Montreal Gazette January 25, 2003
Texas troops join buildup around Iraq
By Sean Gordon
WASHINGTON -- The grunts of the 4th Infantry Division in central Texas spent last week loading their tanks and armoured vehicles on to rail cars, but by Monday, they'll have met their gear in the Gulf of Mexico, ready to embark on the ocean voyage to another gulf half a world away.
It takes between 18 and 21 days to reach the Persian Gulf from Beaumont, Tex., so the 17,000-troop 4th Infantry, nicknamed the Ivy Division, should arrive around Valentine's Day, assuming no storms.
Defence officials won't say where they're going (likely Kuwait or Turkey), but by the time the heavy mechanized units of the 4th Infantry arrive, there will be a veritable city of about 150,000 U.S. soldiers already established on Iraq's doorstep.
"We're ready now ... the Iraqi regime should have no doubt," General Richard Myers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said this week. The Americans will be accompanied by 30,000 specialized British troops, and about 5,000 Australian marines and special forces units.
"There is every expectation that the troop buildup will have finished by the beginning of the third week of February. Giving them time to get off the transports, organize and train, that would mean they would be battle-ready by March 1," said Colin Robinson, a defence analyst at the Centre for Defence Information, a Washington think-tank.
France and other U.S. allies like Russia and Germany have been pushing for the weapons inspectors in Iraq to be allowed another few months to complete their work, which could upset the timetable for an attack.
Myers said the troops are prepared to wait several months "at high alert" if a war is delayed.
Robinson said a postponement would actually be beneficial to the U.S. troops. "The heat won't be a problem. They're trained for it. The longer they're there, the more they get used to the conditions, the better they get at working with one another," he said.
The Pentagon is tight-lipped about the exact number of troops already in the region, partly because the total changes on an hourly basis, and partly because they don't want to tip their hand as to exactly who is where.
The best guesstimate about current troop levels in the Persian Gulf is roughly 100,000, including the more than 50,000 soldiers who have been there since last September.
The allied command centre is at As Sayliyah base in Qatar, and the U.S. has fighter squadrons and Patriot missile batteries positioned in Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
Nearly all the ground troops are at Camp Doha, a sprawling base just outside Kuwait City.
A number of forward-deployment camps are also popping up near Kabal, Kuwait, within a stone's throw of the Iraqi border.
"There's Camp New York, Camp Virginia, Camp Pennsylvania. That's where most of the heavy armoured and mechanized people are, and it's where all the troops are playing war right now," said Patrick Garrett, a military analyst with globalsecurity.org, a Washington-based Web site that specializes in military deployments.
The British are in the process of sending two ships and 30,000 soldiers, including 25,000 ground troops and 5,000 engineers, helicopter airlift specialists, artillery units and intelligence experts.
"They've been sent to complement the other coalition forces already there. The British and Australians have made sure to send units that will fit in with the U.S. forces," said Robinson.
The Australians have sent a pair of frigates, which are currently on export-interdiction duty in the Persian Gulf, and an amphibious ship. They have also committed air force reconnaissance units and about 5,000 ground troops, including marines and special forces units.
According to the U.S. military, another nine troop-transport ships are ready to leave for the area within the next three or four days. That's in addition to roughly 23,000 marines on their way to the region.
Since Christmas, more than 100,000 troops have been notified they are shipping out, including about 20,000 reservists.
While the logistical challenge of moving those people across an ocean and a continent is formidable, it's not the hardest aspect of a massive deployment.
"The people aren't the problem. The difficulty is getting the materiel there. It's easy to send reservists, they can get there in less than a week, but they have to have equipment to use," said Robinson.
The U.S. armed forces already have a large number of tanks, trucks, and missile batteries in the region, but much more is needed for a land war.
Some of the gear will come from U.S. bases in Germany, where one of the army's armoured divisions is based.
GRAPHIC: Map: (See hardcopy for complete text.)
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