Posted on 06/02/2004 7:50:27 AM PDT by demlosers
The Associated Press
IN a rapid-fire deployment of US troops to Iraq, some 10,000 US Marines will arrive in Kuwait this month and travel into Iraq in July, the US military said today.
The deployment occurs in the fierce heat of summer and under an extraordinarily tight schedule, with troops expected to land in the war theatre a few weeks after receiving orders.
"We'll be pushing them through the theatre and getting them up north" into Iraq, said Army Colonel Gary McKown, who oversees US troop movements into Iraq from this desert base south of Kuwait City.
The Marines, who had yet to receive official deployment orders today, will be among the units travelling into Iraq in July, relieving about 15,000 war-weary soldiers from the Army's 1st Armoured Division and 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment.
In April, both Army units had their stays in Iraq extended by three months after a pair of insurgent uprisings spread deadly turmoil across the country, requiring US troops to take over a swathe of Iraq formerly occupied by its coalition partners.
Military officials have identified the incoming Marine units as the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit from Camp Pendleton, California, and the 24th MEU from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.
The Marines will be followed by 3600 soldiers from the US Army's South Korea-based 2nd Infantry Division.
Those soldiers will pass through Kuwait after the Marines, McKown said in an interview.
"They'll have a little longer to get here," he said. "I don't want anyone to think we're pushing that unit that fast."
Many of the incoming troops have already been to war in Iraq or Afghanistan, said Army Colonel Greg Adams, who runs the giant Coalition Operations Intelligence Centre here, overseeing military logistics in Iraq and Afghanistan.
McKown and Adams said the troops already know they are being sent to Iraq but would be given official orders within days. The Iraq-bound troops were packing, handling family matters and taking care of last minute training, McKown said.
"We've already had contact with them, given them their preliminary information," McKown said. "Notification is faster than normal, so we're on a compressed timeline."
At the same time, military transportation gurus in Kuwait were organising cargo aircraft and ships to ferry the troops and their gear to the port in Kuwait.
Because of the short time frame between notification and arrival in Kuwait, the complex rotation of forces must be tightly synchronised.
"It's like conducting an orchestra," McKown said.
The emergency troop rotation has been dubbed Operation Iraqi Freedom 2.5, because it occurs after the huge rotation of US forces in Iraq this spring, when most US invasion troops left and were replaced by the current contingent.
The Germany-based 1st Armoured Division and Louisiana-based 2nd Armored Cavalry were supposed to depart in April, leaving US troop levels in Iraq at around 110,000. But Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the top US commander in Iraq, ordered the units to stay in Iraq 90 days longer, keeping 130,000 troops in the country.
The Pentagon has decided to retain that level of combat power in Iraq beyond the summer, requiring military brass to find troops who could be deployed ahead of schedule. A second major rotation of forces, dubbed Operation Iraqi Freedom 3, is supposed to begin in October.
After arriving this month, the Marines will spend about twenty days in Kuwait, unloading their gear from ships, practice-firing their weapons and acclimating themselves to desert heat that is already soaring beyond 43 degrees Celsius.
43 degrees Celsius. Well the writer is not an American. 43 degrees seems a bit cool in my world.
My eternal thanks to these brave soldiers for a difficult job very well done.
The boy king of Syria better curtail his terrorist ambitions.
Something is damn sure afoot. Bush may have concluded that the time has come to break some china, reelection or no reelection. Boy President may be helping al-Zarqawi. Worse yet, Binnie and al-Zawahiri may be steppin' out like pimps in Western Iran. This event coincides with the decision to withdraw a brigade from the Indianhead Division in Korea and send it to the Gulf. Be Seeing You,
Chris
Sending in the marines is a great move. Sends a strong signal to only Syria and Iran.
Sending in the marines is a great move. Sends a strong signal to only Syria and Iran.
It will be Syria first.
ping
troops expected to land in the war theatre a few weeks after receiving orders.
The Marines, who had yet to receive official deployment orders today
The article makes it seem as if this is some sort of spur of the moment deployment. My brother is in the 24th MEU and they've known for several months that they were going back to Iraq at the end of June.
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