U.S. Responds To Iraqi Exercises Pentagon Sends Ships And Equipment To Gulf

Based on troop movements and warnings from two Iraqi defectors that President Saddam Hussein had considered attacking Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, the Pentagon said on Thursday that it was sending ships carrying equipment and supplies to the Persian Gulf, and could ultimately deploy more than 22,000 ground troops.

Although there is no indication that an Iraqi attack is imminent, two senior American military officials told reporters on Thursday that elite Iraqi troops around Baghdad have conducted “unusual training activities” in the past five weeks that caused concern among U.S. analysts.

Most government experts here and in the Middle East say Iraq has neither the will nor the ability to launch an attack. Many Middle Eastern diplomats and even some senior American officers fear that the administration may be deliberately overreacting to the troop movements in Iraq for political reasons.

“Saddam Hussein is an easy whipping boy,” said one diplomat familiar with the Middle East. “It’s a no-brainer for Clinton. He’s got everything to gain and nothing to lose by acting tough.”

But several factors have prompted the administration to take precautionary steps, including the troop movements around Baghdad, the information provided by high-level Iraqis who defected to Jordan last week, Saddam’s threats to make trouble if the United Nations did not lift sanctions against his country next month, and the memory of military confrontations with Iraq in 1991 and 1994. “We’d much rather be safe than sorry,” said a senior Pentagon aide.

Pentagon officials have ordered 13 ships carrying tanks, trucks, ammunition and other supplies, enough for about 22,000 Marines and soldiers, to the gulf region. That equipment will arrive within a week.

Moreover, the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff prepared orders to send troops to match up with the equipment, although they will not be issued unless Iraq’s forces threaten its neighbors, senior military commanders said. Troops could be flown rapidly into the region.

“I don’t think we’re deeply worried about Saddam launching a military operation, but there’s no harm in reminding him to think it’s not a sensible thing to do,” a senior administration official said. “We don’t want him to have any doubt in his mind.”

The United States already has about 20,000 troops in the Persian Gulf and eastern Mediterranean, including two aircraft carriers, 2,000 Marines engaged in a training exercise with Jordanian troops and more than 100 Air Force planes in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

Iraq is capable of sending elite Republican Guard armored units with more than 10,000 troops, now south of Baghdad, to the Kuwaiti border in about four days, as happened last fall. At that time, Washington dispatched 13,000 troops, ships armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles and scores of warplanes, and threatened much more, to force the Iraqi troops to withdraw north of the 32nd parallel, which is about 160 miles north of the Kuwait border.

American officials this week repeated their longstanding threat to attack any Iraqi troops south of that line. “The difference between this year and last year is that we’ve declared the right to nail them below the 32nd parallel,” said a senior Defense Department official.

Administration officials suspect that Saddam is searching for a way to respond to the predicament he is in as a result of the defections of Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel and Col. Saddam Kamel - Saddam’s two sons-in-law.

These officials say that Saddam may have ordered the troop movements to divert the attention of his country - and the world - from the the defections of the two highranking military officers. Another possible motive is to flex his muscles to scare neighbors and win back respect.