Cheney Warns of Iraq Arms Stocks

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said today that Saddam Hussein still has hundreds of Scud missiles despite the success of U.S. and allied air attacks on Iraq. Cheney also condemned Baghdad’s treatment of captured pilots as a “war crime.”

Cautioning against expecting a quick end to the war, Cheney said Hussein spent $50 billion on armaments in the last decade and has “perhaps the world’s fourth-largest armed force.”

“It’s not surprising five days into the campaign that he’s able to launch Scud missiles,” Cheney said. “He’s got hundreds of them.”

The secretary, interviewed on CNN, CBS, ABC and NBC, characterized the Iraqi missiles as “weapons of terror rather than militarily significant.” He said Hussein “hasn’t hit anything significant with them yet.”

The secretary’s assessment of the number of Iraqi missiles was the highest yet by a U.S. military official.

U.S. officials said Sunday that 10 Iraqi missiles were launched into Saudi Arabia but that U.S. Patriot missiles destroyed nine of them while the 10th landed in the Persian Gulf.

Cheney said Iraqi treatment of prisoners of war, including three Americans, was “ a clear violation of the Geneva Convention.”

“It’s in effect a war crime and those people who carry out those kind of acts would be held accountable,” Cheney said.

“We’ve made significant progress dealing with the infrastructure that supports the missiles,” said Cheney, as well as some success against both fixed and mobile missile launchers.

Cheney hesitated to speculate on how long the war might last or what level of casualties might occur once ground attacks begin.

“We’ve been very careful not to say it will be over in 27 days or 14 days or six months,” he said. “We’ll stick with it until the job is done.”

Cheney said the U.S. and its allies “absolutely can keep up 2,000 (air) sorties a day indefinitely. We can operate at this rate for a very long time.”

When asked if a ground assault against entrenched Iraqi troops would bring a sharp increase in casualties, the secretary replied: “We’re not getting into the business of guessing what kind of casualties would occur in a ground war.”