IRAQ: Armoured divisions of the Republican Guard have moved from their garrisons near Baghdad to Iraq's western desert in the most significant deployment by Saddam Hussein in two years, according to Pentagon intelligence officials.
The movement of what appears to be several hundred soldiers, along with tanks and artillery, to a location about 40 miles west of the Iraqi capital appears to be an effort by the Iraqi leader to flex his military muscles in response to increased US 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 US 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, US defence and intelligence officials said. The barriers, detected recently by US spy satellites, could delay or stop an attack that relied on fixed-wing aircraft bringing in troops to seize the bases.
Iraqis fear US 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.
Defence officials also said the Pentagon believes President Saddam will follow through on his frequent threats to 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 US 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 September 11th attacks, US defence officials said.
US surveillance craft have periodically spied Iraqi troops digging trenches and distributing ammunition and supplies from large central warehouses to smaller depots where it can be more easily distributed to troops.
But deploying troops by the hundreds and the arms, artillery, vehicles and support equipment and supplies they need is seen as a signal by President Saddam that his army is capable of meeting the logistical challenge of moving its forces.
"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 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. In addition, he stressed that the deployment did not pose a threat to any of Iraq's neighbours in the region.
"This is an operational deployment for them," the official said. "It's ... defensive in nature rather than offensive."
The Iraqis are blocking runways at the various airbases 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 US 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 US intelligence officials say is the serious decline of the morale and training of the Iraqi military since the 1991 Gulf War.
The Iraqi military is considerably smaller than the force that opposed coalition troops in the Gulf 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 defence intelligence official.
The Iraqi forces suffer from chronic manpower and equipment shortages, and its air force has been in seeming disarray for years, the official said. - (Los Angeles Times)