TRANSCRIPT Defense Writers Group A Project of the Center for Media & Security New York and Washington, D.C. Gen. Richard Myers, USAF Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff January 22, 2003 THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT AND MAY CONTAIN ERRORS. USERS ARE ADVISED TO CONSULT THEIR OWN TAPES OR NOTES OF THE SESSION IF ABSOLUTE VERIFICATION OF WORDING IS NEEDED. Q: We're on the record.... General Myers: Can I make a quick opening statement? A: Go ahead. A: I just got back Monday night from a trip to Germany and Belgium. That was to participate in the change of command at Stuttgart, to observe and be one of the folks in the audience for the change in Hoehenfels when General Joe Ralston gave up to General Jim Jones. All that went fine. I went down to Italy. Had a meeting with my counterpart in Rome, General Mastini. Up to Vicenza for a troop visit. Two things up there. There is the Southern European Task Force which is in Vicenza and also there is the 173rd Brigade there as well. We went through that. Then down to Turkey, a counterpart visit. Lots of speculation on the visit, this has been on the books probably for six months, so...We were always going to Turkey. Then troop visit at Incirlik before we went down or up to Ankara. Had a meeting with my counterpart again General Kudkamen (?). Then their minister of defense and then came on home. Lots of other things happening. First of all, the troop visit folks are seem to be bearing up very well. Lots of reservists at Incirlik, Guard and Reserve, doing well. In the Q&A session, I didn't hear any reserve component specific questions. They were much broader and very good questions. Of course, the folks in Vicenza, I met mainly with leadership there, not as many troops because it was on a Sunday and we didn't want to call troops in. So we spent time with the leadership. Again, people seem to be real professional about their duties and pretty well motivated for the mission. Some other things have been going on. You probably recognized that on the 10th of January the president signed another change to our unified command plan. This one gave Strategic 1 Command some more responsibilities to include responsibilities for an integrating function for missile defense, responsibilities for C4ISR, responsibilities for Global Strike, responsibilities for information operations and there is one other there, that we gave them. Some of these are going to have to mature. We know what the responsibility is and we know the boundaries, the specifics will take time to be implemented, as Strategic Command adapts those new responsibilities. It will take time to kind of play that out. With that... Q: There has been a lot of speculation about Turkey. I wonder if you can clarify just a couple things for us, briefly. Number one, has Turkey formally, as the reports say, approved the United States putting troops in, in addition to aircraft? And is it going to be a problem that you are not going to be able to put as many troops in as you hoped for? A: As you know, we have some people in there doing some site surveys now. I still think it is a really good policy to let the Turkish government describe what it is they will permit, US or other forces, other countries do on their soil. I am not going to get into that. I would only say that Turkey has been with us in every major conflict -- Korean War forward and I think they have the same desires for the region as we do and that is a stable Iraq that is not a threat to its neighbors, that doesn't have weapons of mass destruction. I think on that, we all agree. I think the partnership we have will allow them to do what they feel is in their best national interest and I think -- I'll just let them characterize their support. Q: Won't it be pretty obvious, if you are moving troops to Turkey, will any of these troops be going to... A: I am not going to talk about where our troops are going. That is just something I am not going to talk about. Q: I want to ask you a little bit about the Guard and Reserve call-up that has been foreseen and expected to come in fairly large numbers. Up to this point, we haven't seen large numbers called up for duty related to the potential war in Iraq. Can you tell me what the timetable looks like? Are we going to see that soon? What ballpark size Reserve/Guard call up can we expect to see? A: I don't know what kind of numbers you are thinking about but the last time I looked, for those called up inside CONUS for what we call Operation Noble Eagle, which is defense of continental United States, there were about somewhere in the area of 56 thousand called up. That had been the size around close to 80 and went as low as below 50. It is back up to about 56 thousand. We are building, as you know, building up forces in the Gulf clearly and there are reserves as pieces of that. That continues. The facts are that there is a lot of our combat capability/combat support and service support capability in the reserve components that, you know, if you want to have a credible force, you've got to call up the reserves along with it. So that is continuing. Q: There are reports that it will be 100 thousand/200 thousand. 2 A: A hundred or two hundred thousand of reserve component? Q: Yes. A: I think in terms of the current build up, that is off base. That is way off base. Q: Can you give us a better number? A: Well, the problem is, you alert some. Some of those you mobilize. And then some of those you deploy. It is sort of three steps. Every number would be different. We've alerted more than we've mobilized and we've mobilized more than we've deployed. The deployed number is much, much smaller than those numbers you've used. Because we deal in all three of them and we work this kind of continuously. I'll go back to see what I can release in terms of what we can release in terms of numbers. I'll work that with (inaudible) to see if there is a number we can release on. It changes fairly quickly. If I were to lay out a number, in any one of those categories, it would probably be off by some. Let's go see what is... Q: Would it be fair to say that you expect more than double your number called up? To more than 100 thousand? A: You talking about Reserve or active? Q: Reserve and National Guard? A: It depends on the situation. Obviously, if the president/the UN decides force is the only way to disarm Iraq from its WMD, then the reserve numbers would be potentially quite high. Certainly, for what we are doing in this case, to kind of put pressure on Iraq, to help the diplomacy along, the numbers aren't going to be near that size. And to make sure I am clear, I am differentiating between -- I am keeping separate the Noble Eagle piece. I separate that out. So, when you say 100 thousand, I am taking the 50 some thousand we have for the home defense piece out of that. If you add it in, you know, you could get to 100 thousand easy. Q: You and the Secretary have talked about the slow, deliberate build up of forces in support of diplomacy. At what point in the next point or so does the slow, deliberate build up of forces become a credible invasion for whatever the president decides to do? Are we talking mid- February? End of February? A: Hopefully that will be in the mind of the Iraqi regime. We think we have credible force any time the president says go do what you have to do. So, if the Iraqi regime were to attack Kuwait, if they were going to attack Turkey or Israel or Jordan or Saudi Arabia now, we'd be prepared, have to be prepared to have a credible deterrent in the region. The build up is going to proceed apace. I would say -- the reason I kind of hesitate on these dates is, what are we telling Saddam? 3 We are saying, "Hey, Saddam, by 18 February they are going to be as strong as they are going to be." Well, I'm not going to say that. I'd like to answer your question, but I can't do it. I just can't tell you what date we are going to be... Q: But what about a rough order of magnitude. Are we talking weeks or a month? A: We're ready now. We're ready now. And the Iraqi regime should have no doubt that if the president of the United States decides that we need to take action, we are ready today. Q: How long can you sustain a large force in the region from a morale, logistics and from a regional sensitivity stand point, if this drags out a number of months? A: We are doing our homework on that.