Associated Press January 5, 2003
Gulf deployment puts 3rd Infantry in familiar territory
By RUSS BYNUM
Maneuvering their Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles in the desert of Kuwait, sometimes within three miles of the Iraqi border, soldiers from Fort Stewart have trained for months on familiar ground that soon could become a war zone.
It's been a long wait. But the Pentagon's announcement last week that the 2nd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized) will soon be joined by the division's remaining two combat brigades from Georgia has some military analysts saying war with Saddam Hussein appears almost certain.
The 3rd Infantry, which will have up to 17,000 troops in the region, would play a leading role in a fight expected to rely more heavily on ground forces than air strikes, unlike the first Gulf War. "The decisive element here, I think, is going to be the 3rd Mech.," said John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org, a nonprofit defense policy group. "All those Abrams and Bradleys showing up on the outskirts of Baghdad, that is going to convince the Iraqi people that Saddam's end is at hand."
The 3rd Infantry specializes in desert warfare, with a special focus on the Middle East, and many of its senior soldiers are veterans of the first Gulf War that included 6,000 of the division's troops.
While Afghanistan's mountainous terrain proved impractical for the 3rd Infantry's armored forces, sitting out that fight gave the division ample time to retrain for combat following a year of peacekeeping duty in Bosnia and Kosovo.
"If they fight it out on a desert, they're going to kill it, or take prisoners, one or the other," said Washington military analyst Bill Taylor, a retired Army colonel. "Probably everybody in those brigades has already rotated in and out of Kuwait before this."
The deployment has come as no surprise for soldiers at Fort Stewart, the largest Army post east of the Mississippi River, located about 30 miles southwest of Savannah.
Maj. Gen. Buford C. Blount III, the 3rd Infantry's commanding officer, has said for the past year that his troops would likely be called if President Bush decides to invade Iraq.
"They're going to be the tip of the spear," Col. David G. Perkins, commander of the division's 2nd Brigade, said in September before his troops left for Kuwait.
Last week, soldiers at Fort Stewart donned desert camouflage and packed their bags after the Pentagon alerted the entire division for deployment - though no dates have been announced.
This would be a far different war for ground troops than Operation Desert Storm 12 years ago. Then, the objective was to force Iraqi troops out of Kuwait. Now, the goal would be invading Iraq to topple Saddam.
That would require sending armored forces into Baghdad, said Pike, who predicts the Iraqi army could crumble in a few days.
"You have to have somebody on the ground there, pointing big guns at them to persuade them that it's time to surrender," Pike said. "I think that's basically what it's going to look like if we're lucky. If we're unlucky, I don't want to think about it."
The greatest threat, analysts say, would be Saddam's troops using chemical or biological weapons against U.S. soldiers.
But Taylor, former senior executive of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said he doesn't think that's likely.
"A major part of the psychological warfare campaign has been to tell (Saddam's) military leadership not to obey an order to use weapons of mass destruction," Taylor said. "Because if you do, you're dead. Or if we get you, you will go before an international war crimes tribunal."
He also predicts the 3rd Infantry and other U.S. ground forces wouldn't carry the fight inside Baghdad, where the battle would shift from desert fighting to urban warfare - risking more American casualties.
Instead, U.S. ground forces would likely surround Baghdad with their tanks and armored vehicles, he said, choking off access to food and other supplies in hopes Saddam's own people would overthrow him.
Taylor said he sees the deployment of the entire 3rd Infantry as a potential piece of a psychological campaign to rattle Iraq with a huge show of force, and Pike said the massive show of force definitely looks like war.
"I think the liberation of Iraq is at hand," Pike said. "The kind of unambiguous indicator that we have been looking for is thousands of troops getting on airplanes and flying over to Kuwait.
"I don't expect Saddam's going to be around to enjoy April Fools Day," he said. "He might not even be around to open his Valentines."
Copyright © 2003 Associated Press
