undesired outcomes of conflict. In this case, targeting of specific military -- militarily legitimate targets that may result in any of the things that you see above.

One would be protected sites that are damaged or destroyed. That could be a mosque, could be a hospital, could be schools; it could be diplomatic facilities. And those are all things that we take great care not to impact, or not to influence in the targeting process. Second, you'll see what we'll discuss a little later in the brief is something called "dual-use facilities." And that's something that -- a facility that has a civilian use, and therefore might be something that we don't want to target, but it also, at the same time, has a military use.

For example, communications facilities might be that. And so a decision is made in that case, a balancing, the necessity on the one hand with the desire to avoid unintended consequences on the other; and then, a discussion of potential noncombatant casualties. And any time we get any noncombatants injured or killed, or their structure is damaged or destroyed, those are obviously things we want to minimize, particularly in an operation like Iraqi Freedom, where the intent is, in fact, to protect and help the people of Iraq from the regime, as opposed to hurt them in the process.

Now, clearly, as I have mentioned, the technology has given us a great capability and a great responsibility, but has not made us perfect. And we're not anywhere near that, and we don’t expect to be near that. We are going to have collateral damage occur. We have seen it already. There will be unintended casualties. And that will happen when technological systems malfunction, weapons break.

It's going to happen when human beings make mistakes, simple human error. And that will happen in every war and on a daily basis. And it will also happen in the fog of war when the weapons may perform exactly as we desire, and human beings may be operating, making rational decisions, but the information that they have is confused because the battlefield is almost by definition that way.

And so the fog of war also produces instances where we strike targets with all the right intentions and with all the right precisions, but with an outcome that we did not seek. And so that will come and that will be with us. And we'll talk a little bit about what we do as we go through.

But one of the things I would highlight at the beginning, that we have proven already in this operation, as we said we would, every time we have a case where there is a real or even potential case of unintended civilian injury or death or collateral damage to structures, we've investigated it. And we go back and we look at the targeting; we account for every munition that, in fact, was suspended; we look for whether the aim points that we intended to hit were hit, to determine if, in fact, there was the result of our targeting unintended civilian damage -- or casualties, or damage, and then we correct the errors as we go.

Next slide, please.

Now, our targeting process starts at the beginning of any military operation, either at the beginning of the campaign or in a much shorter -- as any commander prepares for an engagement, what he does is he determines those targets or those effects he must create on the battlefield to achieve his military objectives. And that will produce a fairly extensive list of effects. For example, it could be prevent enemy movement across a river or it could be prevent a weapons facility from delivering weapons of mass destruction capability.

And then when those effects are determined, the targeteers will determine how we do that. Can it be done by striking the target? Can it be done by preventing the target from having access, i.e., rail or road access to it? Can it be done by effecting preventing people who work there from being there? And it will produce a series of targets, then, that they want to strike. And that's sort of the master target list that comes out.

But that's only really the first part of the targeting process, because once that list is produced, the target list, it then goes through what we call a vetting process, and that vetting process goes through a number of members of the staff and it's a series of decisions. For example, we'll go through legal review, public affairs review, intelligence review, and then we'll look for things like is this really the target we think it is, is it really where we thought it was, is it really necessary, is it legal -- a number of issues.

And each one is judged on the bullets that you see above. For example, is the target likely to result in noncombatant casualties? Is it like to result in damage to structures nearby, or affect protected sites? Is it a dual-use target? Will the effect of creating the military effect we want actually have a negative effect on the populace?

And then of course the last. Is it in close proximity to a fairly new phenomenon we've seen, that of human shields? And that is, of course, of two types now because human shields can be divided into those who are volunteers and those, in fact, who might be there as a result of coercion.

So the vetting process then takes each of those targets. It eliminates a number of targets from the master list for all of the reasons that we discussed -- the desire to prevent or minimize collateral damage and to limit or prevent entirely the potential for unintended loss of life.

Next slide, please.

We then look at each target in a way that we try to essentially engineer the best solution to it. What I'm going to do is take you through a target here and take you through the process on a couple of slides that talks about what happens.

