DENIED
see below, Centcom denies pause:
Denying War Pause, U.S. Seeks to Play Up Successes
Sat March 29, 2003 11:02 AM ET
By John Chalmers
AS SAYLIYA CAMP, Qatar (Reuters) - U.S. Central Command denied on Saturday that there had been a pause in military operations to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, but provided little new to quash doubts about its military strategy.
Major General Victor Renuart could not confirm that Marines on the front line had seen their rations cut to one meal a day and threw no light on what was behind a bloody Baghdad market bombing or when the siege of Basra might come to an end.
Instead, in a briefing at Central Command's forward headquarters in Qatar he sought to underline successes in the 10-day campaign and the "terror behavior" he said U.S.-led forces have encountered from Iraqis.
In one incident, he said, an Iraqi woman who waved a white flag of surrender was later found hanging from a street lampost. In another, four U.S. soldiers were killed in a suicide car bombing at a checkpoint near the central city of Najaf.
He said the car bombing was the kind of attack associated with "terrorists" and suggested an organization "that is beginning to get a little bit desperate."
"Iraqi terror organizations continue to force young men to come out of the towns and fight," Renuart said. "They're probably being forced to fight because they fear for their families as opposed to being loyal to the regime."
Renuart said small Iraqi units were still operating in the south of the country -- where irregular forces have confounded expectations of little resistance to the U.S. and British onslaught -- but they were now getting smaller and smaller.
Asked about concerns that U.S. forces' supply lines were overstretched, allowing Iraqi guerrillas to strike, he said: "There have been some harassing attacks on our supply lines but they have not stopped the movement of our logistical support."
"NO PAUSE"
Overall, he said, Central Command was getting the results it wanted on the battlefield, with long-range patrols and artillery attacks to dent the enemy lines of communication. "We're having our effect on a much broader scale than these small attacks getting some publicity are having on our forces," he said.
Earlier, U.S. officers in the field said commanders had ordered a pause of four to six days in their push toward Baghdad because of supply shortages and stiff Iraqi resistance.
They said the "operational pause," ordered on Friday, meant advances would be put on hold while the military tried to sort out logistics problems caused by long supply lines from Kuwait.
"There is no pause on the battlefield. Just because you see a particular formation pause on the battlefield it does not mean there is a pause," Renuart said.
He joked that he had asked U.S. Central Command chief General Tommy Franks for a few days off and been turned down.
Renaurt said 10 days did not amount to a long conflict, noting it took some 60 to 70 days before Hamid Karzai was installed as the new president of Afghanistan after the U.S.-led military campaign to topple the Taliban administration.
Officers in the field said the U.S.-led invasion force would continue to attack Iraqi forces to the north with heavy air strikes during the pause, battering them before any attack on Baghdad.
On Friday, Britain's army chief, Mike Jackson, dismissed suggestions that the campaign had become bogged down after a few days of quick advances from Kuwait since the invasion started on March 20. But he spoke of a need to pause.
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's government has played down the apparently lightning advance by the U.S.-led forces, saying that most of the gains have been across tracts of desert while skirting major towns along the route.
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doesn't mean it's true, but, they denied it!
I'm already tired of it...I don't even have the TV on!
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