Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com
Monday, Oct. 7, 2002

Some in the loop at the Pentagon will profess that since the end of the Gulf War in 1991, the U.S. has been quietly and deliberately preparing for another inevitable go-around with Saddam.

When the Iraqi dictator complains of despised infidels crowding into the Middle East’s sacred spaces, he does have some empirical data in his favor. Since the U.S. blasted his forces in the short-lived mother of all battles, the U.S. military has not only held on to its strategic bases throughout the Persian Gulf, but has built them up, constructed new ones, and put plenty of troops on the ground.

Consequently, even before President Bush unleashes the dogs of war, Uncle Sam has 30,000 troops already in the region along with the weapons and supplies to outfit them.

Although the Pentagon is understandably mum on the particulars, the host of American military assets already in the potential theatre of operations is impressive: bases, air facilities, command and communication centers, staging areas, refueling stations, naval ports and training ranges - arrayed in Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and Diego Garcia.

Furthermore, these outposts are brimming with tanks, fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers. Kuwait and Qatar are home to some 230 M-1A1 Abrams tanks, 120 M-2A2 Bradley fighting vehicles, 200 armored personnel carriers, as well as scores of mortars and canons. U.S. warehouses in these two countries are standing by to hustle food and fuel to 10,000 troops.

All this muscle is separate and apart from that committed to the Afghanistan operations. Those assets (including 7,800 troops) are either in country or poised in neighboring Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.

With the invasion infrastructure basically in place, the trick remains only to move in massive reinforcements when the balloon goes up. For this operation the legacy of the Gulf War kicks in.

Learning from the logistical mistakes of that conflict, planners have insured that a new fleet of cutting edge ships can move hardware and supplies to the region with amazing efficiency.

Unlike the clumsy and time consuming "lift and swing” techniques used in 1991s Desert Storm, today’s military transport ships are configured to allow personnel to gun engines and drive the war engines down a ramp.

The bottom line is that 150,000 additional fully equipped troops could be on the ground with all their requisite gear - before Christmas.

The only wrinkle in all this good news were a couple of glitches noticed during a recent war game.

According to a recent report in the New York Times, the war game, code-named "Prominent Hammer II,” revealed shortages in some U.S. military equipment – specifically surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft, refueling tankers and transport planes.

However, on the good side, the computer simulation said despite the shortcomings we still win the war, while continuing to march against al-Qaeda and maintaining other commitments such as safeguarding the DMZ between the two Koreas.

But are our warriors ready?

Yes – without qualification – say both Air Force Gen. Richard Myers and Marine Gen. Peter Pace, respectively the chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

And that means quantity as well as the quality borne of intensive training.

Poised to jump across the pond and confront Saddam is another aircraft carrier battle group and another Marine expeditionary unit from the Pacific or the Mediterranean. These floating assets could be in theatre within one to two weeks.

Standing by in the continental U.S. are the 4th Infantry Division, the 1st Cavalry Division, the 82nd Airborne Division and the 101st Air Assault Division. Another Army division could deploy from U.S. posts in Germany.

Also in the lineup: 25, 000 British troops - both armored and infantry, a British aircraft carrier group, special forces units, as well as all the support personnel to keep the units in the field during the course of an invasion.

How about our stocks of ammo?

Precision munitions, smart bombs and the like were fired away at a high rate during the Afghan campaign, but Pace maintains that now "we have a sufficient inventory of precision munitions right now to take care of our needs worldwide.

"Quite honestly, readiness is very, very high across the force,” Pace recently emphasized. "The armed forces of the United States are very ready.”

Spare parts are also on the mark, much of this vital resource already forward deployed.

"We have done a lot with pre-positioned stocks in the gulf, making sure they’re accessible and that they are in the right spot to support whatever the president wants to do,” Army Secretary Thomas E. White said recently.

There is even the luxury of some redundancy built into the awesome military machine. For instance, if a recalcitrant Saudi Arabia ousts the U.S. from the key Combined Air Operations Center at the Prince Sultan air force base, the sprawling al-Udeid air force base in Qatar, on the opposite side of the Gulf from Iraq, can take up the slack.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

Saddam Hussein/Iraq

Editor's note:
Saddam Hussein’s race to make a nuclear bomb