President George Bush yesterday readied US troops for ”crucial hours” ahead in the crisis over Iraq, denouncing Saddam Hussein for showing contempt for the UN as the Pentagon ordered the dispatch of thousands of marines to the Gulf.
Dressed in an olive military jacket, the president made his most combative speech on Iraq to date, dismissing Baghdad’s claims that it is cooperating with UN weapons inspectors.
He told a crowd of cheering US soldiers in Texas that if force became necessary they would not be conquering the Iraqi people, but ”liberating” them.
The significance of the bellicose speech was heightened by the fact that the president was addressing the 1st Cavalry Division, who are widely expected to join the accelerating US military build-up around Iraq in the next few weeks.
Yesterday, another vital element of a likely invasion force, the 45 000-strong 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, based in California, confirmed that some of its units had received deployment orders for the region. A marine representative would not say how many troops were involved but said it was a ”significant deployment”.
They will join 60 000 soldiers, sailors and aircrew already in the Gulf, along with 11 000 troops trained in desert warfare from the 3rd Infantry Division who received their orders to leave earlier this week.
The fourth main component of the expected strike force, the 101st Airborne Division, which has been intensively rehearsing urban combat, is also expected to be dispatched soon. Two aircraft carriers, the USS Washington and the USS Lincoln, and their battle groups of destroyers and sub marines are on 96-hour alert to sail to the region to reinforce an already significant armada.
Speaking at the biggest US military base, Fort Hood, Bush said that President Saddam still had an opportunity to avoid war, saying ”even now he could end his defiance and dramatically change directions. He has that choice to make.”
The denunciation represented an outright rejection of the steps Iraq has taken to date to comply with November’s UN security council resolution on weapons inspections, including a declaration by the Iraqi government last month in which it listed civilian laboratories and factories but denied it had any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
”The Iraqi dictator did not even attempt to submit a credible declaration. We can now be certain that he holds the United Nations and the UN security council and its resolutions in contempt,” the president told cheering troops.
Using rhetoric with echoes of Winston Churchill and John F Kennedy, the president declared: ”Should we be forced to act, should Saddam Hussein seal his fate by refusing to disarm, by ignoring the opinion of the world, you’ll be fighting not to conquer anybody, but to liberate people.
”Some crucial hours may lie ahead. We know the challenges and the dangers we face. Yet this generation of Americans is ready. We accept the burden of leadership. We act in the cause of peace and freedom. And in that cause we will prevail.”
Military observers in Washington say there is still hope in the Bush administration that the show of US force and resolve could trigger a coup in Iraq that would topple President Saddam. Failing that, most agree that the Bush administration has committed too many troops and resources to accept anything less than the removal of the Iraqi leader, or at least Iraq’s surrender of the weapons of mass destruction that the US and Britain insists it has.
The tone of the president’s speech made it clear that the US would not accept a UN report due later this month if that report amounted to an admission that weapons inspectors failed to find evidence of banned weapons. Instead, Washington or London may produce its own dossier of evidence pointing to secret Iraqi weapons programmes.
The UN chief inspector, Hans Blix, said yesterday that his report to the security council next Thursday and a more detailed report on January 27 would include soil samples taken at suspect sites in Iraq and currently being analysed for chemical, biological or radioactive traces.
”Everything is not coming out just from the visit of an empty place, but there are also samples being taken and analysed and so forth,” Blix said. – Guardian Unlimited Â