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| Iraq | |
| British troops will be ready within days, says army chief | |
| 2003-03-08 | |
| The force of 25,000 British troops which has been building up in Kuwait since January will be fully ready by Wednesday at the latest, the army's senior officer, General Sir Mike Jackson, said yesterday. Gen Jackson, who commanded the Nato force which entered Kosovo in 1999, said the British division was still waiting for a few last pieces of equipment to arrive. But the troops were ready for action now, he added. The ticking is getting louder. "There's a couple of ships yet to come in," he said during a visit to British soldiers in a desert camp north of Kuwait city. "I would have thought four or five days would pretty much complete the whole logistic piece, but even if it [military action] were today, we're pretty much good to go." Being ready did not mean the division would go to war soon, or at all, he said. "We can wait here for quite a long time if required. The heat is a difficulty, but it's not impossible. The dreaded Iraqi summer. Some a/c and some sunscreen will do wonders, eh Saddam? "I do not think war is inevitable." Keep pushing the disinformation for the next few days while we finish putting the ribbon on the package. Gen Jackson's comments are the clearest indication yet of the end point of a British military build-up which began stealthily and is still surrounded by a thicker screen of secrecy than the parallel, much larger US effort. Downing Street is still anxious to shield the public's eyes from the fact that British troops are very much preparing to fight, and are not simply waiting in the desert to see what happens in the diplomatic arena. They aren't trolling the beach looking for girls. The media has not been allowed access to British forces carrying out live firing, to British tanks or to exercises involving infantry dismounting from helicopters and amphibious landings. After meeting hundreds of soldiers from the Royal Irish regiment, including a number of Gurkhas who have been attached to the Irish, the general dismissed reports that troops had been suffering as a result of shortages of supplies like toilet paper. "If anything, I'm a little concerned it may be too comfortable," he said, turning his deeply lined face to the questioner. "If they are required to do a dangerous and hard mission, they need to train for a dangerous and hard mission. Any soldier who doesn't have a loo roll in his bergen isn't a very good soldier in my view. I really don't want to get bogged down in minutiae. No pun intended. Question is, since he's a general, did everyone there laugh? "It's worth remembering that in six weeks, since the end of January, we have moved well over 17,000 soldiers, hundreds of vehicles, including heavy fighting vehicles, and thousands of tonnes of stores into a bad desert. It's a remarkable achievement."
A convoy of between 300 and 500 Turkish military vehicles, including tanks, personnel carriers and jeeps, headed towards the Iraqi frontier yesterday despite a warning on Turkish television from the US under-secretary of state, Marc Grossman, against entering northern Iraq unilaterally. Turkey has said it will set up a 9km buffer zone inside Iraq to host camps for refugees fleeing Saddam Hussein's forces. I though Kirkuk and Mosul were a bit further down the road. | |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #1 9km is where the Turkish cops are. The Army is already down the road. |
| Posted by: Tom Roberts 2003-03-08 07:55:39 |