U.S. Sends Planes, GIs to Gulf : Bush Acts to Protect Saudi Arabia From Iraqi Peril : Kuwait crisis: American troops could ultimately total 90,000. Part of the deal reportedly is an emergency sale of advanced U.S. fighters to the Saudis.

President Bush, moving to counter an Iraqi threat to the industrial world’s oil supplies, Tuesday ordered a massive deployment of American troops and warplanes to Saudi Arabia and other Mideast locations, U.S. officials said.

The U.S. forces, to be moved into the region in phases, ultimately could number 90,000, with most destined for Saudi Arabia itself, officials said. As many as 4,000 were to reach the Middle East by this morning. Other participants in what is intended to be a large multinational military force include Egypt and Morocco, one source said.

Saudi Arabia, which previously had refused to allow the stationing of U.S. forces on its soil, agreed to the deployment after intense diplomatic discussions in Washington and Jidda. A key element of the agreement, a source close to the Saudi government said, is an emergency sale of advanced U.S. fighter aircraft to the oil-rich desert kingdom.

The White House, while refusing all comment on the military moves, warned that the Iraqi troops who swept into Kuwait last Thursday are poised “in considerable quantity and . . . in an offensive posture” on Kuwait’s border with Saudi Arabia.

“We believe that there is a very imminent threat to Saudi Arabia from the way that they are positioned and located in Kuwait,” White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said.

Pentagon sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they expect the initial Army units heading to Saudi Arabia to be drawn from the 82nd Airborne Division stationed at Ft. Bragg, N.C., the 24th Mechanized Division at Ft. Stewart, Ga., and the 101st Airborne Division at Ft. Campbell, Ky. All are part of the rapidly deployable XVIII Airborne Corps.

At the same time, the Navy is moving the carrier Eisenhower and its accompanying battle group through the Suez Canal from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, defense officials said. A second carrier battle group headed by the Independence is in the Indian Ocean near the Strait of Hormuz. Together the two ships will be in position to cover both sides of Saudi Arabia and block Iraqi shipping.

A third carrier group led by the Saratoga set sail Tuesday from Florida bound for the Mediterranean, where it will be joined by the battleship Wisconsin, sailing from Norfolk, Va.

Officials disclosed the decision to deploy the aircraft and the troops after Defense Secretary Dick Cheney negotiated the extraordinarily sensitive agreement with the Saudi government.

The Saudis are said to want to purchase 40 F-15 fighters. Such a sale was blocked in 1984 by intensive lobbying on the part of the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee. But President Bush could approve the transaction under the Emergency Arms Sales Act, which authorizes immediate sale of some armaments.

Officials sought to keep the developments under wraps, out of concern for Saudi Arabia’s political sensitivities and out of fear that disclosure could provoke Iraqi President Saddam Hussein into launching an attack before the defensive units could be assembled in the region.

Indeed, a diplomatic source in the Persian Gulf region said Saudi naval forces already had dispersed into the gulf to prevent an attack at port, and Iraqi troops continued to be massed at the Kuwaiti border with Saudi Arabia.

“What their capability is is to move quickly, and that capability has not been diminished from when they invaded Kuwait,” the source said. “In fact, it’s probably greater.”

One well-informed source said that the Saudis, reflecting long-held nervousness about appearing too close to the United States, had agreed to accept U.S. troops only to guard airfields where American aircraft will be based.

Only Egyptian forces would be allowed to work with Saudi troops in general military operations, the source said. Under this arrangement, the bulk of the U.S. ground forces would be sent to Egypt and other points in the region over a period of weeks.

“Ultimately, a lot of folks will go over,” one knowledgeable military source said. “We’re going to position ourselves so we’re not at a disadvantage.”

A Pentagon source said the ground troops are being sent “for defensive purposes,” but he made clear that they would be prepared to engage Iraqi forces along their routes of attack.

The Administration approached the crisis Tuesday on two fronts. U.S. officials spoke in upbeat terms about international efforts to impose a trade embargo so leakproof that Hussein will be pressured to back down. At the same time, the military moves indicate a readiness to back up the economic and diplomatic efforts with a naval blockade and to protect Saudi Arabia with combat air operations if necessary.

