Hundreds of soldiers are involved. Meanwhile, some predict Hussein will target his own oil fields and food supplies and then blame the U.S. By Esther Schrader Times Staff Writer

December 19 2002

WASHINGTON -- Armored units of the Republican Guard have moved from their garrisons near Baghdad to an area about 40 miles west of the capital in the most significant deployment by President Saddam Hussein in two years, Pentagon intelligence officials said Wednesday.

The movement of what appears to be several hundred soldiers, along with tanks and artillery, to the new location appears to be an effort by the Iraqi leader to flex his military muscles in response to increased U.S. preparations for war.

"When you move this size of force, it's a great strain to the military, it's a great signal of resolve," a U.S. official said. "This is the largest defensive preparation that we've seen since 9/11."

Iraqi military forces have also begun placing obstacles on the runways of key air bases, U.S. defense and intelligence officials said.

The barriers, detected recently by American spy satellites, could delay or stop an attack that relied on fixed-wing aircraft bringing in troops to seize the bases.

Iraqis fear that U.S. forces will try to occupy the remote bases as staging areas for an attack on Baghdad and other parts of central Iraq, the officials said.

Defense officials also said the Pentagon increasingly believes Hussein will pursue a "scorched earth" campaign if there is war with the United States, targeting his own oil fields, food supplies and power plants and blaming America for the devastation.

But other U.S. intelligence officials disagreed, saying there is little evidence he will pursue such a policy.

Iraq's forces have been preparing for a war with the United States and its British allies since the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, defense officials said. U.S. surveillance craft have periodically spied Iraqi troops digging trenches and transferring ammunition from large central warehouses to smaller depots where it can be more easily distributed to troops.

But deploying hundreds of troops and the arms, artillery, vehicles, support equipment and supplies they need is seen as a major political signal by Hussein that his army is capable of meeting the logistical challenge of moving its forces from one place to another.

"This takes a great deal of effort. It takes money; it takes resources to support a group of soldiers operating away from home base," the U.S. official said. "This is their way to say to us, 'Hey if you think you have intentions of coming after us, we're going to defend Iraq.' "

The official said there is no evidence that the troops were actively engaged in military exercises in the western desert. And he stressed that the deployment did not pose a threat to any of Iraq's neighbors.

"This is an operational deployment for them," the official said. "It's ... defensive in nature rather than offensive."

Spy satellites have detected defensive moves at air bases in southeastern Iraq and around Baghdad and in far western Iraq at a complex of military bases called H-3.

The complex includes several long runways that can accommodate heavy transports. U.S. defense intelligence officials suspect that some missiles may be stored at or near the bases. The bases have been little used by the Iraqi air force because they lie within a zone where flights by Iraqi aircraft have been banned since the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

The Iraqis are blocking runways at the various air bases by parking trucks in landing areas and dragging concrete highway barriers across airstrips. The Iraqis could move the obstacles aside quickly to allow their own forces to use the airfields. But the barriers would force U.S. planners to consider riskier or more time-consuming approaches during an invasion, such as a helicopter-borne assault or a land attack.

The troop movements and the placing of obstacles on airstrips appear to contradict what U.S. intelligence officials say is the serious decline of the morale and training of the Iraqi military since the Gulf War.

The Iraqi military is considerably smaller than the force that opposed coalition troops in the war.

The Iraqi army had 70 divisions in 1991 but has only 23 today, and its Republican Guard is half its 12-division strength of 11 years ago, said a defense intelligence official who is an expert in Iraq's military capabilities.

The Iraqi forces suffer from chronic personnel and equipment shortages, and its air force has been in seeming disarray for years, the official said.

-- Anonymous, December 19, 2002