>>Army Checks Readiness for War With Iraq
Thursday, September 05, 2002
WASHINGTON — The Army recently moved weaponry and war supplies from Qatar to a base in Kuwait near the Iraqi border to check their condition and test procedures that would be used in the event President Bush orders preparations for war, the Army's top civilian official said Thursday.
Army Secretary Thomas White said the movement to Camp Doha in Kuwait was a training exercise designed to periodically validate the condition of war materiel and practice loading and offloading it.
"We have done a lot with pre-positioned stocks in the Gulf, making sure they're accessible and that they're in the right spot to support whatever the president wants to do," White said in an interview with a group of reporters.
"But we've done nothing specifically against any particular scenario (for war)," he said.
. . . .
White, meanwhile, said the stocks that were shifted to Kuwait in July were later moved back to their permanent position in Qatar, but a spokesman for Army Forces Central Command, Maj. Rich Steele, said in an interview that the materiel -- enough to equip a combat brigade of more than 3,000 soldiers -- remains in Kuwait. That amounts to a doubling of the war supplies now stationed at Camp Doha.
Steele said the extra supplies were needed because the Army had added two battalions -- roughly 2,000 soldiers -- to the existing force at Camp Doha over the past several months. The soldiers were added over a period of months starting last fall to discourage Iraq from thinking the United States was so preoccupied with the war in Afghanistan that it was not ready to defend Kuwait, Steele said.
The war materiel includes tanks and other armored vehicles, as well as fuel, ammunition and other supplies. The purpose of storing it in the Gulf region is to have it readily available to link up with additional soldiers who would be flown to Kuwait from Europe or the United States as reinforcements.
Army officials could not immediately say when was the last time that pre-positioned war stocks were moved to Kuwait for inspection and testing. Kuwait would be a natural jumping-off point for any U.S. land invasion of Iraq. More than 9,000 soldiers are at Camp Doha, training in the desert.<<
foxnews.com |