Bush spent about half of an hourlong Cabinet meeting Tuesday morning reviewing the developments in the Middle East. In addition, he spent two hours at the CIA headquarters across the Potomac River in Langley, Va., on a previously scheduled visit that Fitzwater said was expanded to include a special briefing on the situation in Kuwait.

The President spoke by telephone with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak after Cheney’s meeting in Alexandria with the Egyptian leader. That visit followed Cheney’s whirlwind trip to Saudi Arabia.

Bush also spoke by telephone with French President Francois Mitterrand, discussing the U.N. Security Council resolution, passed Monday, that imposes a global economic and military embargo on Iraq. In addition, he called King Hassan II of Morocco and President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen. Besides Egypt and Morocco, the multinational force is considered likely to include units from Pakistan and Turkey.

As part of the expanding diplomatic effort, U.S. officials said that Secretary of State James A. Baker III would meet with NATO foreign ministers in Brussels after he meets Thursday in Turkey with President Turgut Ozal, whose country’s proximity and trade with Iraq has made it a central player in the effort to cut off Iraqi oil sales.

The plans for the troop deployment began to take shape Tuesday after Cheney completed his talks in Saudi Arabia with King Fahd and then met in Alexandria with Mubarak.

Officials in Washington and in the Middle East said the defense secretary sought and obtained Egyptian permission to allow the Eisenhower to pass through the Suez Canal. Once it is in the Red Sea, the Eisenhower and its escort ships could help enforce a worldwide boycott of Iraqi oil. A major oil pipeline from Iraq through Saudi Arabia ends at the Red Sea port of Yanbu.

In addition, the Eisenhower’s attack planes would also be in better position to participate in a multi-pronged air strike on Iraq, flying over only Saudi Arabia. With the Independence at the mouth of the Persian Gulf and with additional planes based in the United States, officials said an air strike remains an option--although a distant one.

“We’re many steps away from that now,” one senior Administration official said. “The two words of the day are deterrence and reassurance.”

Initially, that would come in the form of U.S. fighter aircraft, including high-performance F-15 Eagles and F-16s, which could damage and delay movements of Iraqi tanks into Saudi Arabia. Reconnaissance planes were also dispatched to the area.

About 2 p.m. PDT, more than a dozen F-15s took off from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, one of the key units of the American 9th Air Force, which trains specially for Mideast military contingencies.

The planes were carrying external fuel tanks, suggesting they would be flying a long distance.

American warplanes began leaving bases around the United States and Europe late Tuesday, Pentagon officials said, and will begin arriving in Saudi Arabia early this morning.

Meanwhile, ships loaded with military hardware, ammunition, food, fuel and other supplies were dispatched from the U.S. military base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean on Tuesday. The gear, packed aboard ships and on docks ready for loading, will support a 16,500-man Marine expeditionary brigade for 30 days of combat.

On Tuesday morning, about 2,500 Marines from Camp Lejeune, N.C., sailed out of Morehead City, N.C., on the amphibious ship Inchon, bound for the Mediterranean.

Marine units afloat off Diego Garcia, Guam-Tinian and in the Atlantic began steaming toward positions near the Persian Gulf, where they could go ashore and establish defensive positions around Saudi oil fields.

At Ft. Bragg, from which initial deployments of ground troops were scheduled to leave Tuesday night, local sources said that members of the 82nd Airborne Division were on one-hour recall, a high state of readiness, and that many soldiers had been put on alert.

Soldiers carried full knapsacks and duffel bags and many carried M-16 rifles ready to fire live ammunition, an unusual sight during peacetime. At nearby Pope Air Force Base, from which those troops are dispatched, Air Force C-130 and C-141 cargo planes were on the tarmac.

If fully deployed, the 82nd Airborne Division numbers 14,000.

The Army’s 24th Infantry Division, armed with roughly 200 M-1 tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles and anti-tank weapons, also was readied for dispatch Tuesday. Based at Ft. Stewart in Georgia, the 24th Division would back the lightly armed troops of the 82nd Airborne with greater firepower, according to Pentagon officials.

In a statement released to reporters, Rep. Robert Lindsay Thomas (D-Ga.) said military officials told him there was no deployment out of Ft. Stewart. But the officials told Thomas that troops there are taking part in an “emergency deployment readiness exercise,” which in several recent cases has provided cover for U.S. troops deploying abroad.

“They are practicing what they would do if they were called out,” Lindsay said he was told by Pentagon officials.

