No Rotation of Gulf Troops : Cheney Says They’ll Stay for Duration

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said today that the approximately 240,000 U.S. troops already in the Persian Gulf will not be rotating back to the United States early next year as hoped because of plans to double the number of U.S. troops in the gulf.

Asked whether the full contingent of American forces in the gulf will be there for the duration of the crisis, Cheney said, “That’s correct.”

Cheney said half of all American land forces in Europe will be moved to the Persian Gulf. About 200,000 Army troops are stationed in Europe, most in Germany.

Those 100,000 European-based troops will join 240,000 U.S. troops already deployed to the gulf and another 140,000 being sent abroad from U.S. bases. President Bush signed deployment orders for the dramatic new escalation on Thursday.

In Baghdad, meanwhile, a German jetliner carrying 177 Western hostages, including a Los Angeles couple and a Georgia man, left today for Frankfurt accompanied by former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, who negotiated their release.

Witnesses identified the three as Don and Brenda Swanke of Los Angeles and Miles Hoffman, 33, of Columbus, Ga. Hoffman was shot in the arm Sept. 5 by Iraqi troops in Kuwait.

In Baghdad, Hoffman refused to talk to reporters. His arm was in a plaster cast, and he appeared to be in pain.

Swanke had been working as a construction engineer at Kuwait University at the time of the invasion, a diplomat said.

The three Americans had been held at strategic sites as “human shields” to deter attack by U.S.-led multinational forces stationed in the gulf. They were taken to the Mansour Melia Hotel, used by officials to process hostages.

Hoffman, a financial analyst with the Kuwaiti government at the time of Iraq’s Aug. 2 invasion, was shot when Iraqi soldiers tried to force their way into his Kuwait City apartment, according to reports from Columbus.

The bullet shattered a bone in his left forearm and he was hospitalized for about a week.

Hoffman was brought to Baghdad and then moved to a strategic site. There were reports that gangrene had developed from the wound, and the U.S. Embassy had placed him on its list of release requests twice before.

Cheney’s remarks today to the Conservative Leadership Conference indicated that Bush intends to have nearly 500,000 U.S. troops in the gulf area within weeks--equaling the current level of Iraqi troops in and around Kuwait.

The scale of the additional U.S. troop deployments is enormous. Once the added forces are in place, America will have more troops in the gulf region than it had in Europe during the Cold War when the perceived enemy was a nuclear superpower. About one-third of the Army’s worldwide force will be in the Saudi desert.

Bush also ordered the Navy to dispatch three aircraft carrier battle groups to the gulf area, in addition to the three already there. Today, the Navy announced that it was sending the Theodore Roosevelt and the America, both based at Norfolk, Va., and the Ranger, from San Diego. Each of the carriers includes about 80 aircraft and about 5,500 sailors.