If you start with this slide, and in the center that red container is a military headquarters, and it's a valid military target and we've determined that it meets legal criteria, we've determined that the destruction of that target is required, we then determine aim points. Those are spots on the target that we want to hit to achieve the desires effects. In this case, the initial targeting says we need to strike the target here and here to create the effect we want to have.

But when we do the targeting, we come out with a red ring, the maximum weapons effects area. And that is, if we've chosen a munition, for example a 2,000-pound bomb, we determine the burst radius of that munition. And in this case, for example purposes, the initial targeting identified these aim points, produced this maximum weapons effects area, and, as you can see, we find we have civilian housing and two protected structures within that area. So at this point, that target targeting in the initial look would produce unintended damage and potentially civilian loss of life.

Next slide, please.

So we go through the next stage in the process, and there are a series of steps that you can take. One of the first is to start by employing smaller weapons. In many cases, if we started with a 2,000-pound bomb to destroy a building, we may look back and say we can do it with a smaller munition, or multiple smaller munitions, and still achieve the effect on that particular target. If you talk about a 2,000-pound bomb, it might have a 600-foot maximum ring, but if we fired a Hellfire missile with only a 40-pound warhead it might be 60 or 70 feet. So by achieving that effect, we can start in the very simplest way decreasing the maximum weapons effects area.

Another way to do it is to achieve or to use a different fuse. When an explosion occurs from a munition, if it's an airburst or right on the surface, it will go without anything stopping the effects of that explosion going out. So, for example, if I say that a 2,000-pound bomb has a 600-foot range, the explosion, if it occurs one or two feet off the ground, nothing stops that explosion from moving out. That produces the maximum weapons effect area.

But if we instead, for example, put a delayed fuse so that when the target is struck, milliseconds after striking, the munition goes off either in the ground or inside the structure, much of the blast is mitigated by the fact that the structure or, in fact, the ground, will take up much of that blast. We have computer models which work this and I'll talk a little bit about those.

Then we can talk about shifting aim points on a target. If we have a target with essentially on three sides we have the potential for unintended casualties or damage, we can switch aim points to another location on the building. Maybe we can achieve the same effect by hitting the other side of the building. Maybe we can achieve the effect by hitting two walls of the building, and that will still make it unusable. And with precision, we have the capability to hit with that kind of accuracy.

The next is to limit attack angles and azimuths. What I mean is the direction in which the munition comes in. And that can be flown by the pilot, if it's an aircraft dropping it, or the direction of attack from a missile being fired. But when a munition goes in, unless it comes absolutely straight down -- and most do not -- it produces its effect in a pattern away from the direction that it was fired in. So, for example, if we have an attack angle, in this case, from the southwest and coming in and striking this point, most of the effects will go out in a pattern that looks sort of like the bat wings on here in the yellow hashed area, so it will pitch out. And we can predict that with a fair amount of accuracy, and therefore we have another way to, again, reduce now the effect to that area.

Finally, we have the ability to limit or determine the time of attack. If we have a target that is a militarily significant target that's near a school and we know the schoolchildren do not occupy the school during hours of darkness, we can hit the military target, obviously, in off hours to minimize the chance of civilians being in the area.

In this particular case, what you see we've done is we've taken a target like this that started with a high potential for collateral damage and loss of life, and we've mitigated that down through the use of the capabilities we now possess and some detailed planning so that, in fact, we've mitigated that so that it now has a low potential for collateral damage. And all of the targets that we strike we rate on their potential for collateral damage and make decisions accordingly.

Now, there are high collateral damage targets struck. There are some targets for which all of the mitigation that we do cannot completely mitigate the potential, and then it's a judgment call that weighs the military necessity against the expected outcome.

Next slide, please.

Now, a dual-use facility is also a potential target. In this case, I've got a fairly straightforward case. What we've got is an ammunition plant in the middle of an industrial complex. It becomes a decision on the potential -- the negative weight against the positive, or the necessity.

