Newsday (New York, NY) October 04, 2002
Quiet U.S. military buildup in gulf
By Craig Gordon
Washington - Under the cover of training exercises and other routine activities, the Pentagon is quietly fortifying troops and equipment already in the Persian Gulf region that could be shifted quickly to an Iraqi invasion, cutting from months to weeks the time needed to launch an attack, military analysts say.
The U.S. moves have come with little fanfare amid delicate negotiations to win world support for a possible invasion. In recent months alone, the United States has doubled its war supplies in Kuwait and begun rotating several thousand soldiers and Marines into it for exercises and deployments. Kuwait, a tiny nation on Iraq's southeastern border, would be an all-but-certain launch pad for any attack. The U.S. Central Command is preparing to move 600 war planners to the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar next month to test setting up a command post. Originally billed as a weeklong test, military officials now say the Qatar exercise is likely to result in creation of a forward headquarters in the region, one that could be used to run an Iraqi war.
U.S. officials have asked Britain for permission to base a half dozen stealthy B-2 bombers on the island of Diego Garcia, in close striking range of Iraq, a move that has been under consideration for several years. Three shipments of tons of military hardware also were contracted recently, two to support undisclosed exercises in Jordan and one for the soldiers in Kuwait.
Military officials have dubbed the various moves long-planned deployments or regularly scheduled exercises to bone up on skills, not a build-up signaling an imminent invasion of Iraq. At the same time, they acknowledge that deployed units could be kept in place longer than planned or shifted into a wartime footing should the need arise.
"Anytime there are troops in the region for an exercise, they could transition in a crisis mode. That's just the facts," said one Pentagon official.
Military analysts say the moves, combined with previous efforts to stockpile equipment throughout the gulf, mean the United States has supplies in place, or nearby, to support as many as 35,000 troops. That would dramatically shorten the time needed to act on a presidential order to invade, perhaps to as little as three weeks under scenarios calling for a small, lightning-quick force designed to take Baghdad and topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's regime.
"How long is it going to take to get 50,000 guys ready to roll in Kuwait? Not very long. Most of the heavy hardware is either already there or near at hand," said John Pike, a military analyst at Globalsecurity.org who tracks deployments.
A second analyst, Anthony Cordesman, believes the Qatar exercise, plus other so-far-unannounced exercises expected by year's end, would put the United States in position to strike Iraq by sometime in December. After that, "the United States and Britain could go to war at virtually any time," said Cordesman, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Some military officials have suggested January or February would be the best time, so soldiers wearing chemical-protection suits could avoid summer's searing heat.
Any war mobilization this time would be faster than the six-month run-up preceding Desert Storm, thanks largely to stocks put in place after the Persian Gulf War in Kuwait, Qatar and Diego Garcia. In addition, Central Command already has about 55,000 troops stationed in the region, with a little less than half in close proximity to Iraq.
A brigade of about 4,000 soldiers from Fort Stewart, Ga., is being rotated into Kuwait for exercises to defend that nation, replacing another unit leaving by December. Meanwhile, 2,200 Marines from the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, based at Camp Pendleton, Calif., have begun a monthlong amphibious assault exercise in Kuwait.
U.S. officials would not say what war scenario would be tested in Qatar at Central Command's biennial command-post exercise, dubbed Internal Look '03. In the summer of 1990, then-Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf used Internal Look to test a new strategy designed to turn back an attack by Iraq, which invaded Kuwait even before the exercise concluded.
Copyright 2002 Newsday, Inc.
