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| Axis of Evil |
| Buildup Leaves U.S. Nearly Set To Start Attack |
| 2002-12-09 |
| The United States will soon have enough heavy tanks, warships, aircraft, bombs and troops in the Persian Gulf region to enable it to begin an attack against Iraq sometime in January, senior military officials say. About 60,000 soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen, as well as about 200 warplanes, are in or near the region. The Army alone has 9,000 soldiers, 24 Apache helicopter gunships and heavy equipment for two armored brigades in Kuwait. Equipment for a third brigade is steadily arriving on ships usually based in the Indian Ocean, and some materiel will be stored at a new $200 million logistics base, Camp Arifjan, south of Kuwait City. By late next week, four aircraft carriers will be poised to strike Iraq on short notice, with a fifth in Southeast Asia ready to steam to the gulf in a crisis. Two of the carriers, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, are heading home, but the Navy will keep their crews together about two weeks longer than the usual 30 days after arrival in case they are ordered back to the gulf. Special Operations forces in the region are refining plans to hunt for Scud missiles and clandestine weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. About 1,000 military planners, led by Gen. Tommy R. Franks, have assembled in Qatar and other gulf states for a computer-assisted exercise that begins Monday and is intended as a model for an offensive against Iraq, officials said. General Franks met today with 200 members of his senior battle staff for a detailed rehearsal. Taken together, those are unmistakable signs that before long, President Bush will be in a position to order an attack to disarm Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein, and have it carried out within days, senior military officials said. Pentagon officials say the armed forces could attack now, if required, but several diplomatic and military steps would need to be completed before the United States could go to war on its own terms, officials said. The administration wants to use Turkey as a major staging base for American ground troops, who would swoop into northern Iraq to protect the vast oil fields of Kurdistan and combine with allied forces pushing up from Kuwait to put the government in Baghdad in a vise. But Turkey has balked at permitting ground forces, prompting the White House to invite Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the leader of the largest party in Turkey's new governing coalition, to meet with President Bush on Tuesday. "We're quite comfortable with what we can do from the south," Mr. Wolfowitz said this week. "Obviously, if we are going to have significant ground forces in the north, this is the country they have to come through. There is no other option." Britain, another vital ally, is expected to contribute several thousand armored forces, but has not yet begun to send them. American active-duty troops could be flown in quickly aboard chartered airliners to join their equipment. But any major campaign would require activating tens of thousands of reservists, largely to help defend American military bases, power plants and transportation hubs at home against possible terrorist reprisals. Mobilizing reserve units typically takes about 30 days, but a senior defense official said the Pentagon was looking at ways to speed up the process. Throughout the gulf region these days, there is a constant hum of military preparations. Army forces are conducting exercises in desert ranges in Kuwait that simulate territory they would roll across in Iraq. Carrier-based jets patrolling the no-flight zone in southern Iraq carry out mock bombing runs against Iraqi airfields and military bases. Air Force engineers at Diego Garcia, a British base in the Indian Ocean, are erecting portable hangars to protect the sensitive radar-evading skin of the B-2 bombers that will soon be stationed there. Planners are readying the heavy equipment and supplies now aboard ships at Diego Garcia that would sustain more than 17,000 marines for up to 30 days. Navy Seabees based in Spain have been dispatched to Kuwait for construction duties at two bases. Military logistics and supply experts have been in the region for months preparing for incoming materiel. Tugboats, forklifts and other cargo-handling equipment needed to prepare ports for the arrival of tanks and other armored equipment are coming in. In Kuwait, the Army has two brigades' worth of heavy equipment in place. A typical armored brigade set includes 88 M1A1 Abrams tanks, 88 M2A2 Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and 16 120-millimeter mortars, an Army spokeswoman said. Equipment from a third brigade stored on ships at Diego Garcia is flowing in. One of the Navy's giant roll-on/roll-off cargo ships, the Watkins, disgorged a load of heavy Army equipment in July, and a sister vessel, the Watson, is on the way with equipment for an armored battalion task force, Army officials said. Special Operations forces are planning covert missions that would be pivotal in the opening hours and days of any campaign. Those operations would include destroying Scud missiles that Iraq could launch at Israel. "We're doing everything prudent and proactive that we can without starting a war in the process," said one military official. Those people who haven't been paying atention are going to be surprised at just how fast things are going to happen when the ball drops. |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #6 Joe, actually he was right. Blix and Kofi were not going to give anyone un-edited materials, the US bitched, and five members are going to get the whole thing. Not that we should not trust Blix to look at places and things not in the Iraqi documentation... Not after his "good manners" in telling them where inspections were going to be held a day or more in advance... Perish the thought! |
| Posted by: John Anderson 2002-12-10 03:12:52 |
| #5 After the Gulf War, the Iraqis admitted to using converted school buses to transport Scuds. That admission must alter the current rules of engagement. The Saddamites are solely to blame if civilians become collateral victims. |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2002-12-09 22:05:37 |
| #4 In addition to all the preparations noted above, we need to get a heavy task force to jump off points in Turkey. That needs a logistics train. The Brits have to get mobilized, and it'd be nice to get a few Iraqi scientists out of there to get the latest poop on WMD. February looks about right. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2002-12-09 22:03:10 |
| #3 According to the USNO, the first new moon is on Jan 2, the next is Feb 1. 2 Jan 2003 seems a little soon, still need the callup of reserves to cover the U.S. homeland and the Brits have not started shipping armor to the gulf yet. My guess is 1 Feb thereabouts. Of course, that may be what they want us to think. |
| Posted by: Steve 2002-12-09 19:26:29 |
| #2 I've been thinking dark of the moon in January, just like last time, for a while now. This may sound callous, but besides the logistics problem, no way would Bush start a war during the Christmas shopping season in an economy this nervous. The question is, the early January new moon, or the late January new moon? |
| Posted by: Meryl Yourish 2002-12-09 18:44:20 |
| #1 Steven Den Beste at USS Clueless was fretting the other day about how he was afraid the delay in releasing the Iraqi document meant that the US effort had been thrown off track. As it turns out, though, he read the reports wrong; the permanent members of the UNSC - including the United States - are getting the full report right away. The report is actually being redacted before public release in order to avoid the release of sensitive information on WMD's to rogue states and terrorists. As it is, anyway, we already know that the Iraqi report has a key deficiency in that it presents no evidence to back up Baghdad's claims that it's destroyed its existing stocks of WMD's since 1998. Judging from the above, we probably won't be really ready to move until at least after Christmas, since the incoming carriers need time to work up for operations in the area and, as with the upcoming Qatar exercise, the command element needs to do the military equivalent of stretching exercises before it can get to work. It sounds like the Army is just about ready to complete the deployment of at least one heavy division on the Kuwaiti front, though I'm not sure exactly whether this will be an existing division or an ad hoc formation. |
| Posted by: Joe 2002-12-09 17:39:24 |