Posted on 03/10/2003 3:07:01 PM PST by TaRaRaBoomDeAyGoreLostToday!
Washington will have enough forces bristling on the borders of Iraq to launch a strike as soon as the March 17 disarmament deadline it is seeking expires, but it looks likely to wait a few days longer.
Analysts said that, despite soaring temperatures which would make battle uncomfortable, U.S. Central Command chief General Tommy Franks may even seek a delay until April 1 to resolve a hitch in plans for a thrust into northern Iraq and have a moonless sky for aerial bombing.
Britain, supported by the United States, has proposed giving Iraq a March 17 ultimatum to cooperate fully with disarmament demands or face war.
Its proposed resolution so far lacks a majority at the U.N. Security Council and faces a possible veto, raising the prospect of military action without backing from the United Nations.
With more than 200,000 combined U.S. and British forces already in the Gulf region, along with dozens of warships and more than 500 attack aircraft, the timing for the start of a campaign is now of the attackers' choosing.
"U.S. forces already deployed...are adequate to quickly overwhelm and defeat the Iraqi military," said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Virginia.
"U.S. intelligence indicates all Iraqi forces, including the Republican Guard, to be poorly equipped, poorly trained and poorly led. In addition, the conscripted regular force appears to be demoralized and fearful."
In Kuwait, from where the bulk of forces would punch north into Iraq, there are signs of last-minute preparations.
ON A WAR FOOTING
Long convoys of U.S. and British military vehicles race up and down the main highway to the Iraqi border day and night. Fuel tankers, land rovers and Humvees are among the vehicles, many of them painted pale brown to blend in with desert.
In the darkness, lights glow from camps in the desert hidden behind walls of sand.
Members of the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division, expected to be a lead element in any invasion of Iraq, have left their camps in the desert in the past few days and gathered at makeshift staging areas to make room for new troop arrivals.
A commercial contractor is building seven new gates -- wide enough to accommodate tanks -- in the fence separating Kuwait from Iraq.
Allied warplanes have more than doubled their patrols over the Iraqi no-fly zones to at least 500 a day, a tactic officials said was designed to confuse air defenses before a possible invasion, and they have dropped hundreds of thousands of leaflets encouraging Iraqi troops not to fight.
In another sign that war may be drawing close, the U.S. Army has begun in recent days to "embed" journalists in Kuwait attached to military units for the conflict.
But Washington is still only weighing whether to order diplomats out of the region, something it did shortly before the start of hostilities against Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War.
Rosemary Hollis, head of the Middle East Program at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, said the United States would not want to give Iraq time to brace itself when the diplomatic showdown ends on March 17.
"I'm assuming the Americans don't want to give them too much time ... and they want an element of surprise," she said, adding that she saw war starting by March 25 but not as late as April.
TURKEY PROBLEM
To be sure of a textbook campaign, though, Franks would probably be aiming for no sooner than the back end of March.
For one, tanks of the Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment will probably not arrive in theater until around that time.
But more crucially, there is the unresolved question of how to secure northern and western Iraq because of the Turkey's decision to deny the use of its territory to U.S. troops.
On March 1 the Turkish parliament rejected a request to station up to 62,000 troops in Turkey, but the government has hinted it may present a fresh motion to the assembly this week.
The original plan had been to send the Army's 4th Infantry Division with tanks and attack helicopters from Turkey into northern Iraq to prevent oilfields being seized by Iraqi Kurds and engage Iraqi forces so that they don't regroup to Baghdad.
These heavily armored troops would also have sought to prevent Kurdish attempts to forge a breakaway state, keep the peace between Kurds and Turkish troops, and possibly head down to Tikrit, the hometown of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
If Turkey stands firm, one option would be for the division to redeploy through the Suez Canal and into Kuwait, which would take a week. Lightly armed airborne troops could then be used to secure the oilfields in northern Iraq.
Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution said that if Franks was looking for full preparedness he would need at least two weeks from a decision to route the 4th Infantry Division to Kuwait and seven to 10 days after any approval by the Turkish assembly.
Analysts say, though, that pinpointing a date for the start of hostilities is intelligent guesswork, complicated by the fact that Franks has to go when President Bush says so.
"While force deployments are not yet complete, the force already in place is capable of defeating Iraq's demoralized military within two weeks," said Thompson. "Tommy Franks is continuously adjusting his campaign plan to accommodate an immediate start to hostilities if the president so directs."
© Copyright 2003 Capitol Hill Blue
I hope you're typing from Saddam's office and you all believe that.
Bush should launch the attack just after France vetos the resolution tomorrow, to REALLY throw everybody off.
Better yet, launch just before the French veto, to let them know exactly what we think of them.
As the season becomes summerlike, the moon effect lessens. It's an issue in January. Now it isn't. Besides, the longer they wait, the more likely it is that Saddam will die of old age, if he hasn't already. Which Saddam did Dan interview?
It is not on the verge of collapse. I still have faith that Bush is in full control. He's giving the UN enough rope to hang themselves.
sw
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