U.S. Says It Has Backing Needed to Strike Iraq

Top Pentagon officials Wednesday gave new hints that military action against Iraq is approaching by declaring that the United States has all the Persian Gulf political support and almost all the forces and materiel it needs to wage a prospective air campaign.

Closing three days of top-level meetings, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen said Wednesday that the Gulf states’ cautious expressions of support and offers of limited military aid provide all needed backing for the campaign that military leaders have begun calling “Desert Thunder.”

“The mission was accomplished,” Cohen said as he visited the aircraft carrier George Washington, which is part of the U.S. military deployment in the region and whose fighting personnel he praised as “the steel in the sword of freedom.”

Gen. Anthony Zinni, U.S. regional commander in the Mideast, gave another hint of approaching action to try to compel the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to allow unfettered U.N. weapons inspections by announcing that American forces may be “within a week or so” of having all they need, although there remain “a few more pieces to put in.”

The operation’s new name, disclosed by Navy officials, lends the military plans an even greater air of reality and was presumably chosen to remind Hussein of the destructive power unleashed seven years ago in “Operation Desert Storm.”

The new U.S. arrangement with six Gulf area states requires them to provide no soldiers or fighter planes; their pilots will presumably stand by while Americans fly through Iraqi antiaircraft and surface-to-air missile fire to hit Baghdad. And of the six nations, Kuwait and Bahrain will provide bases for strike aircraft, but not Saudi Arabia, in what has turned into a public relations black eye.

But U.S. officials said they succeeded in getting the countries to acquiesce to the plan and to give what little help the American force will need for an air assault, which they now believe that they can carry out virtually alone.

U.S. forces will have access to a huge inventory of tanks, weapons and other gear stored in the Gulf states since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, but they are unlikely to need to draw equipment from all of the states.

Kuwait will be host to almost 5,000 U.S. ground troops, as well as F-117A and A-10 aircraft. Bahrain will provide bases for B-1 bombers, F-15 and F-16 fighters; Oman has consented to allowing air tankers to launch refueling missions from its soil. “Now we know we can do everything we wanted to,” one U.S. official said.

The support that was offered was not always easy to get, officials said, and it sometimes came after blunt exchanges. With their populations sympathetic to the suffering of ordinary Iraqis and with their anger apparent about the United States’ perceived partisanship toward Israel, Gulf leaders were skittish.

But Cohen told reporters on his aircraft that Gulf leaders now “understand that force may be necessary.” Of course, in their muted statements, Gulf leaders never went so far as to explicitly say they would support military action. Instead, they said that if violence did ensue, “it will be [Hussein’s] own responsibility,” as Sheik Hamad ibn Khalifa al Thani, Qatar’s defense minister, said Tuesday.

Still, U.S. officials insisted that Gulf leaders are far more ready to accept strikes against Hussein. And they said the nuanced public declarations of support for the U.S. position may help with Washington’s foremost goal--to convince Hussein that his opponents are so numerous and determined that he has no choice but to back down.

Cohen said Gulf leaders realized that they must commit to the U.S. plan because “this is serious--this is substantial.” They may have been pushed along, he speculated, by offers of help from other U.S. allies such as Canada, Germany and Australia over the past few days.

But whether these developments would sway the Iraqis was unclear. “I don’t know if it’s having any effect” on Hussein, Cohen said, adding that he hoped increased diplomatic pressure would bring a change in Iraqi attitudes.

Zinni said U.S. intelligence had seen “some movement but not significant” in Iraqi forces. Some analysts have predicted that Hussein would disperse his elite Republican Guards to make them harder to attack by air. But Zinni indicated that Hussein had done this only to a limited extent.

There was one indication that strikes were not imminent: Sailors from the George Washington said they will begin four days’ shore leave in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, today. That will leave U.S. forces without the carrier--and its 50 strike aircraft--until midweek.

The nuclear-powered carrier, one of about 30 U.S. vessels in the area, has plied the Gulf’s flat seas since November, and some crew members confided that they were ready for a resolution of some sort in the latest stalemate with Hussein. The deployment stirred a “real buzz” among the 5,000-member crew at first, said Chief Petty Officer Jack O’Neill. But, “it’s a little wearing being out here so long,” he said.