Carl is getting ready to eat an enormous meal of Crow that Nadine, CB, etc have prepared for him.
Getting warmer...
Soldiers and Equipment Head for Iraq Border in Vast Formation
By PATRICK E. TYLER
nytimes.com
KUWAIT, March 18 — Artillery fire echoed through the Iraqi border region tonight and Iran's state television showed video of explosions from airstrikes in and around the Iraqi port of Basra, as the United States and Britain made final preparations to wage a war aimed at toppling Saddam Hussein's government in Baghdad.
Following President Bush's 48-hour ultimatum to Mr. Hussein, United States Army and Marine divisions rolled toward the Iraqi frontier today. They formed a broad arc of thousands of vehicles, shoulder to shoulder in a sprawling phalanx facing north and visible to journalists scouting the area.
Across 5,000 square miles of Kuwaiti desert, a full March moon tonight illuminated an army of 130,000 American and British soldiers arrayed with a host of M1A1 Abrams tanks, armored vehicles of every description, ubiquitous Humvees and humble troop transports, many of them short of equipment spares and tires as quartermasters scrambled to catch up.
In the front of the formations, engineering battalions wheeled their bulldozers and heavy equipment into position to breach the ditches and earthen berms that lay between the army and the Iraqi desert.
The sky over northern Kuwait was so thick with assault and transport helicopters that meteorologists trying to track an advancing sandstorm were forbidden to launch their weather balloons. Hundreds of helicopter pilots engaged in last-minute training exercises to master blind descents through the clouds of sand kicked up by their rotors. |
