US General Tommy Franks said Saturday that US-led troops would overwhelm Iraqi forces in a never-before-seen scale, but acknowledged in his first comments since the war started that Saddam Hussein's regime was mounting a fight.
Speaking from his Gulf command post, Franks said coalition troops hadn't found any weapons of mass destruction in the war's first four days, but said he remain concerned that Saddam's forces might still try to use chemical weapons against advancing forces.
While offering no comprehensive battle assessments and few specifics on the war so far, Franks said he was satisfied with his troops' performance and boasted that the campaign to "liberate" the country would be "unlike any other in history."
He called it "a campaign characterized by shock, by surprise, by flexibility, by the employment of precise munitions on a scale never before seen and by the application of overwhelming force."
He acknowledged resistance, however, saying US troops had encountered Iraqi formations on several occasions and in several places and that the Iraqis had mounted "a lot of air defenses" around Baghdad.
But he bristled when asked whether the resistance was stiffer than he had admitted and pointed to what he said were "thousands" of instances of Iraqis surrendering since the war started Wednesday.
"What we say from this podium ... will be absolute truth as we know it," he said.
He said coalition forces were working to negotiate the surrender of Iraqi troops rather than overwhelm them militarily in the southern city of Basra, Iraq's second-largest.
By Saturday, US and British troops had taken the city's airport and a bridge, but Saddam Hussein's security forces resisted with artillery and heavy machine guns, frustrating a speedy advance.
"Our intent is not to move through and create military confrontations in that city," he said. "Rather we expect that we'll work with Basra and the citizens in Basra the same way, I believe, has been widely reported in Umm Qasr," which US officials said was taken on Friday although not entirely secured.
US military officials said Saturday that the aim of coalition troops wasn't to fully occupy and secure cities such as Basra, but move through them en route to Baghdad and keep units in place to fight any lingering battles.
"This is about liberation not occupation," Franks said.
Hundreds of international journalists attended the briefing, the first use of the US military's high-tech US$1.5 million briefing center here in the Qatari desert. Ranking officers from Britain, Australia, Denmark and the Netherlands stood behind Franks as he spoke.
The general also said he had "no idea" where Saddam was and had no clarification of reports that he was injured or killed in bombardments on the night the war started.
"But interestingly," he said, "the way we're undertaking this military operation" would not change regardless of what happens to Saddam, because its intent was to bring down the Iraqi regime -- not just topple its president.
The general confirmed US missile attacks on a camp of the al-Qaeda-linked militant group Ansar al-Islam, in northern Iraq on Friday night. Kurdish officials in the region said at least 100 people died in the bombardment.
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