AS SAYLIYA CAMP (Qatar), March 31: The United States is prepared to pay a “very high price” in terms of casualties to capture Baghdad and oust President Saddam Hussein, a senior official of the US Central Command said on Monday.

“We’re prepared to pay a very high price because we are not going to do anything other than ensure that this regime goes away,” the official told reporters, adding that US casualties in the 12-day-old war had so far been “fairly” light.

“If that means there will be a lot of casualties, then there will be a lot of casualties,” said the official, who spoke on condition that he not be named.

Referring to nights in World War Two “when we’d lose 1,000 people”, he added: “There will come a time maybe when things are going to be much more shocking.”

The official, addressing reporters at the Central Command’s forward headquarters in Qatar, said the net result of reporting by correspondents with the invasion force was creating a false impression of “constant, ferocious battle”.

Such reports, he said, created the impression of a much more difficult campaign than it was. “That’s not what’s going on out there,” he added. “It’s military action at places primarily of our time and choosing.”

The official said there were “an awful lot of ominous signs” that Saddam had prepared his forces to use banned chemical weapons. He listed chemical detection equipment, protection suits, new masks and atropine injectors used to protect against nerve agents, all of it found on the battlefield.

“To me, as a solider, it indicates that he was preparing his troops for the possibility of chemical operations,” the official said. “Will people hesitate to act on those orders? I can only say, I hope so.”

The official predicted that Saddam would probably mount a “layered” defence of Baghdad, with his best-trained and best-equipped troops, the Republican Guard, arrayed on the outskirts of the city.

An inner cordon would most likely include officials of Saddam’s ruling Baath party, militia and Republican Guard infantry, he added.

The official said the United States was paying a price for having failed to protect uprisings by Shias in Iraq’s south and Kurds in the north after a US-led alliance drove Iraqi invaders from Kuwait in 1991.

“I think we bear a certain responsibility for what we didn’t do in 1991 and it’s playing itself out on the battlefield,” he said. “I mean you let somebody down once, you don’t want to let them down twice. I guess I’m being too candid.”—Reuters