Another way to look at this, however, and a decision is made based on that, is other ways to attack that target. If the ammunition plant produces ammunition, clearly the ammunition is only going to be a factor when it gets somewhere, so some options for striking this target are, first, information operations to tell the people who work in the plant not to go there; potentially, we can prevent the production and therefore achieve it without loss of life. Maybe we can shut the power off to the plant. Maybe we can close the road that goes in to the plant. Any number of ways that can cause it without necessarily having to strike the ammunition plant.

And then if that is not possible, then of course the decision is made, and just the model we talked about before, on whether or not we strike the ammunition plant and we mitigate down to the greatest extent possible.

Okay. Next slide, please.

Another mitigation technique is to provide early warning. This, however, is a knife that cuts both ways. And one of the ways we do this is we simply put out instructions to people that these or this target specifically, or these targets, are legitimate military targets and they will be struck, or they may be struck.

The only problem with this is once you do this you are -- you have the potential for deception, you have the potential that the opposing force will make the decision, as we have seen in this conflict, to put noncombatants there for exactly the reason that we are trying to prevent, so that they can cause an incident to occur.

And there are some targets, clearly, that you want the military element to still be there to strike. If it's a command and control target or part of the element, if, in fact, those people are conducting command and control, you want them there. So it's a decision in every case.

Next slide, please.

We also go through a calculus to identify no-strike facilities. Every facility that comes on the no-strike list is one that is a protected site at that point. It becomes a protected site, although it may not have been originally a mosque or a hospital or something like that. Diplomatic facilities, non -- NGO facilities key to us, historically significant sites. Again, those can also be violated.

In this conflict, we've already had significant cases where the Iraqi regime has positioned military equipment right in the vicinity of historic sites. Just this week, in the Grand Mosque in An-Najaf, we took fire from inside the mosque. We took direct fire from inside the mosque. We did not return fire. We did not engage the mosque at all because of its status, although legally, under the law of war, as soon as a facility like that is used, it loses that protective status, we understand that the unintended consequences of returning fire in a case like that just doesn't measure up either in values or military necessity, and so we did not. In fact, the soldiers of the 101st Air Assault Division made a very specific decision not to do that.

In all of the processes we talk about here, we are aided by a number of things, from computer programs that allow us to model and simulate what our munitions will do; a very detailed process of review, starting with the initial targeteers and review to the highest levels; the high collateral damage targets are reviewed high up the chain of command and decisions made on a constant basis; and then a review of the battle damage assessment of each target to minimize those times we have to go back and re-strike a target if, in fact, it did not achieve the desired effect.

Okay, that concludes my pitch on targeting. What I'd like to do is open up the questions either on targeting, or after that on any other subject that you might have.

COL MACHAMER: Okay. Just as a reminder before we start, please wait for the microphone, and identify yourselves by name and the news organization.

QUESTION: Toby Harnden from the Daily Telegraph of London. Could I just ask a question about lawyers and the targeting process? You mentioned legal review.

Could I just ask you about the -- what involvement lawyers have in the process, at what level, and what kind of criteria that applied? I'd ask you whether you could give specific examples of occasions where lawyers had maybe vetoed a target.

And also, if you could perhaps comment on whether the legal -- and I think you also mentioned public relations considerations -- whether taking those into account may sometimes compromise the safety of coalition troops and compromise military aims; and also ask you to comment on the speed at which these decisions have to be made because there is a very, very complex process there. And, clearly, you're operating in real time, and sometimes you may have only minutes to make these decisions.

MAJ GEN McCHRYSTAL: Sure. Well, I remember about a third of that. But because I am not a lawyer, but I'll try to -- I'll try to cover it as best I can. First, we have lawyers at every level that review, that review targets. In the initial targeting process, those lawyers tend to be at the higher levels because you have time to make those kinds of decisions to review target lists before strikes.

So there tends to be a careful process where there is plenty of time to review that. And we produce what we call rules of engagement, which govern not only the targeting process, but all of the other actions of forces in the field. But, as it gets into practice, we have a number of things that we use that work.

First, we operate within those rules of engagement, and then we put together certain processes like time-sensitive targeting. And those are when you talk about the crush of an emerging target that might come up, that doesn't have time to go through a complicated vetting process, then the set of rules apply that says, in this particular case, these are the rules apply. And there still is a legal review, but it is all at a much accelerated process because there are some fleeting targets that require a very time-sensitive engagement, but they all fit into pre-thought out criteria.

