The Seattle Times November 23, 2002
U.S. planners in Gulf to test war readiness
Although planning for the exercise, code-named Internal Look, began long before the U.N. Security Council gave Iraq a Dec. 8 deadline to account for any weapons of mass destruction, the timing of the operation fits in neatly. It will begin a few days before or after the U.N. deadline, officials said yesterday.
It is the first time U.S. Central Command has conducted the exercise in the Middle East. About 600 members of Central Command's battle planning staff will participate in the exercise, and many of them have arrived in Qatar, officials said yesterday. The war game does not involve troops in the field; rather it is a means of testing the communications links that are vital to commanding forces in combat.
Franks has said it would last one week to 10 days.
Franks has not ruled out leaving the new command post and his battle staff in Qatar, although the original intent was to bring them back to Florida at the conclusion of the exercise.
In a recent interview, Franks cautioned against reading too much into the timing.
"This just happens to be a very good time, a very good place and a very good way" to do the exercise, he said.
"It's basically gone from weekly to daily," John Pike, a defense analyst with Globalsecurity.org, a research group, said of the increased pace of U.S. and British strikes.
U.S. and British jets have been patrolling no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq since the end of the Gulf War a decade ago to enforce U.N.-ordered limits on Iraqi military activity. The recent increase in attacks by coalition planes may be the initial stage of renewed conflict, analysts said.
"They're taking apart the integrated air-defense system so that Iraq basically does not have a functioning air-defense system," Pike said.
The allied aircraft struck unmanned communications facilities south of Al Amarah, about 165 miles southeast of Baghdad, after an Iraqi military jet entered the southern zone, the Pentagon said.
Saying he was speaking as commander of the 4,800-member International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and not as a Turkish general, Gen. Hilmi Akin Zorlu said: "If there is any Iraqi operation, it means that the terrorist activities against ISAF forces may start. This is our concern, my concern, as ISAF commander."
The general visited Washington to brief officials on the security situation in Kabul.
The suspect, Khaled al-Shimmiri, was picked up in eastern Saudi Arabia near the border, the state-run Kuwait News Agency reported. He was expected to be extradited to Kuwait, the agency said.
The Thursday shooting has raised safety concerns about the more than 10,000 U.S. soldiers stationed in Kuwait, where most people support the U.S. military presence following the Gulf War.
Copyright 2002 The Seattle Times Company
