Miguel
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U.S. Taking Steps to Ready Forces for Iraq Fighting
By THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT
ASHINGTON, Sept. 22 — Mobilizing for a possible attack on Iraq, American commanders have taken many steps to prepare and deploy their forces, Defense Department and military officials say. But the early steps have been calculated not to interfere with the Bush administration's campaign to build diplomatic and political support for taking action.
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In interviews, these senior officials have described several important steps that the United States has taken to prepare for battle without going on a full war footing.
In one of the most significant steps, elite Special Operations troops have been told to separate from the military temporarily and to join C.I.A. units that could be used in any campaign. Those troops would bring their counterterrorism skills to covert missions while allowing the Pentagon to maintain that no uniformed combat forces were in action.
The Navy has accelerated training and maintenance schedules for many ships, including three aircraft carrier battle groups based on the West Coast, so that they could be ordered to steam toward the Persian Gulf on short notice.
Several thousand marines and Army ground forces, being deployed with heavy armor, are flowing into Kuwait as part of regularly scheduled exercises or troop replacements. But senior officials acknowledge that the fresh units or others timed to rotate out could be ordered to remain along the front with Iraq.
"The question is not what moves into the region," one officer said. "It's what stays."
The Pentagon last week resumed inoculating certain troops for anthrax, Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has told Congress.
To some extent, the latest disclosures serve the military's purposes by indicating the readiness and resolve of American forces.
Some of the steps are described as prudent planning for a mission that has not yet been ordered by President Bush, who has received detailed options for consideration only recently. Some of the deployments are explained as contributing to the global campaign against terrorism, even though the forces involved are consciously placed where they would be available for quick use against Iraq.
Administration officials repeatedly state that Mr. Bush has made no decision about a war with Iraq, and senior military officials say they have received no orders for units to get ready to go to the Persian Gulf region on a mission to dislodge President Saddam Hussein from power.
Still, deployments under way enhance the already sizable force that has lingered in the region since the war with Iraq in 1991, including more than 20,000 American military personnel permanently based within close striking distance, the heavy equipment for at least four armored brigades, and Patriot antimissile batteries to protect them.
Preparations involving the Special Operations units reflect their decisive role during the war in Afghanistan, where they worked closely with intelligence agencies.
Senior officials who discussed their role in general terms said it was a standard procedure to prepare the units for contingencies, citing their particular combat skills. But the officials did not disclose details.
A senior Defense Department official said "some small handfuls" of Special Operations forces offered the kinds of abilities that would be useful to the Central Intelligence Agency.
Their missions would fall into broad categories like what the military calls "preparing the battlefield." As described in unclassified texts on military doctrine, that could include solidifying ties with opposition forces, scouting for arsenals of biological and chemical weapons and the artillery or missiles that would launch them and mounting sabotage raids against prized targets.
Senior military officials said no American military forces were operating in southern or western Iraq, although they would not say whether the C.I.A. was already undertaking missions there.
One senior official said a number of Americans from several federal agencies had flown in and out of the Kurdish-controlled areas of northern Iraq to coordinate with opposition groups there.
Navy officials said speeding up maintenance and training schedules for its West Coast-based carriers was a prudent precaution in case the Pentagon needed to move strike aircraft quickly to the Persian Gulf, where it could not be assured of operating from bases on land.
"We would like to move them up as much as possible," one senior officer said of readiness schedules for the three carriers, the Constellation, the Carl Vinson and the Nimitz.
Those carriers represent a quarter of the Navy's main strike force. Of the three ships, the Constellation, based in San Diego, would be ready to be deployed first. Others, having returned to home port more recently, would take months more to refit.
It takes several weeks for carriers on the West Coast to reach the Persian Gulf. Carriers based on the East Coast need less time to reach the eastern Mediterranean.
In addition to surveillance and strike aircraft, carrier battle groups include ships and submarines with long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles that can attack far-off targets.
The carrier that just arrived in the gulf region for a six-month tour, the Abraham Lincoln, would have a distinct advantage in any war against Iraq. The Lincoln is the first carrier to carry a 12-plane squadron of the Navy's new F/A-18E Super Hornets in its air wing. The Super Hornet is able to stay aloft longer without refueling and to carry more bombs than older versions of the plane.
Marine and Army units on regularly scheduled deployments to the gulf region could also be sent to Iraq if Mr. Bush ordered an attack.
A 4,000-soldier brigade of the Army's Third Infantry Division, based at Fort Stewart, Ga., is being deployed to Kuwait in phases this fall. The unit, which has M-1A1 tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, is scheduled to replace a brigade from Fort Benning, Ga., by December
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