Up to 10,000 such forces will be immediately activated for "security duty" in the United States and abroad. With an order to invade, that number would increase to more than a quarter of a million troops stationed at airports, train stations, power plants, factories, and military bases.

The number is in addition to the more than 50,000 reservists already mobilized throughout the United States. The plans include coastline patrols by Navy and Coast Guard Reserve forces. Fighter jets will be scrambled over U.S. cities.

In the big-business media Washington presents its assault plans as close to complete. In a December 8 New York Times article, military officials said they will "soon have enough heavy tanks, warships, aircraft, bombs and troops" in the region "to begin an attack...sometime in January." The report described a "constant hum of military preparations" throughout the Gulf.

The preparations include ongoing exercises in Kuwait that simulate an invasion; a Qatar-based "command and control" exercise involving 1,000 "planners" flown in from the Central Command headquarters in Florida; the daily delivery of armaments, along with the equipment needed to unload them, from tugboats to forklifts; and the drawing up of blueprints for strikes by special operations forces.

The military mobilizations on home soil and in the Arab-Persian Gulf region have proceeded alongside the intrusive "inspections" carried out by United Nations teams on Iraqi government facilities and industrial and scientific sites.

On December 7, a day before the UN Security Council-imposed deadline, the Iraqi government turned over a 12,000-page declaration on its arms programs. Iraq Maj. Gen. Hussam Muhammad Amin stated that "Iraq is empty of any weapons of mass destruction."

The report was immediately sent to UN bodies based in New York. U.S. officials have made it clear that the report will be useful to them insofar as it helps provide a pretext for military action. According to one report, "National security officials said...that the declaration must be more than accurate; it must lead United Nations inspectors to arms caches, or to irrefutable evidence that they have been destroyed."

U.S. officials have just completed visits to members of the U.S.-dominated European NATO military alliance to hammer out assistance to the assault.  
 
Wolfowitz in Turkey
In Turkey, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz secured the newly elected government’s agreement to maintain U.S. forces’ access to ports and air bases. On December 4 the Bush administration announced plans to upgrade these facilities to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Washington’s invasion plan also includes placing tens of thousands of infantry and Special Forces troops in Turkey, ready to drive into Iraq over its northern border, targeting oil fields located in the regions in which the Kurdish people and their political organizations predominate.

The Bush administration has also asked the Turkish government to prepare to dispatch a large force of its own into northern Iraq. "If we’re going to have significant ground forces in the north, this is the country they have to come through. There is no other option," said Wolfowitz.

To date the Turkish government--which has already faced one 10,000-strong demonstration in Istanbul against its backing for the U.S. plans--has balked at these demands. "It may be difficult to see tens of thousands of American forces being transported through Turkish territory into Iraq or being stationed somewhere in Turkey to carry out strikes inside Iraq," stated Turkish foreign minister Yasar Yakis.

"Nevertheless," noted a Washington Post article, "Pentagon planners are expected to press Turkey to allow tens of thousands of coalition troops on its soil to prepare for a multi-pronged attack on Iraq from the north, south and west." Bush has invited Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the chairman of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party, to the White House for further discussions.

A bipartisan delegation from the Senate Foreign Relations committee has followed up Wolfowitz’s Turkish visit with a trip to northern Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the occupied territories. In northern Iraq committee chairman Joseph Biden warned Kurdish leaders that they should appreciate "the concerns of their neighbors"--a reference to the Turkish government’s determination to brutally suppress any Kurdish movement for self-determination on Turkish soil.

In a meeting with NATO-member ambassadors in Brussels December 4, Wolfowitz requested the deployment of various countries’ forces at bases throughout the Arab-Persian Gulf. He also called for troops to fill the gaps left by Gulf-bound U.S. forces at their bases in Germany, Italy, and elsewhere in Europe. A NATO official said that the governments of Britain, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, Norway, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Turkey expressed "strong and unequivocal support" for the U.S. war preparations.

Despite pronouncements against German forces taking part in a military assault against Iraq, the government of Gerhard Schröder is moving to increase its presence in the area of the coming invasion.

Berlin currently has six Fuch tanks and 52 troops stationed in Kuwait. The parliament has approved the deployment of up to 800 additional troops to Iraq’s southern neighbor.

According to Germany’s Die Welt newspaper, the "inspectors" have also asked Berlin to provide them with unmanned reconnaissance planes.

Washington has made clear that regardless of what the United Nations "inspectors" turn up in the course of their provocative operations, the burden of proof is on the Iraqi government to "cooperatively disarm."

"The United States knows that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction," Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld arrogantly asserted. "The U.K. knows that they have weapons of mass destruction. Any country on the face of the Earth with an active intelligence program knows that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction."

In a meeting with Hans Blix, Bush administration officials have urged him to make use of the section of the recently passed UN Security Council resolution 1441 that gives "inspectors" the authority to round up Iraqi scientists and demand that they leave the country for interrogation, even without the scientists’ agreement.

"If you go back and look at the history of inspections in Iraq," stated Rumsfeld, "the reality is that things have been found--not by discovery but through defectors."

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, in a op-ed piece entitled "’Sodom’ Hussein’s Iraq," urged Washington "to hold the U.N.’s feet to the fire." He quoted a U.S. official saying that "the key is finding a defector through interviews. That’s the only way we’re going to find anything."  
 
Saudis may be next U.S. target
Concerned that Saudi Arabia could be Washington’s next target after Iraq, government officials in that country have consulted with their counterparts in Egypt, Syria, and the Gulf states about the ramifications of an overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime.

"The Saudi efforts want to ensure that no major Arab country will plot against Riyadh or any other regime targeted by the United States," an unnamed diplomat from the region told a World Tribune.com reporter. "While Washington opposed Iraq on the issue of weapons of mass destruction, the Saudis are worried that Washington will use the banner of democracy" against them, added the diplomat.

Saudi foreign minister Prince Saud Al Faisal has been touring Middle Eastern capitals to urge them to sign an agreement at their next summit to pledge opposition to any U.S. effort for a "regime change" in the region. "No one can change the Saudi regime but Allah," said Saudi interior minister Prince Nayef Bin Abdul Aziz. The proposal also asks Arab League members to oppose any U.S. attempt to freeze the assets of any government.  
 
 
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