[Peace-discuss] more troops

[Dlind49 at aol.com]

Army Sending Soldiers to Persian Gulf
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

 
Filed at 3:38 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Army said Thursday it is sending 800 engineering and 
intelligence specialists to the Persian Gulf over the next several weeks.

The deployment is part of an accelerating buildup of U.S. air, land and naval 
forces in the Gulf area as President Bush contemplates a possible attack to 
disarm Iraq and remove the government of President Saddam Hussein.

The soldiers, based in Germany, are from the 130th Engineer Brigade, the 
205th Military Intelligence Brigade, the 22nd Signal Brigade and the 3rd 
Corps Support Command. The Army said they would deploy before mid-February 
but was not more specific.

Already there are more than 50,000 American forces in the Gulf region, and 
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld last week signed orders for the 
deployment of tens of thousands more troops in the next few weeks.

The U.S. forces are operating from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and 
other countries near Iraq.

Meanwhile, U.S. warplanes dropped nearly a half-million leaflets Thursday on 
southern Iraq asking Iraqis to tune in to American propaganda radio 
broadcasts.

The U.S. planes dropped about 480,000 leaflets over Basra, Iraq's 
second-largest city, and An Nasiriyah at about 5:15 a.m. EST, U.S. Central 
Command said in a statement.

The leaflets tell readers the radio frequencies on which they can hear U.S. 
broadcasts from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. each evening. The broadcasts, part of the 
U.S. military's psychological operations in preparation for a possible war 
with Iraq, come from EC-130E Commando Solo airplanes flying over Kuwait.

The Arabic-language broadcasts urge Iraqi soldiers to turn against Saddam's 
regime, accusing him of using soldiers as puppets for his own nefarious 
purposes. The broadcasts say Saddam builds luxurious palaces for himself 
while Iraqi people are sick and starving.

The leaflets dropped Thursday were in the southern no-fly zone patrolled by 
American warplanes to keep Saddam from attacking Shiite Muslims.

Defense officials said Thursday that Rumsfeld is likely to order additional 
deployments and to mobilize tens of thousands more National Guard and Reserve 
forces. Some of those troops have already been notified that they will be 
called up.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the aircraft carrier 
USS Abraham Lincoln, which recently left the Gulf en route to its home port 
at Everett, Wash., is being held in the western Pacific for the time being in 
case Rumsfeld decides additional carriers are needed for war against Iraq.

Likewise, the USS George Washington, which returned home to Norfolk, Va., 
from the Mediterranean Sea shortly before Christmas, has been notified that 
it could be sent back into service in coming days, the officials said.

The carrier USS Constellation is now in the Gulf, and the USS Harry S. Truman 
is in the Mediterranean.