US strike force sets off for Gulf

12.00pm

WASHINGTON - US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has signed an order to move thousands of additional US troops, dozens of strike aircraft and likely two more aircraft carrier battle groups to the Gulf beginning in early January for possible war with Iraq, US officials say.

The Defence and administration officials said yesterday the movement of armoured, infantry and airborne troops would be significant -- at least doubling the 50,000 Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps personnel already near Iraq -- and was a clear signal of President George W. Bush's intent to end Baghdad's chemical, biological and nuclear arms programs.

The officials, who asked not to be identified, confirmed a Washington Post report yesterday that Rumsfeld signed a detailed, classified order on Tuesday to send the forces and put two US aircraft carrier battle groups on active alert that they could soon join two American carriers already in the Gulf and Mediterranean within striking distance of Baghdad.

In addition to about 150 strike and support aircraft aboard two extra carriers, the new order includes preparations to send thousands of Marines from Camp Pendleton, California, and units from five wings of Air Force strike jets, heavy bombers and unmanned spy drones, officials said.

Officials confirmed to Reuters on Friday the military hospital ship Comfort would likely leave its home port of Baltimore for the Indian Ocean as early as Monday.

"It (the order) involves forces that can pretty much deal with anything," one Defence official told Reuters, adding an additional order to move troops was expected soon.

In reaction to the order, US officials said the Army had alerted the 1st and 3rd brigades of the 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Georgia, that they were likely to go soon to Kuwait. The division's 2nd brigade is already in Kuwait.

Defence officials also confirmed the Post report that the 101st Airborne Division, based at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, was likely to deploy beginning next month as well as the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force of some 17,500 troops from Camp Pendleton, California.

US troops from the 1st armoured Division and 1st Infantry Division had also been put on alert in Germany for possible deployment, officials said.

While the new deployment is likely to swell the number of US "trigger-pullers" - ground combat troops - in the region to fewer than 100,000, that number could go higher in February, officials said. Still, the final total used in any invasion would likely be only half that of the US-led coalition of a half-million troops that drove Iraqi troops from Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War.

While Bush has made no decision on whether to launch a US-led invasion of Iraq, the United States continues to insist Iraq is lying when it denies it has pressed ahead with chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs even as UN inspectors have again begun searching for such arms.

The Pentagon declined to confirm or deny that the classified order had been signed, but a senior spokesman for the US military's Central Command in Tampa, Florida, which is responsible for American military activities in the Gulf Region, said additional forces would soon begin to move to the area.

"Here at Central Command, we don't discuss deployment orders, because that would compromise operational security," spokesman Jim Wilkinson said by telephone.

"However, new forces will soon begin to flow to the region to be ready should the president decide to use them," he added.

The aircraft carrier USS Constellation is now on patrol in the Gulf and the USS Harry S. Truman is in the Mediterranean, where it could move quickly through the Suez Canal and close to Iraq.

US officials told Reuters on Friday the USS George Washington, which recently arrived back in Norfolk, Virginia, from the Gulf, was likely to return to the region along with either the USS Abraham Lincoln or the USS Kitty Hawk. The Lincoln is currently visiting Australia on a scheduled return to the United States, and the Kitty Hawk is based in Japan.

Air Force officials said that units from five air wings had been told to prepare for movement to the region, including F-15 fighter jets from Langley Air Force base in Virginia, F-15E ground attack jets from Seymour Johnson AFB, North Carolina; swing-wing B-1B bombers from Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota, and unmanned "Predator" spy drone aircraft from Nellis AFB in Nevada.

"If the president wants to go to war early next year, a lot of real world things need to happen," said one US official familiar with the detailed Rumsfeld order.

"And it's beginning to strike home around the country," the official added. "When you start moving this many people, the potential for war becomes very real in a lot of communities" where troops are based.

- REUTERS

Herald feature: Iraq