Fast start seen to war if Iraq disappoints
By Douglas Hamilton
DOHA, Dec 4 (Reuters) - U.S. forces in the Gulf could be in action against Iraq in no time if President George W. Bush does not accept the declaration of arms of mass destruction Baghdad is expected to deliver to the United Nations on Saturday.
American warplanes already conducting a low-level war in the "no fly" zones of the north and south could quickly ramp up their attacks in a rolling start to a bombing campaign if Bush decides no further United Nations deliberation is necessary.
From that point the United States might need only three or four weeks to put ground forces in place for a land invasion.
Unlike in the six-month buildup to the Gulf War of 1990-91, U.S. forces could this time launch an assault they hope would finish the job quickly, reducing the risk of major unrest in the Islamic world that a prolonged war might provoke.
There are currently three aircraft carrier battle groups in the region -- the George Washington, Constellation and Abraham Lincoln -- and a fourth, the Harry Truman, leaves Virginia this week for the area.
Each carrier has about 75 strike jets and each is shepherded by a half dozen or so cruisers, destroyers and submarines armed with long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles.
BEEN THERE, DONE THAT
The Americans have bases in the Gulf that did not exist in 1990, practical knowledge of the operating terrain and combat conditions, much more accurate precision munitions, and they know the enemy force and its capabilities.
Large stocks of tanks, artillery, ammunition and food have been pre-positioned by the U.S Field Support Command, whose job is to see that forces can hit the ground running.
The designated commander of an Iraq campaign, General Tommy Franks, is due in the Gulf state of Qatar any day to conduct a dry run of his mobile Central Command headquarters here, the likely nerve centre of the war.
The U.S. plan is said to call for a force of 250,000 troops. Some 55,000 are currently in place, two-thirds of them Navy and Air Force personnel at sea and at air bases in Kuwait, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
There are just 15,000 trigger-pulling U.S. troops in the region. But 60,000 or more could get to the region within weeks of the start of bombing, as a further 150,000 are moved in.
"If you are talking about armoured warfare and tanks you have to ship them across there: that's a slow process. To get a sizeable ground force in place you need a build-up which is a matter of a month," said British analyst Tim Garden.
He said that if a decision to go to war were taken on December 8 it would be difficult to imagine an operation getting under way before the end of the year.
FRONTLINE STATES
Meanwhile, the U.S. is signing up frontline allies.
Turkey announced on Tuesday that it would allow its airbases to be used by U.S. and British warplanes for any invasion of Iraq. More than 200 other combat aircraft would be based in Gulf states, and radar-evading B-2 stealth bombers would fly from the British Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia.
Whether Saudi Arabia will ultimately permit combat sorties from the Prince Sultan base near Riyadh is not clear. But Kuwait's role is assured and Qatar is likely to give a green light to American use of its Al Udeid base.
At a Pentagon news conference on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld refused to say what next steps the United States might take if Iraq claims at the weekend it has no weapons of mass destruction.
"We don't really talk about deployments particularly or operations," he said. "We have been moving forces around the world, as you know. We've got a somewhat higher level of presence in the Central Command area today than we did last week or the week before or the week before that."
Special forces and CIA agents are already in autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, training forces opposed to Saddam. Washington is said to have has promised Israel that U.S. special forces will move immediately to Iraq's western desert in the event of war to neutralise any missile threat and keep Israel out of the conflict. |