Meanwhile, the White House emphasized signs that the trade embargo imposed on Iraq was taking hold and that its effort to line up international support for implementing the stringent measures were achieving success.

“We have reached agreements and understandings with everyone we’ve talked to,” Fitzwater said. As one indication of immediate success, he cited the reduction of Iraqi oil exports, on which the nation depends to meet its massive foreign debt and to pay for crucial imports of foreign grain.

Turkey announced that it had shut down the flow of oil through a pipeline that crosses the country and winds up at the Mediterranean port of Yumurtalik and said it would not load any Iraqi oil reaching the port.

Turkey’s moves effectively limited Iraq to the one major pipeline through Saudi Arabia. The future status of that pipeline’s availability to Iraq remains uncertain.

Fitzwater said the Administration believes that Saudi Arabia will abide by the U.N. resolution, which prohibits such commerce.

He and other officials took pains to play down the plight of 39 Americans now reported by the State Department to have been rounded up in Kuwait and taken by Iraqi authorities to a hotel in Baghdad.

While refusing to call them hostages--a term that the Administration considers inflammatory--Fitzwater said of those being held: “They are not being allowed to leave the hotel.”

Another 500 Americans have been blocked from leaving Iraq since last week. And, while a few Americans have managed to get out of Kuwait, about 3,500 U.S. citizens are unable to depart because the main airport is closed and roads are blocked, the State Department said.

As they worked to assemble military units from a number of nations, officials acknowledged that international participation is a matter still under intensive negotiation. But one official said that in the final analysis, “the whole shooting match will be” multinational.

At the same time, one Saudi source said, stationing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia is “going to go down real rough in the Middle East, because you have to remember that (Hussein) is as much a hero to the rank-and-file in the Arab world as he is a villain to the United States.”

Of immediate concern, the source said, is whether the deployment of U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia “checkmates the Iraqis or prods them to attack.”

Although the Saudis were slow to respond to suggestions that they should invite U.S. forces to defend against an Iraqi invasion, the source said most of the country’s political elite was ready for such U.S. assistance “from the outset, but couldn’t signal that.”

However, inviting American troops “can cause all kind of antagonism of the Saudi population and real problems for the royal family,” said the source, who noted that the country has never been under colonial rule, is fiercely independent and “vigilant and obsessive about not suddenly coming under the influence of a Western power.”

“The problem is,” he said, “how do you handle Christian soldiers in a devoutly Muslim country where there will be concerns about soldiers whistling at Saudi girls and throwing beer cans around?”

Before Cheney began his discussions with King Fahd, the Saudis were privately expressing serious concern that turning to Washington for help would antagonize not only their own population but other Arab countries.

“To call in whites to shoot at brown people has lots of problems,” said one Saudi source, “and to be suspected of being a lackey for the U.S. could be the curse of death for the king and the royal family.” Thus, Saudi Arabia’s agreement to allow U.S. troops and warplanes to be deployed on its soil represents a historic breakthrough for American diplomacy--even as it risks undermining the legitimacy of the government the United States is seeking to prop up.

The key to the agreement appears to be the likelihood of an arms transfer involving the F-15s. A knowledgeable U.S. source confirmed that such a deal was under consideration at the Pentagon.

The source noted, however, that any short-notice sale would have to come from existing units, such as those stationed in Europe, for instance, and that it would not likely exceed a squadron--about 24 planes.

The source added that those planes would have to be modified before being dispatched to Saudi Arabia, because the United States does not export some of the highly secret electronic equipment with which existing U.S. planes are equipped.

Saudi Arabia bought 60 F-15 fighter-interceptor planes from the United States in 1978, but the country postponed buying another 40 F-15s because it did not have enough experienced pilots at that time to fly the planes.

Then-President Ronald Reagan sent Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger to Saudi Arabia in 1984 with plans to sell an additional 48 F-15s, but after lobbying by the American-Israeli committee jeopardized the sale, the Saudis decided instead to buy 74 Toronado fighter planes from the British.

Under a subsequent agreement worked out with the United States, the Saudis also have 12 F-15s stationed in the United States on a standby basis for replacing any planes from the original purchase order that might crash.

In addition, the Saudis have one of the great military air bases of the world at Dharhan, built with the aid and cooperation of the Defense Department, which drew up the blueprint. It has a huge underground storage area with a large supply of standby military equipment.