In the end, it's a judgment call, clearly, because you are weighing -- most targets have come up, you have imperfect intelligence. But, in some cases, we raise the criteria for positive identification to the point where we do let some targets go; particularly, I came to this assignment from Afghanistan. Sometimes you make decisions to let potentially lucrative targets go simply because you are not sure enough to risk the loss of innocent lives or potential damage to achieve that end. And that's a measure of our strength that I think we are proud of.

QUESTION: What would be the lowest level which the lawyer will be operating in this process? I mean, do you have lawyers actually on the ground with -- I don't know -- captains and second lieutenants? I mean, what's the lowest level?

MAJ GEN McCHRYSTAL: No, we have lawyers all the way down to our maneuver divisions, and, in many cases -- well, we have them down in our maneuver brigades as well.

QUESTION: Do you have any of them actually on the ground in Iraq?

MAJ GEN McCHRYSTAL: Absolutely, at all of those levels, maneuvering with the element.

QUESTION: Right, okay. Thank you.

QUESTION: My name is Saheed Erykat from Al Quds Newspaper. In today's New York Times, Yagila Henke (ph), an Israel Reserve Army officer, currently serving in the occupied territories, suggests to the invasion force that as they set out to conquer Baghdad, there are two things: that they should not shrink from the prospect of civilian casualties; and, second, to use the Monster D9 bulldozer, as they have methodically went through the West Bank cities, and so on.

Will the United States consider something like this, or will they use the tactic that is being currently used in Basra?

And on the dual-purpose thing, was the raiding of the warehouse, the food warehouses in Basra, did it fall under that dual-use targeting?

Thank you.

MAJ GEN McCHRYSTAL: Sir, I'm not sure on the warehouse in Basra exactly what criteria was used, so I don't want to speculate. On the initial question on what techniques were used if combat is required inside Baghdad, that, again, will be up to the ground commanders. We don't want to fight a fight like that in Baghdad. We don't think that should be necessary, but we are prepared to do that if required.

I would say that we will still be governed by the exact principles that I discussed here. We'll be governed by the minimum and most precise use of force that we can achieve, but we'll accomplish the mission. So we'll do what -- we will accomplish whatever has to be done, but we certainly will not do more or any gratuitous damage.

QUESTION: My name is Nasa Fagedhi from Abu Dhabi Television. Sir, I have a question. Why choosing this subject particularly today to talk about? Are we in a stage in the military operations that we should expect heavy or heavier civilian casualties to come?

We all knew from the beginning that the Iraqi forces are not going to have a conventional face-to-face war on the ground out in the open, and they are withdrawing back to Baghdad and street fights is the most likely scenario to happen. Are we to expect heavier than what was happening in the last two weeks, in terms of civilian casualties?

MAJ GEN McCHRYSTAL: Thank you. I can't tell you what to expect. I can tell you that we gave this brief a number of times prior to the outset of hostilities because we believe it's important people understand the process and what it is we are trying to do. So the timing on this is just -- this is when it came up. I do think the timing is good, however, because we have already fought a portion of the campaign.

I believe that we have proven to date that we have waged a very precise and very focused targeting process against the regime. In fact, it has been probably unprecedented in history in our willingness to only target certain regime-oriented elements.

Now, that said, what happens in the future is very difficult to predict. It will certainly be up to what the Iraqi elements that support the regime intend to do.

COL MACHAMER: If I might also, despite briefings with the Pentagon press corps (inaudible).

QUESTION: More than one official, and analyst, and probably also former military people that were sort of polled the operations in Iraq, they talked, for instance, about how the bombing is going on but the lights in Baghdad are still on. Well, we come now to a point where we don't see that.

So is this like -- is this a pattern that many things that we -- that were kept untouched or unharmed, especially in Baghdad and in Iraqi cities, now is probably joining a different list of being judged by a different criteria?

