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Key battle staffs bolster strength for Iraq attack©Associated PressOctober 13, 2002 WASHINGTON -- In moves suggesting new Pentagon preparations for war against Iraq, key Army and Marine Corps battle staffs are being sent to Kuwait and officials said Saturday that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is likely to order extra germ warfare protection for hundreds of thousands of troops. Although no decision has been made, Rumsfeld is expected to give the go-ahead soon for smallpox inoculations, a senior defense official told the Associated Press. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops have received vaccines to protect them against anthrax, and after a long pause in that inoculation program, the pace of vaccinations was accelerated last month, AP reported. The Pentagon has taken numerous steps in recent weeks to position U.S. forces so as to reduce the time required to launch an attack on Iraq, should President Bush decide that force is required to disarm Saddam Hussein. In the latest such move, AP reports, the Pentagon ordered the battle staffs of the Army's V Corps, with headquarters at Heidelberg, Germany, and the Marine Corps' 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, based at Camp Pendleton, Calif., to go to Kuwait. Several thousand U.S. ground forces are in Kuwait, mostly at Camp Doha. Those moves, reported in Saturday's Washington Post, strongly suggest that Rumsfeld is putting in place the battle planners and command staffs that would be called on to spearhead a land assault on Iraq. The V Corps is the Army's only corps headquarters based outside the United States, and its combat units, including the 1st Armored Division and the 1st Infantry Division, are specifically trained for fighting in Europe or the Middle East. The V Corps is commanded by Lt. Gen. William Wallace and has 41,000 troops. V Corps recently redesigned its main command post, making it modular and more mobile. The battle staff of U.S. Central Command, which would have responsibility for war in Iraq, is planning to move to an air base in Qatar next month from its headquarters in Tampa. The move is billed as an exercise, but AP cites officials as saying the staff -- including the commanding general, Tommy Franks -- might remain in Qatar in anticipation of a presidential decision to go to war. Franks has his naval command staff in Bahrain and his air command staff in Saudi Arabia. One of the key worries about building up forces in the vicinity of Iraq is the possibility that Hussein could launch a preemptive strike using biological or chemical weapons. Thus the Pentagon is considering additional protections, such as the vaccine for the virus that causes smallpox, as reported in Saturday's New York Times. The Health and Human Services Department recently informed the Pentagon that it would make about 1-million doses of the smallpox vaccine available for inoculating troops.
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From the Times wire desk
From the AP |