Asked on ABC’s “Nightline” if he was satisfied with the intelligence gathered on Hussein, CIA Director William H. Webster said he was “pleased” and added that he had heard “very nice compliments from military leaders” and other officials who had received it. While he declined to summarize his agency’s psychological profile of Hussein, he said, “In his own way, he know’s what he’s doing.”

THE FOOD WEAPON IRAQ’S USE AND SOURCES OF GRAIN*in 1,000 metric tons.

Percent Current Commodity Annual Use Imported Stocks (days) Wheat 3,900 87 75 Rice 675 63 115 Corn 840 88 9 Barley 1,425 53 38

FOREIGN SOURCES (1989-90) in 1,000 Metric Tons

Commodity Wheat Rice Corn Barley United States 1,300 392 650 267 Australia 1,500 120 --- --- Canada 700 --- --- 283 European Community --- --- --- 80 Argentina --- --- 100 --- Thailand --- 30 --- --- Others --- --- --- --- Total 3,500 542 750 630

Source: Agriculture Attache Report, U.S. Embassy in Iraq, 12 July 1990.

THE OIL WEAPON Iraq’s customers and outlets for oil in thousands of barrels per day Total Production: 2,700 Exports: 2,600 Export Outlets: Turkish Pipeline (closed): 1,500 Saudi Pipeline: 900 Gulf Ports: 200 Chief Customers: European Community: 620 United States: 580 Japan: 250 Turkey: 240 Brazil: 160 KEY BASES FOR MIDEAST ACTION Standard fighter wing: 72 aircraft Spain: Standard squadron: 24 aircraft, three squadrons to a wing Torrejon Airbase: One wing of F-16s Turkey: Incirlik: Potential staging area for action in Saudi Arabia Potential home to tanker task force U.S. tactical air forces training site U.S.--built Saudi Arabian bases: Air force bases Army bases Britain: RAF Upper Heyford: One wing of F-111s RAF Lakenheath: One wing of F-111s RAF Bentwaters: One wing of A-10s Netherlands: Soesterberg Airbase: Large tactical fighter squadron of F-15s West Germany: Ramstein Airbase: One wing of F-16s Hahn Airbase: One wing of F-16s Spangdahlem Airbase: Two squadrons of F-16s One squadron of F-45Gs Bitburg Airbase: One wing of F-15s Zweibrucken Airbase: One wing of RF--4s Ninth Air Force in U.S. Active units dedicated for use in the Middle East 1st Tactical Fighter Wing: Langley AFB, Va. One wing of F-15As and Bs One squadron of EC-135s 33rd Tactical Fighter Wing: Elgin AFB, Fla. One wing of F-15s 31st Tactical Fighter Wing: Homestead AFB, Fla. One wing of F-16Cs and Ds 56th Tactical Fighter Wing: MacDill AFB, Fla. One wing of training F-16s 363rd Tactical Fighter Wing: Shaw AFB, S.C. One wing of F-F16Cs and Ds 4th Tactical Air Control Wing: Seymour Johnson AFB, N.C. One squadron of F-15Es Two-three squadrons of F-4s 354th TActical Fighter Wing: Myrtle Beach AFB, S.C. 507th Tactical Fighter Wing: Shaw AFB, S.C. 347th Tactical Fighter Wing: Moody AFB, Ga. One wing of F-16As and Bs SANCTIONS AGAINST IRAQ Oil Embargo: United Nations EEC: (Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain) United States Australia New Zealand Brazil Phillipines Japan Norway Sweden Switzerland Arms Embargo: United Nations United States Switzerland Soviet Union China Poland Czechoslovakia Italy France Other Trade Sanctions: United Nations: No trade except medicine and humanitarian food deliveries United States: No trade or travel, no agricultural trade finance Japan: No trade or aid Turkey: Cut pipeline for Iraqi oil across its territory Switzerland: Restricted trade West Germany: Restricted trade Asset Freezes: Iraqi assets, Kuwaiti assets, or both UNited States Japan Switzerland Turkey West Germany Britain Hong Kong Netherlands Luxembourg Italy Belgium France Notes: United Nations sanctions are theoretically binding on all members, but the UN has no enforcement mechanism. French arms shipment to Iraq were already suspended before the invasion. Kuwaiti assets are frozen to protect them from seizure by Iraq or its proxies.