Bush Determined Not to Delay Gulf Attack : Military: He will move quickly after Jan. 15 if Iraq balks. GIs will be inoculated against germ warfare.

President Bush, after weighing the political and military consequences of further delay, has decided that the United States should move quickly to launch a massive military attack on Iraqi forces if Iraq fails to withdraw from Kuwait by the U.N.-imposed deadline of Jan. 15, senior government officials said Thursday.

Neither congressional nor public sentiment on the issue of launching a military offensive will make any difference in Bush’s determination to proceed, because he believes that delaying an attack much beyond the deadline would increase the number of American casualties, two officials involved with Bush in Persian Gulf strategy said.

“He’s thought about all that, and he’s comfortable with his decision,” one official confided. “He said he’s prepared to take whatever the consequences may be, including if it’s an unpopular war and makes him a one-term President.”

In an indication of stepped-up preparations for war, Administration officials said the military is planning to begin inoculating some American troops in Saudi Arabia against biological weapons.

The officials declined to say how many troops will receive the vaccinations or when the program will begin. Biological weapons differ from chemical weapons in that they are based on viral agents or other living organisms.

Although Iraq has denied possessing the deadly toxins, U.S. intelligence agencies divulged in September that Baghdad has an active biological weapons program and is thought to have stockpiled significant quantities of germ agents, possibly including anthrax and botulism.

Pentagon officials have been concerned for some time that U.S. drug firms are not able to produce vaccines in sufficient quantities to provide protection for all U.S. troops and allied forces that could be exposed to biological agents.

In discussing the timetable for possible military action, the senior officials said Bush realizes that a war with President Saddam Hussein’s million-man army could last at least a month and probably cause tens of thousands of Iraqi casualties and perhaps thousands of American lives.

But they said the President and his aides believe that the American public will support a war as long as the United States scores a decisive victory and the number of American casualties is relatively low.

The disclosures by the officials come in the face of growing sentiment in Congress, especially among Democrats, to delay any military offensive for several months or even longer beyond the Jan. 15 deadline in hopes that economic sanctions, imposed by the United Nations against Iraq soon after its Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait, ultimately will force the Iraqis to withdraw.

On Thursday, 110 House Democrats, led by California Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), sent Bush a letter urging him to allow more time for the sanctions to work.

Recent newspaper reports have suggested that the White House is preparing to put off any attack against Iraqi troops and installations because of warnings by top U.S. military strategists that American troops will not be fully prepared for war by the Jan. 15 deadline.

Several military officials have told reporters that the United States will not be ready for war until about mid-February because the full deployment of troops and equipment assigned to the Persian Gulf region will not be in place until then.

Similar views from military officials were passed on to Bush by Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during a closed-door briefing after their recent visit to U.S. forces in the gulf.

On Thursday, however, senior U.S. officials contradicted that view, saying Bush believes that he already has given sanctions enough time and has no interest in delaying a military showdown after the deadline.

Although one official said Bush realizes that a decision to attack soon after Jan. 15 would be contrary to the U.S. tradition of exhausting all means of negotiations for a peaceful settlement before going to war, another official said: “I think the President can make a pretty good case that he has exhausted all rational efforts to settle this diplomatically and he has been rebuffed.”

And the President dismissed those reports in a brief exchange with several reporters who saw him in a White House hallway during a one-day interruption from his holiday vacation at Camp David.

Questioned about his session with Powell and Cheney, Bush said: “I’m not going to tell you what they said, but I’m going to tell you, don’t believe these reports you’re reading.”

Asked if a compromise might yet be reached with Hussein, Bush declared: “That’s the problem. Everybody wants me to compromise. There’s not going to be a compromise with this man.”

As the Jan. 15 deadline draws nearer, Bush, Cheney and other U.S. officials--in what appears to be a concerted effort to prepare the American public for war--have stepped up their threats to launch a devastating attack on Iraq if it does not withdraw from Kuwait.

But not until Thursday did officials--who agreed to be interviewed on condition that they not be identified--disclose that Bush is prepared to order an attack sooner rather than later after the deadline.

“If war comes, it will be long before mid-February,” one official declared. “The longer the U.S. waits to attack, the more U.S. lives will be lost.”

Said another official: “You must remember that the President’s position is that this will not be another Vietnam, there will not be a slow escalation while Americans die.”

The officials said Bush assumes that the American public will be mainly concerned about the number of U.S. casualties, not the tens of thousands of Iraqis who stand to die or be maimed in a massive air assault, and that even the killing of thousands of civilians--including women and children--probably would not undermine American support for the war effort.

“He has to count on the American people being behind him or he wouldn’t do it,” one of the officials said. “Many congressmen are worried about this war, and a lot of people still don’t really understand the stakes involved, but our sense is that Americans will fall in behind the President and expect him to make the call.”

On the other hand, said the official, it will be important for the United States to defeat Hussein’s forces quickly and decisively because “if the war is extended over a long period of time--with all the television coverage and watching people get blown up--it could cause us serious problems.”

Bush told reporters that he does not believe Hussein has gotten the message “that we are serious and our allies are serious” about carrying out the U.N. resolution demanding Iraq’s withdrawal.

Referring to Hussein’s threats to meet any military attack with a deadly counterattack, Bush said: “I read the comments he makes about war, and I find it difficult to believe that he believes what will happen to him. I still am hopeful he will get the message and get out of Kuwait by the 15th of January totally without conditions.”

Dismissing as “fully fallacious” an Israeli newspaper’s report that Secretary of State James A. Baker III will meet with Hussein in Baghdad on Jan. 9, Bush said: “There’s nothing going on on that front. When there’s any news on that, I’ll be putting it out myself. I am staying directly in touch.”

Other sources said that, while no U.S.-Iraqi peace negotiations are under way, both the United States and Iraq have been exploring the possibility of a Baker-Hussein meeting in Baghdad between Jan. 5 and Jan. 8.

The U.S. position so far has been that it would not agree to scheduling such a session for later than Jan. 3 and that, in any event, Baker’s mission would not be to negotiate but rather to reaffirm the demand that Iraq withdraw unconditionally from Kuwait.

The 110 House members who joined an earlier call by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) to give sanctions longer to work told Bush that the U.N. resolution authorizing military action “must not be interpreted as an authorization for the use of American forces in an offensive capacity against Iraq.”

“We note that most of the nations that voted for the resolution made no simultaneous commitment of troops, materials or money to support military action in the gulf,” the lawmakers said in their letter to Bush.

Times correspondent John M. Broder contributed to this story.