MAJ GEN McCHRYSTAL: No, the criteria haven't changed at all. In fact, we are not sure why the lights are off in Baghdad right now. It was certainly not an intended consequence of anything we did. And we are not sure that, in fact, coalition actions are responsible for that.

But the rules haven't changed. The rules that we are going to fight by have always been to target the regime as precisely as we can, to create or accept that level of collateral damage only where it's required. If we enter combat inside Baghdad, there will be damage. And there will almost certainly be loss of life among the civilian populace that we don't want, but it will be as small as possible. And so the values and criteria have not changed at all.

QUESTION: Ian Soud at Eye View Newspaper (inaudible), Finland. There were reports today that the coalition used its cluster ammunition. Are these reports correct, and is there a rule that says that such kind of ammunition couldn't be used?

And another thing. Who said that this has been successful? You have been very successful in avoiding civilian casualties. Do you have any idea on the amount of civilian casualties? I mean, the Iraqis said today that something like 1,250 dead and 5,000 wounded.

MAJ GEN McCHRYSTAL: Sir, we do not have a good feel for the number of civilian casualties. We just don't have access to those areas and we have come to suspect almost anything that the Saddam Hussein regime puts out. So we know that there have been some and we clearly work to minimize that.

In response to your query on cluster munitions, in fact, we do employ cluster munitions. They are legal. But in every case where we deploy cluster munitions, they are outside of urban areas. We have employed no cluster munitions in any of what we would call a built up area or urban area.

QUESTION: Tass News Agency of Russia. Sir, I've got two questions. The first one, you admitted that mistakes are possible. Do you set for yourself some kind of acceptable limit of mistakes beyond which you will stop hitting and reconsider the operation? And if you do have, what kind of level? Is it 5 percent, 10 percent, 1 percent?

And my second question is about the situation in the region. Actually, Moscow, apparently, is not very happy about full flights of United States U-2 spy planes over Georgia. The Russian Defense Minister said he is not satisfied with United States explanation that they are trying to spot the terrorists because they flew too high. And Mr. Ivanov said that we asked the American side to explain to us what was the purpose of such flights, if you can comment on this.

MAJ GEN McCHRYSTAL: Sir, on the second part, we routinely do not discuss any of our reconnaissance operations and so I'm not at liberty to discuss any around the world at this point.

In terms of levels of mistakes, if there is, in fact, a mistake, we don't have a numerical level that says we can make three mistakes today or we can kill 50 civilians today. I mean, that violates every value we live by. We go for zero and then we try to figure out what it is that's truly achievable.

What we do, though, is, as I mentioned at the beginning, every time we have an incident, even if we don't think that we were involved, we go back with a detailed analysis to figure out what actually happened and figure out whether it was something that we did. Was there a mechanical failure? Did someone, a human being, make an error? And so we go to check the systems to, as quickly as possible, see if there is something systemic in our process that we can correct.

QUESTION: Reuters. I have two quick questions. First one, have you determined whether it was American or Iraqi ordnance that fell on that marketplace in Al-Shula that killed those civilians?

MAJ GEN McCHRYSTAL: That was the first marketplace in the Shaab District. We have not. But I would like to tell you what we did do.

As soon as that occurred, that went off, we started the analysis I talked about. We were not striking any target in the vicinity of that marketplace that day. But instead of saying we weren't aiming near this or we didn't do it, we looked at everything in Baghdad that we did strike that day; and for each ordnance that we dropped, we looked for the aim point that we were aiming at and then was there, in fact, an obvious result of that going in. And then we have also looked to see whether any of our other munitions could have had catastrophic mechanical failure and gotten there.

We are not prepared to stand here and tell you 100 percent sure it could not have been an American munition. We will tell you that everything we find right now, we can't find anything to indicate that it was. And so we still believe that there is a great likelihood that it was caused by something else, potentially a SAM fired ballistically coming back to earth.

