Incoming 4th ID awaits its mission — and learns from the 3rd

Man of the Right: Ever since the 1st Gulf War the Army has kept a heavy brigade in Kuwait on 6-month rotations. Camp Doha in Kuwait has a heavy Division's worth of vehicles prepositioned and these are drawn by the rotating brigade when they arrive. The 3rd Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade was already in Kuwait during the buildup so the order to deploy the rest of the Division from Ft. Stewart and Ft. Benning was a natural one. All they had to do was fall in on the remaining equipment pre-positioned at Camp Doha and head out to the desert to link up with 2nd Brigade. If it had been a brigde of the 4th I.D. in Kuwait already then it would have been the remainder of this Division going and the 3rd would have been cooling it's heels back home.

I thought about that too, but I'm not so sure.

It would have been very sound military strategy to have an armored division on the north end of a pincer movement. As it was, the 173rd was able to fix and hold some of the Republican Guard and regular army units up north, but not as effectively as the 4th Div would have done. There was no northern "offensive."

The personnel of the 4th Div were at their base. Mostly, it was the equipment that was on the ships waiting to unload in Turkey. We were very willing to "buy off" the Turks to the tune of about 20 Billion dollars. As a matter of fact, the plurality of the vote of the Turkish Parliament went "our way," but not the majority, due to abstentions. Had we gotten another four to six votes, we would have landed the material and flown the 4th Div personnel into Turkey to meet up with it. It was the uncertainty of the Turkish vote that delayed the deployment. This certainly had the effect of a psychological operation, but I don't believe it was intended!

I think now, for our military planners, this was a case of getting lemons and instead making lemonade.

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