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Ready within days { March 6 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/06/international/middleeast/06MILI.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/06/international/middleeast/06MILI.html
March 6, 2003
Pentagon Ready to Strike Iraq Within Days if Bush Gives the Word, Officials Say
By ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON, March 5 — The Pentagon has provided President Bush with options for an attack against Iraq that could begin within days and without using Turkey as a staging area for American troops in the north, military officials said today.
With the diplomatic negotiations over Iraq appearing to enter a critical final phase, Gen. Tommy R. Franks met today at the White House to discuss war plans with President Bush and his top national security advisers. General Franks reviewed the plans last week with his top Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Special Operations commanders in Qatar.
Mr. Bush has made no decision on whether to order an attack, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and General Franks said later, declining to comment on the meeting.
But other administration officials said the 75-minute meeting focused on all aspects of the war plan, including alternatives to using Turkey as a staging area for American troops to open a northern front in Iraq.
"If the president of the United States decides to undertake action, we are in a position to provide a military option," General Franks told reporters at the Pentagon after the meeting.
Since mid-February, senior military officials have said there were sufficient forces in the Persian Gulf region to mount an offensive. But that has assumed that an offensive would begin with whatever forces were available, and that the weaponry for important units like the Fourth Infantry Division and 101st Airborne Division would not arrive in time for the start of the war.
With 225,000 American and 25,000 British servicemen and women now in striking distance of Iraq, the military options available to Mr. Bush, while still incomplete, are firming up and could be ordered on short notice if the diplomatic string runs out, military officials said.
Top Pentagon aides said Mr. Bush would probably not want to wait long after the diplomatic situation was resolved to use force. Further delay at that point could risk allowing President Saddam Hussein to strike pre-emptively, perhaps by firing Scud missiles at Israel, the aides said.
The Navy has five aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf and eastern Mediterranean — each with 45 to 50 attack planes — that are in position to strike. Nearly two dozen ships and submarines capable of firing Tomahawk cruise missiles accompany those carriers.
There are about 700 Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps combat planes in the region. Fourteen B-52 bombers recently arrived in Britain, ready for gulf missions, and B-1 and B-2 bombers have been sent to the gulf and the Indian Ocean base at Diego Garcia island.
"I do get the sense that we're getting closer to the balloon going up," one senior Defense Department official said today.
While there are more than 110,000 Army and Marine Corps forces now ashore in Kuwait or afloat nearby, the ground options available to Mr. Bush have inherent weaknesses if he gives the order in a week or so.
A senior Turkish general today endorsed a plan to send as many as 62,000 American troops through Turkey to open a second front in northern Iraq. But a senior American military official said the Turkish Parliament's rejection of the plan last Saturday and the subsequent delay might well have taken the Turkish option off the table.
"We're beyond that now," the official said of staging through Turkey. "We're at Plan B."
Plan B, the official said, is what General Franks's initial war plan envisioned: an offensive launched from Kuwait, with lighter forces from there swooping into northern Iraq to safeguard the oil fields there and keep rival Kurdish factions from fighting with each other or with Turkish troops that might cross the border.
"There'll be a northern option with or without Turkey," Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters on Tuesday. One alternative under consideration is dispatching the 101st Airborne Division and its more than 250 helicopters from Kuwait to attack targets in northern Iraq.
All but a few thousand of the division's 20,000 troops have flown into Kuwait on chartered airliners in the last few days. But the division's first shipload of attack helicopters does not arrive until later this week, a Navy official said. The division's full combat package is not expected to arrive until around March 15.
If Mr. Bush wanted to attack sooner than that, commanders could parachute air assault troops from the 82nd Airborne Division in Kuwait or 173rd Airborne brigade in Italy into northern Iraq to seize airfields. Army Rangers could also conduct this mission. Heavy tanks and other equipment could be flown in later.
While the 82nd and 173rd Airborne troops are ready to conduct this mission, military officials said, both lack the armored punch the Fourth Infantry Division offers, as well as the division's ability to present a more fearsome challenge to Iraqi Republican Guard divisions defending the northern approach to Baghdad.
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