QUESTION: I have just a second quick question. You know, people in the Pentagon and elsewhere are expressing concern that as you get closer to Baghdad there is worry that the Iraqi troops may use chemical or biological weapons. If that is the worry, how do you target them differently, because if they have chemical and biological weapons, you can't target them the same way as you would a non --

MAJ GEN McCHRYSTAL: That, in fact, is correct, because the unintended consequences of that. So we do a number of things. The first thing you've done, you've probably heard, we have very specifically, through information operations, sent the message that the use of chemical or biological weapons is a violation of war; anyone who makes the decision to either give the order or follow the order will be treated as a war criminal. So we hope to deter those who might make that decision.

And then we have done a very aggressive targeting campaign against all the enablers for weapons of mass destruction. We've tried to hit the artillery tubes that can shoot chemical or biological weapons. We've tried to hit all of the rockets, Ababil 100s, al-Samouds. We've tried to locate all the Scuds with which he threatens his neighbors with chemical and biological weapons. And so we're trying to take away the -- oh, I'm sorry -- and also the command and control system, because if, in fact, the leadership were to make a decision to employ it but they couldn't get the order out, they couldn't get the call out in any way, then that would achieve the same thing without potentially us striking a WMD site and therefore having some kind of leakage or whatever.

So those are all the methods and we try -- we're doing all as aggressively as we can. We can't prevent it 100 percent, though. There are ways that they could employ chemical or biological weapons either against us or against their own people very crudely but effectively.

QUESTION: Jose Carreno with the El Universal of Mexico. Can you tell me, or can you tell us how many incidents of collateral damage are under review at this point, and if one of those incidents is or could be the incident on Al-Hila (ph.), where it supposedly attributed to coalition forces?

MAJ GEN McCHRYSTAL: Sir, I heard the first part of your question. The location of that last one?

QUESTION: Al-Hila, or Hila, or something.

MAJ GEN McCHRYSTAL: Yes, sir. I don't know the exact number. I know of a handful of collateral damage cases where we are investigating -- very specifically, I am aware of the Al-Hila location. And that was initially attributed to coalition forces. And they said that, in fact, that Apache gunships had created that.

We have looked. At this point, we cannot -- almost the same as the marketplace, we can't come to the conclusion that it was coalition activity that did that. We refuse, however, to close the investigation until we're sure. And I think that proves our intent to do this right.

QUESTION: Italian News Agency. Two questions, General. First question, in a briefing at the Pentagon, you mentioned that seven cruise went away during the war, and that few smart bomb were lost. Are those number in satisfactory for you? Did you expect these kind of numbers? Are they less or more than you expected before?

And the second question, on the ground, about the British and American forces are now in Iraqi territory, other troops from other nations than United States and British?

MAJ GEN McCHRYSTAL: Yes, sir. The answer to your second question, there are troops from more than just United Kingdom and United States in the coalition in Iraq operating right now. I would let each of them categorize their own level of participation, but they are key members of the coalition.

Back to the original question on our Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles, I, in fact, remember mentioning that in a brief. I don't remember mentioning any bombs that didn't hit, but clearly the same applies. When I briefed that there were seven Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles that did not get to their target. In fact, there are now eight. We had another that didn't get to its target. But that's eight of over 730 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles. That's we're running about 1 percent mechanical failure on that weapon system, which is extraordinarily good, and lower or a better, a higher rate of effectiveness than even we had expected.

I also stress, as I did that day, that because of the nature of that weapon, like most of our precision-guided weapons, it doesn't arm itself until very close to the target. So when the Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles grounded themselves what they did is they flew into the ground. They didn't explode. Several of them buried themselves in the ground. A couple of them broke up. In every case, we have gone out and picked them up and taken the residue away.

QUESTION: Mike McCarthy from DPA. With the troops around Baghdad now, there is forecast that the weather is -- I mean, it's getting in the upper 90s. And I'm wondering to what degree this is a concern for the planners in the Pentagon, not only in terms of having to wear chemical protective suits, but also how will it slow forces? Are you going to have to fight more often at night? Well, any more downtime?

And there are also reports proceeding the war that there were concerns in the Pentagon about waiting too long to start the war. Do you think now those concerns were perhaps valid?

