US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Rumsfeld has flatly denied he had over-ruled US military planners on the war strategy.
"No, indeed, it's not true," Mr Rumsfeld said of reports he and close civilian advisers had micro-managed the advance plan, overruling calls from military officials for more US assault troops and armour before beginning the ground war against Iraq.
"You will find, if you ask anyone who has been involved in the process in the Central Command, that every single thing that they have requested has, in fact, happened," he insisted on Fox News Sunday.
Mr Rumsfeld was asked about reports in the New Yorker Magazineand other media that he repeatedly rejected advice from Pentagon planners that substantially more troops and armor would be needed to fight.
On the ABC program, Mr Rumsfeld also said the United States had information that "there are people fleeing from the senior leadership families" from Baghdad but he gave no further details.
And he said he was "not at all" concerned that US and British forces had yet to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
He said US forces were now within 49 miles (78 km) of Baghdad, but were not yet in the "area where weapons of mass destruction were dispersed."