"This will be a campaign unlike any other in history. A campaign characterized by shock, by surprise, by flexibility... and by the application of overwhelming force," he said in his first briefing since the attack on Iraq began on Thursday.
After a day of fierce fighting, U.S. Marines said they had defeated Iraqi forces on the outskirts of the oil city of Basra, some 340 miles southeast of Baghdad, taking hundreds of prisoners in the process.
However, after two days of skirmishes, Marines still struggled to gain full control of Umm Qasr, Iraq's only deep-water port, which lies close to the Kuwaiti border.
"It's probably not going as quick as we would have liked," said Colonel Thomas Waldhauser, commander of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit.
"The lights stayed on in Baghdad, but the instruments of tyranny are collapsing," British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon told a news conference in London.
British Defense Chief of Staff Michael Boyce said Iraq's 51st Division had surrendered en masse in Basra. An Iraqi military spokesman denied this. The renewed raids on Baghdad meant daylight brought no respite to frightened residents. Two missiles slammed into Saddam's main palace compound at dawn, sending up a cloud of pulverized concrete from what appeared to have been a bunker.
Later on Saturday a carbomb exploded close to the border with Iran, killing an Australian journalist and one other person. Kurdish officials blamed Ansar for the attack.
A journalist with Britain's Sky TV said four U.S. soldiers he was traveling with were killed in central Iraq after their vehicles were hit with grenades, but there was no immediate confirmation of the deaths.
Two British naval helicopters collided over the Gulf, killing six British crewmen and an American officer. On Thursday, eight British marines and four U.S. Marines died when their helicopter crashed in Kuwait.
