NATO Help In Iraq Not Expected

Associated Press
November 20, 2003

WASHINGTON - More direct help from NATO in Iraq would be welcome but is
unlikely, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Rumsfeld signed orders notifying about 15,000 troops they will be
sent to Iraq. The orders are part of a troop rotation plan for Iraq the
Pentagon announced last month.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is busy with its command of the
international peacekeeping force in the Afghan capital, Kabul, though its
participation in Iraq is "conceivable," Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon news
conference.

"I would be delighted to see a larger NATO role in Iraq," Rumsfeld said in a
joint appearance with Australia's defense minister, Robert Hill.

Rumsfeld said the U.S. counteroffensive in Iraq was the result, in part, of
better information about insurgent forces responsible for attacks on the
American-led coalition.

"They are finding targets that are appropriate and they're, needles to say,
anxious to attack any targets of opposition," Rumsfeld said.

Military officials say the U.S. attacks, which have involved one-ton bombs
and other heavy weapons, have destroyed dozens of safe houses and other
buildings used by opposition forces. Rumsfeld said some of the buildings
were places where insurgents had built some of the roadside bombs used to
attack Americans.

Later, after a private meeting with senators at the Capitol, Deputy Defense
Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, were asked about how using large bombs could affect
civilian support for U.S. forces.

Myers said commanders on the ground "are very responsive to the balance
between appropriate military action and not trying to turn the average Iraqi
against the coalition. They work this very hard. They have taken great steps
to minimize collateral damage."

"There's going to be very careful balance and no one is more sensitive to
that then our commanders in the field," Myers told reporters.

Wolfowitz said the United States is "very much concerned about hearts and
minds." He cited strides toward rebuilding Iraq and transfer civil authority
to Iraqis.

But he added: "It's also important that Iraqis understand that killers from
the old regime who are out there killing Iraqis and Americans and U.N.
workers and Red Cross workers, hoping to bring back the old regime, won't
succeed."

http://www.military.com/NewsContent?file=FL_nato_112003

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"From the brief time that we did spend occupying Iraqi territory
after the war, I am certain that had we taken all of Iraq, we would
have been like the dinosaur in the tar pit - we would still be there,
and we, not the United Nations, would be bearing the costs of
the occupation. This is a burden I am sure the beleaguered
American taxpayer would not have been happy to take on."

- Norman Schwarzkopf, from his 1993 autobiography, "It Doesn't
Take a Hero."