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| Iraq |
| Iraqi force builds near Kuwait border |
| 2003-02-06 |
| Iraq is moving troops and artillery closer to its southern border with Kuwait and deploying them astride highways in preparation for U.S. attacks, according to military officers with access to the region. Iraqi forces also are increasing intelligence activities along the demilitarized border, sending tough-looking "civilians" to visit the area, the officers said. U.S. commanders, meanwhile, have dispatched crew-cut American "engineers" to the border, the officers said. Heh, heh Most of the Iraqi troops look ragged, and some complain that they are eating only bread and are not being paid, said officers in the 32-nation U.N. Iraq-Kuwait Observer Mission (UNIKOM), based on the border. "Some say their families were put under protective custody" to make sure they fight, said a UNIKOM officer who traveled recently on the Iraqi side of the 150-mile border. This ties in with the reports from the Turkish oil truckers on conditions in the north. Tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Kuwait would use the oil-rich sheikdom of Kuwait as a springboard for a ground attack on Iraq if President Bush decides to invade. U.S. military experts have long predicted that American troops would face little resistance from Iraq's ill-trained and poorly equipped regular army, largely stationed far from Baghdad. More formidable units, the Republican Guard and the Special Republic Guard, protect the capital, about 280 miles north of the border with Kuwait. UNIKOM officers who patrol the 9-mile-wide demilitarized zone, created after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, provided a firsthand independent look at war preparations and troop morale in the region. Real intel from professionals "They are terrified," said one army captain, clad in a blue beret. "They won't surrender at the first shot. They will surrender when they hear the first American tank turn on its engine." After they shoot their officers who try to stop them. Officers from four nations participating in UNIKOM said a few thousand Iraqi troops moved closer to the border in recent weeks and began digging trenches on either side of the three north-south roads in the region. Trenches again, they ain't learned from the last time. Iraq also deployed six 105mm artillery pieces and several antiaircraft guns to bases surrounded by 15-foot-high sand berms on the northeast end of the border near the port of Umm Qasr, they said. Couldn't mark the target area any better if thet tried. An army division based in the Iraqi city of Basra, 28 miles north of the border, has established a new combat command post near Umm Qasr, they added. Which will last about 30 seconds All the officers asked for anonymity because of their U.N. assignments. OK, we won't tell if you don't. Some Iraqi soldiers were armed with British pre-World War II machine guns, prompting speculation that they may be militiamen. Sounds like the poorest troops are being placed in the front line positions to act as a trip wire. Iraqi troops mostly go unshaven and wear tattered uniforms, sometimes with sandals instead of boots. Some complain they have been paid only a half-month's salary in the last three months, the officers said. Soldiers have told visitors that they receive one pizzalike piece of bread at each meal and sometimes beg food from passing civilians and UNIKOM personnel. Drop food attached to those leaflets and watch them surrender One UNIKOM officer said he had spotted two groups of suspected Iraqi soldiers in civilian clothes and vehicles cruising the DMZ in apparent intelligence-gathering missions. Four young Iraqi men are slowly building a house in the DMZ on high ground, where they can easily observe western Kuwait, the officer said. Some nights, what appears to be a radio antenna sprouts from the house. Someone will be paying them a visit at night, real soon. Several groups of American civilians also have visited the DMZ recently, the officer added, "some with crew cuts and young enough to be my son, not the oil engineers they claim to be." Recon UNIKOM officers said they had quietly advised their troops to be ready to evacuate the DMZ quickly in case of war and to watch UNIKOM's American members, because they might get advance warning. "But I don't think there will be much fighting here," one UNIKOM captain said during an interview in a coffee shop. "That waiter there looks more together than any soldier I have seen in southern Iraq." Sammy's keeping his hard boys close to Baghdad. |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #3 Gawd, I'm actually moved by these poor guys' plight. Reason 1,000,006 why Saddam & Sons must go--what kind of vicious psycho scum puts unequipped and outclassed kids on the front lines just to die? I hope those kids surrender as soon as the war starts; it'd be bad for our guys' morale to have to shoot many of 'em. |
| Posted by: JDB 2003-02-06 20:59:00 |
| #2 The Iraqi 'civilians' are making sure the 'Iraqi soldiers' don't surrender. The US should put up a beacon on the Kuwaiti side of the border (away from the majority of our troops) and drop leaflets telling the Iraqi's to come to the beacon and surrender during the night. That way we can hopefully keep them from surrendering enmass, in front of our tanks. The morale bonus of Iraqi's trickling out of the trenches will be terrible. It would be even worse when those same Iraqi's that escaped are talking into the radio to their buddies telling them to kill the officers and head for the border as well. |
| Posted by: Yank 2003-02-06 17:35:32 |
| #1 Sounds like just like the last time. I know guys who were over there and they said half of the fodder didn't even have weapons. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2003-02-06 12:57:37 |