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| Axis of Evil |
| Pentagon Detects Iraqi Troop Movement |
| 2002-12-19 |
| Armored units of the Republican Guard have moved from their garrisons near Baghdad to an area about 40 miles west of the capital in the most significant deployment by President Saddam Hussein in two years, Pentagon intelligence officials said Wednesday. The movement of what appears to be several hundred soldiers, along with tanks and artillery, to the new location appears to be an effort by the Iraqi leader to flex his military muscles in response to increased U.S. preparations for war. "When you move this size of force, it's a great strain to the military, it's a great signal of resolve," a U.S. official said. "This is the largest defensive preparation that we've seen since 9/11." It also plays right into our hands. Keep moving those troops out of the population centers into open country where we can hit them without a lot of civilian casulaties. Also, any time they move them, we see them and watch where they dig in. Iraqi military forces have also begun placing obstacles on the runways of key air bases, U.S. defense and intelligence officials said. The barriers, detected recently by American spy satellites, could delay or stop an attack that relied on fixed-wing aircraft bringing in troops to seize the bases. Iraqis fear that U.S. forces will try to occupy the remote bases as staging areas for an attack on Baghdad and other parts of central Iraq, the officials said. Defense officials also said the Pentagon increasingly believes Hussein will pursue a "scorched earth" campaign if there is war with the United States, targeting his own oil fields, food supplies and power plants and blaming America for the devastation. But other U.S. intelligence officials disagreed, saying there is little evidence he will pursue such a policy. And how many Iraqi troops will fire chemical and biological weapons on their own country? They have to live there afterward. Iraq's forces have been preparing for a war with the United States and its British allies since the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, defense officials said. U.S. surveillance craft have periodically spied Iraqi troops digging trenches and transferring ammunition from large central warehouses to smaller depots where it can be more easily distributed to troops. Large central warehouses make too good a target as well. But deploying hundreds of troops and the arms, artillery, vehicles, support equipment and supplies they need is seen as a major political signal by Hussein that his army is capable of meeting the logistical challenge of moving its forces from one place to another. "This takes a great deal of effort. It takes money; it takes resources to support a group of soldiers operating away from home base," the U.S. official said. "This is their way to say to us, 'Hey if you think you have intentions of coming after us, we're going to defend Iraq.' " It also may mean he hasn't figured out what kind of attack is coming and is just moving troops around as a guess. The official said there is no evidence that the troops were actively engaged in military exercises in the western desert. And he stressed that the deployment did not pose a threat to any of Iraq's neighbors. "This is an operational deployment for them," the official said. "It's ... defensive in nature rather than offensive." The troop movements and the placing of obstacles on airstrips appear to contradict what U.S. intelligence officials say is the serious decline of the morale and training of the Iraqi military since the Gulf War. The Iraqi military is considerably smaller than the force that opposed coalition troops in the war. The Iraqi army had 70 divisions in 1991 but has only 23 today, and its Republican Guard is half its 12-division strength of 11 years ago, said a defense intelligence official who is an expert in Iraq's military capabilities. The Iraqi forces suffer from chronic personnel and equipment shortages, and its air force has been in seeming disarray for years, the official said. The air force also knows as soon as they go wheels up, the U.S. and Brit fighter pilots will be racing each other to see who can make ace first. |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #3 Bah. "several hundred" is just chicken-feed. If a movement like this puts "great strain on the Military", then I'll be believing those estimates of a one-week battle. More posturing. BTW, if the airstrips are blocked from American planes landing, it only makes it more difficult for his planes to land also. |
| Posted by: Ptah 2002-12-20 07:19:09 |
| #2 To make such a public and ineffective move, in broad daylight, with us watching, may mean something different. How loyal is this unit, which was moved from Baghdad to far outside of it, to Hussein? Germans used to threaten poor officers with assignments to the Russian Front. Maybe this is kind of along those lines. |
| Posted by: Ben 2002-12-20 07:11:41 |
| #1 In GW I, the mighty Iraqi airforce up and flew to Iran. They sent the pilots back but kept the planes. Yeah, moving a few hundred troops sends a message all right. "Run away. Run away. Run away." Monty Python |
| Posted by: Chuck 2002-12-19 13:15:10 |