AT AN ALLIED AIR BASE IN KUWAIT, 24 March 2003 — In an effort to placate disgruntled journalists — seven left the embed program here yesterday claiming lack of access, while four remain embedded — the Marine Air Command has started up regular evening media briefings.
The briefings, an encapsulation of the day’s activities, are an effort by MAW, the Marine Air Wing, to share information with the media without compromising the safety of Marines, their positions, or operations.
Col. Jon Miclot, the wing’s operations officer, started the brief announcing the pilots were “maintaining good discipline with their ordinance.” He said “concern for collateral damage (civilian casualties) was in the forefront,” and the pilots were also careful about building infrastructures. They are not destroying facilities just to destroy them.
“The one thing we do not want to do is to ransack southern Iraq,” he added.
Journalists were given details of the day’s sorties, or flights. By late last night, the pilots “had delivered the same amount of attack sorties as the previous day, about 300, with both fixed and rotary wing aircraft.”
No Marines had been involved in the bombing of Baghdad, Miclot said. “We’re primarily supporting a division in the south, and focusing on refueling, logistic, food and ammunition sorties.”
The pilots also decided their laser bombs were not effective due to the thickness of the clouds and the smoke, and instead used GP (global positioning) and cluster bombs.
“If they were unable to engage, the pilots would still be able to collect data, and bring it back and we’ll send it through the information cycles,” Miclot said.
The pilots had also been running “a lot of reconnaissance flights to watch the Iraqi troops and see what they’re doing.”
Miclot said that operations, as the allies move forward, will eventually turn into humanitarian, wing and platform support. Regarding humanitarian efforts, he said: “It’s still too early in the game for this. The situation is still too unstable.”
Miclot said he did not have any details of several US missiles mistakenly fired over the Iranian border. “I don’t even know if they’re ours. I don’t know anything but what I saw on TV.” Iraqi defense was “exactly what we had anticipated, and a continuation of what we had previously known.” Iraq’s surface-to-air threat, he said, “is also exactly what we anticipated.”
A pivotal objective had been to secure the southern oil fields, Miclot said. However, they were not intended for US use, but for the Iraqi infrastructure “so Iraq can continue to produce for its own economy.” Most of the southern oil fields had been taken, and are “mostly totally intact,” he said, though at least three oil fields were set alight.
“My assumption is that (the fires) were probably started by Iraqi forces.”
Taking Umm Qasr was also of strategic importance for the Marines, he said, because it was “very important for humanitarian results, and it’s on the waterway.”
“As we stretch forward, there is a logistic challenge to get our supplies forward,” Miclot said.
The colonel was reticent regarding future plans, saying a series of decision points needed to be made on the next phase. “We have a plan, but it may always change, depending on the enemy.”
Asked if he was surprised the ground troops moved forward so quickly yesterday, Col. Miclot said: “No. We have a very aggressive ground commander.”
