A rchive Date
[ 20-02-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/topstory2/1788368
Rumsfeld: U.S. forces now ready for invasion
Reuters News Service
Feb. 20, 2003, 7:34PM
WASHINGTON - The military build-up in the Gulf region has reached the point where U.S. and British forces are now ready to invade Iraq if the order is given, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said today.
"I would characterize it as ample," Rumsfeld, interviewed on Public Television's "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer", said of the force of tens of thousands of U.S. and British troops massed in the area.
"We are at a point where, if the president (George W. Bush) makes that decision (to attack), the Department of Defense is prepared and has the capabilities and the strategy to do that," he said.
Asked if the U.S. and British forces were ready to go to war now, Rumsfeld replied: "Yes."
"There will be a large coalition. There will be a lot of countries" involved in any such effort, Rumsfeld said, repeating assertions that an international coalition would quickly emerge if Bush decided to move.
Defense officials say the United States and Britain have gathered more than 150,000 troops in the region along with dozens of warships and hundreds of aircraft. But Rumsfeld refused to discuss exact troop totals, saying "I don't do numbers."
The force will soon include six aircraft carriers -- five American and one British -- and could reach more than 200,000 troops by the end of February, according to U.S. officials.
Rumsfeld stressed that U.S. military leaders were planning for a wide range of contingencies in any war in Iraq, ranging from immediate and widespread surrender of Iraqi troops to possible use of chemical and biological weapons by Iraq and door-to-door urban combat in "fortress Baghdad".
"Plans have been prepared to deal with a full range of possibilities ... I think the downsides have been widely discussed," he said.
Rumsfeld spoke amid speculation that the massed forces could launch a war within weeks, even as the United States and Britain are preparing to press for a new U.N. resolution warning Iraq that time has run out to make full disclosure of its arms programs.
The United States and Britain accuse Iraq of hiding banned chemical and biological weapons, but Baghdad denies the charge.
Rumsfeld said U.S. military planners were prepared for the possible failure of attempts to reach agreement with Turkey on using its territory as a springboard for a thrust into northern Iraq.
"We will do it another way," he said without elaborating.
"Everyone agrees that the last choice is to use force and have a war," the secretary said. But at some point, time would run out. "And that's what the president has said," Rumsfeld added.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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