WASHINGTON - The United States is moving about 10 Navy ships armed with
Tomahawk cruise missiles from the eastern Mediterranean to the Red Sea,
senior U.S. officials said yesterday. The move indicates weakening U.S.
confidence that Turkey will grant overflight rights for U.S. planes and
missiles.
From the Red Sea, the cruisers, destroyers and submarines would be able to
launch their Tomahawks - typically fired in the opening hours of a war -
for flights over Saudi Arabia to targets in Iraq.
The ships are part of the USS Harry S. Truman and USS Theodore Roosevelt
carrier battle groups, which have been operating in the eastern
Mediterranean for weeks in expectation of war against Iraq.
No decision has been made to move the carriers from the Mediterranean, but
that could be the next step, the officials said, speaking on condition of
anonymity. Each carrier has about 80 aircraft aboard.
It had been hoped that the Tomahawks could cross Turkey's airspace, but the
Turkish government has not granted overflight rights.
Tomahawks are satellite-guided missiles usually used in the opening stages
of war to strike high-value, fixed targets such as government buildings in
areas where the risk of civilian casualties is relatively high.
The Tomahawks are designed to evade radar by skimming the land or sea and
were designed in the mid-1980s. After the Persian Gulf war, they became one
of the U.S. weapons of choice to respond to Iraqi breaches of United
Nations sanctions.
The issue of overflight rights for U.S. missiles and planes has been
overshadowed by the Bush administration's struggle to win Turkey's approval
to base 60,000 or more U.S. troops there for a northern front against Iraq.
The Turkish parliament rejected the U.S. request for basing rights this
month, and Pentagon officials said yesterday that it appears increasingly
unlikely that the Army would position its 4th Infantry Division in Turkey,
as was planned.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/iraq/bal-te.war14mar14,0,901663.story?coll=bal%2Dhome%2Dheadlines