MAJ GEN McCHRYSTAL: I think we let the diplomatic situation drive hostilities, as we should have. That is the natural outcome. There is not a time on this. The fact of the matter is we could have done the operations in any weather. There are considerations in every weather. They affect aircraft, they affect vehicles, they affect people, particularly, in chemical ensembles. Hot weather in that part of the world has some very specific effects, as you know, particularly, against people in heavy gear.

But it's not so much that it changes the calculus tremendously because it affects both sides the same. In fact, in the sandstorm that occurred last week, that was very, very difficult for us to do many of the things we do. On the other hand, it gave us some specific advantages like thermal sights for see-through sandstorms.

And so, as we were attacked by Saddam Fedeyeen, our people in tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles were able to engage easily using thermal sight. So there is pluses and minuses to everything. Every soldier is going to be too hot or too cold. We can't pick the perfect weather.

QUESTION: Thank you. I have two questions. I am from Turkish television. One is, you said you target the regime, not the people. But in the northern part of the country, you're targeting terrorist groups. And there are so many groups there with different aims. And how -- what is the criteria in your targeting? I mean, isn't it difficult? I mean, it depends only on intelligence, because then you might be targeting -- if the terrain is very difficult, and there are not big buildings, or anything like that over there.

And my second question concerning the northern front, now the options have changed and the northern front option is not being executed as planned before, and what is the overall impact?

And, as you know, after Secretary Powell's visit to Turkey yesterday, Turkey is helping out with the supply and fuel. And what kind of an impact, if you could elaborate a bit? Thanks.

MAJ GEN McCHRYSTAL: Sure. On the first is, what do we target in terms of terrorist groups in the north? Very carefully, because definitions of terrorist group sort of depend in some cases on who you are, who the defining element is. In the case of Kirma , which I think you are probably referring to most likely, we have been looking at Kirma for months, and had a clear nexus between that facility and the production of potential chemicals -- well, really poisons -- and the Al-Qaida and Ansar al-Islam linkage.

We looked at that for a long time and showed great restraint in not striking, and finally did at the outset of this operation because of the threat it has posed for quite a long time. So it's difficult, and it's done with great care in a situation like that, as our targeting is everywhere.

The northern option, clearly, we had hoped to have a northern front with an armored force coming down, so that we could make the operation shorter, so that the length of combat, in fact, was as short as possible, so the Iraqi people could be liberated as quickly as we could.

That said, and you know better than I, Turkey is a close ally of the United States and a member of the coalition. It has been supportive in a tremendous number of things on this operation already. And with the agreements yesterday to facilitate further operations, we appreciate that. So that's where we expect to go forward.

COL MACHAMER: Okay. We've got time for one more question. And I'll give it to somebody that hasn't had one yet. In the front.

QUESTION: Thank you. BBC News. Do you have any sense yet of the Iraqi tactics for defending Baghdad? Have some of those divisions been, Republic Guard divisions, been moving back into the city to defend it?

And just secondly, given that American troops have crossed into what we thought was the red zone, is there anymore information yet on the Iraqi plans to use chemical weapons?

MAJ GEN McCHRYSTAL: Second question first, we anticipated that as we entered the red zone across the red line, really, when we threatened the core of the Saddam Hussein regime, that the chance of the use of chemical and biological weapons would go up dramatically, and we acted accordingly. We kept our posture at that point. We haven't seen it yet.

We are not sure whether or not our deterrence has worked. We are not sure whether or not our disruption of his command and control may have stopped him. It may be a conscious decision, can't tell. We are assuming, at this point, that it may still come, and therefore staying postured for that. But we are, of course, very happy for the decisions made if conscious decisions were made.

The strategy of the Iraqis at this point is unclear. I'll be very forthright with you. They clearly have maneuvered Republican Guard divisions to the south. They have had at least two divisions destroyed with no positive outcome. They didn't stop or slow maneuver the coalition forces. They moved some additional Republic Guard forces south for potential destruction with no positive outcome.

Whether they're pulling back into the city, historically, the Republic Guard does not go into the city. It has not been trusted. We are not sure, quite honestly, whether that is the strategy. We are not sure if the command and control of the regime, at this point, is such that it can make decisions come. So we really are sort of up in the air.
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