BY DOUG LORIMER
On the weekend of March 1-2, two military transport ships carrying equipment, including 300 helicopters, for the 17,000 troops of the US army's 101st Airborne Division departed Florida on a three-week voyage to the Persian Gulf.
With the deployment of the 101st, Washington will have assembled the military forces in the region — around 210,000 troops — with which it plans to invade Iraq. In addition, Britain and Australia are deploying 42,000 and 2000 troops, respectively.
The main complication in Washington's military plans is the delay in securing agreement from the Turkish government for the use by US troops of bases in Turkey as staging posts for the invasion of northern Iraq.
A motion authorising the deployment of up to 62,000 foreign troops, for a six-month period, failed to be passed by the Turkish parliament on March 1. Polls show that 95% of the Turkish population is opposed to a war against Iraq.
The parliamentary vote followed Washington's agreement to provide Ankara with US$20 billion in grants and loans. The motion also sought to authorise the Turkish government to participate in the US-led invasion of Iraq, with up to 80,000 Turkish soldiers to occupy Iraq's Kurdish-populated northern areas.
Retired US general Wesley Clark, commander of NATO forces in Europe during the Serbia bombing campaign of 1999, was reported by the February 19 London Times as saying that he estimated the US would launch an invasion of Iraq in the third week of March, tipping March 24 as the likely date.
In a February 24 article on the liberal US Foreign Policy in Focus web site, British military affairs analyst Paul Rogers concurred with Clark's estimate: "Contrary to conventional wisdom, the latter part of March is considered by the military to be an appropriate time for an invasion, as the cloudy winter weather will have largely been replaced by clear days."
Rogers also noted that "another preference is for moonless nights, enabling more effective use of night-vision equipment where the US forces have a huge advantage. With a full moon due on March 18, this could make March 25 the most likely starting date of the war — quite a lot later than most analysts have been predicting."
A late March invasion date would also give Washington the time it needs to bully and bribe members of the UN Security Council that are not already part of its "coalition of willing".
On February 24, the US and Britain presented a draft resolution for discussion by the Security Council that declares Iraq has "failed to take the final opportunity afforded it in resolution 1441" to fully comply with previous council resolutions demanding it destroy all its chemical and biological weapons.
To get the resolution passed, Washington and London need the support of at least nine council members, with none of the other permanent members — France, Russia and China — exercising a veto.
Of the 10 non-permanent members of the council, only two — Spain and Bulgaria — have definitely committed themselves to support the draft resolution. Washington and London are expected to seek a vote on the resolution soon after chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix's March 7 report to the council.
Spain is a NATO ally of the US and, despite the fact that 85% of the Spanish population is opposed even to a UN-backed war on Iraq, Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's right-wing government has supported Washington's war drive from the beginning.
A February 11 Gallup International poll found that only 28% of Bulgarians support a war against Iraq, even if endorsed by the UN Security Council. Nevertheless, the government of Bulgarian Prime Minister (and former king) Simeon Saxe-Coburg has been an enthusiastic supporter of the US war drive.
Saxe-Coburg is reported to have sought US assurances that a post-war Iraq, to be ruled by General Tommy Franks of the US Central Command, would pay back the $1.7 billion debt still owed to Bulgaria by Baghdad.
Two non-permanent members, Germany and Syria, have lined up with France, Russia and China in arguing that the UN weapons inspectors should be given much more time to do their work before any new resolution is considered by the Security Council.
The remaining six non-permanent members — Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico and Pakistan — are expected to be bullied with threats of economic punishment and bribed with offers of economic aid and trade concessions into backing Washington's resolution.
However, even if Washington is able to secure a majority of votes on the Security Council, the public credibility of the vote might be called into question if Hans Blix does not present a report to the council which fits into the White House's claim that the continuation of the weapons inspection process is a "dead-end".
In an interview published February 27 by the German weekly Die Zeit, Blix repeated his earlier complaints that Iraq was not fully cooperating with the inspectors. "On the other hand, this country had eight years of inspections, four years without inspections and now 12 weeks with them. Is it now the right time to shut the door?", he asked, adding: "Even if Iraq would cooperate immediately, actively and unconditionally with us, we would need several months."
From Green Left Weekly, March 5, 2003.
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