Much of the military equipment needed to carry out a war on Iraq, such as refueling tankers and cargo planes, is in reserve units, noted retired army general Barry McCaffrey. "We can’t go to war without the Guard and Reserves," he told the Baltimore Sun. "To run a major operation with Iraq, the first thing the president will need is 100,000 troops" from those units. McCaffrey commanded the 24th Mechanized Division, which spearheaded the U.S. ground invasion of Iraq in February 1991.

According to U.S. officials, some reservists will be assigned to combat duty, while others are to be placed on guard duty at U.S. military bases overseas and throughout the United States. Plans are also in the works to station U.S. troops outside factories, at power plants, transportation hubs, and medical centers.

Meanwhile, the Navy is speeding the deployment of aircraft carriers to the Mideast. Two are there now--the USS Abraham Lincoln, located in the northern Arabian Sea, and the USS George Washington in the Mediterranean Sea. Scheduled to make their way to the area shortly are the USS Harry Truman and USS Nimitz.

Also preparing for operations off the coast of Iraq is the USS Constellation. The aircraft carrier has been in the midst of two weeks of war exercises running through October 30, off San Clemente Island near California. The action involves nearly 9,000 troops and more than 15 ships, with F-14 Tomcats and F/A-18 Hornets being catapulted off the carrier’s deck at 150 miles per hour. At its completion the Constellation together with the eight ships in its battle group will be departing for the Middle East as well.

The big "issue for us right now is getting the heavy equipment over there," a senior Pentagon official told the press. Toward that end, large cargo ships are being loaded in the major ports of San Diego and Charleston, South Carolina, to ferry Army and Marine Corps trucks and other military equipment to the Middle East.

In addition, the U.S. merchant fleet is being readied for sealift services to supply U.S. armed forces once the war against Iraq gets under way.

According to an article appearing in the October American Maritime Officers online edition, "One certain immediate source of sealift would be the fleet of ships pre-positioned in the British Indian Ocean Territory of Diego Garcia, the Mediterranean, and the Far East under Military Sealift Command charter. These vessels are stocked with tanks, trucks, trailers, and other vehicles, weapons, ammunition and other supplies for the Marine Corps, the Army and the Air Force."

One of the land bases out of which U.S. forces are operating is the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. Along with 2,200 U.S. troops, the base already stores two dozen KC-135 Stratotankers and KC-10A Extenders for inflight refueling operations. In cooperation with Washington, the Qatari regime has been expanding the base over the past six months to accommodate up to 10,000 troops and 120 aircraft.

U.S. general Thomas Franks, head of the U.S. Central Command, is scheduled to arrive at the base in early December with a contingent of 600 officers to coordinate Washington’s invasion plans. Those officers were among the 900 who have been functioning out of the Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Florida.  
 
‘Protect U.S. access to Gulf oil’
An Air Force University document, accessible on the Pentagon’s web site, spells out bluntly the role the United States Central Command sees itself playing in the Mideast region. Its purpose, the paper states, is "to protect the United States’ vital interest in the region--uninterrupted, secure U.S./Allied access to Gulf oil."

The document adds, "The world’s demand for oil can only be met by the vast oil reserves of the Arabian Gulf region." There, "unrestricted access by the industrial nations of the world to the Central Region’s vast oil reserves remains an imperative." The Command, which was established in 1983, encompasses U.S. military operations over 19 nations of the Middle East, Northeast Africa, and Southwest Asia, including the waters of the Arab-Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and Gulf of Oman.

U.S. military preparations for an invasion of Iraq have been accompanied by a step-up in bombing attacks within the "no-fly" zones imposed by Washington at the end of the Gulf war in 1991. In violation of Iraqi sovereignty, the areas encompass both the northern and southern parts of the country. Since the zones were imposed, U.S. and British forces have carried out nearly 300,000 bombing attacks against Iraq over the past decade, with the pace accelerating over the past couple of months. The U.S. government is especially targeting Iraq’s integrated air defense systems, with the aim of clearing the way for an unimpeded U.S. aerial assault upon the country. Just on October 22, for example, U.S. warplanes bombed targets in both the northern and southern zones.  
 
Air surveillance over Yemen
As Washington makes its military might felt throughout the region, it is expanding surveillance operations over the Middle East as well. Pilotless U.S. spy aircraft are scouring a the desert area in Yemen, known as the Empty Quarter, supposedly to locate and track al Qaeda operatives residing in the area. The Empty Quarter, the largest unbroken stretch of sand in the world, runs 900 miles from the frontier of Yemen to the foothills of Oman, and 500 miles northward into central Saudi Arabia.

"A U.S. war against Iraq is now a given," writes Washington Times commentator Arnaud de Borchgrave from Amman, Jordan, October 21. "United Nations proceedings are a charade that gives the United States time to get its strategic assets in place throughout the region. This should be done by December 15 and the war is expected to begin early in the New Year."

The U.S. government is pushing for a rapid vote in the United Nations Security Council on its proposed resolution governing a new round of "arms inspections" of Iraq, designed to pave the way for a U.S.-led invasion of the country. The governments of France and Russia have been holding out for wording in the new resolution empowering the Security Council to authorize such a military assault, while Washington insists it needs no prior UN approval for initiating the war against Baghdad.

French and Russian officials have made it clear they have no intention of vetoing the U.S. resolution, although they have been circulating their own "informal" alternative text.

In another development, Iraqi president Saddam Hussein issued an amnesty for many of the country’s prisoners October 20, freeing tens of thousands from incarceration. Immediately after this message was broadcast in the media, relatives and friends gathered outside the Abu Ghraib prison, 20 miles west of Baghdad. They joined in helping to pry the prison gates open, freeing some 10,000 individuals at that facility alone.  
 
 
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