As talks over a new U.N. resolution head to an expected vote this week, the frenzy at Clifford’s shipyard is another sign that the U.S. military buildup against Iraq is working against its own unannounced deadline. The Pentagon wants to be ready by mid-December–most likely a week or so after the Muslim holy month of Ramadan ends on Dec. 5, sources say. Why then? If Saddam Hussein obstructs U.N. inspectors sooner rather than later, the military can then move quickly against him, flying thousands of troops to the gulf in a matter of days to man equipment already waiting for them in Kuwait, Qatar and giant floating warehouses at sea. The Navy has juggled training and deployment schedules so that five or six carrier battle groups could also be on scene in December. In addition, the 600-strong core of the U.S. Central Command’s headquarters staff is flying out from Tampa, Fla., to Qatar at the end of this month to debug a new operations center that’s been hastily put together at Al Udeid Air Base.
In New York, U.S. officials said odds are that France, Russia and China will all refrain from vetoing a tough resolution to disarm Saddam. “We haven’t heard the V word [threatened] yet,” said one U.S. official last Friday. (Only the Permanent Five–the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China–have vetoes that can reject resolutions.) After seven weeks of talks, Washington has made last-minute concessions on the resolution’s wording; one reason is to meet military deadlines. To keep to the buildup schedule, President George W. Bush must soon make a public decision to call up the 100,000 or so Reserves needed for war, plus as many more who will have to guard U.S. installations. The U.S. military calls it “the tipping point,” when the momentum of a buildup requires big decisions that aren’t easily reversed. “We’re getting very close,” one administration insider said last week. “Think early November.”
The possibility that U.N. inspectors will go back into Iraq complicates the military timetable, though. If troops are activated now and then don’t take action within a few months, they’ll have to stand down. Troops cannot be left in the desert indefinitely, and two of the Navy carriers should be heading home in the new year, or risk a sharp drop in re-enlistments. In addition, temperatures in the Iraqi desert will begin to heat up by March, and April marks the start of Iraq’s windy season, when blinding sandstorms could ground the helicopter operations that are at the heart of Gen. Tommy Franks’s invasion plan.
Politics plays into the timing of the U.N. resolution as well. A new poll by the Pew Research Center shows that U.S. support for an invasion of Iraq is slipping–dropping to as low as 27 percent if Bush opts to go to war without allied support. As a result, sources say, the White House doesn’t want Bush to start the public phase of the military buildup until he has a U.N. resolution in hand. That way he can claim that the buildup doesn’t signal a unilateral U.S. invasion–as some allies suspect–but is only intended to give U.N. chief inspector Hans Blix the big stick he needs to brandish over Saddam.
